Occasional Black screen on Live TV and Recorded TV (1 Viewer)

[George Leverington]

Hello,

I've been using the fantastic MediaPortal for a couple of years without issue. But I needed to reinstall Windows because things were slowing down.

I've got a nice speedy setup again now with a fresh Windows 10 install & MP 1.22 but I have an issue where if MP were to startup while the TV is off (i.e. scheduled night time reboot), when I next go to use it and I start Live TV or start a Recording and I get a slower load followed by black screen no audio. I have to quit MP and start it again with the TV on to watch TV.

I have attached 2 logs, one is an example of a failed launch of Live TV then a Recording, the other is working launch of the same channel and recording.

I am hoping someone could point me in the right direction. The log on the failed launch has extra lines of "Audio" so I have experimented with various settings in the Startup/Resume and TV Video Codecs and Renderers sections to no avail.

Windows 10 (1903) 64bit, Nvidia GT610 connected to an LG TV via HDMI

Many thanks for your help in advance!

 

[ajs]

@mm1352000

 

[mm1352000]

So, MediaPortal is configured to use a specific audio renderer/output for TV and TV recordings:
(from MediaPortal.xml)

<section name="mytv">
  ...
  <entry name="audiorenderer">DirectSound: LG TV (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)</entry>

Taking the failed live TV attempt as an example, the log file is pretty clear...
1. Select channel:
[2020-01-08 13:09:00,450] [Log ] [MPMain ] [INFO ] - TVHome.ViewChannelAndCheck(): View channel=BBC One HD

2. Try to use configured audio renderer... fails:
[2020-01-08 13:09:06,959] [Log ] [MPMain ] [INFO ] - DirectShowUtil: AddAudioRenderer - Attach volume handler device to audio renderer: DirectSound: LG TV (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)
[2020-01-08 13:09:06,962] [Log ] [MPMain ] [INFO ] - DirectShowUtil: AddAudioRendererToGraph failed filter: (DirectSound: LG TV (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)) not found

MP can't play video without audio, and it can't play audio without an audio device connected. As indicated above, you've configured MP to use the LG TV as audio output.

If that output is not available for some reason - for example, maybe the TV is off - then live TV will absolutely fail in the way that you've observed.

On the other hand, if you think the output _should_ be available, further investigation will need to be done by somebody who is more knowledgeable than me.

 

[George Leverington]

Many thanks for your fast replies, I should have made clear that the TV is always on when trying to play the Live TV or recording, the difference between the logs is that Mediaportal was just started with the TV either on or off.

 

[CyberSimian]

a fresh Windows 10 install & MP 1.22

The problem of a black screen on wake from sleep has received some fixes in recent releases of MP. I therefore think that it would be worthwhile upgrading to MP 1.23, as it may have a fix for this problem that MP 1.22 is lacking. (It is also possible that my recollection is completely faulty .)

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[George Leverington]

I am still on 1.22 but I had a thought that MediaPortal did not like starting up without a Audio Device available in Windows, even if you later turn on the TV (HDMI audio device becomes available) and play the TV content.

So I plugged a set of headphones into the on-board soundcard and Windows enabled the soundcard, I launched MP with the TV off, turned on the TV when loaded and successfully played TV through the TV speakers (as HDMI Audio is still the default audio device in Windows).

Great!!!

Then I found a registry hack for the HD Audio Driver which disables jack detection so I can have the soundcard available in Windows as a fall-back device without having the headphones plugged in (on my system I found the HD Audio Driver in 0003):

1. Press Windows Key + R.
2. Type regedit, press Enter.
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0007\GlobalSettings.
4. Right-click the REG_BINARY EnableDynamicDevices, click Modify, and set it to 0.
5. Reboot.

Thanks everyone for your help and confirming the audio issue on my system.