TV server - freeze (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Phaedra
- Start date
- September 1, 2008
- 21,544
- 8,236
- Home Country
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New Zealand
Hi again Phaedra
I've had a look at your logs but it really doesn't help that they are sooooo long - that makes it almost impossible to see anything. Having said that, I suspect that you have a signal problem, and since signal statistics aren't logged after tuning it makes the logs useless anyway...
Why do I think you have a signal problem? Well, mostly because you said that you see signal level and quality fall in TV Server configuration when you try manual timeshifting. Loss of signal would obviously explain the freeze in the client. If you have short signal dropouts then some applications may be able to recover/retune (which would explain your ability to watch for hours in other applications), however TV Server can be a little more sensitive...
Is the fall sudden, or a little gradual?
Do you have other devices connected to the dish, and if so:
- do they function well?
- what do they say about the signal?
Does DVBDream (or any other applications you use) show the same signal drops, and does the signal recover quickly?
Regarding the PMT comment made earlier: you seem to have a specific problem tuning to "CNN Int." (CNN International I presume) sometimes. I'm guessing the signal may be marginal...
I've had a look at your logs but it really doesn't help that they are sooooo long - that makes it almost impossible to see anything. Having said that, I suspect that you have a signal problem, and since signal statistics aren't logged after tuning it makes the logs useless anyway...
Why do I think you have a signal problem? Well, mostly because you said that you see signal level and quality fall in TV Server configuration when you try manual timeshifting. Loss of signal would obviously explain the freeze in the client. If you have short signal dropouts then some applications may be able to recover/retune (which would explain your ability to watch for hours in other applications), however TV Server can be a little more sensitive...
Is the fall sudden, or a little gradual?
Do you have other devices connected to the dish, and if so:
- do they function well?
- what do they say about the signal?
Does DVBDream (or any other applications you use) show the same signal drops, and does the signal recover quickly?
Regarding the PMT comment made earlier: you seem to have a specific problem tuning to "CNN Int." (CNN International I presume) sometimes. I'm guessing the signal may be marginal...
- Thread starter
- #15
Hi,
thanks for your effort and reply.
Regarding the signal drop :
- when I monitor it in realtime when doing manual timeshift, the drop is very sudden. I just tried it with another channel, with signal level 78%, Quality 74%. After a while, both suddenly drop to around 5%, signal level sometimes going to 15% and dropping again to 5.
- I then open DVB dream, tuned to the same channel, to see the original values of signal level and quality, with a very subtle variation of around 1 %.
If signal quality is really the issue, would that explain the fact that the error reporting service always seems to kick in at the same time as the TV server freeze ?
I don't have any other devices connected to my dish, and I agree the alignment could be better, but I fell from the ladder the last time I tried to fix that
If MP is this sensitive to signal quality, then I have a major problem anyway. I really need the client-server capability, and I don't know an alternative right now.
I wonder how many others have the same problem ? I've seen quite a few threads on this forum describing similar problems...
I refer to Norseman's message, having the same problem since upgradin from a previous version.
Maybe this person could specify whether or not the signal quality has changed since the upgrade ? It could be a coincidence, but the experience of a longer-term user is of much value in this issue.
I haven't tried the patch that he refers to (about the intensive disk I/O during timeshift)...has that been release yet ? That might be worth a try.
Thanks again for your time,
Phaedra
thanks for your effort and reply.
Regarding the signal drop :
- when I monitor it in realtime when doing manual timeshift, the drop is very sudden. I just tried it with another channel, with signal level 78%, Quality 74%. After a while, both suddenly drop to around 5%, signal level sometimes going to 15% and dropping again to 5.
- I then open DVB dream, tuned to the same channel, to see the original values of signal level and quality, with a very subtle variation of around 1 %.
If signal quality is really the issue, would that explain the fact that the error reporting service always seems to kick in at the same time as the TV server freeze ?
I don't have any other devices connected to my dish, and I agree the alignment could be better, but I fell from the ladder the last time I tried to fix that
If MP is this sensitive to signal quality, then I have a major problem anyway. I really need the client-server capability, and I don't know an alternative right now.
I wonder how many others have the same problem ? I've seen quite a few threads on this forum describing similar problems...
I refer to Norseman's message, having the same problem since upgradin from a previous version.
Maybe this person could specify whether or not the signal quality has changed since the upgrade ? It could be a coincidence, but the experience of a longer-term user is of much value in this issue.
I haven't tried the patch that he refers to (about the intensive disk I/O during timeshift)...has that been release yet ? That might be worth a try.
Thanks again for your time,
Phaedra
- Thread starter
- #16
I have applied the patch - version 3 - that Norseman suggested, and so far it seems to solve the problem !
I have been timeshifting for over two hours now without a glitch, so I am very impatient in trying to patch the client and trying to stream.
Thanks again for all the help so far, I'll keep you informed on my experiences.
I have been timeshifting for over two hours now without a glitch, so I am very impatient in trying to patch the client and trying to stream.
Thanks again for all the help so far, I'll keep you informed on my experiences.
- Thread starter
- #17
Back to square one...
After the patching of the TV server, everything seemed to work just fine.
The next day, however, waking the server from sleep, I lost reception on 2 of the 3 satellites. Scanning of channels only indicated "no signal".
Troubleshooting all connections, swapping diseqc switches, no avail.
Today, after hours of troubleshooting, I reverted to the original TV server version, ad guess what, I have good reception again on all satellites.
But he freezing is back....
If we want to switch to sat tv in a couple of months from now, I will have to decide on a configuration.
