HVR-1600 works fine on analog but not QAM? (1 Viewer)

[litljay]

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'nuther quick thought... mm1352000 seems to have been on the right track all along with the TSReader issue. Since I can't make my own .ts files to work with, can someone set me up with a .ts file that I can download and attempt to play? That might get me closer to the problem, vis-a-vis "Are mine being created corrupt?" or "Can I not play ANY .ts file?"

J

 

[mm1352000]

OK, now I'm furious... MEDIAPORTAL IS THE PROBLEM. Let's focus on that. I can't say much more than the logs I have already posted say unless someone asks something new.

litljay - I get that you're frustrated. Please keep the tone friendly if possible though.

I'm *really* confused about the fact that recording doesn't work. Perhaps there is a second problem that hasn't yet been seen in the logs you've posted. For that reason I'd say logs for what happens when you're trying to make a recording (along with brief instructions describing how you're attempting to start the recording, because there are many ways to do that) would be helpful, as would logs for testing the analog cable channels (in some cases analog is *much* trickier to set up and test than you might think). I can provide you with a sample TS file when I get home from work in 8 hours or so (if nobody beats me to it).

mm

 

[mm1352000]

Potentially dumb thought coming up so please excuse me for asking what might be obvious. I'm getting to the point where I think it would be worth trying anything...
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I wonder if you're missing a pre-requisite for XP. Did you see all the pre-requisites and required updates -->here<-- in the second "section" on the system components and required updates tabs.

mm

 

[Andrew H]

First off +1 for mm, we're trying to help

litljay - I get that you're frustrated. Please keep the tone friendly if possible though.

And a few observations I'd like to mention:

My cable provider pipes about 20 or so channels in analog alongside the few dozen clear qam channels that I use, so I connected the cable to the analog side of the HVR-1600, scanned, tried to tune, and got the same old result.

WinTV worked fine. NextPVR works fine. This eliminates problems with my hardware, tuner card, drivers, or cable service.

I'm not sure you can say that explicitedly... often having too much or too many similar applications loaded can cause an issue when similar services are competing for resources, or drivers of the same name get loaded inadvertantly. I would suggest you UNLOAD these other applications and reboot just to see if MP acts differently without them...

Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\PsisRndr.ax, 6.05.2600.5512 (English), 4/14/2008 05:42:44, 33280 bytes
Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\PsisDecd.dll, 6.05.2600.5512 (English), 4/14/2008 05:42:04, 363520 bytes

Oddly enough I believe the version numbers are the ones the DVB-FIX replaces so I suspect the OP has not installed the fix or didn't establish the necessary c:\dvbfix folder.

From re-reading the OP he was receiving analog on this card previously and it was working. Then he moved to a new cable provider and assumably was still receiving analog stations although he wanted to tune QAM stations wherein lies his problem. I did see this in the first set of logs which (to me) indicate a codec problem either not installed, or not selected inside the MP-configuration:

2011-05-10 02:48:11.593750 [ERROR][MPMain(1)]: Failed filter: not found
2011-05-10 02:48:11.593750 [ERROR][MPMain(1)]: Failed filter: not found
2011-05-10 02:48:13.765625 [ERROR][MPMain(1)]: TSReaderPlayer: Unable to start playing

I also noticed the Free To Air (FTA) flag is set to False on the ClearQAM channels he's tuning... YES, we'd discussed this on another thread but setting them to TRUE in the TV-Server/TV Channels section would be better (and he'd see the Green icon adjacent the FTA channels.

2011-05-10 02:48:07.671875 [(6)]: subch:0 SendPMT: Channel FTA information changed to True according to CAIDs in PMT.

I suspect the dvb-fix is key for this XP-user and we should note the system is an AMD single-core 3000+ and a modest GPU (HD3450)... What does this OP want to view (DVD, ATSC 720p, ATSC 1080i, .mkv files) and what resolution? How is your CPU loaded when you're running these? How does it respond (use Task-Manager) when you play these using MPC-HC or VLC Player? I'm trying to get a sense of his system capability with a single-core 3000+ and 1GB RAM, and whether DXVA is being triggered -- I had a 3100+, 1GB RAM and an nVidia 9500GT to do deinterlacing without jitter... I suspect his modest system will be taxed on deinterlacing HD material, or maybe the improvements in the way MediaPortal has addressed texturing/display (since MP 1.0.0.0) has reduced/eliminated deinterlace-induced jitter on weak GPU/video cards.

