Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine though. (1 Viewer)

[mm1352000]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

Firewire fix ? I assume that's the DVBFix that MP TV server config throws a notification of when it isn't installed ? I haven't tinkered with the fireware drivers yet, no legacy driver either (think i remember reading something like that but related to Vista or 7).

I wasn't referring to the DVB fix - it was a Firewire thing especially for DigitalEverywhere tuners. I've since discovered that is only relevant for Windows 7/Vista. Are you running the latest firmware though?

TV Karten Digital Everywhere - Digital Devices Distribution UG (haftungsbeschränkt)

As for CPU usage, i really don't mind it being around 80%, it's not like it has to do anything else. If i were to look into a new card, are there any cards that you can recommend without it breaking the bank ?

Any mid-low range card would do the job. The most critical thing to check would be that the card could do good 1080i deinterlacing. Some of the lowest cards can't. I'm not really the best person to give advice about this...

I got the Digitally Everywhere FloppyDTV S2 specifically because MP seemed to recommend it. I had a Hauppauge card before but i couldn't easily find a CI solution for it. FloppyDTV's have those built right into the board.

Yeah, the WinTV CI isn't particularly ideal as you can only decrypt one channel at once and you can only have one connected to your system. As long as your CAM supports it, DigitalEverywhere tuners are able to decrypt multiple channels from the same transponder. That is why they are recommended. However, they have been known to fail (hardware dies)...

I never had any significant problems with the FloppyDTV until i tried my luck on HDTV.

Hmm...

FTA channels work perfectly fine btw. I tried Arte(SDTV) and Arte HD(HDTV-H.264), both played nice but that was this morning... I know Arte HD caused problems before too, probably because it's a H.264 stream as well. I did try EinsFestival HD (MP4) and that ran fine this morning too, but that channel has done so ever since i found it weeks ago (even on the old singleLNB dishsetup (it's on 19.2E).

Okay, what we really need here is consistent results. Either you can always view these channels without problem, or there are sometimes problems. Right now the impression I'm getting is that SD channels always work and any HD channels sometimes work. Apart from EinsFestival HD, are there any other HD channels that always work?

Edit:
I forgot to mention that i have tried a couple of bluray rips that have been encoded in H.264 and they played just fine at anytime, either in VLC or in MP.

So that again confirms that the problem is isolated to the tuner, the tuner driver or CAM. Our current theory is that the drivers are bad - correct?

...had to do a channelsearch first (which was blazing fast !)...

We're working on speed-ups for scanning for 1.3.0

After that, regular SDTV channels on 19.2 worked great as did HDTV (H.264) channels on 23.5. So i think it's safe to rule out the wiring and dishalignment at this point.

Agreed, although we can't rule out that the signal is slightly too weak for the FloppyDTV. Some tuners require better quality and/or stronger signal than others.

Just rebooted, didn't help. I shared the timeshift folder to the rest of the network and opened the tsbuffer on my mac with vlc. Same problem, 95% green picture and barely any sound. In other words, it's not the codec or GPU card in my HTPC either. Even tried a recording (manual control, start timeshift, start record), tried that on my mac as well but didn't work either. Same corrupted frames.

Cool. Another confirmation - again, it is clearly the tuner, tuner driver, CAM or signal strength.

Let's add to the weirdness....

Oh no!

First i did a complete cold boot, determined that none of my HDTV channels produced a uncorrupted stream. Then i trashed ALL my channels and did a rescan on 23.5 (that's where most of my HDTV channels are located). Guess what, HDTV works again. However, if i timeshift and play the tsbuffer in VLC at the same time i am still seeing corruption (VLC show it in its statistics too), but when i close vlc and just record the stream... no problems. Clear recording. Although i have to admit it's choppy as hell, but that might be due to the new 270.61 drivers i installed for the 7600GT just 10 mins ago. Playback of the recording through VLC on my Mac is just perfect. Going to reboot now...

So what do we conclude from this? That the act of playing the buffer in VLC while you're timeshifting has an effect (remember my warning about testing that way...)? That the video card driver upgrade had an effect?

Just tried a "hot" reboot (without draining the system of any leftover current) and HDTV still worked, didn't even have any corrupted frames with live playback on VLC. After a cold boot though... all logic gone again. On the first try it even said "Channel scrambled", took a lot longer to get to that point too. Once i clicked that error away i hit start timeshift again and within half a second it was timeshifting, but with the usual 95% corruption again.

Can I please have the TV Server logs to show this (or similar) behaviour. The first logs that you posted were very short and didn't show any problems. If there is corruption in the stream then it should also be shown in the logs...

