More then 8 tuners equals slow record response

Help with tuners from ATI, Hauppauge, AverMedia and more.
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choliscott

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More then 8 tuners equals slow record response

#1

Post by choliscott » Fri Aug 23, 2013 8:53 pm

Hi Everyone,

Just seeing if anybody has any suggestions to this issue. I was running 2 Infinitv4 pci cards & when I pushed the record button, it would usually show the red dot usually between 5 seconds to maybe a couple of minutes (depending on how many times the show played).

I received a Infinitv6 Pci card, which replaced one of the infintv4 card, which everything is working, but now everytime I press the record button, it's at least a minimum of 15 minutes before it starts to record & usually WMC window will freeze (thus I have to "end task" on ehshell).

Any suggestions on anything to try, before I decide that I'm only supposed to have only 8 tuners?

Thanks

barnabas1969

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#2

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri Aug 23, 2013 8:55 pm

I can't remember the details, but everytime I've seen a solution for this, it was something to do with a corrupt Media Center database. It has nothing to do with the number of tuners. I have 10 tuners, and recording starts immediately when I press the record button.

choliscott

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#3

Post by choliscott » Fri Aug 23, 2013 9:12 pm

I've seen that too & also tried re-setting up WMC & will have the same problem. In fact, If I remove the 6 tuner card & put the 4 tuner card back in, the problem will probably disappear. Just not ready to that (yet)
barnabas1969 wrote:I can't remember the details, but everytime I've seen a solution for this, it was something to do with a corrupt Media Center database. It has nothing to do with the number of tuners. I have 10 tuners, and recording starts immediately when I press the record button.

blueiedgod

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#4

Post by blueiedgod » Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:43 pm

We have 10 tuners, and about to have 12. Going from 4 to 8, and then to 10 had no effect. Hoping going to 12 will not either. Maybe it has to do with your CPU capabilities? Hexacore CPU here.

choliscott

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#5

Post by choliscott » Sat Aug 24, 2013 1:43 am

Well I wouldn't think it would be the Computer setup (I5 2500k, 8 GB ram, 240 GB SSd, 3 - 3TB, 1 4 TB). Unless how much available storage on the recording drive & the number of scheduled show series has a big part to do with that.

After a few hours, some shows started to record right away, while some still took a 1/2 hour to start recording & this was trying to record a show that was currently on, not scheduling a series.
blueiedgod wrote:We have 10 tuners, and about to have 12. Going from 4 to 8, and then to 10 had no effect. Hoping going to 12 will not either. Maybe it has to do with your CPU capabilities? Hexacore CPU here.

barnabas1969

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#6

Post by barnabas1969 » Sat Aug 24, 2013 2:06 am

@blueiedgod: choliscott's PC has a faster CPU than mine, and the same amount of RAM. He also has a larger SSD than mine.

@choliscott: I don't think re-setting-up Media Center clears up the problem with a corrupt database. In other threads, I've read that the only solution is to delete a particular file, and then let Media Center re-create it. But I don't know the exact filename or what you need to do after that. I could search for the answer, but so can you.

choliscott

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#7

Post by choliscott » Sat Aug 24, 2013 12:35 pm

I ended up just reformatting & installing Win7. For the most part the first 29 show series have scheduled fine, with the exception of the 30th has been sitting there for a while (also have it ending 10 minutes after). I'll let this sit as I need to go to sleep & see how the rest go.

By chance, can I ask what time server you're using when you have the HTPC resync the time? I know usually when I said stop/end on time, they scheduled fairly quickly.

Thanks
barnabas1969 wrote:@blueiedgod: choliscott's PC has a faster CPU than mine, and the same amount of RAM. He also has a larger SSD than mine.

@choliscott: I don't think re-setting-up Media Center clears up the problem with a corrupt database. In other threads, I've read that the only solution is to delete a particular file, and then let Media Center re-create it. But I don't know the exact filename or what you need to do after that. I could search for the answer, but so can you.

