Weak signal > crashing (2 Viewers)

[bounguine]

TV-Server Version: TV-Server 1.0 (RC3)
MediaPortal Version: MediaPortal 1.0 (RC3)
MediaPortal Skin: Xface
Windows Version: XP SP3
CPU Type: Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5600+
HDD:
Memory: DDR2 1 Gb
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H
Video Card: Integrated ATI Radeon X1250
Video Card Driver:
Sound Card: Integrated Realtek ALC889A Audio (8 channels)
Sound Card AC3: optical out, HDMI
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Technisat SkyStar 2s V. 2.7 U
1. TV Card Type: DVB-S
1. TV Card Driver: WDM 4.4.3
2. TV Card: GOTVIEW PCI DVD2 LITE
2. TV Card Type: analog
2. TV Card Driver: 21.09.07 v3.0.50.2 (Win 32)
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: MPV (DVD), Intervideo (TV), ffdshow (video)
MPEG2 Audio Codec: ffdshow (DVD), Cyberlink (video), Intervideo (TV)
h.264 Video Codec:
Satelite/CableTV Provider: Hotbird 13.0°E, Astra 19.2°E, Eutelsat 36.0E, Sirius 5.0°E
HTPC Case: Cooler Master RC-260-SKN1 Silver
Cooling: Cooler Master Susurro + 3 HTPC box fans
Power Supply: Thermaltake Silent PurePower, 500W
Remote: One for all 8 in 1 + Imon Remote
TV: Phillips 42PFL9632D/10
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI

This week one of the days was very cloudy and some transponders had weak signal and some had no signal at all.
I suffered from issues (see description below) in MP.
That’s why I took for tests another application I used before MP.

So I decided to make some tests using MP and DVBViewer Pro to understand the cause of troubles..

Step 1 – no signal on a transponder

MP:
- “all cards are busy” in the TV-console, “signal level 0, quality 0” in the tv-log,
a) I watched only 1 channel on a non-working transponder and then switched to a transponder with a strong signal:
- switching to any FTA channel with a strong signal – OK, switching to any scrambled channel with a strong signal – always “channel is scrambled”,
- to solve the problem restarting TVServer is needed,
b) I watched more than 1 channel on a non-working transponder and then switched to a transponder with a strong signal:
- switching to any channel with a strong signal gave a message “all cards are busy” in the TV-console and “signal level 0, quality 0” in the tv-log (I saw that the driver was crashed by MP when I opened DVBViwer Pro),
- to solve the problem restarting SS2 driver with a drivercontrol is needed.

DVBViewer Pro:
- black screen on a non-working transponder,
- switching to a transponder with a strong signal gave no errors.

Step 2 – signal jumping up and down

MP:
If I succeeded to tune such channel (signal was enough) picture was stable, but when the signal went down, picture freezed, watching the channel wasn’t possible any more even the signal was going up.
If I did the trick only once, everything went like in step 1 (a)
If I did the trick more than once, everything went like in step 1 (b).

DVBViewer Pro:
When the signal went down, picture freezed.
When the signal went up, picture appeared again and I was able to watch the channel until the next freeze.

Step 3 – weak signal on a transponder

MP:
- black screen (no picture), “signal level 22, quality 0” in the tv-log, no problem when switching to a transponder with a strong signal,

DVBViewer Pro:
- strange enough, but the same channel with a weak signal worked without problems (no freezing, etc.), picture was stable on other channels from the same transponder.

 

[pilehave]

2?

 

[bounguine]

2?

Oops, pressed the wrong button.
Can't rename the topic

 

[Spragleknas]

[Edit] -> [Go advanced]

 

[bounguine]

[Edit] -> [Go advanced]

Thanks!
Didn't know that.
Was too busy making MP work

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

MP has never liked a weak signal, unfortunately the answer is spend some cash and get a decent aerial\amplifier\cable so you get a reasonable\good one.

Your local aerial guy is usually the best person to ask for reception where you live.

Regards

 

[bounguine]

MP has never liked a weak signal, unfortunately the answer is spend some cash and get a decent aerial\amplifier\cable so you get a reasonable\good one.

Your local aerial guy is usually the best person to ask for reception where you live.

Regards

I disagree with you.

I think, it's better to ask God not to send bad weather
And probably to program for MP-team.

I'm not asking for good signal - I was talking about stability of software.

To be serious, I consider it as a very serious MP’s bug to work on.
To be correct - MP is still underdone.
I see a good concept, but realization is still very poor
Strange enough, people’s spent so much time, but could make what others did.

I tried more apps today (MyTheatre, ProdDVB and so on).

Yes, they have a lot of bugs, but they do what they are supposed to do.
They let me watch TV.

If we talk about working with a weak signal, MP is the worst.
Moreover, it’s the only app I tested, which showed bad results.
Why don’t work on it?

These apps wait for the signal to come back and I can see the picture again.
MP doesn’t.

These apps let me watch TV when the signal is weak, but not "0", but MP doesn't work.

These apps don't crash themselves or (or what is the worst thing - crash drivers), if there’s no signal.

I’ve worked for a long time as a PM and always said to programmers that they should make a “defense from idiots”.
Someone can drop a sandwich onto keyboard, but the billing they make should work.

What I saw, when the signal was down – it looked like someone dropped a sandwich onto keyboard, billing went down and electricity, too.

It’s all the teams fault.
If they can’t make MP work with a weak signal (too bad, but I can wait for the team to correct the mistake), but why does MP crash itself and drivers?

