DVB EPG not working (1 Viewer)

[svendis]

MediaPortal Version: 1.1.3
MediaPortal Skin: xFactor
Windows Version: Windows 7 X86
CPU Type: Phenom
HDD: Hitatchi 1TB
Memory: 4GB Crucial
Motherboard: GA-MA78GM-S2H V. 1.0
Video Card: HD4670
Video Card Driver: 11.6
Sound Card: Realtek HD
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Floppydtv S2
1. TV Card Type:
1. TV Card Driver: BDA 5.7
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: MicrosoftDTV
MPEG2 Audio Codec: FFDshow
h.264 Video Codec: MicrosoftDTV
Satelite/CableTV Provider: Thor 0.8W
HTPC Case: Antec 430
Cooling: Scyte Ninja
Power Supply: Antec 430
Remote: Microsoft MCE
TV: Sony Bravia w2000
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI, without adapter

Hi

My DVB EPG stopped working after a few months yesterday. This has happend before, last time I reinstalled and all was fine. Now the same has happend, and I cant find out why. If I remember right I read at the time it happend last time that it was a fix for this, but not in 1.1.3
Every time I restart MP, it seems to delete all epg data and starts to renew them. Some EPG are visual for 10-30 minutes, and then "no data available" on every channel.

I have reverted back to 1.1.3 from 1.2 final because I am not able to watch som HD channels from 0.8w with 1.2. It is a known reason for that, was something with the details on the broadcasting. Not a MP problem but Telenor.

Hope somebody is able to help with the EPG in 1.1.3, or a patch or whatever to workaround the HD channel problem in 1.2. Can't find the thread where I read about this earlier. It was a thread started by a fellow Norwegian who tuned from 0.8W
As I understood from the conclusion in the end of that thread was to contacting Canal Digital and get them to broadcast according to standards. Have tryed that with no luck. The tuners delivered from them are showing those channels, so no problem.. For them..

Hope you guys can read english norwegian

 

[sincze]

Just curious.

why reverted back to 1.1.3 ??
mp 1.2.1 not working either??

Problem sounds familiar. I can give you my details about how i 'fixed' it.
At the moment system is running fine for almost a week, but I can only say it's 100% working after 10 days or so.

 

[svendis]

I reverted back to 1.1.3 because everything was working there.
I noticed it with 1.2 alpha and beta. Tried 1.2.1 the other day and it did not work there either. The hd channels are picked up as unknown.

What did you do to fix it on your system?

 

[Wbunaarf]

My DVB EPG stopped working after a few months yesterday.

If I read your log correct you are picking up EPG from 18 channels. Is there a particular reason for doing this rather than grabbing all epg from just, say, 'Motors TV'?

I have reverted back to 1.1.3 from 1.2 final because I am not able to watch som HD channels from 0.8w with 1.2. It is a known reason for that, was something with the details on the broadcasting. Not a MP problem but Telenor.

Which channels are you missing?

Hope somebody is able to help with the EPG in 1.1.3, or a patch or whatever to workaround the HD channel problem in 1.2. Can't find the thread where I read about this earlier.

Perhaps you are referring to https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...-scan-any-dvb-s2-channels-floppydtv-s2-93207/ ?

//W

 

[svendis]

Hi Wbunaarf, and thanks for your interrest in helping

I only grab EPG from the channels I have in my "everyday" list because I had problems with tv service crashing during every night. Every morning I had to restart to watch TV. Unchecking all channels not in the list solved that problem. Maybe because I dont subscribe to many of them?..

Missing channels: Thor5 12015 -all, 11785 -all. Discovery, BBC, Animal, History, ESPN, NatGeo, NatGeo Wild, MTV Live..

Perhaps you are referring to Can't scan any DVB-S2 channels with FloppyDTV S2 ?

That is correct! Seems to be the same thing. andraves never came back to that thread.

Looked at the signal strenght during channel search and it showed 80% at the time of scanning 12015 and 11785. Have tried to fine tune the disch with a beeper and cant get it better than that.
Have tried to manually add the channels without luck, also using an exported list from 1.1.3.
Noticed the new function in 1.2 "error counter" can't remember right, in manual control, counting continuosly upwards. Like the signal is corrupted.

Maybe my signal quality isn't good enough for 1.2, and that I am allowed to live "on the edge" in 1.1.3?
Are you tuning 0,8 west, and all working? And if so, do you have a floppydtv s2?

 

[Wbunaarf]

I only grab EPG from the channels I have in my "everyday" list because I had problems with tv service crashing during every night. Every morning I had to restart to watch TV. Unchecking all channels not in the list solved that problem. Maybe because I dont subscribe to many of them?..

Not having access to some channels could perhaps be the reason, yes. TVE of course shouldn't crash because of that, but... Anyway, try to uncheck all channels and check _only_ 'Motors TV' (I assume this channel is included in the basic package in Norway as well). From this single channel you'll get 5 days worth of EPG for _all_ (well, at least CD's) channels.

Missing channels: Thor5 12015 -all, 11785 -all. Discovery, BBC, Animal, History, ESPN, NatGeo, NatGeo Wild, MTV Live..

OK, the usual problem ones...

You have 1.1.3 installed at the moment, right? If you do a scan there, preferably on a clean db, are those channels picked up and identified correctly? If so, would it be possible for you to immediately after such a successful scan install 1.2.1 and redo a clean scan? If 1.2.1 then fails to find them I believe it could be very useful for the developers to have the logs for both cases to try and spot what's different.

I tried to scan those two transponders myself yesterday, and while all the channels were found they were of type '0' and identified as 'Unknown'. This matches the behaviour I reported in https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...hor-5-6-missing-channels-when-scanning-96652/. As I also stated in that thread a later scan found them, so I put this down to being CD's fault. If you could do the above test and prove me wrong I wouldn't be sad at all...

