Live Tv Channel surfing locks up on channels not broadcasting.

[Petrovski]

If I choose a channel that is currently not broadcasting a signal e.g. BBC Three or Four which are only post 7pm NPVR locks up with a black screen. By locks up I mean I cannot select another channel and have to press stop to get back to the menu. I've just noticed that if I press a number for a channel that is broadcasting the channel will appear after 10 seconds or so sometimes.

[sub]

We don't have part-time channels here in NZ, but it used to work a long time back when I lasted tested with UK streams.

I'm not in a position to test this at the moment. When I'm back in NZ in a couple of weeks, if someone wants to supply a sample full transport stream, I'll recheck it in my development environment.

[Zeb]

Have you tried the setting "Use alternate OSD with missing video" on Misc2? I have not, but it's supposed to help in situations like that. If it doesn't, then perhaps sub should remove it from the next release because it has also been suspected of causing problems. (I'm sure mvallevand could tell you more about possible problems than I can.) For getting out of a locked-up black-screen situation, try Escape key.

[Petrovski]

Have you tried the setting "Use alternate OSD with missing video" on Misc2? I have not, but it's supposed to help in situations like that. If it doesn't, then perhaps sub should remove it from the next release because it has also been suspected of causing problems. (I'm sure mvallevand could tell you more about possible problems than I can.) For getting out of a locked-up black-screen situation, try Escape key.

Yes! It does help I can now navigate thru the channels, although if I go too fast or too many channels (not sure which) I get a message about "card in use is needed for a recording" ( or similar) even though I am not recording. Perhaps NPVR or the tuner can't keep up. I do seem to think channel changing used to be a lot quicker than it is currently - up to 5 seconds sometimes. BTW some of the channels that are black screen are actually transmitting a still image announcement that they are coming soon but I've never seen this via NPVR only with my TV's built-in tuner. I've just tried DVBViewer and the still image doesn't show on that either though.

[martint123]

ISTR sub provided a fix in the gbpvr days for this situation. More accurately I think it was pre padding finding another "station" in the same slot when the required station had not yet started. ( things like BBC3 & 4 sharing slots with Childrens channels I think). I'll give a try this evening.

[Lao Pan]

Yes! It does help I can now navigate thru the channels, although if I go too fast or too many channels (not sure which) I get a message about "card in use is needed for a recording" ( or similar) even though I am not recording. Perhaps NPVR or the tuner can't keep up. I do seem to think channel changing used to be a lot quicker than it is currently - up to 5 seconds sometimes. BTW some of the channels that are black screen are actually transmitting a still image announcement that they are coming soon but I've never seen this via NPVR only with my TV's built-in tuner. I've just tried DVBViewer and the still image doesn't show on that either though.

5 seconds is not bad for a DVB-T2 Tuner - I just timed my PCTV T2 tuner and it takes 5-6 seconds for an HD channel to show after pressing Watch, the Compro DVB-T tuner takes less than 3 seconds. I believe its to do with the length of the GOP's in H264 streams. Of coarse if surfing that would take a second or two to close the previous channel as well.

The coming soon announcements are MHEG5 transmissions (Digital Teletext) which is a proprietary licensed system i.e. paid for by the equipment manufacturers. I think I have seen open source MHEG5 software, but it is probably not very legal.

The only trouble with the non broadcasting channels (use alternate OSD unticked) is that you can't see the Overlay as there is no Video to overlay on (limitation of EVR?) so you will probably need 2 browser back / esc presses to go back to the menu.
I have noticed that if you use channel up / down - when you get to the non broadcasting channel NPVR will wait 2 or 3 seconds then go to the next channel in the list automatically