Multiple Silicondust tuner problem

[Rich A]

Thanks I'll try that. BUT .. after further investigation I've found that some of the cable companies are now rolling out their plan to encrypt ALL their channels. No more local Clear QAM channels. Comcast is already starting in the New England area, and I fear my cable provider (Cox) is going the same route. So all this work trying to sort out the tuners problems is for naught. Looks like there won't be any clear QAM channels for the tuner to work with any more. Sigh ... I'll have to take that HDHomeRun dual tuner and put it in my junk box with the other batch of analog tuners that became obsolete last year. Guess I'll have to get another HDHomeRun Prime which will give me a total of 6 tuners, (for 4 bucks a month cable card rental) that will give me ALL the encrypted channels I subscribe to. I just know the cable company is just crying because they can't rent me a couple of their set top boxes or DVRs. I suppose they will find a way to get around that as well .. sigh.

Rant off .. Thanks for the help guys. I'll pick up another "Prime" and see how NextPvr works with the "two" cable card devices. Man I am not looking forward to working with the people at the cable company. I had to tell THEM how to activate my cable card ... And that was only after pulling teeth and getting through a forest of non-technical technicians until I found one that knew what I was talking about. ... sorry .. NOW the rant is off. <grin>

And I should mention, Bless "Sub" and all who support NextPVR with it's integration of cable card support.

[mikeh49]

You could use a TV with a QAM tuner to see if the locals are now scrambled.

[Rich A]

I think there is "something" wrong with my operating system, the HDHR setup, or NPVR or all three. <grin> Here is what is happening (and I think why I can't get my HDHR to work).

Best way to show everyone is with a few screen caps.

Here is what always shows up when I run the NPvr device setup:
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

Notice all the ATSC and QAM Turners having models in the 101C7789-x and 1310308C-x showing zero channels. None of them work. The bottom three are the actual HDHR Prime tuners that ARE working fine.

Next I disabled all the "bogus" devices .. and then deleted all the bogus devices .. and then it looks like this:
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

Notice the list is clear and the only devices still listed are good and working.

I shut down NPVR .. stop the recording services .. reboot the computer and then restart the NPVR Recording services and also NPVR .. I go to devices and all the bogus tuners show up just like in the first picture in this post.

Huh ?? Well what you don't know is that prior to this test I REMOVED the HDHR from the system. Power was removed, Cat 5 disconnected and I even disconnect the coaxial line. Brought the HDHR to my desk and I still have all those bogus HDHRs showing up. No MATTER what I do, delete the HDHR, uninstall it remove or throw it in a trash can (can) NextPVR still thinks it's still in my system.

And here is the latest result when I re-run the actual SiliconDust HDHR setup ..
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

As you can see .. both tuners are still listed (the HDHR Prime AND the HDHR dual) .. but the 101C779-x tuner (HDHR) is NOT FOUND.
First I think some HDHR setup still has some remnants referencing the HDHR dual because it HAS the data .. It's just not found any more. BUT how does it still know that there was two 101C7789-x in my system when I physically removed the device? Of course the answer is the data from the old install is still somewhere on my machine.

And the same thing is happening in NextPVR ... No matter what I do (short of blowing my entire HTPC environment away and re-installing everything fresh) NextPVR is still seeing those "phantom" tuners .. and it's seeing several copies of them as well (as you can see) ...

I'm hoping someone can give me an idea where to look. In lieu of any forthcoming ideas .. my next step will be to examine the PC registry for any references to anything SiliconDust or HDHomeRun or what-ever I can think of and nuking what looks suspicious. So what next ?? Oh .. I better image the HTPC hard drive before I do ANYTHING ...

[sub]

Everytime you go to the Settings->Devices screen, NextPVR will rescan the system for devices, and add any devices not currently listed.

NextPVR uses different mechanisms to scan for different types of devices. You'll get an ATSC and QAM entry for any ATSC/QAM devices that have BDA drivers installed. You'll also get an HDHR entry for each any device reported by libhdhomerun.

In the case of phantom ATSC/QAM devices, this is because the SiliconDust software doesn't seem to remove the BDA drivers it installed in the past for old HDHomeRun devices. ie, the app asks Windows for the list of BDA devices, and these devices are included in the list. You can safely just ignore these extra BDA devices though. Even though they show up in the list, if you don't try to setup channels on them, then NextPVR won't use them.

If you want them gone, you can probably just uninstall the SiliconDust BDA drivers.

[Rich A]

I spent some time with the Windows Registry. I removed every instance of the HDHR .. being careful to not disturb anything that had number corresponding to the perfectly working 3-turner HDHR Prime.

Saved the registry. Rebooted the computer and much to my surprise when I checked the NPVR devices .. the ONLY tuners were the Prime 3-tuner device .. all the "phantom" tuners were GONE. At this point still had the HDHR sitting on my desk not yet hooked up. So I shut down the system and re-checked NPVR devices and everything still looked golden. I was just about to re-install the HDHR back to the system, when the phone rang. About 15 minutes later I returned to the computer to physically re-install the HDHR .. and I noticed I still had the NextPVR device setup on the screen. AND .. while I was on the phone, the phantom multiple tuners CAME BACK ...

I guess my only recourse without resorting to a complete re-install of everything, is to remove all the Silicon Dust hardware. Un-install all Silcondust software. Uninstall NextPvr and start all over again.