Are you tuning 0,8 west, and all working? And if so, do you have a floppydtv s2?

Yes and yes.

//W

 

[svendis]

Hi again!

I reinstalled 1.2.1 before I did see your reply Wubanaarf..
Updated search list and scanned maybe 5-6 times and there suddenly they came in!
I suspect this to not being a MP problem, but CD/ LNB or FloppyDTV driver, since it just suddenly worked...
Today is the first time above mentioned channels are working for me in MP 1.2, so now I don't want to touch anything

Will try out and log your ideas if I get problems anytime later. Thanks a lot for your help!

 

[Wbunaarf]

Updated search list and scanned maybe 5-6 times and there suddenly they came in!
I suspect this to not being a MP problem, but CD/ LNB or FloppyDTV driver, since it just suddenly worked...

Last night I tried, just like you, 5 consecutive scans. On scan 1,2,3 and 5 the channels were found, but on scan 4 they were identified as unknown. Since you have just confirmed this erratic behaviour I would guess that it's either MP or something regarding the FloppyDTv and that CD (and the LNB) is actually innocent...

//W

 

[svendis]

You have a good point there. I guess that they always broadcast the same, not sometimes so it should be picked up as 0

 

[mm1352000]

Hi svendis and Wbunaarf

I've been meaning to post for the last couple of days now but I just haven't had time. A quick post now before I go home and to bed...

If you could do the above test and prove me wrong I wouldn't be sad at all...

I'll tell you what - I would definitely be sad!
I've spent hours going through the code to check that TsWriter's string and SDT parsing is correct. It seems to me that this could very well be a FloppyDTV issue. I mean, it seems very strange that this problem has only been reported with FloppyDTVs (am I wrong about that?). From my perspective it is not so productive for me to spend more hours examining the code at this time - I would like to see if this issue is reproducible in MP with a different model of tuner. Of course I won't stop looking at the code, but I'm just reluctant to waste a lot of time if this is a hardware issue.

svendis: one thing I noticed in your first logs is that there is no scan information and no attempt to tune either of the transponders. That makes those logs pretty much useless.
Wbunaarf: you've provided many logs internally so I *really* appreciate your persistence. When I look at this problem I really need the TsWriter log as well as the tv.log so your latest log is not all that helpful either. One thing I did notice:

2011-10-28 01:08:05.228218 [(27)]: Found: DVBS:tv: Unknown B77 Freq:11785000 ONID:0 TSID:38 SID:2935 PMT:0x102 FTA:False LCN:10000 SymbolRate:30000 Modulation:Mod8Psk Polarisation:LinearH InnerFecRate:RateNotSet DisEqc:None band:Universal Pilot:NotSet RollOff:NotSet
2011-10-28 01:07:21.242703 [(27)]: Found: DVBS:tv:Telenor ESPN America HD Freq:11785000 ONID:70 TSID:38 SID:2935 PMT:0x102 FTA:False LCN:10000 SymbolRate:30000 Modulation:Mod8Psk Polarisation:LinearH InnerFecRate:RateNotSet DisEqc:None band:Universal Pilot:NotSet RollOff:NotSet

One very critical difference in these two (apart from the channel and provider names of course) is... the ONID. That is really critical. Let me explain with a comment about channel scanning:

When scanning for channels, we find the list of channels in the PAT. When a channel is first identified there, we only have:
SID
TSID
PMT PID

We use that information to try to find the details for the service from 3 other tables. They are listed below with the fields that we get from each of them:

SDT (service description table)
- network ID
- transport ID
- service ID
- free CA mode (encrypted/free indicator)
- channel type
- provider name
- channel name

NIT
- logical channel number

PMT
- has video?
- has audio?
- has CA descriptor?
(these fields are alternative ways of getting the channel type and encrypted status for providers that misbehave)

Initial values for the fields are:
- free CA mode = 0 (free to air)
- channel type = 0 (undefined)
- provider name = ""
- channel name = ""
- has video = false
- has audio = false
- has CA descriptor = false

When your channel is found as unknown, I think we are not receiving the SDT. However, that would be very curious since the FloppyDTV hardware PID filter should be enabled. As I've told Wbunaarf in the past on the internal forum, we don't know the PMT PIDs in advance and we disable the NIT PID so when the PID filter is engaged (which it should be for these transponders since they are high-bitrate DVB-S2... which the FloppyDTV/firewire might not be able to handle) I'd only expect to get information from the PAT and SDT. The PMT and NIT should be thrown away by the FloppyDTV's filter.

Now, what is so strange is that even when the channel name is unknown we somehow know the type (TV) and correct FTA/encrypted status but we don't have the ONID. How is that possible if the SDT and PMT are not received? If the SDT is received then we should have the ONID and channel name. If it is not received then we shouldn't know the channel type and encrypted status. If the PMT is received (and that is where the channel type and encrypted status come from)... well, it should not be received if the FloppyDTV PID filter is working correctly. If you can answer that question then you can solve this problem! I expect that the answer/cause will either be:
1. FloppyDTV PID filter doing strange things.
2. Some SDT sections in the stream only contain partial information. It is pure luck as to whether the right section is received or not. This would be a provider problem.

So what can we do?
1. Try scanning with another card and see if the channels are ever found as unknown. Can one of you do this?
2. Check the stream contents. I can do this if somebody provides me with a stream dump. Alternatively I can provide a debug TsWriter that logs the PIDs which are being received so that we can see if the FloppyDTV is behaving correctly.

Which option would you prefer? The 1st option is easiest for me...

mm

[Edit: one more clarification. Once the SDT (or PMT) information for a channel is received, SDT (or PMT) for that channel is no longer used.]