I'm going to shop for a Geforce GT220 or GT240 right now, since they seem to be the best bang for buck right now, i'll bring my CAM along with me to see if it might be the culprit. These damn cams are EXPENSIVE (60-ish bucks) so unless i can see this one failing in another system i'm not buying anything else (or i would have to be able to return it without question).

I've only heard positive things about the 220 and 240, but don't take my word for it - I've only owned 2 video cards, and the NVidia one was a 6600GT. Fair enough about the CAM. I'd feel the same way.

Well. I just got back from the store. Didn't end up buying a new cam as it worked perfectly fine with HDTV channels in one of the receivers they had on display. So it has to be something in the hardware or software in the PC itself. Think i'll try a fresh install of Win7 in a few minutes, just to see if that solves... or makes the problem bigger. Didn't get a new graphics card either, nothing in stock =(

I think you're getting closer and closer to proving it is a driver issue... or something about the hardware that can't handle the higher bandwidth. Have you managed to install 7?

 

[C.44]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

Firewire fix ? I assume that's the DVBFix that MP TV server config throws a notification of when it isn't installed ? I haven't tinkered with the fireware drivers yet, no legacy driver either (think i remember reading something like that but related to Vista or 7).

I wasn't referring to the DVB fix - it was a Firewire thing especially for DigitalEverywhere tuners. I've since discovered that is only relevant for Windows 7/Vista. Are you running the latest firmware though?

TV Karten Digital Everywhere - Digital Devices Distribution UG (haftungsbeschränkt)

As for CPU usage, i really don't mind it being around 80%, it's not like it has to do anything else. If i were to look into a new card, are there any cards that you can recommend without it breaking the bank ?

Any mid-low range card would do the job. The most critical thing to check would be that the card could do good 1080i deinterlacing. Some of the lowest cards can't. I'm not really the best person to give advice about this...


Yeah, the WinTV CI isn't particularly ideal as you can only decrypt one channel at once and you can only have one connected to your system. As long as your CAM supports it, DigitalEverywhere tuners are able to decrypt multiple channels from the same transponder. That is why they are recommended. However, they have been known to fail (hardware dies)...


Hmm...


Okay, what we really need here is consistent results. Either you can always view these channels without problem, or there are sometimes problems. Right now the impression I'm getting is that SD channels always work and any HD channels sometimes work. Apart from EinsFestival HD, are there any other HD channels that always work?


So that again confirms that the problem is isolated to the tuner, the tuner driver or CAM. Our current theory is that the drivers are bad - correct?


We're working on speed-ups for scanning for 1.3.0


Agreed, although we can't rule out that the signal is slightly too weak for the FloppyDTV. Some tuners require better quality and/or stronger signal than others.


Cool. Another confirmation - again, it is clearly the tuner, tuner driver, CAM or signal strength.


Oh no!


So what do we conclude from this? That the act of playing the buffer in VLC while you're timeshifting has an effect (remember my warning about testing that way...)? That the video card driver upgrade had an effect?


Can I please have the TV Server logs to show this (or similar) behaviour. The first logs that you posted were very short and didn't show any problems. If there is corruption in the stream then it should also be shown in the logs...

I'm going to shop for a Geforce GT220 or GT240 right now, since they seem to be the best bang for buck right now, i'll bring my CAM along with me to see if it might be the culprit. These damn cams are EXPENSIVE (60-ish bucks) so unless i can see this one failing in another system i'm not buying anything else (or i would have to be able to return it without question).

I've only heard positive things about the 220 and 240, but don't take my word for it - I've only owned 2 video cards, and the NVidia one was a 6600GT. Fair enough about the CAM. I'd feel the same way.

Well. I just got back from the store. Didn't end up buying a new cam as it worked perfectly fine with HDTV channels in one of the receivers they had on display. So it has to be something in the hardware or software in the PC itself. Think i'll try a fresh install of Win7 in a few minutes, just to see if that solves... or makes the problem bigger. Didn't get a new graphics card either, nothing in stock =(

I think you're getting closer and closer to proving it is a driver issue... or something about the hardware that can't handle the higher bandwidth. Have you managed to install 7?

Ah that firewire fix is something i tried to find in WinXP too, however, i soon realized that it was a Vista / 7 Fix only. As for consistent results, SDTV always works. Both payed/encrypted and FTA. HDTV works too, but generally it takes a (re)scan and i can't reboot cold. If i do, i have to rescan and most of the time that will bring encrypted HDTV back. I have not been consistently testing if that affects FTA HD too, but i know that EinsFestival HD always works, probably because it's not a H.264 stream.

I have tried the newer VGA drivers (270.61 WHQL) but that didn't do anything besides slow the 7600GT down it seems. Certainly didn't help with the corrupted frames but i'll try them on a fresh install of WinXP and 7 today.

