DJBlu's Custom Sky Data Grabber for MP1.9 onwards (2 Viewers)

[ears]

Hi,

I decided to have an experimental return to MP to see if the issues I had with it before had gone away.

So I built a custom 1.12 with the EPG grabber included.

This is a very early and lightly tested build but built according to the same process I used for previous builds.

Please post back with findings if you use it. If nobody has problems I'll add it to post 1.

 

[MonkeyJug]

Thanks ears.

Might be time for a fresh install...

 

[Philip Churchill]

Awesome thanks ears

 

[theidiot]

Cheers ears.

 

[mm1352000]

to see if the issues I had with it before had gone away.

Have you reported these issues somewhere? (Issues don't usually get fixed unless they're reported.)

 

[ears]

Have you reported these issues somewhere? (Issues don't usually get fixed unless they're reported.)

Thank you - yes at the start of the problems and I got some good help. I'm pretty sure the issue is with my setup rather than MP. I was running the TV Engine on a server that was also running Hyper-V. Despite ensuring that all the VM VHDs were on drives other than the one used for timeshift and recording, and even having all VMs switched off I just couldn't get away from discontinuities in recordings. So I switched to DV|BViewer Recording service as, for some reason, it was a little better (but still affected).

I've since switched Hyper-V to another machine and completely removed it from the server. I'd been running with DV|BViewer which was no longer reporting discontinuities so I decided it was time to give MP another go as, when it's running in the right environment, and with this plugin, it's lower maintenance than DVBViewer.

Sorry - should have been clearer about this from the outset.

 

[Assault88]

If anyone is getting the 'no signal detected' error when grabbing then it might be that your FEC rate or polarisation is set wrong for your provider. You can change it by going to Radio Channels where you will find the Sky Grabber channel. If you right click the channel and select edit, then select and edit again, then you will be able to set FEC rate and polarisation. I had to set my FEC to 3/4 and change polarisation from vertical to horizontal as it is displayed on this page: http://www.lyngsat.com/packages/Sky-New-Zealand.html

 

[DragonQ]

Thanks ears, will probably give it a go tonight unless I have lots of stuff scheduled to record. Any chance you could share an idiot's guide to merging and building this flavour of MP? It'd be good to distribute the knowledge as much as possible in case you decide to pursue other projects like DJBlu did.

Have you reported these issues somewhere? (Issues don't usually get fixed unless they're reported.)

Thank you - yes at the start of the problems and I got some good help. I'm pretty sure the issue is with my setup rather than MP. I was running the TV Engine on a server that was also running Hyper-V. Despite ensuring that all the VM VHDs were on drives other than the one used for timeshift and recording, and even having all VMs switched off I just couldn't get away from discontinuities in recordings. So I switched to DV|BViewer Recording service as, for some reason, it was a little better (but still affected).

I've since switched Hyper-V to another machine and completely removed it from the server. I'd been running with DV|BViewer which was no longer reporting discontinuities so I decided it was time to give MP another go as, when it's running in the right environment, and with this plugin, it's lower maintenance than DVBViewer.

Sorry - should have been clearer about this from the outset.

I had similar experiences with my first MediaPortal TV server setup. In the end, the only way I managed to get rid of the random write continuity errors was to separate out my TV server from my main server. So I now have two PCs - one that acts as a file store, download server, channel decrypter, backup server, etc. and another that ONLY runs MP TV Server (on probably overkill hardware). No more random write continuity errors. I still get the very occasional hiccup during playback of live TV, which seems to be due to my client's plugins taking up network bandwidth and CPU cycles updating databases.

 

[mm1352000]

In the end, the only way I managed to get rid of the random write continuity errors was to separate out my TV server from my main server.

...which basically points to disk load/contention being the underlying problem.

Similar deal for ears - I suspect HyperV may have done funky stuff with hardware abstraction that negatively affected disk access time (by increasing DPC latency etc.).

 

[DragonQ]

In the end, the only way I managed to get rid of the random write continuity errors was to separate out my TV server from my main server.

...which basically points to disk load/contention being the underlying problem.

Similar deal for ears - I suspect HyperV may have done funky stuff with hardware abstraction that negatively affected disk access time (by increasing DPC latency etc.).

True, although I did various tests where I shut down everything I could on the server and it was still an issue. So it could've been a hardware issue (disk controller maybe) or something to do with FlexRAID, which should in theory have been idle but maybe caused other issues.