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#8

Post by foxwood » Sat Aug 24, 2013 1:04 pm

choliscott wrote:By chance, can I ask what time server you're using when you have the HTPC resync the time?
I use us.pool.NTP.org as the Internet Time Server on my machines.

barnabas1969

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#9

Post by barnabas1969 » Sun Aug 25, 2013 4:26 am

I'm using time.nist.gov. I don't see what that has to do with anything. I have most shows set to stop on-time, but several are set for 10 minutes after the show ends, because they typically run longer than they should.

I just checked and I currently have 100 series scheduled. I don't know how many of them are no longer aired. It's been a while since I cleaned up my series schedule and deleted ones that will never air again. There are probably less than 10 that need to be deleted.

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#10

Post by choliscott » Sun Aug 25, 2013 9:28 am

The reason why I asked was when I started to schedule the shows, it seemed to respond faster if I made the default "start on time, end on time". With the exception of about 10 -20 shows (which are set for New only, waiting for the new season to start) the rest are set for "new & repeats". The first 25 show series scheduled really quick (at the most it was within 5 seconds for each). # 26 (Family guy, plays on multiple channels) took about 45 seconds. The next 3 was within 5 seconds or so. #30 (Jessie) took about 12 minutes to respond. The next 10 shows came up within 5-10 seconds & now it's sitting again when trying to schedule SpongeBob (this is set to record only off 1 channel), which took about 15 minutes.

Can I ask out of the 100 show series, how many are set as New only compared to New/Repeat & how many shows you have scheduled where it plays on multiple channels &/or multiple times during the day on only 1 channel? (Examples of this might be Any Disney Channel Show, Spongebob, American Dad, Family Guy, etc)

choliscott

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#11

Post by choliscott » Sun Aug 25, 2013 8:22 pm

Here's an update.. Got to show #85 (about 60% scheduled within 5 seconds or so, the other 40% took 5-15 minutes). I then decided to do the reboot test, to see how long it would take to automatically start recording (before it would take about 5-10 minutes). I went to sleep & woke up 6 hours later & noticed that nothing I had scheduled during this time actually recorded.

I then, decided to try to record a live show & got the swirly circle & when I look at MC, it says I have a conflict, but only shows it being with the shows scheduled. Almost like it doesn't know the other tuners are even there.

I had this same problem when I tried adding a HR Prime as an addition to the 2 infinitv4's (which I have since gave to my parents). When the infinitv6 came out, I took a chance as I thought maybe it's not the number of tuners, but the number of physical TV devices connected.

At the moment, I removed the 6 tuner card & put back in the 4 tuner card & decided to do a full Win reinstall again (yeah I know I shouldn't have to go that far) & going to reset this thing backup with the original 8 tuners.

While I know shows that I have scheduled (that come on a ton of times) have a good part of do with the slowdown's, I would think that with more tuners, it would actually make it schedule faster.

barnabas1969

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#12

Post by barnabas1969 » Mon Aug 26, 2013 2:38 pm

I have my series default set to start/end on-time. If you sync your clock at least once a day (I have mine set to sync every time the PC wakes up... so it gets sync'd immediately before a recording starts, or when I wake the PC to watch TV), most shows will record correctly when you schedule them to start/end on-time. I only have a few shows set to run an extra 10 minutes at the end, mostly on Comedy Central. I think that network must run about a minute behind all the other networks.

When I want a series to record longer or start earlier, I just modify the series settings after I initially create the series recording. I've never seen a series recording take more than a few seconds to setup. I don't think I have any series currently setup to record a bunch of episodes per day. I have had them in the past (when my 14-year-old daughter schedules stuff), and I never heard any complaints that it took something like 15 minutes to schedule. I'm certain that she would have come to tell me if this happened, because she would have assumed that the extender/PC hung or something like that.

I don't know how many are set to New vs. New/Repeat. I have plenty of both.

So, my advice is to sync your clock at least daily, and set your series default to start/stop on-time. Then, make changes for shows that often run off-schedule.

To sync your clock daily (or twice a day, or whatever) schedule it with the Windows Task Scheduler. Read the post linked below for details on how to make it sync every time the PC wakes from sleep. If you don't allow your PC to sleep, then you'll want to change the scheduled task to run once or twice a day, but in that case, make sure to check the box on the Settings tab that says "Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed."

