MP1 Upgrade to 1.17 causes playback of recordings to stop (1 Viewer)

[OTA Watcher]

I do have another problem. It's not related to this problem. When I try to record 3 or 4 shows at once, all of them get garbled and pixelated. I removed the second tuner for that reason. Just curious if you have any idea what I could do to use two HD Homerun units at once so that I have 4 tuners to use for recording.

 

[Sebastiii]

No idea, but i think to open a new forum thread with logs for it and tag @mm1352000 too
It surely a performance issue related to network or hdd !

 

[mm1352000]

Just curious if you have any idea what I could do to use two HD Homerun units at once so that I have 4 tuners to use for recording.

I do!
The problem is related to your network connectivity.
Each tuner stream requires approximately 43 Mb/s (mega-bits per second).
Total network traffic for 4 tuner streams = 4 tuners x 43 Mbps per tuner = 172 Mbps total

If your network connection isn't capable of carrying that amount of traffic (eg. a wireless, powerline or 100 Mb wired connection) then you're going to experience the problem that you described.

In short: you need a "gigabit" (1000 Mb / 1Gb) network connection between your router/switch and the system that MediaPortal TV Server is installed on.

Clear?

 

[Stéphane Lenclud]

@OTA Watcher it's really weird all those HID log
@Stéphane Lenclud any idea ? thanks.

Too much HID logs, it looks like it's stuck repeating a key. It's certainly worth taking a closer look.

You could try to reproduce the issue with HID Demo
Make sure you enable 'Repeat' on the first tab and see if that 0xFA1C key is turning up.
Disable keyboard devices from the 'Devices' tab if they get in your way to copy the Logs.
Just push the remote keys you used to reproduce the issue on MP1 and see if and when 0xFA1C comes up and gets stuck on repeat.

You could also take a look at HID Known Issues, maybe you find something there that helps. If you have some sort of overlay windows on top on MP1 that could cause that issue by stealing focus from MP1.

 

[RonD]

The problem is related to your network connectivity.
Each tuner stream requires approximately 43 Mb/s (mega-bits per second).
Total network traffic for 4 tuner streams = 4 tuners x 43 Mbps per tuner = 172 Mbps total

mm, on this you are off by a factor of 2, a USA OTA ATSC physical channel is about 19.2 Mbps. I always round up to 20 so 4 HDHR tuners is about 80 Mbps. This is pushing the edge 100 Mbps Enet, if other network traffic did copies to the TV server you might start seeing problems. Since wired ethernet is full duplex with independent TX and RX, a 100 Mbps Enet could receive 80 and send 80 without seeing problems, BUT this might be enough to cause problems. Fired up MP1, started 4 recordings using 4 different HDHR tuners, about 78 Mbps receive bandwidth. My TV server has a 1 Gbps ethernet connection. In my SF Bay area the 5 major networks show the following

17.6 Mbps KTVU (Fox)
18.5 Mbps KPIX (CBS)
19.3 Mbps KGO (ABC)
19.1 Mbps KNTV (NBC)
15.7 Mbps KBCW (CW)

The HDHR tuners have ways to do "command line" testing of tuners and network traffic. You need to type commands to setup tuners/channels, start tuners/test and look for errors. With 4 tuners you need 4 command line windows.

I mention this because I also had weird HDHR problems when I added another HDHR with 2 tuners to my wired ethernet setup with 2 wired 1 Gbps ethernet switches, 4 total tuners. I did command line testing, saw "network errors", and ended up changing how I had the HDHRs connected. Moved all 4 HDHRs to the same ethernet switch and the 2 TV Servers (Beyond TV and MP) to the same switch. With that setup my HDHR problems went away.

Picture showing 4 active HDHR tuners and 78 Mbps ethernet traffic.

 

[RonD]

Adding info on command line HDHR info. Download the hdhomerun_tech.pdf file from silicondust webpage Tech - Silicon Dust. This was called HDHomeRun TECH Usage Guide when I looked today. http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/hdhomerun_tech.pdf The pdf location may move. The pdf has more details on the HDHR command line options. Spoiler has examples for my USA ATSC command line testing. Other countries may need to modify details.

Picture shows 4 HDHR channels running tests with no errors. If there were errors some "." would show "n" network errors, "t" transport errors or "s" sequence error. The "n" is dropped ethernet packets, I moved my 4 HDHRs to use the same 1 Gbps 8-port ethernet switch to fix my "n" problems and video glitches.