Maybe "Sub" can look over his code to see if there is anything can be causing phantom HDHR devices to be created. Note that the SiliconDust setup shows properly that I only had the HDHR Prime tuner and the other HDHR Dual tuner is "not found' .. (it's still not in the system).

Well at least the HDHR and NextPVR are actually running fine .. recording is working etc. Fortunately this past week has had a lot of show re-runs. Normally on Friday night I have all tuners recording and I would have had to shut down two show recordings.

[sub]

Maybe "Sub" can look over his code to see if there is anything can be causing phantom HDHR devices to be created. Note that the SiliconDust setup shows properly that I only had the HDHR Prime tuner and the other HDHR Dual tuner is "not found' .. (it's still not in the system).

They're showing up because there is BDA drivers installed for them. As far as NextPVR is aware they're present, since Window's is returning them in the list of available devices. Easiest bet is to just ignore them.

It's related to the way SiliconDust makes virtual drivers for each of it's network devices.

[Rich A]

Ah .. thanks .. that makes sense (I think) I think I've found over the last week or so that having all those phantom tuners in the list really doesn't hurt anything. But I still have the underlying problem of not being able to get my HDHR to find any channels. I uninstalled all the other tuners .. I had a few Hauppauge clear QAM tuners installed (internally PCI buss) and removed them opting to be happy with the 5 tuners the HDHR and HDHR Prime gave me. Everything was fine after that for maybe a month .. then I seemed to have lost the HDHR tuner. This all started because I thought Cox cable had discontinued their clear QAM channels and were now encrypting them. Which of course would have made any of my clear QAM tuners obsolete. However today I checked with a neighbor down the street and he is still getting the clear QAM channels fine.

I will uninstall the BDA drivers. All I am trying to do is to get the HDHR to work along with the HDHR Prime. Thanks .. I'm still trying ..

Everytime you go to the Settings->Devices screen, NextPVR will rescan the system for devices, and add any devices not currently listed.

NextPVR uses different mechanisms to scan for different types of devices. You'll get an ATSC and QAM entry for any ATSC/QAM devices that have BDA drivers installed. You'll also get an HDHR entry for each any device reported by libhdhomerun.

In the case of phantom ATSC/QAM devices, this is because the SiliconDust software doesn't seem to remove the BDA drivers it installed in the past for old HDHomeRun devices. ie, the app asks Windows for the list of BDA devices, and these devices are included in the list. You can safely just ignore these extra BDA devices though. Even though they show up in the list, if you don't try to setup channels on them, then NextPVR won't use them.

If you want them gone, you can probably just uninstall the SiliconDust BDA drivers.

[sub]

This all started because I thought Cox cable had discontinued their clear QAM channels and were now encrypting them. Which of course would have made any of my clear QAM tuners obsolete. However today I checked with a neighbor down the street and he is still getting the clear QAM channels fine.

If you're still wanting to do ClearQAM, I can check it for you.

I don't think you can use your HDHomeRun Prime for ClearQAM in NextPVR, but if you want to do a scan of the 'QAM' device on the other dual tuner HDHomeRun, then post the npvr.log, I'm happy to check what it's seeing.

[Rich A]

Gee, with a little wise advise, you've solved my problem. Many thanks.

1. Checked with my neighbor and he still has clear QAM at his house.
2. Now I know those extra "Phantom" tuners are just left over ghosts from possibly earlier installs and re-installs of SiliconDust tuners. This was probably due to my having TWO servers running separate tuners .. some with BeyondTV and some with NextPvr. I recently shut down BTV, and I think that is when all my trouble started. I think the SiliconDust setup is common to both applications and after I shut down BTV, I tried to re-install the leftover HDHR that WAS formerly set up with BTV only. In my attempt to get it sorted out, I may have made the problem worse or at least created more phantom devices ??

3. I did an uninstall of the Slicondust software .. then cleaned the registry .. then re-installed the SiliconDust application. Although the NPvr device list still had a lot of "phantom" devices, I figured out which 2 were associated with the HDHR dual tuner. After doing a scan for the first of each tuner I found NPVR telling me that it could use the same channel set for the next device which was really nice .. no need to rescan any more of the same type tuner. And now .... we have channels .. I set up five recordings at the same time and they all recorded fine so all the tuners are working. Everything works!

Thanks Sub .. I'm once again a happy camper. Oh one more thing. Will I have any problems if I nuke the HDHomeRun BDA driver? Remember, I'm using the HDHR Prime to capture my encrypted cable channels and the HDHR to capture the 20 or so clear QAM channels. The problem is that I have a few nights a week where I need at least 5 or 6 tuners to record simultaneously. I'd like to keep that intact until I can get a 2nd HDHR Prime .. How do I go about removing the driver? Could it be as simply as finding the proper file and deleting it?

[sub]

Will I have any problems if I nuke the HDHomeRun BDA driver? Remember, I'm using the HDHR Prime to capture my encrypted cable channels and the HDHR to capture the 20 or so clear QAM channels. The problem is that I have a few nights a week where I need at least 5 or 6 tuners to record simultaneously. I'd like to keep that intact until I can get a 2nd HDHR Prime .. How do I go about removing the driver? Could it be as simply as finding the proper file and deleting it?

I don't know how you remove it's BDA drivers. I don't use a HDHomeRun myself.