I'd like to mention I do not use VLC Player -- couldn't ever get it to play correctly using my SPDIF -- if you have then more power to you. Also, I have always been able to use MPC-HC. In fact, I use it as a test-bed of sorts to help me understand playback problems, setting the status on the OSD tells me directly whether a DXVA filter is active, and establishes a CPU baseline for me that I can compare to the same file via MediaPortal. He should also grab a copy of the GraphEdit and/or GraphStudio as they (along with MPC-HC) will tell you which filters are being selected/loaded while playing files... Just my $0.02 worth

 

[mm1352000]

Andrew H: Could well be the DVB fix - that was certainly my thought when mentioning the prerequisites.
litljay: I promised you a TS file to test with. You can download it from -->here<--. Size is roughly 50MB...

 

[litljay]

Between problems getting my internet upgraded to 50 megs, surprise customers with broken power buttons (I wish I were kidding about that), cranky kids, sick in-laws, and nearly drowning in the wave pool at splashtown because I forgot that I'm not a kid anymore, getting my HTPC house in order hasn't been high on the list.

I do appreciate all of the feedback I see up there (but not the snippy rants about my well-justified frustration) and WILL be testing out every single theory just as soon as I can.

You guys do realize that MP will nag you to death about the dvbfix until you take care of it? I'm not even sure it will start up. Of course I did that. I will double check when I can for the sake of completeness, though.

J

 

[mm1352000]

I do appreciate all of the feedback I see up there (but not the snippy rants about my well-justified frustration)...

My intention was fully *not* to rant so I unreservedly apologise if that was how you took my post. :sorry:

You guys do realize that MP will nag you to death about the dvbfix until you take care of it?

It has been a *long* time since I've reinstalled - more than two years - so I don't remember any nagging. Sorry again. I guess you could say we're clutching at straws. At this point my perspective is that it would be worth trying anything...

 

[litljay]

Well, I've spent some time pounding on it and have some interesting updates. A really big thing is that I have made some substantial upgrades. A customer traded in some equipment for service credit, so now my HTPC is a P4 with 3 Gigs of RAM. I also ran a hard wire through the wall to the system, so it has a nice, solid, wired gigabit connection to my server instead of a flaky 300Mb wifi connection. You can see more details in my system spec's. They are up to date. Ffdshow runs much more comfortably on this hardware, and I can stream any kind of hi-def content I want from the server without stammers and hiccups.

All that upgrading did not fix my crashing TV channels, though. It turns out that ffdshow was the problem all along. Don't ask me to explain it. Ffdshow did just fine with the analog signals from my old cable company, but when I switched to clear QAM it got PO'ed and took a dump on me (I guess it needs a diaper).

I swtched my TV video decoder to Gabest and it works great. I find it pathetic how embarrassingly simple it was. For some reason I just never imagined that I would have to change the codec. It even crossed my mind a few times before and I dismissed it because ffdshow is so universally accepted as the de facto standard for your decoder. In the course of this FOUR PAGE discussion someone once told me to double check and make sure that I WAS using ffdshow! Why consider changing it, right?

Well, it is working nicely and I appreciate everyone's help and input. I do have a scaling issue to sort through, but that is (obviously) for another thread.

Thanks again everyone, especially mm1352000 for toughing it out with me the whole way through!

J

 

[mm1352000]

Hi litljay

I confess I totally though you had thrown MP out the window in complete disgust. I'm ***ecstatic*** that you didn't do that and that you managed to figure out what was wrong. *Thank you* for reporting back - I'll definitely keep your comments regarding FFDShow in mind going forward. This honestly makes my evening!!!

Best regards,
mm

 

[litljay]

Hi litljay

I confess I totally though you had thrown MP out the window in complete disgust. I'm ***ecstatic*** that you didn't do that and that you managed to figure out what was wrong. *Thank you* for reporting back - I'll definitely keep your comments regarding FFDShow in mind going forward. This honestly makes my evening!!!

Best regards,
mm

Without being to detailed or sappy, my near-death to the waves of a pool at Splashtown in July gave me a new resolve to never take no for an answer. I've always been the kind of guy that won't let anyone tell him that he can't do something, but these days I'm just a machine when I set my mind to a task.

I've used MP since ~mid 2009. I wasn't about to give up on it now!

It also always makes my day to make someone smile. Now I can rest easier when I go to bed, which I am going to do as soon as I finish this post because it is 03:00 in this time zone.

See you on the other side!