Crashing and craziness

[MikeT]

Hi, I'm new to this software and when it's working, it's very good but when it misbehaves it drives me to dispair.

I eventually got a configuration that seemed to work and I was using LiveTV last night when the picture and sound started to stall/stammer making viewing impossible.

After a few minutes of channel changing (to see if it would clear the hesitations) the sound stopped, the screen blanked and then I got the No Signal display - check connections etc.

Knowing the connections were fine, I fired up the software bundled with my tuner and it was working fine. I reloaded LiveTV and all EPG programme descriptions were blank (no information). A retune did nothing to correct this problem.

Does this indicate a software (gbpvr?) fault or is it in my configuration?

[MikeT]

Anyone?

It happened again last night - it is very frustrating, like getting half way through a book to find pages missing.

If I shut down GBPVR and restart it, I then find the EPG has "no details" either and trying to watch LiveTV brings up the NO SIGNAL display.

[sub]

I eventually got a configuration that seemed to work and I was using LiveTV last night when the picture and sound started to stall/stammer making viewing impossible.

After a few minutes of channel changing (to see if it would clear the hesitations) the sound stopped, the screen blanked and then I got the No Signal display - check connections etc.

I'm not really sure what to suggest, but having live tv starting starting to to stall/breakup does sound like signal problems. With recordings there could have been other causes, but with live tv the tuner is pretty much hooked up via the decoders straight to the screen, so not a lot inbetween that cause the problem.

2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE Graph contains the following filters:
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - Default DirectSound Device
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - Video Renderer
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - BDA MPEG2 Transport Information Filter
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - GB-PVR PSI Parser
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - MPEG Audio Decoder
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - NewSoft MPEG Video Decoder Filter (MPEG1/2/4)
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - GB-PVR Flow Status
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - GB-PVR TS Mon
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - ULi M9207 Digital Capture
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - Digital TV USB Mini Receiver
2009-04-07 22:14:24.781 VERBOSE - Microsoft DVBT Network Provider

I do notice your system is using very uncommon audio and video decoders though, so it might be worth trying other decoders to see if it makes any differents.

[MikeT]

Hi sub, thanks for your feedback, I'll see if I can get some more details on the signal strength. The Audio Codec I recognise as being by the PVR software company, Newsoft, that came bundled with the USB tuner (real poo bit of software, and totally outclassed by GBPVR!).

I'm not experienced with swapping codecs so may be a while sorting out a known good one - I did see mention of one in your Update Sticky so know where to begin, again thanks to you.

Cheers.

[MikeT]

Hi sub, I'm afraid it doesn't appear to be a signal strength issue and I'll explain why I think that.

I ran GBPVR and selected channel 301 to watch the MotoGP qualifying but I got the black screen followed by the Signal Meter display saying NO SIGNAL.

I closed GBPVR and ran Presto PVR (software that came with the stick) which worked fine on channel 301. To double-check my findings, I closed Presto and re-ran GBPVR but still NO SIGNAL. Just to be 100% sure, I closed it and ran Presto again which worked fine again. Please advise?

[gEd]

Are you 100% sure that you have configured gbpvr to tune to the correct transmitter?

Not sure if this affects you but they changed the Rowridge transmitter last month

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...ransmitter

[MikeT]

I tried selecting the Rowbrdige transmitter but it only gave me five channels so I now use the catch "ALL" transmitter settings which seems to work fine, not that I understand the differences.

As I state above, I have proved it's not a signal problem as my original software will work while the GBPVR will report NO SIGNAL.

I'm also wondering if the EPG auto-update (which I've set at 10pm) is causing this problem (only at that time)? I've reset it to 8am now to rule that out/in.

However, it seems there may be at least two problems affecting my setup - the other being that I notice the green led on my USB tuner will sometimes go out after about 20 seconds of chosing LiveTV or Presto, whichever tuner software I'm using. The only way to cure this fault is a reboot. Whereas even a reboot can't get rid of the NO SIGNAL problem GBPVR is seeing.

[MikeT]

Last night I wanted to watch the MotoGP re-run, scheduled for 18:45 on channel 301. At the appointed time I started GBPVR, selected TV guide, selected 301 but the picture was just a black screen with no sound either.

So I closed GBPVR and ran PrestoPVR which showed the program had started. Once finished, I closed Presto, re-tried GBPVR but it still showed nothing on that channel. Other channels were working ok.

On a positive note, there was no problems the rest of the evening which may or may not be down to the EPG update timing. Hopefully it was and that problem is now sorted, time will tell.

[cgilson33]

have you played around with the audio and video codec options? you can change them under the Playback tab of the config tool.
Also, are you doing any recording at the same time?
Or have you done any recording that worked or didn't work?

[MikeT]

No, I'm a complete novice when it comes to codecs I'm afraid. In my Playback config, the setting is "System Default" and there are no other options to chose.

I think I had EPG update running when I first started getting freezing and crashing but that's now been rectified and the software is showing more stability. I have not yet tried any advanced options yet like recording etc. I try to keep it simple for diagnosis purposes.

However, last night I tried a couple of other channels and they came back with NO SIGNAL, yet PrestoPVR could show them no problem.