Upgraded my TV server now have live tv stuttering/pixelation (11 Viewers)

[jonathantwynham]

I may have found a possible reason.. the machine has 1gb of ram, which apparently was fine on XP, but it seems W7-64 requires a little more.. ive noticed that its got 0mb of free physical memory available and is running around 1022mb of pagefile.. ive just ordered a 4gb upgrade and will see what happens as i honestly cant find any other reason for it.. i just dont understand why its fine on bbc channels but not the others!

 

[mm1352000]

All the BBC HD channels work perfectly

Is that a change? I didn't think that was true in your previous log files.

Edit:

i just dont understand why its fine on bbc channels but not the others!

Without log files I can't even begin to try to understand either.

 

[jonathantwynham]

Ok. I will grab log files tomorrow evening.

Im in the process of upgrading to MP2 on a spare PC i have setup as dev machine. I have got as far as upgrading to MP2 server using the 1.12 tv server which is now running both my MP1 live clients and MP2 dev client. It hasnt made any difference to my glitch issue (I didnt think it would), its still the same as before.

 

[jonathantwynham]

Ok. Logs attached.. My lounge client log done in watchdog, and also that of the tv-server (all be it now a MP2 using the MP1 tv server DB).

I am still noticing quite a lot of PMT errors in the tv server logs.. and a hell of a lot of discontinuity errors in the client logs....

What I did in this log grab was:
Open MP on lounge client
View BBC1 HD on lounge client - resulted in a perfect tune
Switch to ITV1 HD on lounge client - audio with black screen
Switch to BBC1 HD on lounge client - resulted in a perfect tune - left streaming whilst..
..I then fired up a second client and:
View ITV1 HD on second client - resulted in scrambled picture on second client and loss of picture on lounge client
Switch to BBC1 HD on second client - resulted in perfect tune on both second client and lounge client - after it settled down a few seconds later.

 

[mm1352000]

The only thing that stands out to me is that BBC ONE HD is being tuned via DVB-T/T2 whereas ITV1 HD is being tuned via DVB-S2.

I am still noticing quite a lot of PMT errors in the tv server logs..

You haven't specified which messages you're looking at, but it would be wrong to assume all PMT related messages are errors.
I can see PMT messages correspond with the activity of the DVB EPG grabber, which is repeatedly trying (and failing) to grab EPG from channels like "BT Showcase", "ITV4" and "?TV". The failures could be indications that:

1. The channel tuning details are wrong (ie. the channel has moved, the transmitter tuning details have changed, or you scanned with out-of-date tuning details).
2. The channels are not currently on air (ie. they don't run 24 hours per day, and they're inactive at the time grabbing was attempted).
3. The channels are obsolete (ie. the channel is no longer broadcasting).

Either way, it tells me that your EPG grabber configuration is incorrect. For Freeview and Freesat, please consult the recommendations in threads like this:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/no-data-available-for-some-channels.132046/
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/tv-not-recording.131759/#post-1149034
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/where-is-dvb-epg-data-stored.131910/#post-1150285

...and a hell of a lot of discontinuity errors in the client logs....

Well, yes. These are a reflection of the same problems that you're observing through the user interface (no audio, no video, stuttering etc.).

You said earlier that the server firewall is disabled and doesn't have anti-virus software (I assume that includes Windows Defender and MS Security Essentials). What about the clients though?

 

[jonathantwynham]

Hi. Just looked at the epg settings on the server.. I originally had my old mp1.5 server set as you said but I assumed by doing an export of 1.5 and import of channels into 1.12 it would have pulled that in.. seems it hasnt! Ive corrected that now.

firewall, av, defender, mse are all off/uninstalled. I could understand about firewalls/av on my clients if I had this issue before I upgraded the tv server.. but as this only appeared after the upgrade I cant believe it would be that..

 

[mm1352000]

but I assumed by doing an export of 1.5 and import of channels into 1.12 it would have pulled that in.. seems it hasnt!

Unfortunately import/export doesn't exhaustively cover every setting, so this assumption is dangerous. Also causes me to question what other critical settings might not have been pulled in.

The only thing that stands out to me is that BBC ONE HD is being tuned via DVB-T/T2 whereas ITV1 HD is being tuned via DVB-S2.

Any thoughts about this?

 

[jonathantwynham]

Yeah. I am wondering too.. I am puzzled by that too. All the core channels are tuned and mapped to both the T2 and S2 tuners.. the T2 tuners have priority over the S2 tuners, mainly because of the lower power usage of the T2s. The odd thing I have also noticed is there are a few errors stating that particular HD channels arent mapped to the tuner. Ive done a full channel rescan on both tuners but it has made no difference.

 

[jonathantwynham]

Right.

Bit of an update and a bit of a change...

I have deleted all the channels from all my tuners, I then rescanned both tuners, organised all the channels again (took me around 3 hrs - i dont delete channels just remove the ones i dont want from the groups as everytime i do an update scan it adds them all back again - sodding dvb-s adds nearly 900 channels!!! ha).

I have also upgraded the tv server to 4GB of ram.

Did a bit of testing to see what it does and these are the results:
All HD channels now work on my lounge client, but I still get a lot of random stuttering/pixelation - nowhere near as bad though.
I can now fire up HD channels on all my clients (admittedly they cant play it properly) but I have had all 4 clients attempting to stream HD and my lounge client gets no worse than normal.

The stuttering/pixelation seems to be at random times.. annoyingly never in the commercials though!

Im 99% sure that its a server issue rather than client.. my next step is I have a spare solidstate hard drive sitting in my cad workstation so I am going to borrow that as my timeshift drive..

I'll let you know the end results and post some logs.

 

[jonathantwynham]

Right.

This is getting weird now.

Ive done a fresh, clean, install of the TV server, I have swapped some vga cards around (my bedroom htpc is now capable of HD).

Watching the same HD channel (BBC 1 HD) on my lounge and bedroom clients has given me some odd behaviour...

Lounge HTPC runs for ages and seems to be perfect, then all of a sudden it glitches and wont stop glitching until you stop and start the stream again. However if whilst the lounge htpc is glitching I tune to the same channel on my bedroom htpc it runs perfectly, and I mean absolutely spot on - no glitches, no stuttering, nothing....

and heres the big but... if i remote desktop onto my tv server whilst my lounge htpc is glitching and my bedroom htpc is not it is showing discontinuities...

the TSWriter log shows "Recorderid 19c9 Continuity error... 8 ( prev f ) - bad signal?" at the exact time the glitches happened.

looking at the tvserver log it seems that it starts an epg grab about 1second before it goes weird.

I've attached the logfiles so hopefully you can see whats happening.. it doesnt appear to be bad signal as the level never drops below 78 with a quality of 100 (im watching on remote desktop)