Spoiler: HDHR examples

# find hdhr tuner info
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config.exe" discover
hdhomerun device 1013A9F2 found at 192.168.0.199
hdhomerun device 10303662 found at 192.168.0.197
hdhomerun device 103533ED found at 192.168.0.198
hdhomerun device 10418944 found at 192.168.0.196

# if you need your channel info, do manual scan, I have 4 tuners, used 10418944 for examples
C:\Users\Ron>"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10418944 scan /tuner0

# output example, cut out most channels
SCANNING: 563000000 (us-bcast:29)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=98 snq=85 seq=100)
TSID: 0x017B
PROGRAM 1: 5.1 KPIX-TV
PROGRAM 2: 5.2 Decades
SCANNING: 557000000 (us-bcast:28)
LOCK: 8vsb (ss=54 snq=42 seq=100)
SCANNING: 551000000 (us-bcast:27)
LOCK: none (ss=100 snq=0 seq=0)

# for SCANNING: 563000000 (us-bcast:29)
# 29 = Physical Channel, maps to ATSC logical channels 5.1 KPIX-TV and 5.2 Decades
# SCANNING: 557000000 (us-bcast:28) and SCANNING: 551000000 (us-bcast:27) failed

# tune to a channel, get status
# set tuner 10418944   to physical channel = 29 in this case
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10418944 set /tuner0/channel auto:29
# get status
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10418944 get /tuner0/status

# receive channel video stream, output "." for good, press cntl C to exit
# this example uses "null" does not save video to file,  use "video.ts" to save video to file
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10418944 save /tuner0 null

# from HDHR pdf, anything other than “.” is an error
While saving the stream, a single period “.” will be displayed every second. Errors will be indicated by a letter. Example output:
............n...............................n..........ts..........
-- Video statistics --
23323 packets received, 2 network errors, 1 transport errors, 1 sequence error

# to test 4 tuners opened 4 command windows and ran the following
# auto:44 = KTVU
# auto:29 = KPIX
# auto:7  = KGO
# auto:12 = KNTV

"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10303662 set /tuner0/channel auto:44
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10303662 get /tuner0/status
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10303662 save /tuner0 null

"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 103533ED set /tuner0/channel auto:29
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 103533ED get /tuner0/status
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 103533ED save /tuner0 null

"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 103533ED set /tuner1/channel auto:7
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 103533ED get /tuner1/status
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 103533ED save /tuner1 null

"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10418944 set /tuner0/channel auto:12
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10418944 get /tuner0/status
"C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config" 10418944 save /tuner0 null

 

[mm1352000]

@RonD

mm, on this you are off by a factor of 2

You're assuming ATSC digital terrestrial (maybe valid, I'm not sure) whereas my numbers are actual worst case (clear QAM [cable] 256 QAM).

Please refer to QAM (television) - Wikipedia

ATSC 8 VSB (digital terrestrial, over-the-air, received with an aerial/antenna) is 19.3926 Mbps [usable] as you say.
Clear QAM 64 QAM (unencrypted digital cable, received with a cable connection) is 30.342 Mbps (26.97035 usable).
Clear QAM 256 QAM (unencrypted digital cable, received with a cable connection) is 42.8843 Mbps (38.81070 usable).

Either way:

1. Wireless and powerline connections are not suitable due to either or both latency and bandwidth limitation issues.
2. A wired 100 Mbps connection is insufficient for 4 clear QAM streams and borderline for 4 ATSC streams. In the ATSC case there's only ~20 Mbps for other network traffic (internet etc.). I agree with your assessment that this would be far from ideal.

Hence my recommendation for a gigabit/1000 Mbps connection.

 

[Owlsroost]

1. Is there a sample recording somewhere in this thread I can download and use for testing/debugging? (I only need a few minutes)

2. Yes, you do need the Core CC Parser filter added in video post-processing to handle CC decoding. What changed a while ago was that MP got it's own version of the filter, updated to handle H.264 video as well as MPEG-2.

3. These are the instructions in the Wiki to enable CC in TV - How to get CC in ATSC/QAM streams

 

[Sebastiii]

I don't think there is a sample but @OTA Watcher can surely upload a record somewhere

@Owlsroost it's not possible to get the text from CC Core Parser and parse it to subtitle renderer ? (we need code change but do you think it's possible ?)
Thanks

 

[Owlsroost]

@Owlsroost it's not possible to get the text from CC Core Parser and parse it to subtitle renderer ? (we need code change but do you think it's possible ?)
Thanks

We use the Microsoft 'Line 21 decoder' filter to decode and render the Closed Caption data - the Core CC Parser filter just parses the CC data out of the video stream, it doesn't decode it.

This is where some of the H.264 CC parsing code came from if you feel like having a go at replacing the 'Line 21 decoder' functionality - CCExtractor's home page [CCExtractor's home page]