Viewing or recording ClearQAM = Tuner Conflicts = ?

[ProAm500]

Some of you may have read the posts I made in the the Ceton thread over in the AVS forum or the old school greenbutton about issues recording my local clearqam channels. A quick recap, I have a Infinitv4 and whenever I viewed or recorded what are clearqam channels in my lineup in media center the screen freezes and I get a no tuner available message. I then have to close media center and start again. Everything is up to date and firmware is up to date and signal levels are good. I was told from Ceton its a media center issue and they are working with MS to correct it. I'm not confident.

Anyway, I decided to by a HD Homerun to sort of "offload" those channels from the ceton onto the hd homerun. For example, instead of watching NBC which is 863 in my digital lineup, I'll just watch 2.1 in my "clearqam lineup" from the HD Homerun. Well, whenever I record form the channels I get the same thing. Picture freezes, I try a channel change and the message no tuner available pops up. I have to close media center to resume viewing TV again.

So I figured I would try to experiment. I set up media center on my main desktop and used the hd homeruns as its tuners. After running through the set-up I go to record my local CBS (5.1 in my lineup) I get the same exact thing. At this point, I'm at a complete loss. Is there possibly something with my cable service that's different than anyone else? (Time Warner in Upstate, NY). Is there a service disabled on both machines that I turned off on accident? Is there something else I'm missing? Keep in mind I only have these issues with are determined to be ClearQAM channels (locals plus PBS) and not with premium channels.

[Scallica]

With the HD HomeRun, can you tune the local broadcast channels with the QuickTV application?

[ProAm500]

yes, all the channels work fine in the quick app...I'm also not sharing any of the ceton tuners at all and had this issues before i got the hd homerun.

[Scallica]

Does the issue occur if you view a local broadcast channel in the digital lineup? For example, NBC which is 863.

[erkotz]

Do you see an application error get logged in the Application Event Log indicating that ehrecvr crashed when you tune this channel? I remember we saw something similar on a few channels in the Binghamton, NY and Albany, NY areas. Root cause seems to be TV station putting out illegal MPEG, which is in turn blowing up ehrecvr. We are working with Microsoft to try and get a fix.

[ProAm500]

Does the issue occur if you view a local broadcast channel in the digital lineup? For example, NBC which is 863.

Yes it does.Thats how it started. I originally started with just the ceton and it first started occurring during the football season on Fox or CBS. I thought it was a timing issue with maybe some process starting around 1pm. But then it started on Sat. during the college games on ABC and CBS. Then during the World Series on FOX and when watching PBS so thats when it I determined it wasnt the times but the channels. The commonality of them are that they are all available over the air or ClearQAM channels. I got the HD Homerun thinking it was maybe a ceton or cablecard issue, but it also happens when tuning with the HD Homerun.

Do you see an application error get logged in the Application Event Log indicating that ehrecvr crashed when you tune this channel? I remember we saw something similar on a few channels in the Binghamton, NY and Albany, NY areas. Root cause seems to be TV station putting out illegal MPEG, which is in turn blowing up ehrecvr. We are working with Microsoft to try and get a fix.

I live in Utica, NY so its Time Warner as is Albany, Syracuse and Binghamton. Are locals are different though. I do see some errors on my desktop system with the HD Homerun from when I last experimented on Sat. all are error 0xc0040524. I also see some randoms errors associated with the Ceton from some past Sunday night recordings with the same number from recording on FOX. If you like, I can upload a event logs from both my systems, even though someone from Ceton has them from working with them in the past. Just curious though, when you say "illegal mpeg" what does that mean exactly? Are they using some kind of rouge codecs or something? And also, wouldnt it be TW and not the local stations themselves seeing that its on multiple networks..at least for me anyway

[erkotz]

I live in Utica, NY so its Time Warner as is Albany, Syracuse and Binghamton. Are locals are different though. I do see some errors on my desktop system with the HD Homerun from when I last experimented on Sat. all are error 0xc0040524. I also see some randoms errors associated with the Ceton from some past Sunday night recordings with the same number from recording on FOX. If you like, I can upload a event logs from both my systems, even though someone from Ceton has them from working with them in the past. Just curious though, when you say "illegal mpeg" what does that mean exactly? Are they using some kind of rouge codecs or something? And also, wouldnt it be TW and not the local stations themselves seeing that its on multiple networks..at least for me anyway

Utica might have been one of them, too - I remember it was a few areas in that area of NY. By illegal MPEG, I mean MPEG that does not conform to the spec - specifically, we were seeing conditions that never should happen according to the specification.
If you can reproduce this with the InfiniTV, please PM me your ticket #.

[ProAm500]

Utica might have been one of them, too - I remember it was a few areas in that area of NY. By illegal MPEG, I mean MPEG that does not conform to the spec - specifically, we were seeing conditions that never should happen according to the specification.
If you can reproduce this with the InfiniTV, please PM me your ticket #.

RBE-313-16590 this is the ticket number that i had going back and forth with ceton since October when I first seen the issue. Like I said, at firstI thought it was something with the time which originally cause some confusion, but its a clearqam issue.

I should add, this doesnt happen 100% of the time, but at least 85% of the time when viewing or recording these channels.

[erkotz]

I just looked through your ticket - according to the notes in your ticket, it is indeed the issue I mentioned earlier. The last message we sent to you indicates that we were able to reproduce the issue with the transport stream capture you provided, and currently have Microsoft investigating. Also, this issue is not limited to the InfiniTV, I have reproduced it with competing OCUR devices, and believe it would affect ClearQAM tuners (and possibly ATSC) which you seem to have experienced.
Microsoft does have an in-house repro, but this sort of investigation moves slowly. To be honest, we just need to wait at this point.

[ProAm500]

thanks for the clarification...i must say though, thats a big time bummer