HD-PVR Client/Server Woes

[smajor]

This log set may or may not be related. This happened on the server only, no client involved, but still a problem starting LiveTV.

Listened to some music with Martin's excellent Music Box 4. Time for the evening news.

Used TV Listings to select channel 863 from the guide. Black screen.

Pressed stop, tried again, black screen. Pressed stop.

Power cycled the HD-PVR, tried again, this time using Live TV from the menu, black screen.

Exited out of NPVR but did NOT restart the recording service or the HD-PVR. Just left the program. Opened NPVR again, selected Live TV and it worked great.

I see "Playback graph failed to Run()" in the Log, but don't know what that means other than Live TV didn't start, I guess.

[smajor]

...and back to our Client/Server woe...

Decided to watch the rest of the news from the client, worked well. Then went to see what was on the History Channel, brought up the "overlay guide" while on Live TV (is that was it is called?) Anyway, found History channel from that guide, selected it, and it "froze" on the channel change similar to my description a couple of posts back (Recording Service was disabled this time)...



All I needed to do to recover was press stop and then select Live TV. Logs attached.

[smajor]

..and again, these are the logs from the latest client issue:

I was watch channel 863 and it just stopped, live picture on the screen frozen, NPVR unresponsive. Windows 7 popped up with "the program has stopped responding" message.

I forced NPVR to close and reopened. I couldn't get LiveTV again until I power cycled the HD-PVR that was in use and restarted the recording service on the server.

[sub]

Client server stuff is really painful to debug unless you can find one scenario that causes a problem and we can repeat it over and over. This gives us the opportunity to add additional logging and narrow down on the cause.

On the client, you could try creating a c:\temp directory, and setting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NPVR\LogClientStream=1, then reproduce the problem and zip and attach the c:\temp\stream.log. It may provide some clues. If you're on 64 bit windows, it'll be HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\NPVR\LogClientStream=1

[smajor]

Thanks sub, I understand. I'll definitely be giving that a go. We make heavy use of the Live TV feature - more so now I have clients in the mix - so the above is probably only about 10-15% of our viewing. It's enough be to annoying, but it's also fair to say that when it works, which is the majority of the time, it's just wonderful.

[dark_half]

This may have nothing to do with your problem but I recently upgraded to the newest driver 1.5.7 and had horrible problems. Channel changes often failed with the HD_PVR stopping recording and sometimes it would just stop recording in the middle of livetv. I have switched back to hd-pvr1.5.6.1_whql and the tuner has been solid for a week. Just something to think about.

[smajor]

This may have nothing to do with your problem but I recently upgraded to the newest driver 1.5.7 and had horrible problems. Channel changes often failed with the HD_PVR stopping recording and sometimes it would just stop recording in the middle of livetv. I have switched back to hd-pvr1.5.6.1_whql and the tuner has been solid for a week. Just something to think about.

Thanks! Shortly after my first post with the programs, I noted I was using 1.5.6.0 and went to 1.5.7.0. With both, I've seeing much as you describe, mostly with the client and Live TV. I have had a recording fail right in the middle a couple of times, I posted on that earlier in a different thread but haven't seen a reply.

I found an archive of 1.5.6.1 so I might give that a try too.

[smajor]

Stream log attached, this was virtually identical to what I described in post 11.

EDIT: sub, I've been trying to be aware of when this happens per your last post.

- The vast, vast number of these is when an HD-PVR is already in use and then a channel change is requested. I've seen it fail recordings my wife has scheduled on the server and I've correlated those to someone watching Live TV, then being disconnected because that tuner was needed for the recording. By the time I made this connection, it was too late to go back for the logs.

- I've tried over the past week, at least when I use LiveTV, to stop the LiveTV, wait 5 seconds, then go to my channel from the guide, effectively starting the HD-PVR "cold". I've had no issues doing that, maybe it's just coincidence.

Could we be having some sort of timing issue here with the HD-PVR isn't fully "ready to go" upon a channel change from a client?

[smajor]

...and again, I was happily watching Live TV on a client and it just... stopped. I think I described this above, once. stream.log attached as well as the Server log... oh that didn't go well either.

Previously, when a client just stopped, I could usually power cycle the affected HD-PVR and all was well. This time my wife had something recording on the other, but it was "okay for me to cancel it." I restarted the recording service, now THAT HD-PVR went unresponsive and the original one is working and restarted her recording... and the status shows this:

[sub]

I've been trying to look into your logs today, but I've decided I need more info - sorry.

You'll need to have another go at reproducing this, then collect the client's npvr.log and stream.log, and the server's nrecord.log.