Live-tv decrypting, recording not

[sub]

Sorry, I dont really know what to suggest. I'm not really very useful at knowing whats happening inside the multidec components.

Acamd works fine for me, but my cable system is using Irdeto, and I'm guessing yours a different set of variables.

[Reddwarf]

I have to correct myself, if I run the recordingservice from a command prompt it works partly, that is, it records some seconds of clear show, then partly encrypted and unencrypted.

It is strange thou, it seems to me as if the recording service has problems detecting that a channel is encrypted and, if run as a service, doesn't see the need to decrypt.

[sub]

It is strange thou, it seems to me as if the recording service has problems detecting that a channel is encrypted and, if run as a service, doesn't see the need to decrypt.

The recording service doesnt know or care if a channel is encrypted, it just records everything that comes through on that channel. When you start a recording on an encrypted channel though (indicated by "~E:T" in the tuning request), it tells multidec which channel it wants decrypted, but thats it for special handling of encrypted channels.

If it starts decrypting, but then stops, it sounds like something is going wrong inside your multidec plugin.

[Reddwarf]

Some more experiments today has cleared up a thing or two. Note that this thread is about a problem on my testrig, running the Cinergy C PCI HD card, not my regular htpc that runs the Technotrend 1501 with CI/CA.

A while ago I experimented with some remote desktop sw, and in order to get it working I had to turn off simple file sharing. Today I tried to turn it on again in a desperat appempt to see what effected the problem and not. After turning it on, both recording and live-tv (as well as dvb-epd updating) works IF, and only if, I run the recording service from a command prompt with the "run" option, ie. as my own user. Running it as a system service does not work, even if I let it log in as my user.

To me that indicates that there is somthing about permissions, access and ownership that I don't understand.

Now, running the recording service from a command prompt is probably not a permanent solution, but I may be able to live with it for now, if it will work on my regular htpc and the Technotrend card.

[Reddwarf]

I have now been running the recording service from a command prompt with the run commandline parameter on my regular htpc for a couple of weeks, and it seems to work both stable and well. I have an analog PVR150 card, one Technotrend 1501 dvb-c card with CI/CA and one Terratec Cinergy C PCI HD card which uses MDAPI/ACAMD/NEWCS to decrypt. The system service GBPVRRecordingService is disabled so when I occationally have to run the config app I have to enable it, else the config won't save the changes.

1. What is the primary reason for running the recording service as a system service? It seems to be working just as fine run from a command prompt (or with "Run" from start menue).

2. Why the one-channel limit for encrypted channels with MDAPI? One should think that recording service can load one instance of mdapi for each channel it needs to decrypt.

I'v noticed that pvrx2 loads one instance of mdapi while the recording service loads another one, and they seem to coexist without interference.

[sub]

I have now been running the recording service from a command prompt with the run commandline parameter on my regular htpc for a couple of weeks, and it seems to work both stable and well.

Thats definitely sounds like you have something permission related going on there. The only thing different when running as a service is running under a different user account and different desktop session. It be nice if you could resolve that.

1. What is the primary reason for running the recording service as a system service?

Thats just the way its designed to work. It makes sense for it to be a service, since it needs to run in the background all the time, even when the user isnt logged in etc.

Some other things in the app expect it to be a service, like clicking OK in the config app restarts the service etc.

The only time I run it from the command line is when I need to run it in the debugger for my testing.

2. Why the one-channel limit for encrypted channels with MDAPI? One should think that recording service can load one instance of mdapi for each channel it needs to decrypt.

I'v noticed that pvrx2 loads one instance of mdapi while the recording service loads another one, and they seem to coexist without interference.

There is a setting in the config.xml which allows you to up the maximum instances used in the recording service. It defaults to 1 because many multidec plugins are built with the expectation there will only be one instance, using global variables etc, and crash badly if you use more than once instance. This is because multidec originated in an application that only supported one tuner. (it works fine with one in the recording service and one in pvrx2 since these are separate processes and isolated from each other)

[Reddwarf]

Thats definitely sounds like you have something permission related going on there. The only thing different when running as a service is running under a different user account and different desktop session. It be nice if you could resolve that.

There must be something else, because if I let the system service run as my user it doesn't work, it is a different session yes, but NEWCAMD also runs as a different session so I can't see why a system service should be cut off from accessing port 555.

There is a setting in the config.xml which allows you to up the maximum instances used in the recording service. It defaults to 1 because many multidec plugins are built with the expectation there will only be one instance, using global variables etc, and crash badly if you use more than once instance. This is because multidec originated in an application that only supported one tuner. (it works fine with one in the recording service and one in pvrx2 since these are separate processes and isolated from each other)

Doed this mean that I can try increasing this value and try multirecord with mdapi? Anything else I need to change?

[sub]

There must be something else, because if I let the system service run as my user it doesn't work, it is a different session yes, but NEWCAMD also runs as a different session so I can't see why a system service should be cut off from accessing port 555.

I dont know, but I've not seen any other reports of this, and personally works fine for me from a service, so I'm still leaning towards it just beening some quirk about permissions or similar at your end.

Doed this mean that I can try increasing this value and try multirecord with mdapi?

No, it wouldnt help with multi-record, but if you increased the value it might decrypt multiple simultaneous recordings if you had multiple capture cards in your machine (ie, one decrypt per card)

[Reddwarf]

So there's absolutely no way of getting multirecord to work with encrypted channels? If so, why not?

[dennit]

So there's absolutely no way of getting multirecord to work with encrypted channels? If so, why not?

You can always do post recording decryption.