[confirm] MP has lost one of my tuners (1 Viewer)

[doveman]

So I sit down to watch TV and it hangs when I try to tune. When I look at TV Server config it shows only one half of my K-World 499U dual-tuner, with the other listed as NA. So I delete that and try to manual timeshift on the remaining tuner, TV Server config hangs. I repair the database, no difference.

So I disable/re-enable the tuner, reinstall TV Server, no difference. I do a complete uninstall of TV Server, reboot and reinstall, still it only shows one tuner (IT9135) and a channel scan on that finds no channels (No signal!).

I've got a spare one of these tuners I could try but is there anyway to make TV Server config scan for new tuners other than doing a complete uninstall/reinstall?

 

[doveman]

OK, so I swapped the tuner out and whilst in TV Server config caused it to restart the TVservice, which then showed both tuners and I scanned and tested both and they worked fine. So I swapped back to the original one and tried Manual Timeshift and got a PMT error, even after stopping and restarting the TVservice. So then I scanned for channels on both tuners and that worked fine and updated them all, after which Manual Timeshifting worked again.

Still I have no idea what happened, why a complete uninstall/reinstall of TV Service didn't get the original device detected and working again but swapping it with the spare and back did.

 

[jameson_uk]

Windows USB handling most likely.
You may need a longer delay when starting TV service.
Does device manager report one or two tuners? If two and it happens again look to see if both are present there.

 

[The_Stig]

I had a disappearing TV-Card aswell a few weeks ago (disappeared in device manager). In the end it was a defective PSU...

 

[doveman]

Windows USB handling most likely.
You may need a longer delay when starting TV service.
Does device manager report one or two tuners? If two and it happens again look to see if both are present there.

No, it only gets listed as one "KWorld DVB-T UB499-2T".

Never had any issues with it being detected before in the six months I've had it (and rather weird that the spare worked without any delay, as did the original after swapping it back) but I'll fiddle with the detection delay if it happens again (hopefully not though).

 

[doveman]

Yikes, after rebooting Windows detected a new device and now Device Manager doesn't show the KWorld DVB-T but just one IT9135 BDA Device, which MP has added so it now shows three of those!

 

[mm1352000]

So I sit down to watch TV and it hangs when I try to tune. When I look at TV Server config it shows only one half of my K-World 499U dual-tuner, with the other listed as NA. So I delete that and try to manual timeshift on the remaining tuner, TV Server config hangs. I repair the database, no difference.

Missing info here. Was the TV Server already running when you sat down, or did it get woken by PowerScheduler?

So I disable/re-enable the tuner...

Won't help unless you also restart the TV service. In fact it would probably make things worse.

...reinstall TV Server...

I'd consider that more than a little extreme. The chances of it being a TV Server issue with a problem like this are slim to none.

...no difference. I do a complete uninstall of TV Server, reboot and reinstall, still it only shows one tuner (IT9135) and a channel scan on that finds no channels (No signal!).

Strange. Indicates potential hardware issue to me. The first thing I would have done is check device manager and then try other software - just something simple like EPG Collector or ScanChannelsBDA - in that order.

...but is there anyway to make TV Server config scan for new tuners other than doing a complete uninstall/reinstall?

Uninstall/reinstall is possibly the most extreme way I can think of. The simplest way is to stop and start the TV service, either in the Windows service manager or manual control section of TV service configuration. Alternatively, just restart the PC.

Still I have no idea what happened, why a complete uninstall/reinstall of TV Service didn't get the original device detected and working again but swapping it with the spare and back did.

Likely there was some problem with the hardware or driver which was fixed with the swap.

Yikes, after rebooting Windows detected a new device and now Device Manager doesn't show the KWorld DVB-T but just one IT9135 BDA Device, which MP has added so it now shows three of those!

Recently, have you:
1. Added any new hardware?
2. Updated any drivers?
3. [If you use the default MS drivers for your tuners:] had any Windows updates that might have updated the driver?

If you can answer yes to any of those questions then that is likely the cause of the problem.

 

[doveman]

So I sit down to watch TV and it hangs when I try to tune. When I look at TV Server config it shows only one half of my K-World 499U dual-tuner, with the other listed as NA. So I delete that and try to manual timeshift on the remaining tuner, TV Server config hangs. I repair the database, no difference.

Missing info here. Was the TV Server already running when you sat down, or did it get woken by PowerScheduler?

It was already running (it's the same PC I use for browsing, etc) but I couldn't say if the TV Server was working earlier that day or if it had been in an unusable state since resuming my PC from S3.

Won't help unless you also restart the TV service. In fact it would probably make things worse.

Yeah I stopped the TV Service first before disabling/re-enabling the tuner and then restarting TV Service.

I'd consider that more than a little extreme. The chances of it being a TV Server issue with a problem like this are slim to none..

Yeah, I was just desperate to watch TV

Uninstall/reinstall is possibly the most extreme way I can think of. The simplest way is to stop and start the TV service, either in the Windows service manager or manual control section of TV service configuration. Alternatively, just restart the PC.

Yeah, I found later that restarting TV service does the trick!

Recently, have you:
1. Added any new hardware?
2. Updated any drivers?
3. [If you use the default MS drivers for your tuners:] had any Windows updates that might have updated the driver?

If you can answer yes to any of those questions then that is likely the cause of the problem.

Pretty sure I haven't added any hardware or updated any drivers.

Rebooting from cold today and my tuner is detected and shown in Device Manager normally again. TV Server still shows three IT9135 BDA Filter devices though (2 at the top with type DVBT and one at the bottom with type Unknown). When starting TV Server config it asked if I wanted to start TVService so obviously it wasn't running, so I don't know why it didn't remove the ghost tuner. Or does it only automatically detect new devices and add them and I have to delete them manually?

It only lists the ghost tuner in the right-hand pane, in the list on the left under TV Servers - 192.168.2.1 it only lists four devices (the two tuners, DVB-IP and Radio Webstream).

The tuner is connected directly (via a USB cable) to it's own port on the motherboard but I'm having issues with my USB hub now, with USB sticks and other devices that were working fine a couple of days ago not being recognised anymore, so something weird is going on. Even my Hauppauge Nova-T 500 PCI card, which presents as a USB hub/device and which I haven't got round to removing yet, threw up an error on booting up this morning about not being able to start or install the drivers properly, so I disabled it (I'd already disabled the device itself under sound, video and game controllers, this seemed to be another part of it under USB controllers).

 

[doveman]

Well I removed the Hauppauge card.

MP's been working OK with a 10s TVservice startup delay until this morning. I'd used gamebooster to shutdown unnecessary services/programs when gaming yesterday (not TVservice or HCWhelper though) so in case that had caused problems, I rebooted but it still doesn't work and TVservice hangs when clicking Manual Tune.

As you can see from the screenshots, TVServer doesn't show my tuners properly, even after disabling/re-enabling the device and restarting TVservice.

 

[doveman]

OK, I tried to shutdown the PC and it got stuck on the Shutting Down screen, until I unplugged the tuner when it proceeded immediately.

After rebooting, both the tuners are visible as they should be in TVServer config. Nonetheless, clicking Start Timeshift causes it to hang as does clicking on either of the tuners under TV Servers.

EDIT: I closed TVServer config and tried to stop TVservice but it wasn't working. I noticed that one of the lights on the tuner was stuck on so unplugged it and then TVservice stopped immediately. I plugged in a spare tuner and restarted TVService and now I can timeshift in config no problem. Strange thing is, this spare tuner wouldn't work on my Raspberry Pi and I had to use a third spare on that to get it working. They don't seem particularly reliable these tuners, which is strange as they seem to be recommended.