MP freezes up after long period of inactivity (1 Viewer)

[kkendall]

MediaPortal Version: MP 1.1 final
MediaPortal Skin: Blue3 Wide
Windows Version: Windows 7 (since 07-18-2010)
CPU Type: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 775 1333FSB 2.66Ghz 4MB
HDD: Intel Postville SSD 80GB
Memory: 2x Kingston DDR2 ValueRAM 1GB 667 CL5.0
Motherboard: Asus P5K
Video Card: NVIDIA 9600 (passive)
Video Card Driver: latest
Sound Card:
Sound Card AC3: AC3 and DTS: S/PDIF
Sound Card Driver: latest
1. TV Card: FloppyDTV
1. TV Card Type: DVB-C
1. TV Card Driver: latest
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: PowerDVD 10 (SAF 5.00)
MPEG2 Audio Codec: ffdshow (SAF 5.00)
h.264 Video Codec: PowerDVD 10 (SAF 5.00)
Satelite/CableTV Provider: CAIWAY
HTPC Case: Silverstone LC17b
Cooling: 1x 80 mm fan + 1 x cpu fan
Power Supply: ANTEC
Remote: Microsoft MCE 2005 remote
TV: Panasonic TH-42PZ85
TV - HTPC Connection: DVI-HDMI

I have problems with MP when I don't touch my pc for a couple of hours, like a days work or a night sleep.
I've turned off all windows sleep modes, only MP is set to go black after a few minutes.

Example: I watch tv in the morning before going to work. When I leave, I hit the stop button to stop livetv, turn my panasonic tv and marantz receiver off and leave. When I come home after work, I turn on the tv and receiver, hit the epg button on the remote, I choose a channel and ....MP lockes up. This happens almost every time after long periods. Only taskmanager can now close MP off.

I have the logs from today in debug mode attached. I've had this before in older versions, but I can't recall it from the first weeks I used 1.1 final...but it's hard to say since it appears to happen only after long periods with no activity.
Can anybody see what goes wrong?

EDIT: Sometimes the message that the connection to the tv server has been lost is there, sometimes not. When I look in the tvserver config the tv service sometimes is not running anymore, and sometimes it is, but you have to restart it (and after that also MP) before you can watch tv again because apparently something crashed in tvservice). If you don't restart tvservice in this case, MP keeps locking up when trying to watch tv.

EDIT2:
I found out its the 'epg grabbing when idle' option. I can turn all epg grabbing options on (including WebEPG) but as soon as I turn on the grabbing when idle function, MP has the reported problems! So the bug must be in the tv epg grabbing section somewhere. I have to manually restart tv service and restart MP to make it all work again. It must be related to a change somewhere within the last 12 months because I didn't have this before. I only started to notice this a couple of weeks ago though.

 

[robyf]

Can you please try to disable dvb epg grabbing and see if it happens again?

 

[elliottmc]

When you come back, can you do anything that doesn't involve watching TV ? That is, are your problems all related to TV?

If you did not turn off your TV/amp, do you see the same problems? I know it is a pain to leave TV running when not needed.

For what it is worth, I have a dedicated TV server (although it does have MP running on it). I can leave the server running for weeks on end, recording programs every day. I can turn on TV in MP any time I want to do so, and see no problems. There is clearly something going wrong with your system, and it would be useful to find out what it is. However, I am getting slightly confused by the number of different bug reports you are making. Personally I suspect that you have one problem with TV, and it is causing problems (which it should not be).

You could even try turning off the TV service for a while and running MP without it - does it then freeze after long periods of inactivity?

Mark

 

[kkendall]

When you come back, can you do anything that doesn't involve watching TV ? That is, are your problems all related to TV?

Yes, I can do everything accept watching tv or recording.

If you did not turn off your TV/amp, do you see the same problems? I know it is a pain to leave TV running when not needed.

I have a plasma tv, so i'd rather not leave the tv on for a couple of hours That would definitely burn in my tv.

There is clearly something going wrong with your system, and it would be useful to find out what it is.

Can't deny that...

However, I am getting slightly confused by the number of different bug reports you are making.
Personally I suspect that you have one problem with TV, and it is causing problems (which it should not be).

EDIT: Yep, I definitely have a tv problem that's causing these problems. To be specific, I found out its the epg grabbing when idle option. I can turn all epg grabbing options on (including WebEPG) but as soon as I turn on the grabbing when idle function, MP has the reported problems! So the bug must be in the tv epg grabbing section somewhere. I have to manually restart tv service and restart MP to make it all work again. It must be related to a change somewhere within the last 12 months because I didn't have this before. I only started to notice this a couple of weeks ago though. If I turn off this function, when is the epg grabbing kicking in when all other epg grabbing functions are selected?

