Flaky DVB-S reception??

[mattyb]

Here's an interesting one, maybe it's something simple... I've been happily using Nextpvr for years, and have been recording content on the tuners in my signature below without problems. Haven't been watching much lately as been busy with kids etc and have just started getting back to clearing a backlog of shows recorded on the DVB-S tuner. And I've discovered that something happened between the 4th and the 11th of March and now the .ts recordings are all glitchy and unwatchable. I know it's between these dates as regular shows recorded on the 4th or before are fine, and from the 11th on are not good. I've done some testing and narrowed it down to the DVB-S tuner, and it shows the error repeatedly, as well as during live TV using this tuner.

Any ideas what could be causing this??

(I know I'm still running an old version of NPVR, but it was working fine up until March!)

My log files are fairly large - is there a specific file that would help with diagnosis - let me know.

[jcjefferies]

Has the dish moved? Has the signal strength and quality dropped? The info will be in a recent Ndigitalhost log file. Look for the line :- (Locked=X Present=X Strength=X Quality=X) at the start of a recording.

Chris

[mattyb]

Logs attached. Any ideas?

I don't see how the dish moving could cause this - the dish is used for Sky TV and we haven't had any problems with that. The DVB-S tuner is also used for collecting EPG data and haven't had any issues with that either.

Thanks in advance!

[stustunz]

Pc tuner need the best signal. tuners in tvs st boxes etc dont care so much.
So just because sky is mint doesnt mean your pc tuner will be.

[mattyb]

Pc tuner need the best signal. tuners in tvs st boxes etc dont care so much.
So just because sky is mint doesnt mean your pc tuner will be.

Ok, I didn't realise that. Did you take a look at the log files? Do you think the dish moving is definitely the problem? How can I fix it if so??

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

[Graham]

Did you take a look at the log files?

The ndigitalhost-22.log has ...

2016-05-23 19:29:17.768 [DEBUG][4] locked=1, present=1, strength=-1599, quality=100 (took 47ms to check)

2016-05-23 19:38:41.222 [DEBUG][23] locked=1, present=1, strength=-2000, quality=100 (took 110ms to check)

2016-05-23 19:40:20.520 [DEBUG][22] locked=1, present=1, strength=-1500, quality=100 (took 47ms to check)

2016-05-23 20:20:04.564 [DEBUG][23] locked=1, present=1, strength=-2099, quality=100 (took 124ms to check)

2016-05-23 20:32:09.666 [DEBUG][18] locked=1, present=0, strength=-1799, quality=90 (took 141ms to check)

2016-05-23 20:33:21.975 [DEBUG][9] locked=1, present=1, strength=-2000, quality=90 (took 125ms to check)

2016-05-24 02:46:07.219 [DEBUG][23] locked=0, present=1, strength=-2599, quality=100 (took 124ms to check)

The variation in "strength" and "quality" values suggests a reception problem ... loose cable connections or knackered cable, perhaps.

You could try moving closer to the satellite.

[mattyb]

The ndigitalhost-22.log has ...



The variation in "strength" and "quality" values suggests a reception problem ... loose cable connections or knackered cable, perhaps.

You could try moving closer to the satellite.

Thanks. I checked the incoming UHF connection and the splitter seems to be loose into the wall... I'll get a new one and try that.

[jcjefferies]

Thanks. I checked the incoming UHF connection and the splitter seems to be loose into the wall... I'll get a new one and try that.

Splitter!! What are you splitting? You cannot just split the signal from the dish like you can a terrestrial signal. Unless you have some special equipment each cable from the disk can only feed one receiver.


Chris

[Jaggy]

Splitter!! What are you splitting? You cannot just split the signal from the dish like you can a terrestrial signal. Unless you have some special equipment each cable from the disk can only feed one receiver.
Chris

Huh? My dish feed (single lnb) is split to feed four tuner cards & it's been working fine for ages.

[sub]

Huh? My dish feed (single lnb) is split to feed four tuner cards & it's been working fine for ages.

With splitting a DVB-S signal, it can be complicated if you're using a mixture of horizontal and vertical signals, since the voltage on the cable dictates horizontal or vertical. Here in NZ we're only using a single polarity for all our channels, so the voltage is always correct.