Channels not broadcasting

[jcjefferies]

NPVR does not seem to be able to deal with channels which are “off air” and only transmitting a MHEG signal. I don’t recall ever seeing any mention in the forum but it was the very first “problem” I saw after my first install. Whereas the TV will display the message NPVR just displays the last frame from the previous channel. It can give the impression that NPVR has locked up if you are not aware you have tuned to a channel which is not broadcasting. However it is not a “Problem” for me as I currently don’t watch live TV via NPVR.

Chris

[sub]

Yeah, unfortunately the video renderers typically wont update the screen in any way until it is displaying the next frame of video, so when you switch to a channel with no video currently transmitting, the old frame stays on the screen, with no way to make it go black, and no update to the OSD graphics even though the app is telling the renderer to display them.

I think the UK is the only country that has these part time channels though, so I havnt put too much effort into coming up with a workaround. If it was a problem I saw here, I'd probably have come up with something by now.

[imilne]

I've got a workaround for this with my TimeSharer plugin (that I've yet to make available). It basically lets you assign an alternative channel for when the actual channel is offair, so that video is always playing for all channels which avoids the "pretend" lock-up situation. So, for example, you could have CBBC showing BBC Three when it's off-air and vice versa.

[jcjefferies]

In the UK there are quite a few part time channels which time share the Mux capacity. For instance BBC3 and BBC4 on channels 7 & 9 are off air during the day until 7pm while the capacity broadcasts two Children’s TV channels. Other channels time share with Shopping or Adult channels but CNN has been “Off Air” for several months waiting for capacity to become available. It’s not a problem for me as I only ever use “LiveTV” to confirm a setup is working and just happened to install a new NPVR machine yesterday.

Chris

Chris