Weak signal > crashing (1 Viewer)

[bounguine]

I'm not an expert indeed, but coming back to the very first post here - why doesn't other apps crash when there's no signal and why do they have a better level of sensitivity with the same BDA driver?
Just a question.

 

[tourettes]

I'm not an expert indeed, but coming back to the very first post here - why doesn't other apps crash when there's no signal and why do they have a better level of sensitivity with the same BDA driver?
Just a question.

Not possible to say until someone digs thru the whole code base of the other application and analyzes what is done differently (one thing could be the usage of CRC check sums, other is buggy TsWriter code).

 

[bounguine]

Do you mean all the authors did a deep investigation?
I doubt so, as most of the apps listed above were made by a single person without any team.
I used them long before MP and never did what I do now.
I never used hot keys to start an nCrone script (stop TVService > restart driver > start TVService).
And the worst thing is that in some cases MP, being a frontend, keeps a silence for a long time when the TVServer crashes and then a message “connection to the TVServer lost” appears.
And I have to restart MP, as the list of channels in MP is absolutely blank.

 

[tourettes]

Do you mean all the authors did a deep investigation?

Most likely they are just better when it comes to a writing working C++ code so thay aren't having buggy code like we have.

 

[bounguine]

No, I didn't mean that.
To be frank, I don't care whose code is immaculate.
The only thing I'd love to see is MP working perfectly with the TV signal.

 

[Berns]

Just to make sure:
I did not want people to start a discussion about code quality, comparison between products and so on.
There are 2 main reasons why I use media portal:
1) the processing is done on a central point, with the tv server, and multipoint clients is a possibility
2) it runs on a windows platform (I would not want my family to change all computer habbits that have grown over the years)

(The fact that MP uses a temporary stream location, therefore, by desing is helping for both my goals.)

Tourettes,
I've tried to think out of the box, and find a possible solution on how to detect the singal being weak or low on quality.
If CRC check can do that, fine. If any other solution would exist, also fine.

It is important for the users to be informed in a user friendly way, that something is wrong with the signal on the channel they are watching, allowing them to change channel, without a system crash.

 

[CHli]

I think a big improvement would be first to notify the user with an image inserted in the stream instead of a dialog box when the signal is lost or CAM cannot decrypt the signal.

Use case :

I select a channel that I don't have rights to watch or i don't have the right codec installed or that is on a transponder that offers bad signal or any other reason for the tv stream not showing. What I get today is : wait wait wait wait wait wait wait and some error message telling me that something doesn't work (crypted / bad codec / unable to start graph /etc) and the possibilty to go back to the previous channel or stop. What I think would be a major improvement is to tell the user much sooner that something went wrong (I tried to change the different timeouts in the configuration but I don't think they have any effect on that delay) and also instead of raising an error message just insert a picture in the stream that would tell me that this channel is crypted / bad codec / etc.

It has the following benefits :

The user can continue zapping within a reasonable amount of time
The user doesn't have to think about the possible answer he wants to give (i just want to zap i don't want to think hehe)
This is the way that is used on most set-top-box and is more natural to the general user

What do you think ?

 

[Al_Capone]

CHli

good idea ! - very nice...

 

[Berns]

CHli,

I second the words of Al_Capone: superb idea ....