 

[IkeV70]

Allthough I wouldn't put it as strongly as Bounguine, in general I do agree with him.
TV stutter / freeze problems can often be solved by restarting MP and/or TV Service. To me (as a programmer) this sounds like something is not quite right in the software. It should be able to recover from unexpected problems (such as hickups in reception, hickups in CAM decoding) by itself.
I'm using a DVB-T card which just hasn't got perfect reception 100% of the time. Whenever a motorized vehicle passes my house there is some disturbance in the signal. At this moment I find myself restarting MP and/or TV Service at least once a day, sometimes several times per evening. (which is noy only annoying, but also a serious wife-acceptance-killer).

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

If they can’t make MP work with a weak signal (too bad, but I can wait for the team to correct the mistake), but why does MP crash itself and drivers?

None of this happens here, i can unplug aerial and the worst thing that happens is tv turns off, don't know of anyone on team-mediaportal that this does not happen correctly to, with no crash of TVServer or MP.

We have a lmited hardware range to test with, but we also know certain makes go outside standard bda drivers guidelines, these seem to be the cards we have problems with mainly, M$ MCE also does not like a wide range of cards, even standard analogue\dvb-t cards, that work in MP, and are supposedly mce compatible, just look at any of the mce forums.

Cam's again are usually solved by a manufacturers update to there drivers, if you read as many posts as i do you see this happening a lot.

That's not saying TVServer should be able to adjust its boundary's to cope better with such error's the same as dvbviewer, but this is work in progress.

Can say i have not had tvserver stop working, or MP crash (except after standby, hauppauge T500 known problem, workaround found) for well over a year.

Regards

 

[bounguine]

I didn’t mean to show disrespect to the team.
Actually, they’ve made many great things spending a lot of effort.

I was just wondering how people could spend so much time and miss the most important things.

If you start a project, you always take care of:
1) the main purpose of the project,
2) functionality of the SW,
3) the SW to be user-friendly,
4) stability of the SW.

What I see now:
1) Purpose
TVServer is to let people watch TV. That’s the main purpose.
Is signal’s quality a part of watching? Yes. And the most important, I guess.
TVServer can’t lock the tuner when the signal is weak.
TVServer has a “bad” level of sensitivity, while picture is stable in other apps.
Why? Simple DVB-apps use the same drivers.
Dows that mean that their authors cared much about it?
I posted another thread describing the issue when TVServer can’t lock the tuner and tune to the very first channel after starting up.
Does anyone know any other DVB-SW doing the same? I doubt.
For me, these are the things to be the first in the list.

2) Functionality
I can wait for some extra-features (like more than 4 LNBs, combining static LNBs with a motor and using more than 1 LNB on the motor), but I can’t say that TVServer has the functions it is supposed to have (see p. 1).
I understand that it’s yet under construction, but too much time I’ve been waiting.
Why other authors succeeded in making stable versions, which make it possible to forget about p. 1?

3) User-friendly
MP is a piece of SW for HTPC. That means that a user uses a remote control.
On any exception I have to close the GUI and to open “services” panel and restart TVService.
All using my keyboard.
Or to restart drivers using 3rd part utilities.
That’s user-friendly, of course.
I can use something like nnCron to make the same.
Why not make it in MP?
I agree with IkeV70 that SW should treat exceptions by itself.
Crashing TVServer (not only because of weak signal), crashing DVB-drivers (signal level “0” isn’t the only case, as I had the same issue in different situations), restarting DVB-driver on resuming (very old issue) can be done by TVServer.
Only making logs is helpful, as a programmer can fix the bug, but also treating exceptions as soon as they occur on the client’s side is more helpful.

Another bad thing is that I’m always dependant on many other things that are not a part of MP.
When I used DVB-apps I didn’t care much about system-administrating, DB-problems and so on.
Now I can sometimes see “connection to the TVServer lost” or “can’t connect to the DB”.
Too much for a stupid user.
Again a good reason to close the GUI and to start “Services” by myself.
Another pain in the mass last days – using MS SQL.
Is it really so necessary to use such bulky DB that eats my RAM and causes many troubles?
I spent last three days reading MS SQL forums, because “sa” login was rejected by MS SQL after PC starts up.
Actually TVServer tried to login before MS SQL started.
I checked DNS in my home network, put 1433 port in the registry and so on and so forth.
Again and again this is not the only case of troubles with MS SQL.

4) Stability
Nice topic!
Too much to tell, even many things are in p.p. 1-3.
What can I say more, if TVServer crashes DVB-drivers?
Nice indeed.
Believe me, I have at least one issue per day.

I’d better stop, because I haven’t read error.log since yesterday.
I really miss doing that : )

OK, guys, I don’t try to abuse anyone.
I’m positive and I’m not going to change SW.

I just still wonder – how long will it last?

We have a lmited hardware range to test with, but we also know certain makes go outside standard bda drivers guidelines, these seem to be the cards we have problems with mainly, M$ MCE also does not like a wide range of cards, even standard analogue\dvb-t cards, that work in MP, and are supposedly mce compatible, just look at any of the mce forums.

Thanks, Friend.

I know that SS2's BDA are bad (no diseqc support in MP - only in DVBViewer).
I'm using WDM, which work good in MP.

If it's a drivers issue (although I didn't see drivers crash in other apps), I can wait for the update from the manufacturer.

What I meant - an exception handler is needed.
Not only for the driver's issue, but for DB-issues and so on.

If I can help in testing, I will.

Moreover, I re-installed OS the day before yesterday and spend every evening reading logs after my family goes to bed.

I'll also try to buy another DVB-card, as noew I have more than one cable from my aerials.

Unfortunately, the card is not from the list (peolple say it works in MP).
Many cards from the Wiki will cost me more than 400 euros (tickets to Europe and backwards), as they aren't solved in Russia.