Working analog TV-cards (2 Viewers)

[John_Galt]

After spending quite some time trying to get a Terratec Cinergy HTC USB XS tv-adapter to work with mediaportal I have finally resigned. IT works fine with digital recordings but will only record 10 minutes of analog TV before freezing and stopping the recording. Now I am trying to find a new USB TV-adapter that actually works with mediaportal and analog TV but the market is big and information is sparse. Therefore I am wondering if I might steal some time from all you other users of mediaportal with one question?

Which analog USB TV-cards have you had any success with in mediaportal?

Thanks in advance


PS I have been seaching the forum but mostly found cards not working, what I am missing is a list of cards that actually work.

 

[mm1352000]

Sorry I can't offer specific advice...
For best reliability and video quality you really want a tuner that has hardware encoding - could be quite difficult to find in a USB form factor. Do you mind uploading the log files for your Terratec - just interested to see if I can spot anything suspicious that would be causing the recording drop-out...

 

[John_Galt]

Thanks, I would really appreciate all help I can get with this.
Since I have made a lot of testing, I have had mediaportal record tv-shows a couple of times each day to verify this behaviour, my logfiles where rather large so I cleared them out and ran a new test with a restarted tv-server. I noted at the same time that all my analog recordings where in the span of 09:57-10:09 minutes.

The actual test for the attached logs: I restarted mediaportal/tv-server and started a manual recording from mediaportal, TV was set to off. After approximately 10 minutes I looked at the recorded file and noticed that it did not increase in size anymore, mediaportal was still reporting that it was recording. I waited another 10 minutes and during that time mediaportal changed to a not recording state.

As stated, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mm1352000]

How did you start the recording? From the EPG, or from the main TV screen. It looks like you started the recording from the EPG. The default behaviour when you start a recording from there is to only record to the end of the program. The program that happened to be on when you did this test finished at 9am. TV Server carried on recording until the post-record time (10 minutes in your case ==> stop at 9:10am) elapsed and then stopped.

Could that be what happened?

2010-11-24 08:46:56.786400 [(18)]: Scheduler: Time to record KANAL 5 08:46-09:00 Vakna med the Voice

 

[John_Galt]

In that case I made a mistake on my test today, sorry for that, had to stresstest before work. I will make a new testrun tonight when I come home, I do not think I have any recordings scheduled for today to download.

What I made today was to manually start a recording from the mediaportal interface. Normally, all my other 10 min recordings are based on epg-data.

for looking in to this

 

[John_Galt]

Now I have tried to make two new recordings last night. I used EPG to select the shows and deleted the tv-server logs. This morning when I woke up I had two recordings of approx. 10 minutes each, the shows should be at least 30 minutes incl commercials.

If you have the time and can find anything to help in these logs I would be really grateful.

I am still interested in if anyone has found a good USB TV-card to record analog TV with mediaportal.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again John

Sorry about the delay in responding. I'll remember to make sure I subscribe to all responses on the thread next time

Regarding your logs: the TV log is crazy-long! Lots of "TCP connect took" and "remotecontrol - connected" messages. I'm pretty sure they're meaningless. I guess you have some kind of remote control? I've removed those entries and had a good look at what is left over. There is certainly something interesting that happens with one recording. I actually see three recordings in the log:

1. The Big Bang Theory, from 23:49 to 00:20
2. 2 1/2 män, from 00:29 to 01:00
3. The Simpsons, from 02:30 to 03:00

The first two recordings seem to run to completion without any problems. The third recording is strange. It appears to start correctly, but for some reason TV Server doesn't realise that it has already started the recording. It keeps trying to start the recording until the programme eventually ends. Then comes the following log entries:

2010-11-25 03:10:02.710800 [scheduler thread(10)]: diskmanagement: recording Simpsons ended. type:Once max episodes:2147483647
2010-11-25 03:10:02.790800 [scheduler thread(10)]: Scheduler: Orphaned once schedule found 64 - removing

Not quite sure what to make of that...
Do you have the TV Server error log covering that time?
Also, which were the recordings that you found in the morning? Was it 1, 2, or 3 that was missing?

 

[Spragleknas]

Didn-t read every post, but Hauppauge has got an analogue card with hardware encoding.

 

[John_Galt]

Hello again!
Sorry I have not written anything in a while, I really appreciate your effort but my job is taking all my time right now :-( so I have not been able to log in to the forum.

None of the recordings where complete, they all stopped after 10 minutes. I sent all log-files as far as I can remember so there was no error-log in TV-server for that time. I will make a new test tomorrow hopefully and see if I can fetch more data.

 

[mm1352000]

No problem - I look forward to the new logs...