Another Black screen problem thread

[Nafon]

Hello everyone!

I have a Diamond branded ATI TV Wonder HD750 PCIE edition TV Tuner card. It works perfectly with Windows 8 Media Center and Mediacom Basic Cable, but i just get a black screen when i try to view live TV in NPVR. I've had it working with NPVR before, but one thing wouldn't work, so i'd mess with it and break something else. I have tried to watch live TV with windows and webroot firewalls completely turned off, so that shouldnt be the problem. I'll attach the logs so someone can see what's going wrong. I did find this in the ndigitalhost-22.log:

Code:

2013-02-02 16:23:08.677    [INFO][4]    Setting locator to BDA_MOD_256QAM
2013-02-02 16:23:08.677    [INFO][4]    Tuning to frequency 51
2013-02-02 16:23:08.682    [DEBUG][4]    About to try setting tuner modulation
2013-02-02 16:23:08.682    [DEBUG][4]    Got tuner output pin
2013-02-02 16:23:08.682    [DEBUG][4]    Got IKsPropertySet interface
2013-02-02 16:23:08.682    [DEBUG][4]    KSPROPSETID_BdaDigitalDemodulator is supported...
2013-02-02 16:23:08.682    [DEBUG][4]    Modulation set
2013-02-02 16:23:08.682    [DEBUG][4]    Resetting metadata
2013-02-02 16:23:08.683    [DEBUG][4]    About to submit tuning request
[B]2013-02-02 16:23:08.683    [DEBUG][4]    Unexpected error on ATSC put_TunerRequest: 0x80070057[/B]
2013-02-02 16:23:08.683    [DEBUG][4]    Resetting metadata
2013-02-02 16:23:08.685    [DEBUG][4]    Calling LockChannel()
2013-02-02 16:23:08.686    [DEBUG][4]    locked=0, present=0, strength=50, quality=49   (took 0ms to check)
2013-02-02 16:23:08.690    [DEBUG][4]    File size is 0
2013-02-02 16:23:08.690    [INFO][4]    DigitalRecorder.StartStream() allocated handle: 0x1
2013-02-02 16:23:08.691    [DEBUG][4]    Temp at 2/2/2013 4:23:18 PM
2013-02-02 16:23:18.573    [INFO][4]    DigitalRecorder.StopStream() handle: 1
2013-02-02 16:23:18.574    [INFO][4]    No more streams active. Stopping device.
2013-02-02 16:23:18.574    [DEBUG][4]    About to request async graph stop

The rest of this post isn't related to the problem, but is a bit of background explaining everything i have attempted.
When i first installed NPVR a couple weeks ago, I had a black screen then as well. I don't remember everything i did, but I downloaded the community codec pack (i think) and used the LAV decoders and it worked eventually. The problem was that it wouldn't scan on correct frequencies to find the correct channels and I couldn't find a way to manually add channels within the program, so i first messed with the 0qam.ini (I only need the ClearQam function of the card) to attempt to make NPVR scan different frequency variations. After a lot of tinkering, It wouldn't find any channels. So, i used iobit-uninstaller to completely remove npvr and its files from my pc in an attempt at a fresh start. Some things didn't work after this, but i solved that all myself.

I ended up where i had been a few days earlier. It wouldn't scan on the correct frequencies, so i looked into editing the database directly. I found SQlite Expert Personal worked great, so i replaced channels that were on the correct base frequency with the correct service id (ie. 27.x where x is service id and 27 is base channel). Somewhere in between manually editing the DB3 and renaming the channels, npvr just quit working.

I have two set-top boxes from mediacom in my house, but am using Media Center to stream basic cable to my Xbox 360 in my room. I also want to stream TV to my android phone with XBMC. I had this part working early on when only a few of the channels were channels that i actually receive.

Thanks and any help appreciated!

[Nafon]

Anyone know what's going on? I backed up npvr.db3 and completely uninstalled and reinstalled npvr with fresh config and database files but I still get the same error bolded in the excerpt from the ndigitalhost log with firewalls turned off and LAV decoders. Live TV still works in Win 8 media center too.

