Failed Start on Live TV

[Peter847]

I've done a bit more investigating on this issue using the Avermedia tuner and an HDHomeRun. With the AverMedia TV Works on its own & radio works on its own and radio works after TV but not TV after radio. Interestingly after screwing things up by selecting TV after radio I could get it all working by leaving NPVR running and power cycling the tuner (its a USB tuner) so that suggests the tuner state gets out of sync with NPVR. I tried to disable the Avermedia TV tuner but neither the disable tick box nor moving the tuner down the priority list stopped it being selected first, only deleting all the channels stopped it being selected. The HDHomerun tuner always worked but again after selecting it the radio no longer worked. Bottom line I cannot run analog radio & digital TV through NPVR, any chance this could get fixed as I really want to use this software.

[johnsonx42]

Sounds like your tuner is hanging a critical thread in nrecord so that once it gets stuck trying to stop FM radio, nothing else will work. Your only immediate solution will be to get a different tuner that doesn't cause this problem.

[mvallevand]

I tried to disable the Avermedia TV tuner but neither the disable tick box nor moving the tuner down the priority list stopped it being selected first, only deleting all the channels stopped it being selected.

Do you restart the recording service after making those changes?

Martin?

[Peter847]

No, I just made the changes and hit save. I guess you are saying that those changes won't be transfered to the recording service until it's restarted? I do not need the Avermedia TV, I just want the HDHomeRun and FM radio so I'll have another try tonight and restart everything between changes.

[johnsonx42]

Oh, wait a moment... STOP EVERYTHING. You don't have any problems a quick config change and proper usage won't fix.

In your original log, you never stopped the Radio before trying to start live TV; I took Martin's comment to mean you had tried to stop the Radio but NPVR wasn't able to stop the device, but I never looked in the log myself and ASSumed a bunch of things that weren't true. You need to press the STOP button on your remote (or Ctrl-S on your keyboard) to stop the Radio function. The results from there on show that NPVR doesn't know that your tuner is a single hybrid tuner rather than a dual-tuner device.

Add the following to DeviceRules.xml (within the <SharedNames> section like the existing entries):

Code:

        <!-- AVerMedia Hybrid Volar Max-->
        <Filter name="AVerMedia H826 Hybrid TV Video Capture" resource="AVerMedia H826" />
        <Filter name="AVerMedia H826 Hybrid TV BDA Tuner" resource="AVerMedia H826" />

Make sure you restart the recording service after adding this.

If you still have any problems, post new logs.

[Peter847]

Ah, that makes sense! I did a lot of checking last night but could not make sense of it all so only posted what I was sure of. There is an LED in the Avermedia that shows when it is in use and if I switch from TV to radio I go to the main screen and then the guide to get the channel, that stops the tuner & the LED goes out before I select the radio. However I can listen to the radio with the guide on screen and select a TV channel, the LED stays on and the TV doesn't work. So yes, I do think this is something to do with the way I stop the radio.

I'll try the fix tonight, my fingers are crossed!

[Peter847]

Unfortunately updating DeviceRules.xml did not work.

I started from a clean install, updated DeviceRules, added only the AverMedia tuner, scanned the TV channels, added three FM channels and reset the PC. Radio worked the first time but after selecting a TV channel it stopped. It looks like it is streaming but there is no audio, selecting a TV channel still works. Logs attached.

[Peter847]

Thought I'd try and make this reproducible so I have a test. I now have the HDHomerun ATSC tuners and the AverMedia FM tuner enabled, everything else is disabled. I deleted the old logs, reset the PC and started NPVR. I then selected an FM channel, all worked OK, selected a TV channel, all worked OK, selected a FM channel again, all looked OK but there was no sound. Logs are attached.

[johnsonx42]

Are you explicitly stopping the radio before trying to watch TV, and explicitly stopping TV before listening to radio? I'm not saying that's definitely necessary, but I'd like to know if you're doing that for these tests.

It's really tough to follow everything going on in those logs. There must be a log viewer somewhere that can display multiple log files side-by-side and synchronize them by timestamps... (I searched and found Vim for windows and a log viewer plugin that claims to do what I want, but I couldn't get it to do anything useful before my attention span was exhausted; and yes, I am familiar with the basics of using Vi and Vim)

Just to get one thing out of the way, please .zip post your DeviceRules.xml so we can verify your changes.

[Peter847]

I "think" I tried explicitly stopping the radio before switching to the TV but I will double check this evening. I'll also leave a 5 minute gap between the program startup and the start of my tests, that might help cross referencing the logs.

Many thanks for sticking with this.