Live TV Hanging (was OK, zero changes to my config)

[veletron]

Hi

I am new to NPVR, but not to HTPC's in general, I came here after 15+ years on a variety of WMC/DVBLink combo's

I only started with NPVR this weekend gone and initially it worked perfectly, however from today, I am experiencing 100% guaranteed freeze's when playing live TV. The period after hitting play to the video/audio freezing is variable, but its always < 2 mins and always > 5 seconds!

There have been ZERO configuration changes to my PC. No new software. no changes to NPVR settings and no windows updates. I am at an utter loss in explaining why it has gone from 100% reliable to 100% unreliable with zero changes!

I have tried restarting the PC (many times), tried shifting the liveTV buffer onto a different disk.

- Version is 4.2.3 (181112)
- Issue occurs with MPEG2 streams and H264 streams
- Issue occurs with both LAV and Microsoft DTV-DVD decoders (I rebooted after changing each of these)
- The issue occurs both for live TV and for recordings. Playing back old recordings works just fine still.
- Issue occurs on every single channel
- Time-to screen freeze is variable 5 seconds through to 2 mins
- The hang happens in the native client running on same PC as server, in the web client running locally and elsewhere and also in the android clients and the Emby client.

I am at an utter loss as to why and how this could have occurred. Next step will be a reinstall.

Maybe someone here can help - logs generated at the time of the video hang are attached

Kind Regards

Nigel

[Graham]

ndigitalhost is the process that NEXTPVR uses to communicate with the tuner. Your ndigitalhost log has ,,,

2019-01-22 23:06:57.360 [DEBUG][5] locked=1, present=1, strength=85, quality=49 (took 31ms to check)

The quality value is low. I suspect that you have a poor signal … Try some tests after removing all splitters and extension cables in aerial coax.

[veletron]

Hi

Thanks for the response, yes, my signal is poor, and that's despite having a 2.5m long tripple 'director' antenna+masthead amp on top of a 15ft pole strapped to the side of the house! It used to be better, but the powers-that-be have been messing with the transmitter.

Anyway - it turned out to be another bit of software - MediaPortal2. When I was putting together my box, I investigated several back-end's and front ends, eventually settling on Emby with NextPVR. Turns out that I had not either uninstalled or stopped the MP2 service (although I had disabled all the autostart systray stuff). All I can think is that the MP2 service was seeing data coming from the TV card - heading to NextPVR, and had triggered an EPG update on an in-use tuner this messing up the stream? Stopping the MP2 service fixed the NextPVR hangs.

I chose NextPVR as it provides several things that MP2 does not:

- Its a single service - not a service + a tasktray app to provide the remote features (mpextended)
- It's Emby plug-in is designed to work hack-free with the NextPVR software. MPExtended has been modded to work with MP2, and issues still exist
- Its way less complicated and faffy to set up channels and grab the EPG
- It sent the entire EPG to Emby - MP2 only ever sent about 48 hours despite over a week's worth existing
- Its Emby plug-in is simple
- NextPVR will grab thumbs for live shows/recordings which makes for a more immersive browsing experience
- NextPVR allows me to change the Channel Logo, or to add my own.

That's not to say that MP2 is bad, its IP-based EPG grabber plugin is great, and its online channel logo lookup database is cool, I just preferred NextPVR as my backend.

Nigel

[gEd]

Welcome to the forums and pleased to hear you got it sorted out.

One of NEXTPVR's other great strengths is it's very well thought out recording logic, honed over several years to manage pre and post padding, resolve conflicts where it can, re-schedule any missed/failed recordings, avoid re-recording already recorded shows etc.

btw, I would recommend Schedulesdirect as an EPG provider. Support is built right inside NextPVR (no hacking bat or xml files) and the quality of the EPG info is really good. (I always found the OTA data to be inaccurate WRT genres, uniqueIDs and show/film details sometimes poorly written). It's $25 a year or thereabouts and there is a free trail available. http://www.schedulesdirect.org/membershiplevels