QAM recordings failing

[steveum]

I have had a large increase in QAM recordings failing. If I reboot my computer, the next scheduled QAM recording will be fine, but the next one will fail with either a 0 length recording or it will be really small file (1,342KB). These recordings are all being made on a new (1 month old) 2250.

I had made a change to my one my BDA recordings settings about a week ago to try to correct an issue with recording the wrong progroam. I reversed that setting last weekend thinking it was the cause of the problem. Reversing the setting did not seem to make any difference. The only other recent change that I have made was bumping my MVP server count up to two to handle a second NMT.

I have attached my logs. CSI Miami is an example of a failed recording. It was scheduled to be recorded at 22:00 yesterday (Dec 28). The NBC news was recorded successfully a couple of hours prior to it.

[sub]

Is it always specific channels that have problems?

[steveum]

No. I only have 4 QAM channels mapped. I seen it happen on 3 of the 4 over past several days and the other I have not recorded lately.

[sub]

Any extra splitters that could be removed that might be causing a reduction in signal?

[steveum]

I have two lines I run to my room that runs GBPVR. One of these lines I run into a powered splitter and the other I don't. I have tried connecting the 2250 to the direct line and to a line off the splitter.

There is another powered splitter that both of the feeds run though, but I don't think I can remove it.

Do you think I have a signal problem?

[sub]

Do you think I have a signal problem?

Yes, possibly.

[steveum]

I made the following changes:

- I changed the CATV wiring to be a little more direct to my 2250. It currently still passes through an amplifier though. It was passing through 2 amplifiers before.
- I removed my 1600 and 1800 from my system. I thought it might help to get the extra tuners out of my system until I get this resolved.
- I installed the latest version of wintv7 from the hauppauge web site. The site implies this version of wintv has the latest drivers.

The frequency of the problem has gone way down, but it still occurs. I suspect the improvement is related to the change in CATV wiring. I am planning to make another improvement to the wiring in near future.

One thing that seems odd to me is that GBPVR seems unaware that the recording is not happening. GBPVR will report the tuner as busy until the recording is complete. The recording will appear OK until I go play it, which will not work since it is 0 byte recording.

If I catch the problem occurring, I can cancel the recording and restart it. Maybe this is a wishlist item, but I wish GBPVR could detect that it is failing and restart it. Every time I have caught the problem occurring, my manual restart of the recording has corrected the problem.

The native recording service log always shows the following line during the tuning:

VERBOSE locked=1 present=1 strength=-20 quality=100

I assume this line is describing the signal strength. What are the range of values for strength and quality? Are my values good? bad?

Are there any other symptoms to a bad signal that I can look for? My analog recordings on the 2250 are very clear. All my QAM recordings are almost always perfect on the 2250, as long as they get started ok.

[sub]

One thing that seems odd to me is that GBPVR seems unaware that the recording is not happening. GBPVR will report the tuner as busy until the recording is complete. The recording will appear OK until I go play it, which will not work since it is 0 byte recording.

Yeah, unfortunately that's fairly normal. It sets up the recording and starts it, then assumes it's recording. It doesnt know if the device is delivering no data.

VERBOSE locked=1 present=1 strength=-20 quality=100

I assume this line is describing the signal strength. What are the range of values for strength and quality? Are my values good? bad?

Unfortunately there is no standards around this and the manufactures can use any range and values they want. Most Hauppauge devices have a strength of 'zero or above' representing a acceptable signal.

[steveum]

I think I may have discovered the cause of this problem. Uninstalling wintv7 seems to resolve the issue. I probably need more up time to be certain, since the issue was pretty much random.

I had installed wintv7 a while back to confirm that I had a bad 1800 card. I was not using it other than to test qam scans recently. I had noticed that there was a wintvtray log being updated every couple of minutes. The contents of the log suggested it was polling the hauppauge cards to check if they were active. My wild guess at this point is that was somehow connected the recordings failing to getting correctly started. Maybe it is just coincidence and the problem will show up again tonight.

[mvallevand]

I'm "lucky" then, Hauppauge forced me to uninstall WinTV. I got 1.3 from their ftp site when I was looking for updated HD PVR drivers, I started the WinTV install and then it asked for my original CD which of course is lost somewhere in my house.

Martin