Mediaportal in this state isn't usable because of the constant freezing of live TV.
I really hope this can be solved, because it would be the nicest integration in a mediacenter...
After the patching of the TV server, everything seemed to work just fine.
The next day, however, waking the server from sleep, I lost reception on 2 of the 3 satellites. Scanning of channels only indicated "no signal".
Troubleshooting all connections, swapping diseqc switches, no avail.
Today, after hours of troubleshooting, I reverted to the original TV server version, ad guess what, I have good reception again on all satellites.
But he freezing is back....
If we want to switch to sat tv in a couple of months from now, I will have to decide on a configuration.
Mediaportal in this state isn't usable because of the constant freezing of live TV.
I really hope this can be solved, because it would be the nicest integration in a mediacenter...
- September 1, 2008
- 21,544
- 8,236
- Home Country
-
New Zealand
Hi again Phaedra
I'm sorry to hear that the problems are back, but I have to say that I'm not surprised. I'm still convinced that you have a signal problem, perhaps combined with a problem with resuming after hibernate/sleep. The stuttering patch isn't going to fix either of those problems.
You mentioned that signal appears to be perfect immediately after a freeze in MP when you check signal in DVBDream. That wasn't quite what I wanted to know - I wanted to know whether you see the signal drops in DVBDream at all. Please try monitoring the signal in DVBDream over time to confirm that the signal drops are also occurring there. If they are, that would confirm that you have a signal problem and that DVBDream is just slightly better at recovering from signal loss.
Regarding the loss of access to the 2 satellites: I suspect that restarting TV Server after removing the patch was what helped to resolve that. I recommend you don't allow your TV Server to go to sleep until you find the cause of the first issue. Resuming from sleep comes with many issues of its own - many tuner card drivers have trouble with this. To solve these people often have to use static IP addresses, restart TV Server on resume with a delay to allow the tuner driver to reinitialise, or use devcon to restart the tuner driver...
I'm sorry to hear that the problems are back, but I have to say that I'm not surprised. I'm still convinced that you have a signal problem, perhaps combined with a problem with resuming after hibernate/sleep. The stuttering patch isn't going to fix either of those problems.
You mentioned that signal appears to be perfect immediately after a freeze in MP when you check signal in DVBDream. That wasn't quite what I wanted to know - I wanted to know whether you see the signal drops in DVBDream at all. Please try monitoring the signal in DVBDream over time to confirm that the signal drops are also occurring there. If they are, that would confirm that you have a signal problem and that DVBDream is just slightly better at recovering from signal loss.
Regarding the loss of access to the 2 satellites: I suspect that restarting TV Server after removing the patch was what helped to resolve that. I recommend you don't allow your TV Server to go to sleep until you find the cause of the first issue. Resuming from sleep comes with many issues of its own - many tuner card drivers have trouble with this. To solve these people often have to use static IP addresses, restart TV Server on resume with a delay to allow the tuner driver to reinitialise, or use devcon to restart the tuner driver...
- Thread starter
- #19
Hi,
in DVB Dream I don't see any signal drop at all ; as I mentioned, I see slight variations in the signal level and quality, but not the same sudden drop as in MP.
I've run a few analysis tools in DVB dream to try and identify signal problems, but so far it doesn't report any. I will try to capture some problems if any should arise...
It still leaves me with serious doubts about the signal quality being the cause of my troubles, taking into account a few facts from the past days :
- the Error Reporting Service that kicks in at the same time as the freeze phenomena
- the fact that after the patching of the TV server, everything went perfect for the whole evening ; I never experienced this sort of trouble-free operation since the beginning of my experiments with TV server : I ALWAYS had freezing phenomena from day one. This time, I had NONE for hours on a row.
I will be trying your other tips though, to try a delay in startup of the TV service, but even when I do a manual restart, I get TV freezing.
in DVB Dream I don't see any signal drop at all ; as I mentioned, I see slight variations in the signal level and quality, but not the same sudden drop as in MP.
I've run a few analysis tools in DVB dream to try and identify signal problems, but so far it doesn't report any. I will try to capture some problems if any should arise...
It still leaves me with serious doubts about the signal quality being the cause of my troubles, taking into account a few facts from the past days :
- the Error Reporting Service that kicks in at the same time as the freeze phenomena
- the fact that after the patching of the TV server, everything went perfect for the whole evening ; I never experienced this sort of trouble-free operation since the beginning of my experiments with TV server : I ALWAYS had freezing phenomena from day one. This time, I had NONE for hours on a row.
I will be trying your other tips though, to try a delay in startup of the TV service, but even when I do a manual restart, I get TV freezing.
- Thread starter
- #20
Hi mm1352000,
I took your advice, and checked the startup options for the TV service.
I changed it to delayed automatic start, and it seems that this solves a lot of problems I've been having.
The freezing of TV channels is now reduced to something very rare, which only requires a renewed selection of the channel (TV off-on or zap channel) to kick it back alive.
I will keep you informed of the evolutions, but so far it's looking good, even after a few sleep-wake cycles of the TV server.
Thanks again for all your efforts !
Phaedra
I took your advice, and checked the startup options for the TV service.
I changed it to delayed automatic start, and it seems that this solves a lot of problems I've been having.
The freezing of TV channels is now reduced to something very rare, which only requires a renewed selection of the channel (TV off-on or zap channel) to kick it back alive.
I will keep you informed of the evolutions, but so far it's looking good, even after a few sleep-wake cycles of the TV server.
Thanks again for all your efforts !
Phaedra