[confirm] Update TV card driver can cause MP misbehaviour (1 Viewer)

[KevL]

This concerns 1.1.0RC4 (though may be have been present longer)



I have a single TV card with several tuners on it.

When I install MP and look in the TV Server config app these are correctly listed as cards 1-6 etc.

Recently I had cause to update the driver for the card (to fix a bug in tuning - rather than for the fun of it).

As manufacturers often do they had changed the name of the driver from something like BTG BDA driver to BTG3540, BDA driver.


When I installed driver, rebooted and went back into MP TV server config I now found I had something like 14 tuners listed - the old ones and the new ones. OK so I deleted the old ones and thought little of it.

Subsequently I tried to get DVB EPG grabbing working. It didn't so I looked at the EPG log. LOg said it was trying to grab epg date from Card 9. Obviously it wont manage that as I only have 6 tuners on the card + the standard MP tuners for internet radio etc.

So the act of changing TV card drivers can break MP database somehow. I'm not really sure about how that info is stored etc so I'm now in the process of doing a clean reinstall to fix the issue (hopefully).

Maybe this might explain the occasional - MP doesn't work type posts.

Hope this helps.

Have no logs as I'm in the process of full reinstall. Though I have recently posted logs on other issues and these might contain needed info.



Kev

 

[elliottmc]

This concerns 1.1.0RC4 (though may be have been present longer)



I have a single TV card with several tuners on it.

When I install MP and look in the TV Server config app these are correctly listed as cards 1-6 etc.

Recently I had cause to update the driver for the card (to fix a bug in tuning - rather than for the fun of it).

As manufacturers often do they had changed the name of the driver from something like BTG BDA driver to BTG3540, BDA driver.


When I installed driver, rebooted and went back into MP TV server config I now found I had something like 14 tuners listed - the old ones and the new ones. OK so I deleted the old ones and thought little of it.

Subsequently I tried to get DVB EPG grabbing working. It didn't so I looked at the EPG log. LOg said it was trying to grab epg date from Card 9. Obviously it wont manage that as I only have 6 tuners on the card + the standard MP tuners for internet radio etc.

So the act of changing TV card drivers can break MP database somehow. I'm not really sure about how that info is stored etc so I'm now in the process of doing a clean reinstall to fix the issue (hopefully).

Maybe this might explain the occasional - MP doesn't work type posts.

Hope this helps.

Have no logs as I'm in the process of full reinstall. Though I have recently posted logs on other issues and these might contain needed info.



Kev

I have seen this sort of thing in the past, and have two comments.

Firstly, my personal experience with BlackGold cards/drivers is not good. I bought one of their cards (not the same as yours) a while ago, and could not get it to work reliably. It only seemed to work well with their own software.

Secondly, if you do need to change drivers and the card is then recognised as a different card/brand, then MP might not realise that the old card is no longer around. Personally, I am not convinced that this is a bug. For example, you could have a USB tuner that either takes longer to initialise or has been unplugged for some reason. If MP deletes a card from the database as soon as it realises it is not connected, and then loses channel information, etc, then this would be a bigger bug. This type of situation is simply the nature of the beast. Sometimes we need to find the best compromise solution. If this sort of thing happens, the only thing to do is delete your database and reconfigure.

Best wishes,

Mark

 

[KevL]

I had not considered the need for removable devices and I can now see why attempting to fix this eventuality would produce a bigger bug.

Re BGT capature cards. I have found them to be very good. Mine works in MP flawlessly. I have had trouble in the past with Twinhan and Hauppauge cards. Bloody tricky this HTPC stuff.

Kev