Australian FTA live TV setup for ABCTV

[Snufty]

Hello all

I'm an Australian HD Homerun user (running Vista Home) migrating from Mediaportal.

So far GBPVR is looking great, except I'm having trouble with live tv display of the Australian ABCTV suite of channels (ABC1, ABC2, ABC HD) (DVB-T). The channels appear on the scan, but will not play (video or audio) in the channel mapping preview window (config), or in the normal live tv mode. I get a blank window that sometimes causes a hang - sometimes I can switch to another.

I have followed the HD Homerun instructions and installed the survival patches, and done a successful re-register of the filters using the .bat file. Then a re-scan. Still the same problem - all channels scan fine but no display of the ABC ones.

From reading other posts it seems one explanation may be lack of the right codec - but before I begin downloading and trying out a bunch of codecs (I hate playing with codecs!) I wanted to see if others think that's it. All commerical channels and SBS are fine. And if a missing codec is probably the problem, what codec/renderer combos are people using in GBPVR to get Australian DVB-T - particularly ABC?

If a log of the config would help I can post it but I thought someone might be able to guess the problem without it.

Thanks!
Snufty

[sub]

Yeah, its probably the decoders.

[Snufty]

Hi again

I've tried installing and using MPV and ffdshow (with everything enabled) with GBPVR but still get no audio or video playback on the ABC channels (from Black Mountain, Canberra).

On another post here I read about an incorrect Vid PID entry causing a similar issue with a particular channel, but the PID values in my scan-1.cache for all ABC channels looks OK to me (I can't be sure but they are very similar to the ABCTV Brisbane PID values I found posted on another forum).

The ABC channels display OK on the HDhomerun 'quick TV' app - looks like they have their own .ax/.dll files that run in WMP.

Any suggestions for other decoders (or other solutions)?

Thank you!
Snufty

[sub]

Reproduce the problem and post the pvrx2.exe.log/pvrx2.exe-native.log and I'll see if anything stands out.

[Snufty]

Here are log files for viewing a commercial channel for a few seconds (which works fine) followed by seclecting ABC1 (which gives a blank screen and no audio), navigating to both with a mouse via the TV guide. I uninstalled MPV and ffdshow before doing this because they made no difference - MPEG2 decoder prefs are set to system default.

Thanks very much for looking at this sub - I hope you can spot something.

[sub]

Try setting your audio renderer back to 'system default'. Choosing audio renderer options other than 'system default' will often lead to video that doesnt play.

[Snufty]

Tried system default for audio - same result.

Upgraded the homerun software (new beta release yesterday) and rescanned on that. Then rescanned on GBPVR - same result. I also tried the config.xml change suggested in the note on the homerun instructions for GBPVR.

I noticed when rescanning on the homerun that one of the ABC channels with the no display problem (ABC1) was broadcast on two subchannels. Homerun only allows one instance of be enabled because the guide name is the same. I tried enabling each - and rescanning with GBPVR - same result.

I also tried recording an ABC channel. GBPVR creates and names a folder and a file OK, but it has 0kb.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Edit: Just had a closer look at the logs and it looks to me like the treatment for the successful WINTV is quite different for the failed ABC1. For WIN there is a 'quick PID switch' soon after the tuning request - and everything seems to happen once without issues. For ABC1, it looks for Agarwal's MDAPI filter, fails, then produces a graph that looks half empty. I don't know what to do with that info - just noting it in case someone can figure out why GBPVR is trying to locate a MDAPI component for a normal FTA DVB-T channel.

Edit pt II: I think I've found the issue - see here http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/communit...abc-3.html . Not a GBPVR problem. The difficulty for me is the registry hack re 'Enableautooffset' that seems to fix it for other tuner cards other tuner cards wont work with an HDhomerun - I can't us device manager to find the device ID. Hopefully the HDhomerun folks will help out on this one. BTW - I tried enabling 'scan for offset frequencies' in GBPVR config but got the same result - ABC channels all showed up as usual but none would display.

[Snufty]

Apologies for the double post, but I think I'm finally getting to the bottom of this issue and need a bit of help to finish it off.

Here's the entries from scan-1-cache for the problem channels:

T:C9A,205500,0,0,7~NID:12881~ONID:4112~TSID:529~P:528~V:2314~A:2315~L:eng(AC3)~PMT:258~LCN:20~TXT:2316~PCR:2309~N:>ABC HDTV (AC3)
T:C9A,205500,0,0,7~NID:12881~ONID:4112~TSID:529~P:529~V:512~A:650~L:eng~PMT:256~LCN:2~TXT:576~PCR:128~N:>ABC1
T:C9A,205500,0,0,7~NID:12881~ONID:4112~TSID:529~P:529~V:512~A:660~L:eng(AC3)~PMT:256~LCN:2~TXT:576~PCR:128~N:>ABC1 (AC3)
T:C9A,205500,0,0,7~NID:12881~ONID:4112~TSID:529~P:530~V:2307~A:2308~L:eng~PMT:257~LCN:22~TXT:2310~PCR:2306~N:>ABC2
T:C9A,205500,0,0,7~NID:12881~ONID:4112~TSID:529~P:531~V:512~A:650~L:eng~PMT:259~LCN:21~TXT:576~PCR:128~N:>ABC1 (Audio #2)
T:C9A,205500,0,0,7~NID:12881~ONID:4112~TSID:529~P:531~V:512~A:660~L:eng(AC3)~PMT:259~LCN:21~TXT:576~PCR:128~N:>ABC1 (Audio #2) (AC3)
T:C9A,205500,0,0,7~NID:12881~ONID:4112~TSID:529~P:532~V:512~A:650~L:eng~PMT:262~LCN:23~TXT:576~PCR:128~N:>ABC3

The problem may be, I think, that the tuning request for all of the ABC channels is asking for a frequency of 205.500 MHz. But according to the ABCTV website (and a bunch of other posts I found while researching this), the broadcast frequency from the source I'm using is offset to 205.625 MHz. When GBPVR is asked to search on the offset frequency it gets nothing - all the ABCTV channels are detected at 205.5. The reason for the discrepancy between the detected frequency and the actual frequency is, I'm guessing, tinkering with the descriptors discussed in the thread linked to in the previous post.

My question now is - can this be easily fixed (without getting into registry edits etc) just by changing the frequency in the tuning requests for those channels in GBPVR to 205.625? If so, how can I do that? I have tried some obvious things like editing the tuning request column in the 'edit recording sources' config page, but the edits won't 'stick' - as soon as I click out of the box it reverts to 205.5. I've also tried editing the scan-1.cache file and restarting, but those entries don't seem to make it into the turning request column.

Thanks again,
Snufty

[sub]

Have look through the c:\program files\devnz\gbpvr\bda\dvb-t directory for the .ini file you're using, and edit it to have whatever frequencies you want, then delete your capture source and recreate it.

[batb0t]

I use GB-PVR for recording and post-procesing, then I stream to PS via another media server. Note: I haven't watched ABC through GBPVR yet.

After adding 205625,0,0,7 to the freq .ini and recreating the capture device, its picked ABC - so thx for that. As a token of appreciation..

I did a couple of captures and here's what stands out to me as being a bit strange about the ABC broadcasts.... stuff that might affect playback or trip up some codecs.

ABC HD: Video @ 50fps
ABC1: 2 sound streams (MPEG & AC-3)

Screens attached of MediaInfo's take on the recorded broadcast dumps. 1st screen is ABC, 2nd is ABCHD. Both recorded using MEDIUM quality.

Hope it helps!