[whurlston]

First, the logs don't show an attempt to scan for channels. Second, this card seems to handle Clear QAM in a non standard way; it exposes a "CQAM" BDA device but it doesn't seem to be accepting the tuning request on that device. It looks like it exposes 4 BDA devices, so attempt a scan on the "ATI BDA Digital Tuner" and the 2 "ATI BDA Digital Tuner" devices (ignore the DVBT device). You probably won't find anything due to the wrong frequencies but zip and post the logs after the scan so we can see what is happening during the scan on those device drivers.

Also, post your Zip Code/provider or your channel frequencies and we can create an ini to scan the proper frequencies.

[Nafon]

The logs probably don't show scan attempts because they are from when i reinstalled NPVR and used a backup of the database and didn't need to scan.

http://mediacomtoday-lineup.com/lineup/9...ty_ia.aspx

The bottom three channel groups (the three "digital-ready" groups) are the channels i can get with the tuner. I'm not home at the moment, but i'll post new logs asap. I also forgot to mention that i end all of the Media Center related services and processes in task manager before i try NPVR to make sure it's not trying to use the tuner at the same time. I'll just do scans on all of devices to be safe.

[Nafon]

Ok i have the logs. I ran a scan on each of the tuners. It was weird though. I tried to scan on the CQAM tuner and it wouldnt find anything. I went into windows media center and clicked on live tv to verify that it was working and it was. I went back into npvr having only closed the media center window (all of the background processes still running) and it started finding channels. Live TV in npvr still not working.

[whurlston]

I assume you have tuner that says "ATI BDA Digital Tuner (ATSC)" and one that says "ATI BDA Digital Tuner (QAM)". It looks like the tuning requests are working on those two but you only scan 2 channels on it. You should perform a scan of all channels/frequencies on "ATI BDA Digital Tuner (QAM)".

Ignore the "CQAM" entry for now. I've pretty sure that uses a proprietary tuning system (or it may simply require a frequency request instead of a channel number request).

[Nafon]

I'll try that tommorow, but i'm fairly certain that mediacom requires a clearqam tuner for all channels but a few. Before i got the tuner, i ran a scan on a newer lg tv with a qam tuner and it got all of the channels. I ran a cable to an older hdtv with the xbox 360 and it only got a few channels and it only has an atsc/ntsc tuner. I will try the atsc tuner scan again, but when npvr was working, it was using the cqam tuner.

I might have misunderstood your post and what i said above might not make sense lol. I think the other tuner with (qam) might be dvb-t which, to my knowledge, isnt used in the US. I will run complete scans on all tuners to be safe.

[whurlston]

I'm not saying you don't need a clear QAM tuner, you do if you want use cable. I'm saying that the CQAM BDA tuner listed by the device seems to be a non standard driver. Most PC TV tuner devices use the same driver for both ATSC and QAM and you just request that it tunes QAM instead of ATSC using the KSPROPSETID_BdaDigitalDemodulator shown in the logs. There is usually not a separate driver for QAM, NextPVR just usually shows an "(ATSC)" device and a "(QAM)" device for simplicity, so you don't have to scan both ATSC and QAM. NextPVR will use the same BDA tuner driver for both and just set the appropriate modulation type.

[mikeh49]

I agree with whurlston, ignore the CQAM tuner, in fact, set it to disabled in the devices to ensure it stays out of the way. I have an ATI 650 and use the BDA Digital Tuner (QAM) for clear QAM. It will tune any QAM, whether it is clear or cloudy. For complete disclosure, my ATI tuner does not show CQAM device.

I'm impressed that your cableco even admits that there is clear QAM and reveals the actual physical channel numbers, like 115-2. I'd try just scanning the channels 70+ to see if you can get things working. That should get all the locals, i.e., the Local Plus channels. Once we have that, you can move on to the others.

[Nafon]

*facepalm* I ran the scan on the BDA QAM and it found all of the channels and it works perfectly! I don't think mediacom said anywhere that the channels were specifically clearQAM, but my LG TV is advertised as having ATSC, NTSC, and CQAM tuners so i assumed i HAD to use clearqam. Thanks to both of you! It's weird that i was able to watch the channels correctly when i was only using the CQAM device before. I didn't update any drivers, but windows could have done something in the background.

Now that it is working, is there anyway to use the auto-updating .mxf EPG that WMC automatically downloads everyday in NPVR? I had to manually assign every channel in WMC because none of the databases have updated to mediacoms new digital channel configuration.