You could even try turning off the TV service for a while and running MP without it - does it then freeze after long periods of inactivity?
Mark

Nope, no freezes when tv service is not running.

 

[elliottmc]

Hi,

Well now you've narrowed this down to the EPG grabbing, that's a major start.

I guess we will need help from a developer, in order to make sense of your log files.

Since you are using DVB-C, I'm guessing that signal strength is not relevant. This could be one cause on DVB-T or DVB-S.

I guess the next thing to do is search the forum for active members who have the same TV card as you have, and see if they also have problems. It could be that some driver versions are better than others.

Whatever is happening, MP is not handling the situation well, and ideally this should be fixed. However, it would be nice to find the cause as well.

I am trying to remember the history of your problems, and if I remember correctly, you have had problems with scanning where not all channels are detected. You have then added some channels manually and most of them work. Please correct me if this is not the case.

In tvserver_egp.bak you have

2010-08-13 01:01:31.696940 [EPG Update thread(6)]: IdleEpgGrabber: no channel found for networkid:0x8C9 transportid:0x8A serviceid:0x9484
2010-08-13 01:01:31.701940 [EPG Update thread(6)]: IdleEpgGrabber: no channel found for networkid:0x8C9 transportid:0x8A serviceid:0x948E

What is this channel? I am a bit suspicious that you might have some particular channel that is causing this. You could disable EPG for all channels, and then turn it on a few at a time, maybe focusing on one transponder/provider/group at a time until you work out what is causing the problem. Then we will be able to get cleaner logs with only the problem channel enabled.

Mark

 

[gemx]

I also experience this and it's also related to the idle grabber but it's quite hard to track down.
From the logs everything seems fine but when sometime when i start tv in the evening TvServer just locks up right after "OnBeforeTune".
That's it.
This bug is there for several years now and some devs including me tried to solve it and did indeed find some bugs but there is still something in there and i have no clue what it might be.

If anybody has an idea drop me a PM please

 

[kkendall]

I'll try to narrow it down to the problem channel(s), but this will take some time, as I keep having to wait to the next day...
anyway, thanks for the efforts and info!!

 

[cewillis]

Re: freezes up - me too

My system is listed under the drop down menu.
For the record, I have this problem, too. I have just built my htpc about 3 weeks ago, and installed MP. It's working beautifully -- except for this problem.
(no log files yet, but will get)
I have no TV guide grab done by MP at all - none. It's all off line. I get MS 'legacy' guide data off line, and import it using the XmlTV plugin.
I have never had a problem recoding numerous TV shows, often 2 at a time using my dual hybrid tuner. Sometimes two different set of shows.
I have also tried numerous cycles on manual standby and resume, with no problem.
I also discovered that if I change MP from full screen to window, or vica versa, it frees MP to again respond to remote control input -- until I try to watch live TV again, then it freezes again.
What I have been doing is setting the htpc to record sometime later, then Power Scheduler puts it in standby after 3 minutes,
resumes to start recording 2 minutes before the next scheduled show, then puts it back in standby.
I do not get the problem every time. It can be 3 (or more?) days sometimes, with no problem.

So for logs, I assume you want both MP client and TVserver extended logging.

This is the only thing that's preventing me from moving my htpc from my office to the family room to replace a pitiful analog only DVR. Well, I'd like to change the menu structure, but that can wait.

Thanks,
Cal

Forgot to say -- I have MP set to 'restart on resume', and TVserver (Power Scheduler) set to 'reinitialize service on wakeup'.

 

[Razorblade]

I guess the next thing to do is search the forum for active members who have the same TV card as you have...

I do not have the same TV card but I am experiencing the same problems, also with DVB-C.

I don't have to wait until the next day for liveTV to stop working.
Sometimes this happens after 20 minutes, sometimes this doesn't happen for 3 hours. BUT: it will happen!

So for example after watching a DVD movie I get a "connection to TV server lost" message and I have to restart the TV server. (TVServer is stopped in services.msc and taskmanager)
After leaving the system idle for some time (20min or longer) this message doesn't appear but liveTV won't start. The only difference is that there's no error message and the TVService is still running (services.msc and taskmanager)

All Windows settings related to energy saving except CPU throttling are turned off (screen blanking, screensaver, HDD spin down)

I have some tv channels in my list which do not provide EPG data. Does this affect EPG scanning somehow?

Is there a command line parameter to start the TVService in some kind of debug mode? Maybe that could help.

 

[nimrodel50]

I had the same problem with my tv, only worked after a reboot.

Now disabling the idle epg graber everything seems to work ok. the only thing is that I have no epg. But no more freezes.

Hope we can find the problem on the idle epg grabber.