Interruptions to tv & radio (1 Viewer)

[Alan Honeyman]

When watching any tv channel, I get frequent pauses/jumps in both picture & sound. I have confirmed that the incoming signal is ok by viewing the channel directly in the tv. I first thought that some program was taking too much cpu but there is nothing obvious showing in task manager, so I'm at a loss. Can anybody suggest a line of investigation?

 

[mm1352000]

Hello Alan

Comparing signal strength with your TV is not a fair comparison. Every tuner (including TVs and STBs) have different sensitivities and characteristics. In other words, just because the signal is okay for your TV doesn't mean it is okay for your tuner card (and vice-versa).
Please post your logs so that we can have a look at what is going on:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/Forum/How_to_post_logs

Follow the instructions for reproducible problems. When it gets to the bit about reproducing the issue, just watch a couple of channels that exhibit the problem for a couple of minutes.

mm

 

[Alan Honeyman]

Apologies for the delay in getting back - had to dismantle everything for painting and carpeting. Just got everything back up and running and I'm now not seeing the frequency of 'glitches' as before. Not sure why but I'll keep an eye on it.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Could be something as simple as moving a cable to new position

 

[Alan Honeyman]

ok, the problem has not gone away (of course!) and is now happening every few seconds. Collected data via watchdog and posted here.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Hi Alan

mm is the guy to check your logs, but have you used this tv card successfully with any other software, just as a comparison.

Regards

 

[mm1352000]

Hi Alan (and Ray )

There are continuity errors in the TsWriter logs here and there. Causes of these include:
1. Signal issues.
2. HDD stress issues.
3. Overheating components.

Your signal strength/quality readings don't seem to be that great. Normally I'd say ignore the readings, however I see *lots* of SAA7164 based tuner (especially HVR-2200, HVR-2210 and HVR-2250) logs and I've owned SAA7162 based tuners myself. My experience is that ideally signal quality should be 50%+ for reliable receiving. You're seeing 100% sometimes, but 20s and 30s at other times.

If you really think your signal quality is okay then check that you haven't got real-time scanners (virus scanners, search indexing etc.) and other HDD intensive activities running in the background. Make certain that timeshifting and recording files are excluded from scans.

Overheating is less common, but it does happen. Doesn't hurt to consider this.

mm

[Edit:
PS: when you post logs in future, I'd appreciate it if you could consider wiping the old logs first. 25MB of logs going back to September 2011 is just a tad more than is required in this case.
1. Open TV Server configuration.
2. Click "open log directory" in the top left corner.
3. Delete all the files in there.
4. Reproduce the problem.
]

 

[Alan Honeyman]

mm & pd, thank you for your inputs and humble apologies for the overly large log - very clumsy. Have I used the card with other software? No, but it has been working with mp for several years without a problem - it's only quite recently that the problem has been apparent. The little tv I watch hasn't been an obvious problem in the past from a signal strength perspective but I have never been able to watch one program whilst recording another and I've tended to put that down to insufficient signal but I had a pro check it out and he declared it quite satisfactory. HDD stress is interesting, I looked at taskmgr at the time of the issues but could see little other activity but I had expected to see something there. How should I check this?

 

[mm1352000]

Hello again Alan

Since you're running Windows 7, I'd suggest the task manager is a great place to start. Especially take a look at the performance tab - there should be HDD utilisation measurements by process listed in there.

mm