Serios Problem with EPG Grabber? (1 Viewer)

[BugsBunny]

TV-Server Version: 1.0 RC2
MediaPortal Version: 1.0 RC2
MediaPortal Skin: BlueTwo wide
Windows Version: XP Pro SP3
CPU Type: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
HDD: Western Digital Caviar 750GByte
Memory: 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS2 DIMM 1024MB PC2-6400U CL5-5-5-12
Motherboard: ASUS P5B-E
Video Card: MSI NX8600GT MTD256
Video Card Driver: ForceWare 169.21
Sound Card: ESI Juli@
Sound Card AC3: ESI Juli@
Sound Card Driver: v1.18
1. TV Card: FloppyDTV DVB-C/CI
1. TV Card Type: DVB-C
1. TV Card Driver: 4.5 N
2. TV Card: FloppyDTV DVB-S2
2. TV Card Type: DVB-S2
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:
MPEG2 Audio Codec:
h.264 Video Codec:
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case: Zalman HD160
Cooling: Noctua NH-U9F / Noctua NC-U6 / NF-R8
Power Supply: Seasonic SS-301HT
Remote: MCE over IRTrans
TV: Sharp Aquos LC-46 XD1E
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI

I've got a test PC with a KNC1 DVB-C Card, my main Media Center PC that has a second HD I connect for doing test installs so they do not har my main installation and my mum has a PC that runs Media Portal as well.
Recently with RC3 I got into some serios problems.
I'm using DVB-C for a long time now, but recently set up a sat dish to get some channels that the cable provider does not have.
So I now got a DTV S2 + DTV C in my main media portal.
A part of the cable channels is FTA but I heard from a local TV+HIFI Dealer that my provider will switch from conax it uses now for the non fta channels to NDS and will encrypt all channels sometimes next year
We do have got a crappy receiver and a smartcard but this will not enable to use it on mediaportal.
So lucky me - I've installed a sat dish that has most of the channels from the cable provider
I told my mum better to get a floppy dvb-s2 and hook it up to my disteq switch. She was using the old engine until then.
So my mum now got a DTV S2 + DTV C as well. So A fresh install of windows with all prerequisites to meet RC3 would be the best I thought.
So all wu Patches installed newest drivers... mediaportal rc3 + tv server ... and the problems started.
The TV Service seems to simpy stall now and then. Starting MediaPortal with a stalled TV Service will stall the startup process. If MediaPortal is running and TVService stalls, entering TV will stall MediaPortal.

A solution is to kill the TV Server task and restart it then (net start tvservice from Win+R) - my mom is not very happy with the new TV setup...

As I want to update my MediaPortal setup to RC3 now and then I did a lot of testing this weekend to see where the problem could be.
Did a absolutely clean WinXP SP3 install all wu updates no extra codec stuff MP RC3 setup on my test HD on my main MediaCenter PC and the same problem...

Once the TV is running it seems stable. Turning off TV for a while and starting it after a while -> problem

Now it seems that I have tracked down the problem to the EPG grabber. If the EPG grabber is running it will stall the tv service at some point.

Logs attached from the test setup.
Disabling EPG grabbing will result in a stable setup.
Maybe this is the cause of the 10min problem of the other thread...

 

[infinite.loop]

I am using:
- one skystar2
- one floppy-dtv-s2
- one floppy-dtv-s
- one hauppauge nova-t usb-stick
- one hauppauge nova-hd-s2

all of them are grabbing dvb-epg without issues.
using winxp sp3 here as well.

do you have the "background epg grabber" feature in tv-server enabled?
did you try to only select the "important" channels to grab epg for?
maybe there is a channel which sends "bad" epg. but that should not be a issue at all.

 

[BugsBunny]

maybe there is a channel which sends "bad" epg. but that should not be a issue at all.

Well after some more testing today this seems to be the cause.
I've tracked it down to three channels of my cable TV provider:
Kanal 7 int.
Star TV
TRT int.

These are turkish channels and I never watch them anyway.
If the EPG grabber comes to one of these channels the tvservice stalls and the tv server process has to be killed in task manager.

Maybe these channels use some special caracters in epg that the tvserver doesen't like?
I've now disabled EPG grabbing for these channels and now it works just fine again.

Will do some more testing on other PCs to be 100% sure of it.

 

[jof]

I have the same Provider as you BugsBunny.

Kanal7 and TRT shouldn't be a problem, as they have no EPG Data.
The problem is probably Star TV. There are really some special turkish characters which MP maybe can't handle.

 

[infinite.loop]

I have been talking with our developers.

Could you please create a dump of the RAW TransportStream where Start TV is located?

just follow this guide.

In Step 2 of this guide, you have to tune "Start TV" in manual control.

 

[tourettes]

I have the same Provider as you BugsBunny.

Kanal7 and TRT shouldn't be a problem, as they have no EPG Data.
The problem is probably Star TV. There are really some special turkish characters which MP maybe can't handle.

Please make a small transport stream dump from that frequency:

Debugging/TS-dumps - MediaPortal Manual Documentation


EDIT: didnt see iloop's comment

 

[gemx]

Maybe i have an idea.
Could you please try grabbing Star TV with the attached TvLibrary.dll?
This will grab the epg but won't store it in the db.
It just to get a bit closer to the root cause of the problem (already have an idea what it might be)


(Attachment removed as TvLibrary was not the cause of the problem)

 

[BugsBunny]

I'm uploding the ts file at the moment. This one is from my test PC with a KNC1 DVB-C card. (Kanal 7 Int.)
Today the StarTV went through without stalling the TV service but on selecting Kanal 7 int. or TRT Int. for EPG grabbing the service stalled again. Under manual control it says something like grabbing EPG for Kanal 7 Int.
Then it goes to idle. When I then try to select eg "General Settings" in TV server config, the TV server config freezes and the TV Server also.
I've tried the TvLibrary.dll also but the TV service stalled the same way.
At the time posting the upload is about 15% finished. Will probably take an hour or so to finish. I'll post again as soon the transfer has finished. The files size is 273.070k.

 

[gemx]

Thanks BugsBunny.
At first: i don't need another TsDump
Please try grabbing with replacing the attached TsWriter.ax and THE ORIGINAL TvLibrary.dll
Again, no epg data will be written to the database.
Let's see if it stalls again.
If this also crashes TvService i think i am very close

 

[BugsBunny]

Did the testing with TsWriter.ax and the original TvLibrary.dll
It stalled again - it even stalled before going into idle again.

BTW for the testig I simply renamed the file to .BACKUP and copied your file in the same dir and then started the TVservice again.
Did no unrigister/register with regsvr32. Hope that was OK that way.
The ts is uploaded anyway - in case you need it (contains Kanal 7 int and TRT int amongst others).
Thanx