TVService (EPG grabbing when idle) preventing Standby (4 Viewers)

[doveman]

Thanks seco, that'd be great.

When you say "disable all 3rd party stuff" do you mean just TV Server related plugins, or MP plugins as well? I'm not entirely sure which MP plugins are default or not, so it might be a bit tricky to just disable the 3rd-party ones (and I won't be able to use my remote if I disable MessagePlugin).

Could you upload the 1.3a Powerscheduler server and client plugins for me please, as I don't seem to have a backup of them unfortunately?

The Windows power options are Balanced, Sleep after 30 minutes, Allow wake timers, Allow sleep with remote opens.

The TV Server PS options are Wakeup server for various events, Shutdown mode: Suspend, the EPG tab settings are all unticked, Network Monitor is disabled, Share monitoring is disabled.

 

[doveman]

Actually, no worries about the PS plugins, I just reinstalled the TVserver package.

So the DVB EPG settings are now:
Everything ticked except for "Grab EPG only for channels on same transponder"
whilst timeshifting/recording, Timeout: 2 minutes
whilst idle, Timeout: 10 minutes, Refresh every 240mins

I just enabled grabbing whilst idle and powercfg -requests shows TVservice.exe and two instances of Legacy Kernel Caller. I'll wait for the grabber to finish and check again and then gather the logs.

 

[seco]

At this point what I would suggest is that you forget all Windows power options (maybe set to "Always on" etc.) and see if you can get sleep by MP. You didn't mention anything about PS Client plugin so in order to do what I'm suggesting you should enable it and tell us your settings.

 

[doveman]

OK, I'll do that first if you think it will be helpful, although bear in mind I need to have Windows control standby in the end. I imagine if MP is forcing standby that will override anything that's blocking Windows from going to standby, in the same way that my manually sending it to standby does.

I'll set the PS Client plugin to standby after 30mins and not "Only on Home"

EPG grabbing still going, never realised it took this long!

EDIT: I've set the shutdown mode in the client and server plugins to Suspend. I have Hibernate/Hybrid disabled anyway.

 

[doveman]

OK, the EPG grab's finished after almost two hours. Should it take that long? Log's attached in case they're useful.

Anyway, the Legacy Kernel Caller HAS cleared this time, so I'll keep an eye on it whilst testing with the PS Client plugin to see if it gets stuck after the next EPG update.

 

[elliottmc]

OK, the EPG grab's finished after almost two hours. Should it take that long?

I have never checked, although if you have it set to refresh every 4 hours, and it takes 2 hours, then it will be grabbing EPG most of the time.

Do you really need it updating every 4 hours? I set mine to grab every 24 hours. Sure, if a program changes, it might not catch this, but then again there is a chance that it won't anyway.

 

[doveman]

I have never checked, although if you have it set to refresh every 4 hours, and it takes 2 hours, then it will be grabbing EPG most of the time.

Do you really need it updating every 4 hours? I set mine to grab every 24 hours. Sure, if a program changes, it might not catch this, but then again there is a chance that it won't anyway.

Yeah, that occured to me that it will be spending a lot of time refreshing if it takes two hours and the interval is four hours, which is partly why I was surprised it took so long as four hours is the default interval which someone chose and I don't suppose they would have done that if it normally takes two hours.

Perhaps the options "Always try to fill holes", "Always update existing entries" and "Enable CRC Check" make it take much longer than it should, although I think at least the first two need to be enabled, to prevent gaps appearing and to ensure it catches any changes to programmes.

On that last point (as you mention) I think it probably needs to refresh several times a day to give it a chance to catch any rescheduled/late-changed programmes and of course if it's only allowed to run once every 24 hours there's more chance that the card(s) will be busy when it tries and then the PC is shutdown for the night by the user before it gets another chance, although I guess that's less likely if there's at least two tuners.

I think when grabbing whilst timeshifting/recording it can only grab for the channels on the same transponder being watched/recorded, although perhaps if there's more than one tuner and only one's being used it can use the spare one to grab the EPG for all transponders.

 

[DragonQ]

Which country are you in and which provider are you using? An EPG grab for Freesat or Sky in the UK should take 10-15 minutes for a full 7 day EPG for hundreds of channels.

 

[tourettes]

On that last point (as you mention) I think it probably needs to refresh several times a day to give it a chance to catch any rescheduled/late-changed programmes and of course if it's only allowed to run once every 24 hours there's more chance that the card(s) will be busy when it tries and then the PC is shutdown for the night by the user before it gets another chance, although I guess that's less likely if there's at least two tuners.

It will only reduce the change of missing EPG change.

Users shouldn't try to turn the HTPC off just tell them that HTPC will shut down by itself when MP is in homescreen with no media playing. Or if users really want to turn the HTPC off tell them to use S3/S4 and MP will wake up to grap the EPG at configured time in the night.

I think when grabbing whilst timeshifting/recording it can only grab for the channels on the same transponder being watched/recorded, although perhaps if there's more than one tuner and only one's being used it can use the spare one to grab the EPG for all transponders.

Depends on the broadcaster - some of them are sending all the EPG data on every single mux. I guess this depends mainly how wise their technical guys are and how many channels there are available (as the EPG populating gets quite slow if there are hundreds of channels).

 

[DragonQ]

Well in the UK, each channel broadcasts EPG data but this will take ages it's only now & next information. For the actual full EPG you only need to grab from a single channel ("Freesat Info" for Freesat, can't remember the name of the Sky one) so it's much quicker.