I have installed Win 7 last night, but got into nothing but problems. Aside from the normal Win Vista / 7 bit where it doubts your every click i did get SDTV and HDTV right off the bat, no codecs or anything, just hit preview. After that i might have compromised the system when i tried to install the driverpacks that i had on hand for my chipset, which was probably not a good idea since i know it was intended for XP / Vista but Win7 didn't complain about them when i installed them so i figured i was in the clear. Rebooted Win7 nothing worked, neither HDTV or SDTV. I figured i compromised the install and called it a night.

At this point i've downloaded a copy of Elgato's EyeTV 3.5.1 and i intend on pulling the FloppyDTV out of my system, hook it up to my mac (if firewire works on my mac that is) and try to get it working that way. Just trying to eliminate hardware problems on the FloppyDTV end of the equation. If the FloppyDTV S2 fails on this setup too it could still be either FloppyDTV or a too weak signal. At which point i'm not entirely sure what my next step should be since FloppyDTV's aren't exactly sold on every streetcorner anymore.

I will get you a couple more logs, at this point however i have nothing on my harddrive anymore since i have been formatting and reinstalling all the time haha. I have looked into the logs however, TSWriter.log doesn't show anything out of the ordinary.

The weird part for me is that encrypted HDTV works after a rescan of 23.5 and except for the sloppy playback because of the graphics card the stream is okay. I just can't get my head around the issue why it doesn't work after i do a cold reboot.

 

[C.44]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

Just reinstallled WinXP SP3, installed the bare essentials, updated the transponderlist and scanned 23.5E. HDTV (encrypted - H.264) worked rightaway. Did a cold reboot, tried a SDTV channel (encrypted) which worked ok and a HDTV channel (encrypted - H.264) that didn't work. Trashed all channels, imported a backup channellist that included all 19.2E channels (scan is a day or two old i think) and tried 2 channels on 19.2E. SDTV (Encrypted) worked fine and a HDTV channel (FTA - H.264) that worked fine and another HDTV channel (FTA - MP4) that worked fine too. After that i tried another HDTV channel (encrypted - H.264) on 23.5E and that was corrupted again.

I haven't touched the logs since i have installed MP 1.1.3 and they are attached to this post.

Edit:
Just rescanned 23.5E and voila, HDTV (encrypted - H.264) reception is back to normal. Did a regular restart (not a powered down, just "start" -> "shut down" -> "reboot") and HDTV (encrypted - H.264) still worked. Did another regular restart and it still worked. Then i did an actual shutdown, but left the powersupply on. After that HDTV (encrypted - H.264) was gone again. Another rescan brought the HDTV channels (encrypted - H.264) back to life. Basic shutdown killed it again though. I even tried letting capture the corrupted stream for 5 minutes and then stop and start a preview again. Didn't work out either. Did a restart again and that didn't do anything either. A rescan however... you guessed it... did. Then killed it again with a shutdown, tried HDTV (encrypted - H.264) that obviously failed and did a rescan that i immediately canceled, resulting in one transponder (the first in the list) being scanned and the channellist being updated with only those channels. That didn't work either. A full rescan however did bring them back again.

The full logs are attached as logs2.zip and are the complete logs from when i reinstalled the computer, so the first logs.zip in this post is basically obsolete.

 

[C.44]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

Well adding to the weirdness again. Turns out i don't have to shut it down to corrupt the signal again. I just rescanned and had it working in MP TV Server config using the preview button again (HDTV encrypted H.264) and then i tried the FireDTV Viewer that installs itself when you install the drivers for the card. While still got a picture in MP i didn't get one in FireDTV Viewer, so i tuned into the same channel anyway and hit record. After a minute or so i stopped the recording and went looking for it on my harddrive. Found it, opened it with VLC and got nothing but corruption. Intrigued i started the MP TV Server Config again, tried watching the same encrypted HDTV channel (H.264) and that's corrupted again as well.

I know WinXP doesn't like 5.6 or 5.7 driverversion one bit (doesn't recognize the card with it in the "device manager") so i'm going to install 7 once again to try and see if either of those drivers can actually do anything at all for me. I will make a backup of my logs first though this time around.

 

[mm1352000]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

After looking at your logs I am a little perplexed. There is too much information in them to follow what you're actually doing, but if there is corruption and discontinuities as you said I expected there to be errors and/or suspicious entries in the TsWriter log. That is not really the case. I can see several entries that are really bad:

01-06-2011 21:21:54.937 !!! CSectionDecoder::OnTsPacket Entered infinite loop. pid: 68 start: 11 BufferPos: 6 SectionLength: 3 - Discarding section and moving to next packet

...but I can't confirm any correlation with the issues you're seeing. Do you still see the discontinuities, and are you able to collect a shorter set of logs that shows that?

