NPVR Service Keeps Stopping

[NND]

Hi, Martin. I can verify the presence of the <premiere/> tag in the xml file, but it is provided for most major US networks. There will no doubt be some trial and error involved, but I'm fine with that.

[NND]

I may have found something which will help mitigate the original reason for this post - the NPVR Service stopping unexpectedly and then not recording subsequent programmes until the error is noticed and the service is restarted manually.

In my case, the cause of the stopping seems to be that my IPTV provider allows for four concurrent streams, but if the NPVR Recording Service attempts to request a fifth (easily happens when recordings overlap due to post padding of 1 or 2 minutes), the remote server returns an error: "(403) Forbidden". That causes the NPVR Recording Service to stop.

However, I have found that by going to the recovery properties of the service (Start / Run / services.msc / OK, scroll down to NPVR Recording Service / Right click / Properties / Recovery tab), there are options as to what to do when the service fails. The default is "Take no action". I have changed all three options (first failure, second failure and subsequent failures) to 'Restart the Service', with the time delay being 1 minute. Be sure to click 'Apply' at the bottom of the panel. I may have to change the delay setting to something like 5 minutes, but since I made this change a few days ago, I have not yet found the service stopped anymore. I may still miss an occasional recording, but not a whole day's worth as I was before.

I'm thinking that for future releases, it might be an idea to change these values to 'Restart the Service' when the system is installed, rather than just going with the Microsoft defaults. I hope this helps someone else!

[mvallevand]

I think changing the default would be a bad idea since the cause of the crash my not be simple logic issue that recovers easily. Although the 403 might be related as I reported it wasn't an immediate crash or it wouldn't log and you don't really know what being done to your system until it is investigated by viewing the restart.

You can probably reduce the number of 403s by dropping one padding to zero but the better suggestion is to give v5 a try. You can copy the database over and see. Deleting I easier too.

Martin

[BrettB]

I think changing the default would be a bad idea since the cause of the crash my not be simple logic issue that recovers easily. Although the 403 might be related as I reported it wasn't an immediate crash or it wouldn't log and you don't really know what being done to your system until it is investigated by viewing the restart.

Also, since NPVR only keeps 3 copies of the logs, if there is a more significant problem which will persist, the scheme described by NHD will quickly cause the useful logfile (with the original error) to get deleted so you would no longer be able to see what caused the problem in the beginning.

[sub]

In my case, the cause of the stopping seems to be that my IPTV provider allows for four concurrent streams, but if the NPVR Recording Service attempts to request a fifth (easily happens when recordings overlap due to post padding of 1 or 2 minutes), the remote server returns an error: "(403) Forbidden". That causes the NPVR Recording Service to stop.

FYI, NextPVR v5 allows you to control the maximum number of connections to an IPTV provider.