No TV

[jp2code]

My last hard drive died, so I hooked up another one.

The last drive was a desktop drive plugged into a USB port on the media PC that NextPVR was running on.

This drive is plugged into my router and uses a Raspberry Pi running DietPi File Server.

After getting the Network Drive (NAS) up and running so that all PCs on the home network could access it, I uninstalled my HDHomeRun software, rebooted, installed it clean, and configured all of my 26 channels in NextPVR (HDHomeRun EXTEND requires all channels be setup as H.264 HD, one by one).

I went into Settings and pointed the Recording to my DietPi File Server: \\DIETPI\dietpi\DVR\RecordedTV.

NextPVR wasn't able to play the files, so I did the old uninstall/reinstall trick.

That still didn't help.

Log file here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tvn3idfyystre9r/NPVR.log?dl=0

Nothing in it jumps out at me.

I can't play TV or, obviously, record.

[johnsonx42]

it'll be a permissions issue; the npvr recording service normally runs under the [Local System] account, not your regular desktop user. configure your DietPi share to allow everyone full access. failing that, in services.msc you can reconfigure the npvr recording service to run as your regular desktop user. there's also mvallevand's ShareHelper utility, which lets you map network drives into the Local System account.

[mvallevand]

You may need to use an IP instead of a netbios name. This likely will be a very low performance NAS not fully suitable for HD streaming and simultaneous recording.

Martin

[jp2code]

So, the log file wouldn't say anything about not having permission to read/write to the drive?

I could have sworn it was working the first day I got all of this together (Sunday).

When I noticed it hadn't been recording the news, I started investigating.

[Graham]

it'll be a permissions issue;

I believe that the various .bat files that run at or about the time of making a recording also run in the "system" account used by the recording service.

You might try a test with a .bat file that creates a test file on the NAS. For example a parallelprocessing.bat that contains ...

time /t > \\DIETPI\dietpi\DVR\RecordedTV\test.txt
echo Can you see me? > \\DIETPI\dietpi\DVR\RecordedTV\test.txt

Don't rely on my batch command syntax being correct!

http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...BatchFiles

[jp2code]

I might try mapping the network folder to a local drive letter on the PC.

Should that solve the problems?

How would I test the network throughput to see what kinds of read/write speeds it can maintain?

[Graham]

I might try mapping the network folder to a local drive letter on the PC.

Drive letter mappings are specific to a user. A mapping for N: created when logged on as "Joe" would not be visible to the recording service which would be logged on as "system". Stick with UNC.

How would I test the network throughput to see what kinds of read/write speeds it can maintain?

I would copy a bunch of video files onto the NAS and then use 'nextpvr.exe -multi' to play them back simultaneously and see how many you can play at once before you start to see glitches in the video playback. Recording (i.e. writing to NAS disk) requires more resource than reading so have a recording going on at the same time as all of the playbacks.

Task Manager will tell you how much data is going across the network interface while all this is going on.

http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...ineOptions

[jp2code]

> Stick with UNC.

Uh-oh. My "I don't know Linux" is starting to show. What does that mean?

Before, I had my media drive plugged in using my media PC's USB 2.0 port (it doesn't have USB 3 and its hard drive is too small to support recordings). Recorded shows (like the news) were often difficult to sit through because of the horrible quality, but watching Live TV was never an issue. Could I have been exceeding the USB 2.0 capacity?

I guess I need to build another media PC, but that's going to run me around $500 for what I want to build and take a lot of time to get setup.

[Graham]

> Stick with UNC.

Uh-oh. My "I don't know Linux" is starting to show. What does that mean?

I went into Settings and pointed the Recording to my DietPi File Server: \\DIETPI\dietpi\DVR\RecordedTV.

http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/53398/unc

[Graham]

Could I have been exceeding the USB 2.0 capacity?

Probably. Recording and playback requires very, very little resource from, for example, the CPU. You need a good disk rate because video files are big. You could get the rate that you need by adding a SATA or USB3 card and an existing drive in an external enclosure case.

You need good enough video to do playback but the video built into any computer built in the last 8 to 10 years should be good enough for HD playback.

It's almost certain that you don't need a whole new computer to get an acceptable result.