TV recording and streaming (3 Viewers)

[markius]

Dmitry - Do you have the Vista TV Pack 2008 installed?

Yes, I installed it because I use MCE as backup solution.[/QUOTE]

Hmm... that's both of us with problems and both of us with TV Pack installed. There's something for me to work on

Is there anyone else lurking on this thread who has the Vista TV Pack installed? Do you have problems or is your system working perfectly?

Mark

 

[Dmitry_f]

Looks like I have to reinstall Vista without TV pack (((. If I would know that it will help to fix problem...
Markius if you will do this before me please let me know about result (of course I'll do same).

 

[markius]

Yes, I'll definately report back. The weekend isn't a good time to reinstall my HTPC but I should be able to do a test install next week. I might also test TV Server on Windows 7 Beta since most of the VMC TV Pack stuff will be included in that.

Mark

 

[Dmitry_f]

Yes, yes, yes!!! Cha-cha-cha!!!
Windows from scratch, no TV pack and no problem!!!
Of course I got few new bugs))), and I can't say exactly may be it just coincidence, but most probably problem related to TV pack.

 

[markius]

Nice one Dmitry... I can confirm this. The TV Server does not work properly if Vista TV Pack 2008 is installed.

I did a test with a fresh install on a spare HDD. Immediately after installing the TV Pack, TV-Server was unable to multi-tune.

Chris - would I be wasting my time asking for this to be looked at by a dev? Although the TV Pack is an add-on to Vista, it may be pre-installed by OEMs on newer systems. Microsoft haven't provided any way to uninstall the TV Pack so potentially there are a group of users who will not be able to use MediaPortal properly.
A quick scan of my system reveals that the TV Pack updates the MSNP.ax and various BDA and MPEG2 related filters... could this be the problem?

UPDATE
I've just tested this with a fresh installation of Windows 7 Beta build 7000 and the same problem occurs. This is not really that surprising since the Vista TV Pack 2008 is basically integrated with the base OS in Windows 7. I think this is another very good reason to fix this problem with the TV Server.

Cheers
Mark

 

[Agent X20]

I've just revisited MP 1.0 after VMC "TV Pack" caused me endless problems (it forgets all recordings in New Zealand when using the over the air EPG).

The good news is that I have MP 1.0 running much better than ever before in terms of playback. It's rock solid on the frame rates and no more judder and the Moving Pictures and TV Series plugins are brilliant.

However, I've been having real trouble recording. Scheduled recordings don't record or stop almost immediately. I've pored over the log files and it looks just like the problems you guys are experiencing - my HVR3000 (DVB-S) isn't able to change the channel and constantly throws an error 0x01.

I've removed the hybrid configuration on my 3000 card and it IS better but it's still not working right. If I'm watching anything the recordings fail. It won't play something that's currently recording all of which lines up with your experiences with the sub-channel problems. Also I cannot stream to another client PC as it complains about being unable to timeshift.

The common thread here is that I too have TV Pack installed. (Vista 32).

 

[Dmitry_f]

I think now it's obvious that recording and streaming doesn't work if TV Pack installed.
It would be really good to get this problem fixed in coming SVNs.

 

[Agent X20]

I'm happy to help test any patches etc and can supply additional log info if required.

 

[asd7000]

Well to reanimate this thread I´m using Windows 7 an having sometimes the same problem. I tried different drivers. Then i thought about like somethink as the dvbfix for Windows XP. I experimentet a bit with the BDA for Server Package and got my Windows 7 to feel sick The old BDA System of Vista isn´t working in Windows 7. As the thread starter im using DVB-T for the TV-Server. In my case there a two CTX946 Cards using the Windows 7 drivers. I tried some drivers from the manufacturer no chance. But at the testdriving sessions a had seen something interessing. Sometimes while starting a Timeshift via TV-Server Configuration i got a signal level at zero! The nice thing with the sick Windows 7 was it gave me better error Messages. It dosen´t say unknown error it said no signal! The next thing i regocnized was that the first channel on a frequency allways seems to have a better reception than the last channel on the same frequency. I know i have a very poor Signal Quality here so i bought ( had done this for half a year ) an antenna amplifier and after that i all seemed to be fine, but who of us looks normaly at the tuning details? Then i have a stupid swiss mux, they put five channels on one frequency, the tv-server doesn´t like that
Well back to the tunning problems. I started changing cabels and watching at the tuning details. Then i took the two frequencys with the best receiption and only activated them. That changed much. Now i could watch a channel and start a record on the same channel. The recording on that channel started normaly a second or two later, i could see that because the live tv has a very short lag if a recording or livestream on the same frequency is started. But the problem gets back if you record more than two or three channels on one frequency. Every record or timeshift lowers the signal quality. On the best frequency it even wasn´t a problem to record all channels an then timeshift one of that channel, too. Then i put all channels back and then i saw some of the strange things ever seen in MediaPortal. I started a recording and then a timeshift one the same channel and MediaPortal started the timeshift on card1 and the record one card2! Well now i got into trouble changing onto a channel on a different frequency, stopped the recording after some error messages. Could understand that! Because the tv-server checks if a card is free when a new channel is tuned. When two channels on the same frequency are in used and you have two cards one should be free, but it isn´t. That behavior happend on the frequency with the poorest receiption. For me it looks like MS tried to fix some failures with poor signals. I think they dynamic change the amount of usable channels per card according to the signal level.

 

[markius]

The number of channels viewed on each MUX shouldn't make any difference to the signal strength - the signal isn't "split" each time you view an additional channel.

Fundamentally, with DVB you receive all channels, all the time and the software simply ignores channels that you don't need.

Mark