 

[C.44]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

After looking at your logs I am a little perplexed. There is too much information in them to follow what you're actually doing, but if there is corruption and discontinuities as you said I expected there to be errors and/or suspicious entries in the TsWriter log. That is not really the case. I can see several entries that are really bad:

01-06-2011 21:21:54.937 !!! CSectionDecoder::OnTsPacket Entered infinite loop. pid: 68 start: 11 BufferPos: 6 SectionLength: 3 - Discarding section and moving to next packet

...but I can't confirm any correlation with the issues you're seeing. Do you still see the discontinuities, and are you able to collect a shorter set of logs that shows that?

Heh, i know the logs were long, but since you requested longer logs i thought i'd upload everything from beginning to end. Basically i made sure that everything in my second to last post is an exact transcript of that set of logs.

I haven't actually seen that Infinite Loop thing yet. Not sure yet what it does or how it affects the corruption.

At this moment i am scanning 23.5E after installing Win7Ultimate again (using driver version 5.7 this time). Actually it is JUST done but none of my HDTV channels were even detected (using 1.2.0 Beta again). Doing one more scan with 1.2.0B, if the channels are still not in my list i will revert to 1.1.3 and try again.

Edit:
Just finished the rescan, didn't find any HDTV channels and a lot of others were missing too, i saved the logs and attached them to this post. Installing 1.1.3 right now.

Edit 2:
Just installed 1.1.3, scan went flawless, found all channels i expected to find. That said, the behavior i get is exactly the same. HDTV works after a scan, but once i shut the computer down and power it back on, the stream is corrupted. Rescanning right now, logs are attached again.

Edit 3:
As expected, a rescan resulted in a decent stream on HDTV channels again (encrypted - h.264). A restart didn't corrupt the stream, just like on XP SP3. A shutdown and power on did however. I've also tried to disable the card in the device manager, restarted and re-enabled it (and restarted again even though i didn't have to), i even disconnected the firewire cable itself. I'm getting quite convinced that this a card issue since it STILL WORKS.

I'm now going to disable it, unplug the firewire connector and the power (molex) to the card, then reboot and hook it back up. see what that does.

Edit 4:
As expected, disabling the card, completely unplugging it and restarting the computer without powering down has the same effect as powering the computer down with the card hooked up to the molex for power. What this essentially means is that as soon as the FloppyDTV loses power, i lose the encrypted HDTV channels that my cam + smartcard is supposed to unlock.

That means that either the drivers don't fully initialize the card and mediaportal forces it to do that still (when i click "scan") or there is something wrong with the card that makes it fail part of its initialization. The only real way to test would be with a different card i think. Sadly i don't happen to have a stash of them hidden anywhere. I did contact a few semi-locals to see if they still have a card for sale. Fingers crossed.

 

[mm1352000]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

Again, I don't see any issues in the logs here. Could this simply be a playback problem? Are you still using VLC? Please try to set up the MP 1.1.3 client (make sure you configure codecs) and then post a full set of logs using debug mode...

 

[C.44]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

Again, I don't see any issues in the logs here. Could this simply be a playback problem? Are you still using VLC? Please try to set up the MP 1.1.3 client (make sure you configure codecs) and then post a full set of logs using debug mode...

Basically what i did on the Win7 install was click preview, if the channel decodes you get a nice little popup window that show the stream. Worked for both SDTV and HDTV. When HDTV didn't work i used Manual Control to make a short recording and played that recording in VLC. That showed me a corrupt file (90% of the picture would be green, although there is something "underneath" the green layer, just as if it were waiting for a keyframe that never arrives), exactly the same as windows xp.

I have attached a zip with 2 folders in it with the logs from the tv server and the client (one and the same pc but still )

Edit: i quickly set the client side up with SAF5 codecs, switched all codecs over to ffdshow and then tried to watch from within the MP 1.1.3 client. An encrypted SDTV channel worked perfect, HDTV channel (encrypted - h.264) didn't (Can't play Live2-0.ts.tsbuffer).

 

[C.44]

Re: Fresh install HDTV works. Reboot pc, nothing but corrupted frames. SDTV fine thou

I am hereby excluding the FloppyDTV S2 hardware itself from the equation. I have bought another FloppyDTV S2 and it does the EXACT same thing. Scan, encrypted HDTV works, power off, encrypted HDTV doesn't work / corrupted frames. Rescan and it works just fine again.

I have reinstalled WinXP SP3 (Win7 was waaaay too sluggish), installed MP 1.1.3, dvb fix and basically everything i've done a dozen times before. The logs that are in my previous post are just as relevant but just for shits and giggles i'll upload another batch of right now. I really hope someone is able to make something out of these things because i am about fed up spending hard cash on my HTPC (vid card, new harddrive and new floppydtv all in a months time).