Recording Failure - HDHR Transcoding

[craigrs84]

I'm running the latest version (4.4.2). I have a 2 tuner HDHR Extend transcoding unit.

I've found an apparent bug that is consistently reproducible with the following steps:
1. Start a recording on channel 44.1 which occupies tuner #1
2. Try to play or record channel 44.2: The channel fails to load/record

Everything works fine if I view the channels when a recording is not active in the background. It also works fine if a recording is active in the background but I view another channel that does not start with 44.* (any channel with a different frequency).

If I remember correctly NPVR does not use the 2nd tuner under these circumstances, it's actually trying to re-use the 1st tuner to record both channels since they both share the same frequency (both start with 44.*). I suspect there is a bug with this code that tries to re-use the same tuner when H.264 transcoding is enabled. Disabling the transcoding on the HDHR does seem to correct the problem, but of course that's not an ideal solution for me.

So I just wanted to report this to make you (sub) aware of the situation. If it's not something that is fixable, is there a way that I can disable the feature where it tries to re-use tuners for the same frequency?

[Graham]

I've found an apparent bug that is consistently reproducible ...

I'll say it before anyone else ... please reproduce the problem and attach the logs to a post telling us the time of the two recordings. Thanks.

[mvallevand]

I already reported multirec didn't work on the Extend when it is transcoding to sub quite a while ago. Currently NextPVR doesn't control the transcoding so it doesn't know if you are using raw streams or not.

Martin

[pkscout]

If it's not something that is fixable, is there a way that I can disable the feature where it tries to re-use tuners for the same frequency?

I think if you use the HDHR device type instead of ATSC/QAM device type that NPVR gets the channel list from the Extend rather than by scanning for actual frequencies. By doing that you lose the ability to frequency share, which in your case sounds like what you want. The bad news is that means remapping all your channels. If you keep the channel names the same NPVR mostly keeps working. I've noticed a few display oddities when I've done that in the past (which I fixed by manually fixing some internal channel information in the SQL Lite db), but the recordings and LiveTV work.

[mvallevand]

I don't think it is the type. The Extend would need to have lots of h264 encoders to be able to do the transcoding for each channel in the same stream.

Martin

[craigrs84]

I think if you use the HDHR device type instead of ATSC/QAM device type that NPVR gets the channel list from the Extend rather than by scanning for actual frequencies. By doing that you lose the ability to frequency share, which in your case sounds like what you want. The bad news is that means remapping all your channels. If you keep the channel names the same NPVR mostly keeps working. I've noticed a few display oddities when I've done that in the past (which I fixed by manually fixing some internal channel information in the SQL Lite db), but the recordings and LiveTV work.

Thanks for the info. Are you referring to BDA Compatibility Mode dropdown in the HDHR Setup program? I'm a little hesitant to make any changes right now and have to remap all my channels, but it's something I can look into more if I start to get desperate.

I was sort of hoping for some setting (which probably doesn't exist) that I could update inside config.xml to disable multi-record. Typically, for me at least, there's a good chance the 2nd tuner is just sitting idle when this type of error might occur, so if multi-record was disabled I think that would help solve this problem.

Thanks!

[pkscout]

Thanks for the info. Are you referring to BDA Compatibility Mode dropdown in the HDHR Setup program? I'm a little hesitant to make any changes right now and have to remap all my channels, but it's something I can look into more if I start to get desperate.

I was sort of hoping for some setting (which probably doesn't exist) that I could update inside config.xml to disable multi-record. Typically, for me at least, there's a good chance the 2nd tuner is just sitting idle when this type of error might occur, so if multi-record was disabled I think that would help solve this problem.

Thanks!

No, what I was talking about is in the NPVR Settings (in the device section). You should see two device types listed for your device (ATSC and HDHR). The ATSC device type is the one that does the multi-record, the HDHR type doesn't. So I think you're either going to have to turn off the H264 encoding on the HDHR or switch to the HDHR device type to resolve your issue. BTW, if you do switch to the HDHR device type, you need to do a channel scan using the HDHR Setup Program because when you using the HDHR device type NPVR gets the channel list from the device rather than doing it's own channel scan.