Issue after replacing tuner (1 Viewer)

[pfilippone]

I've been successfully using MediaPortal1 and TV Server 1.17 on Win7 for years, using first a HDHomerun tuner, when that died, a Hauppauge WinTV DualHD ATSC USB tuner. Recently the Hauppauge tuner died on me (still shows up, but all channels show 'no signal'), so I went and purchased a new Hauppauge WinTV DualHD ATSC tuner.

The problem is, the device shows up OK as two tuners as expected, it works fine with the Hauppauge WinTV 10 software, but with TV Server, I get nothing but black on all channels. This is in TV Server config > channels > Preview channel, and in Media Portal. In TV Server config, I was able to scan channels OK on both tuners. So it seems the tuner is getting recognized and channels scan works, but not getting any video/audio.

Although the old and new Hauppauge tuners look identical, the new one must have vastly newer firmware, as it required WinTV 10 software and driver combo, whereas the old tuner used WinTV 8 software and driver combo.
I've since installed Win10 Pro and MediaPortal 1.36 from scratch with no success. I tried both x86 and x64 versions. Same issue as mentioned above. Logs attached.

Thank you!

 

[CyberSimian]

In TV Server config, I was able to scan channels OK on both tuners. So it seems the tuner is getting recognized and channels scan works, but not getting any video/audio.

This looks similar to the problem described in this thread. Unfortunately, we could not identify the problem described there, and hence no solution was found.

@Pablik may be able to help, but if he is not available, I regret to say that the current range of Hauppauge tuners are no longer compatible with MP, and you should consider buying an alternative tuner. TBS tuners are known to work (I have one), as are the SiliconDust HdHomeRun tuners. Sorry to be so negative.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[pfilippone]

This looks similar to the problem described in this thread. Unfortunately, we could not identify the problem described there, and hence no solution was found.

@Pablik may be able to help, but if he is not available, I regret to say that the current range of Hauppauge tuners are no longer compatible with MP, and you should consider buying an alternative tuner. TBS tuners are known to work (I have one), as are the SiliconDust HdHomeRun tuners. Sorry to be so negative.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

Thank you for the info and especially for your time. I've ordered a HDHomerun Flex Duo 2. I'm using a mini PC for TV, it's too small to fit any card from TBS. Hopefully the HDHomerun will work, and last longer than the previous HDHomerun I had (HDHomerun Extend HDTC-2US) which was hot to the touch and died after a couple years.

 

[pfilippone]

(Holy moly!) Update:

After more hours spent troubleshooting this issue than I care to admit publicly, I finally have things working again. Notes:

- It does not appear that the Hauppauge USB Dual tuner was the problem. I returned it and got a HDHomerun Flex Duo 2 and saw the same issue. I eventually learned the new tuners (HDHomerun and Hauppauge) for some reason require lots more CPU power than the old units did.
I was running fine for years on a Gigabyte Brix mini PC with Celeron J1900 and Win7. On a hunch I tried Megaportal on a Beelink mini PC with Intel N100 and Win11. That fixed the issue! (The problem was not the Windows version, as I had tried Win10 and Win11 on the Brix with the same issue)

- Then I learned Kodi 21.1 Omega has a (bandwidth?) issue with the new tuners. In Kodi when selecting a TV channel, I would get the hourglass for several seconds, then kicks me out to the channel menu. As a test I set the option in Kodi>MediaPortal config "Wait time after tuning a channel" to the max (3000 ms). That caused Kodi to display a few seconds worth of TV before kicking me out. I downgraded to Kodi 18.8 Leia and was working fine to watch TV, set the wait time setting back to zero and was fine.

I'll check the Kodi forums to see if there's any posts about the Kodi issue mentioned above. If not, I will post about my findings.

All this turmoil because my Hauppauge tuner died.
Thanks for reading. I hope this pain I went through may help somebody someday.

 

[Pablik]

Well, the log doesn't show any problems. I can see correctly tuned channels in the log. It seems to me that the tuner works fine.
Can you copy the created ts file(located in your timeshift folder) somewhere else while in channel preview and try to play it in VLC or MPC-HC?

PS: You can also try to make short record