Blank screen on Live TV + no recording - was working until earlier this week!

[Phono Paul]

Hi, new here, please help!

I'm getting a blank screen on Live TV and NextPVR won't record (empty file created). Everything was working happily last week, first noticed the problem on Tuesday night, which makes me wonder if something broke with a MS update.

Setup is AugustDVB-T205 (V3.1), OS is Windows Server 2016 Essentials.

Have been running latest verson of NextPVR for 2-3 weeks. Everything was happy, as it had been with previous version.

Anyway, tried to troubleshoot. Checked USB Tuner on another machine (with PVR as a test), it was happy. Back on the problem box I reinstalled NextPVR and tuner driver anyway. NextPVR can pull down channels from tuner, so they both seem happy. I'm guessing it might be a codec issue so I reinstalled SAF, but no joy. (Machine has been rebooted several times during all of this!)

So no picture on Live TV, but no error message either.

Logs and codec config attached (Cyberlink PDVD13, but I gave LAV a try too). Any suggestions?!

[mvallevand]

Maybe you need to reapply the bda hack?

Martin

[Phono Paul]

I don't think I ever applied the bda hack previously (tbh I'd never heard of it!) possibly because the August's Realtek drivers already contain that, er, stuff. (Possibly!)

Nevertheless a bit of googling told me about the bda stuff so I've installed it (2012 R2 version, there didn't seem to be anything for 2016e) and... alas no difference. I still get a "please wait" on LiveTV as before, then a blank screen.

[jcjefferies]

Were the Realtek drivers you mentioned for the tuner? Does the tuner use the RTL2832+R820T chipset? There is a known problem where Windows updates the latest 2012 drivers with older 2009 drivers which are for a different chip set. If it is that there are instructions on a web site how to stop the correct drivers being "updated".

Chris

[Phono Paul]

Ah yes, the Realtek drivers are for the tuner, and apparently it is the RTL2832 chipset. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) it turns out that it is using the correct 2012 drivers. (Although it is something I'll keep an eye on, as it might just be correct now due to the recent reinstall.) But thank you for the suggestion.

I've noticed that since the reinstall NPVR is currently "recording" stuff and creating files that be viewed... unfortunately those files just display a blank screen. (So they've recorded nothing - or rather a blank screen - but the files aren't empty.) Not sure if this is relevant. (TBH I don't really care about the Live TV side of things, I just need the recording working. But I'm assuming these things are related!)

[jcjefferies]

This article tells how to overcome RTL2832+R820T tuner problem under Windows 10 but it may not be relevant to your setup!
http://dalvikplanet.blogspot.com/201...r820t2-on.html

Its not clear if you have a recording or playback problem! You havnt made it clear if the recorded files are Zero bytes in which case you have a recording problem? An SD recording should be around 1GB per hour. If they are not zero bytes can you play the file in a media player such as VLC?

Chris

[Phono Paul]

I thought I should update this... the good news is that I've fixed the issue. I did try reinstalling everything (driver, codecs, npvr) twice... but this evening I realised I wasn't fully uninstalling npvr as the uninstaller leaves all the config files in users/local. This time I manually removed the npvr config directory and did a new install... and to my great relief everything is now working again. So, er, seems the issue was some sort of config-related thing. I'm not much the wiser but all good... (For the record I'm sure everything in the config is the same as previously!)