Setup woes - Is anybody able to run this reliably with XP SP2?? (1 Viewer)

[johandm_be]

Hello,

I have been setting up a dedicated machine for TVEngine 3. This is a brand new PC that I've assembled myself, and since I was planning on using MediaPortal, I did not get XP MCE, instead I bought XP SP2. After quite a few days of struggling, I am starting to wonder if that was a mistake...

My setup is a quad LNB dish, and I am using a 4x1 diseqc switch.
With a topfield settop box this is working perfect and I am seeing all 4 satellites loud and clear.

The PC is brand new, Intel Dual Core 2 E6600, 2GB RAM, an Intel P965 mainboard (MSI P965 Platinum) Video = MSI NX7300GS, Windows XP SP2, and it went through the regular windows updates.
There's nothing else running on on this machine.

Initially, I was using a Technotrend S2-3200 card, with the 4.4.10.18 BDA drivers.
What I saw was: I could scan the 1st LNB (Hotbird 13E) OK, but somewhere in the 2nd LNB (Astra 19.2E) it would consistently fail. (access violation in psisdecd.dll)

I saw the same problem in the DVBDream software, so I assumed it was an OS problem.

So I found this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896626

Which replaced my psisdecd.dll by a newer one : 6.05.2600.2640

And sure enough that helped... to some point:

Now both apps (MediaPortal and DVBDream) were able to scan LNB1 (Hotbird 13E), LNB2 (Astra 19.2E) and LNB3 (Astra 23.5E) successfully, but both still failed on the 4th LNB (28.2 and 28.5 astra & eurobird). In fact just tuning to a channel on that sat in DVBDream sometimes causes the application to crash.


I searched more and found somebody else was experiencing the same problem (different viewing software) in XP SP2:
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=2641&page=1&pp=10

and they "fixed" it by replacing the XP SP2 mpeg2data.ax & PsisDecd.dll files form the ones that come with MCE's...

= PsisDecd.dll 6.5.2700.2230
= mpeg2data.ax 6.5.2700.2230

So I tried that, and sure enough I can now scan my 4 LNBs reliably, in both programs. I also got rid of the crashes when watching certain channels in LNB4.


All that works, and in theory both MediaPortal and DVBDream (I use the latter as a reference when things go wrong) seemed happy.

However, I still find that after a while, when I open MediaPortal I get no audio/video. (either FTA or scrambled channels)

If I then restart the TVservice, ususally that fixes it... for a while. I assume the reason it is broken again later is because the EPG grabber has been working with the DB card in the background. Sometimes I need to restart the whole PC to get the audio/video again.


First I thought maybe I just had an unreliable card / drivers (Technotrend S2 3200), so last week while struggling with all this I ordered a fireDTV as well. This came in today.

I installed it, and guess what : I am seeing exactly the same problems!

if I don't install MCE's mpeg2data.ax & PsisDecd.dll then scanning satellites will go fine except for the 28.2/28.5 astra/eurobird.

with MCE's mpeg2data.ax & PsisDecd.dll then scanning satellites is successfully completed, but I still find my system in a state where it says "unable to start timeshifting, No video/audio detected" very often.

This is a TVEngine 0.3 setup, SVN build 14010 (both client and server). I suspect the software version is not that important as I am seeing similar problems in DVBDream.


Is there anybody that is using XP SP2 with a system that is stable and reliable ? Or has anybody else had to debug similar problems ?
I am curious to know what versions you are running of these files:

mpg2splt.ax
msdvbnp.ax
psisdecd.dll
psisrndr.ax
mpeg2data.ax
msvidctl.dll

Any help would be really appreciated!

Thanks!
Johan.

 

[gxtracker]

You shouldnt expect any SVN and TVEngine 3 builds to run reliably. SVN builds are released multiple times on a daily basis - that by nature makes it unstable enough as it.

Do you have this issue with regular TVEngine 2 builds? (0.2.2.0)

 

[johandm_be]

Thanks for your reaction.

SVN builds are released multiple times on a daily basis - that by nature makes it unstable enough as it.

Understood. But from reading in the changelogs and/or the forums, I don't see anybody else mention this (quite serious) problem. That lead me to believe the issue I am seeing should not be happening, even in SVN builds.

Do you have this issue with regular TVEngine 2 builds? (0.2.2.0)

I wanted to try that, but I was not sure how to do that... How can I install a 0.2.2.0 that does not connect to the server on the same machine ?

Can I uninstall just the client plugin (is that possible) and disable TVService ?
Or do I need to uninstall the whole server software alltogether.


Also, I found in this forum, in the thread:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/multi_dvb_tuner_issues_windows_xp_patch-t6344.html

That thread also talks about the same MCE mpeg2data.ax & PsisDecd.dll files. Quote from post #58: (from Taipan)

That sounds like a different problem altogether, as this patch is only required for the v2 TV engine. The v3 TV engine does not use the Microsoft Stream Buffer Engine, so this patch is not required.

So, I do wonder how much sense it makes to test this with 0.2.2.0 because it seems like the engines are fundamentally different ?

That said, I am definately willing to try this, please advise what is most convenient way to do that on this machine that already has v3 engine + MP with client pluging installed.

Thanks!
Johan.

 

[dvdfreak]

How's your setup running in the mean time? I'm assembling a new "server" with almost identical specifications (with TVE3), so I was wondering if I'm going to run into the same troubles...

 

[johandm_be]

Hi there,

Things are still pretty much the same, but I must admit that I have not had a lot of time to experiment with this in it the past week.

I did install a newer release : SVN14156 but the problems were exactly the same.

Apart from the unreliability, I also found that the teletext is broken (which I reported in a different thread: "Teletext is broken when using TVserver " link here).

I found another interesting topic on this forum (Thread: "Multi DVB Tuner Issues in Windows XP, Patch here", link here), and in that thread you can download newer mpeg2data.ax & PsisDecd.dll (also from MCE).

After installing those files, I find that my system is now rock solid... with the DVBDream software. For TVE3, I don't really feel a difference, but the thread that I just pointed to says that the multi-tuner patch does not matter for TVE3, only if you use MP standalone.


Now, here is one thing I learned that is interesting: most of the times when it fails to start timeshifting a channel (no audio/video message), you can just tune to the same channel again and then the channel that failed before suddenly works! And, in some of the cases where retuning the same channel did not help, you might still be able to get it working by tuning to a different channel first, then tune to the channel you want. Again, quite oftenly that fixes it too.

I get this behavior with the FireDTV, I have not gone back to try the TT-S2-3200 to see if that behavior is the same.

It is an interesting discovery though nevertheless. If you can fix a problem by just retuning without even restarting the TVService, that feels like it is a software issue inside TVEngine.

The workaround for manually retuning the same channel works fine if you are want to watch live TV, but is a showstopper for your recordings


That said, I certainly don't want to bad-mouth the TVE/MP software, because I think the features it offers are really outstanding and I have not been able to find any (Windows) tool that can match it. Furthermore it is free and open source! Though I must say that I would have no problems paying for it, if it would have been reliable as a PVR system should.

My profession is software developer (and my fulltime occupation is writing C++ code) so I was actually planning on, when time permits, download the source and start contributing by troubleshooting this locally and if possible providing fixes.

And that is also why I sort of stopped experimenting last week. I am waiting for when I can make some significant time available to get up to speed on the MP/TVE code and look at the problems from that angle.


Now, if you do build that system, please let me know your findings. I am very curious to hear how it works for you.

Thanks!
Johan.