MediaPortal hanging when trying to view a channel when it is off air (accidentally) (1 Viewer)

[Anthony Vaughan]

Hello

I am in the UK and two channels, BBC Three and BBC Four are off the air much of the day - it is on air between 19:00 and 04:00 the next morning.

When I select either of these channels, when they are off air, MediaPortal freezes and I have to use Task Manager to kill the process. This is most likely to happen when I use the up and down channel buttons on the remote to switch channels.

Is there a setting to stop this happening or is this a bug?

Thanks.

Tony

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Hello,

Could you please post the server logs? The client logs are not helpful to answer your question.

regards,
HTPCSourcer

 

[CyberSimian]

When I select either of these channels, when they are off air, MediaPortal freezes and I have to use Task Manager to kill the process.

MP is not frozen -- it is actually waiting for a timeout to expire. I noticed precisely the same behaviour when I first started using MP. If you wait long enough, a message is displayed (something like "unable to tune channel"), and you can then use the remote control to select another channel, display the EPG, or do something else.

Is there a setting to stop this happening or is this a bug?

There are several settings that you need to alter. See this thread:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...t-time-tv-channel-causes-long-timeout.127492/

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Hi CyberSimian,

Guess what, that's what I had in mind but wanted to see the logs first before making judgements and putting out the recommendation to shorten the waiting time. There is also no point in seartching through all available tuners if the first one is not able to decode the stream.

 

[CyberSimian]

Guess what, that's what I had in mind but wanted to see the logs first before making judgements and putting out the recommendation to shorten the waiting time.

That is always a good idea. (Unlike me, who shoots first and asks questions afterwards.)

There is also no point in seartching through all available tuners if the first one is not able to decode the stream.

I see from Anthony's server specs that he has eight identical tuners (like me ), so using the default settings, we would both get an exceedingly long wait while MP tries all of the tuners.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Right. With the standard timeout of (i believe) 10 s it would take 80 s until the response is finally received by the client. Im am using 3 s and allow only one available tuner to be searched.

 

[Anthony Vaughan]

Thank you all for your replies.

I actually have 16 tuners on my production machine - 4 quad tuner cards (TBS 6205). I think explains why I was having such a problem.

I have set PMT to 2 and set the 'maximum free cards to try' to 3 for recordings:

I have set the 'Maximum free cards to try' for time shifting to 1:

The latter setting is not documented in the guide so I am guessing that this limits the number of cards for playback only.

Both of these settings say 'number of cards'. Does this really mean cards or does it mean tuners?

'If you set the PMT PID on all your tuning details to 0 or enable the "always use PAT lookup" debug option then you get rid of the PAT lookup retry. You're now down to 21 or 14 seconds.'

Finally, I am not sure where these setting are. Where do I find where to set these?

Thanks again.

Tony[DOUBLEPOST=1439493771][/DOUBLEPOST]Hi HTPCSourcer

As I see that this is not a bug, I won't send you the server logs and save your time.

Thank you for your help.

Tony

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Set for timeshifting

"Maximum free cards to try" to 1 - it actually means tuners
"Wait for Timeshifting file" to 5 sec
"Wait for unscrambled signal" to 1 s - if you have no CAM in use

This should get you down to a few secvonds when there is nothing broadcasted.

 

[Anthony Vaughan]

Right.

I'll try those settings.

Thanks again.

Tony

 

[CyberSimian]

I actually have 16 tuners on my production machine

I set the 'maximum free cards to try' to 3 for recordings:

With the default settings, MP was trying all eight of my tuners. But after identifying the source of this timeout issue, I decided that there is no point trying more than one tuner if the tuners are identical and fed from the same aerial.

If you have different makes of tuner, it is possible that they vary in sensitivity, so with a marginal signal, one tuner might always be able to receive a channel, while the other tuner might only sometimes receive it. So in that case it might make sense to try more than one tuner.

'If you set the PMT PID on all your tuning details to 0 or enable the "always use PAT lookup" debug option then you get rid of the PAT lookup retry. You're now down to 21 or 14 seconds.' Finally, I am not sure where these setting are. Where do I find where to set these?

I have just been looking at my setup notes, and it seems that I did not make this change -- possibly for the same reason as you (I couldn't find it! ).

-- from CyberSimian in the UK