Here's the link:
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 883#p10883

blueiedgod

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#13

Post by blueiedgod » Mon Aug 26, 2013 4:52 pm

Having just switched from InifiniTV4 to InfinitTV6 I can tell you that you have to load beta drivers and beta frimware. Firmware shipped with the unit was buggy (was not releasing tuners after you have changed channels), and updated stable firmware was slow, and updated drivers for some reason reverted the system back to 4 tuner limit.

Beta firmware also enabled dynamic tuner pooling ala HomeRun Prime.

I think the speed with which "record series" is added to the schedule is dependant on how fast your machine can go through the guide and find all instances of the same program name for future recorings.

choliscott

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#14

Post by choliscott » Mon Aug 26, 2013 11:51 pm

Another Update, after I reconfigured the original 8 tuners, The series that took 15 minutes, only took 30 seconds to schedule. However when I got to Series #70, for some reason that one took about 45 minutes to schedule & everything after that took a while to schedule, so I decided to start over, but make a few changes: 1) Tried using Win 7 Home (instead of Pro), Move one of my recording drives to use a Raid Controller (the port it was connected, was split, One that if I'm using this particular port, then the ESata port on the back won't work). For some reason the drive would keep disappearing. Last I decided not to install the TubeCore MC Add on.

Once I started to schedule shows, everything (with the exception of a few shows, which responded back in a minute or so), all came back within 30 seconds including the same show that took 45 minutes before. I would find it hard to believe that any of these 3 changes would cause a major change, unless TubeCore is a resource hog, or having the recording drive (with the most free space) plugged into a picky sata port was the issue (another words, the shows scheduled faster because there was a bunch of free space, compared if there was only 50 GB free on each of the recording drives).

I did setup a task every 12 hours to resync the computer time using the sc.exe & w32tm.exe commands & also used the latest infinitv drivers, which I noticed the latest beta is also the latest released version, also the firmware on the card was up to date

However I had to ruin it by changing the few shows to end 10 minutes afterwards. Trying to record a one time show took about 5 minutes to respond, so I switched these back to "End on Time" & went back to try recording a live show & record something once later on & both came back within 10 seconds or so.

Now I'm sitting here, trying to decide if I want to try it again, but with the 6 tuner card, replacing one of the 4 tuner cards, or follow the "If it's working, then don't mess with it"

I did have one more question, which is how many episodes are scheduled In your record list (scheduled recordings, sort by date). Currently mine says 1350, which probably has a lot to do with the slow response time, but again, can't see why it would response faster (overall) with 8 tuners compared to when 10 was installed.

barnabas1969

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#15

Post by barnabas1969 » Tue Aug 27, 2013 12:47 am

Mine only shows 95 recordings scheduled right now. Most of my series recordings are for things that are non in season right now. But even when there is a very busy recording schedule, it doesn't take more than a few seconds (like two or three seconds) to schedule a new one.

I doubt that it has anything to do with the number of tuners. You have some other problems going on.

choliscott

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#16

Post by choliscott » Tue Aug 27, 2013 2:34 am

Not exactly sure what it could be. The only thing I can think of is the amount of episodes it has to sort thru, to decide where to schedule a recording.

For example, I went back thru my list of shows that I remembered had a bunch of episodes being played. 17 shows that are scheduled, had a total of 1137 episodes. Mind you not all of these 1137 are scheduled to record, but I would think this would one of the main reasons for the slow down, but with it taking longer to schedule with more tuners, throws this off.

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#17

Post by barnabas1969 » Tue Aug 27, 2013 1:57 pm

I know this is a stupid question, but are you sure that Windows is installed on the SSD, and not on the HDD?

choliscott

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#18

Post by choliscott » Tue Aug 27, 2013 3:13 pm

Yes it's installed the on the SSD. When I did the Win 7 Home install, I unplugged all the other drives with the exception of the dvd & ssd (so it wouldn't create the 2nd 100 MB partition on the other drive). The one other test I thought about trying was only scheduling the shows with not too many episodes to see how fast those schedule & then add in the 17 shows with the most episodes. For example, before I got to the first show that had more then 30 episodes in the channel guide data, everything before that scheduled within 5 seconds.

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