Channel freeze when recording starts

[OpIvy]

Among the many issues I'm having with my Kodi HTPC, there's an ongoing issue with recording FTA tv for some time now that's driving me crazy.
Before I throw my PC out the window and get a proper PVR box, I'm going to try one last time to get this sorted....

I schedule a few tv recordings but what often happens is the channel I'm watching will just freeze when a recording starts on another channel (using a dual pci tv tuner). I can't do anything but close Kodi through Task Manager. When I open Kodi again and click on a channel in the epg, I get a message up the top saying 'Tuner not available' even though it's should only be recording one show with one tuner.
Unfortunately there are no new drivers for my tuner card as this was the obvious place to start....
I simply don't know how to go about fixing this!

Here's my setup:
i3-3220- Windows 10 x64 w/ Kodi 18.0
DNTV Dual 7164 PCIe tuner

Kodi and NPVR logs are attached (hope these are the right ones) for when it happened last night around 1930hrs

[mvallevand]

No those aren't the debug Kodi logs you need to have debug logging enabled. Also turn off Timeshift for a real test since I know it can be unstable.

Martin

[mvallevand]

In addition to my previous comments

- Your signal strength seems to be very poor on some channels.

2019-12-01 19:28:01.321 [DEBUG][127] locked=1, present=1, strength=-20, quality=25 (took 172ms to check)

- your version of Kodi is 5 versions behind the current 18.5

and as you suspect there does appear to be a driver issue because both tuners are regularly reporting

2019-11-26 17:43:49.597 [DEBUG][5] Failed to start device: 0x8007001f

Martin

[OpIvy]

And here I am thinking Kodi had been updating!
So I'll turn off timeshift, enable Kodi debugging (which I thought had been enabled) and perhaps try reinstalling drivers.....

I'll set up some recordings tonight and see if the problem occurs.
Although signal strength may be low, I'm not getting any problems with reception. Unfortunately I think I'm just stuck with it in my area.
Thanks for the quick replay and I'll get back to you

[OpIvy]

I made the above changes last night and tried recording a few shows whilst watching a separate channel....also tried recording some overlapping shows in order to capture the problem in the logs. Low and behold, I had no issues.

I suppose it could be one of those random problems that could pop up at any time but it could also be changing the timeshift option to "EPG based".
Is there known issues with timeshift that could cause this?

[mvallevand]

In my first post I mentioned timeshift is unstable and it can certainly hang Kodi. The author who wrote the change pretty much abandoned it and it isn't going to work with v5 some not much point in trying to fix it.

Martin

[OpIvy]

Ok it happened again last night.
I was watching a channel that had a show about to record with another one scheduled for about the same time on a separate channel.
As soon as the other channel started recording (David Attenborough), the show on the channel I was on failed to start recording (Bondi Rescue) and live tv stopped.

While the Attenborough show was recording, I couldn't start any other recordings or change to any other channel. It seems like only one of the tuners was working at that time.

I've attached logs with Kodi debugging on and it appears to show this ("Device failed to start"). It was on 04/11/19 at about 19:25 -19:30 that the recording problem occurred. From 19:30 onwards, the log shows where I tried unsuccessfully to start other recordings and changing channels.

Any help would be hugely appreciated as the wife is getting cranky and wants to plug the antenna into the back of the tv like it's 1995.

[mvallevand]

Yes only one tuner was working. As long as you continue to have tuner driver problems

2019-12-04 19:30:00.242 [DEBUG][9] Failed to start recording on allocated device (1763:E:\Recorded TV\Bondi Rescue\Bondi Rescue_20191204_19302000.ts): 'Device failed to start'

I can't see you having a stable system or a happy wife. NextPVR cannot control this. I basically crashed the night before

2019-12-03 20:12:43.621 [DEBUG][55] Async stop taking way too long
2019-12-03 20:12:43.621 [DEBUG][55] Stop() appeared to have failed. Exiting...
2019-12-03 20:12:43.621 [DEBUG][55] Unregistering IPC host

Is it possible you are putting your PC to sleep while LIVE TV is playing?

2019-12-03 20:12:43.700 [ERROR][23] Trying to force restart of NDigitalHost on next stream request...
2019-12-04 05:30:00.882 [DEBUG][21] Resuming...



Martin

[OpIvy]

I was watching tv when this all happened so I didn't put it to sleep.
But I do accidentally do that quite a lot because there's no way to prevent sleep when I hit the power button on the remote during a recording...unfortunately! I miss that about WMC....

Well I think I'll reinstall the tv card drivers one more time and if that doesn't fix it, I may grab a new USB tv tuner.
The system has been otherwise 95% stable
If that doesn't work, then the missus wins

[mvallevand]

The tuner problem actually started last night (on the 3rd) but the tuner wasn't needed until the 4th when Bondi Rescue failed. I don't know much about the PC remote but you might be able to disable the power off key.

Martin