Anyone losing picture with HDHomeRun Prime

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HBGDawg

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Anyone losing picture with HDHomeRun Prime

#1

Post by HBGDawg » Sat Sep 07, 2019 11:37 pm

I am using an HDHomeRun Prime on a WMC Win 7 set up with tuning adapter and cable card on Spectrum in Austin TX. Once or twice a month, I lose the channel and it goes to the image below. If I tune away from the channel and then back, it resolve the issue. The big problem is when I am away from home and DVRing and this happens which means the show is unviewable. Any ideas what this could be? I have submitted a ticket to SiliconDust.
IMG_20190906_171324.jpg

john321

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#2

Post by john321 » Wed Sep 11, 2019 10:28 pm

Have you tried going to the tuner's internal web page and looking at the signal strength and quality when you are watching that channel? Signal strength should be between +7 and -7dB (0dB is perfect), and signal quality should be 35 or higher.

See attached pic from my tuner.
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (35.22 KiB) Viewed 10672 times

HBGDawg

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#3

Post by HBGDawg » Fri Sep 13, 2019 12:45 pm

john321 wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 10:28 pm Have you tried going to the tuner's internal web page and looking at the signal strength and quality when you are watching that channel? Signal strength should be between +7 and -7dB (0dB is perfect), and signal quality should be 35 or higher.

See attached pic from my tuner.

Capture.JPG
Thanks for the reply. Yes I have checked and the tuner appears to think it has a good signal. I have been in contact with support for SiliconDust and they think it is a driver/video card issue with my NUC. I am not sure that is the case, because when it happens, I can minimize WMC and go to the OS page and everything appears fine. If I then go back to WMC that channel is still showing the same way. If I go up or down a channel, the picture is fine, even if I return to the original channel. So something along the way is corrupting the picture. My config is a Spectrum tuning adapter, cable card, HDHomeRun Prime and then an Intel NUC (Win 7) and a Sony TV. I have swapped everything out except for the NUC and HDHomeRun Prime so the problem appears to be in one of the two of them. I am updating my BIOS and video driver to see if that resolves it. Any other ideas you think I should try?

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UCBearcat

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#4

Post by UCBearcat » Mon Oct 21, 2019 1:23 am

I see this is an old post, so hopefully you've found your answer. But if not....
You say this happens once or twice a month... Do you sleep your PC when not in use?? How often do you reboot the PC and/or the Prime? If the answer is no or not very often, then read on, my friend.

I'll get to the point - User HTBruce had somewhat of a similar issue as you. See post #182 through #189. HTBruce posted an image very simliar to yours. viewtopic.php?p=95910#p95910

But if you want to get into it even further, here is the thread that I referenced in the above thread. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5927 I opened this thread in 2013, and since then a handful of people have replicated the same issue. Near the end of this thread, we devised a workaround for the problem. Don't expect any help from Silicondust, as they don't consider it their problem.

In short - there is a bug with the Prime which causes the Prime and Windows to break the connection on Copy Protected channels every 47 hours - no joke. Copy Free channels (like locals, CBS, NBC, PBS, etc) do not display the problem. Read the above posts for more details.

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#5

Post by HBGDawg » Tue Oct 29, 2019 2:40 pm

UCBearcat wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 1:23 am I see this is an old post, so hopefully you've found your answer. But if not....
You say this happens once or twice a month... Do you sleep your PC when not in use?? How often do you reboot the PC and/or the Prime? If the answer is no or not very often, then read on, my friend.

I'll get to the point - User HTBruce had somewhat of a similar issue as you. See post #182 through #189. HTBruce posted an image very simliar to yours. viewtopic.php?p=95910#p95910

But if you want to get into it even further, here is the thread that I referenced in the above thread. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5927 I opened this thread in 2013, and since then a handful of people have replicated the same issue. Near the end of this thread, we devised a workaround for the problem. Don't expect any help from Silicondust, as they don't consider it their problem.

In short - there is a bug with the Prime which causes the Prime and Windows to break the connection on Copy Protected channels every 47 hours - no joke. Copy Free channels (like locals, CBS, NBC, PBS, etc) do not display the problem. Read the above posts for more details.
I found the original thread you mentioned above. So, to answer your questions:
1) I reboot my PC weekly, but I don't reboot the Prime unless something happens to it
2) The time is so random that it happens that I don't think I correlated it against when my PC was rebooted

I saw the script that was proposed to reboot the Prime. To be clear, is the recommendation to run that script and reboot the PRIME daily? Or the PC? Or both?

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UCBearcat

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#6

Post by UCBearcat » Tue Oct 29, 2019 11:40 pm

When configuring and running the script, it's ultimately your choice which system you want to reboot (Prime or PC). There's no need to do both. One or the other is adequate. It's really all about resetting the connection between the two. We found that suspending/sleeping the PC would actually reset the connection.
In the second forum thread I mentioned (starting around Page 3) Barnabas was rebooting his PC. Conversely, KevinC25 had configured his script to reboot both of his Primes. Both of them seemed happy with their results.
Personally, I reboot the PC a couple days each week early in the morning when I'm still asleep. Like you, i don't reboot/reset the Prime unless there's an issue with it - which is generally pretty rare.

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#7

Post by HBGDawg » Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:09 pm

Just to follow up on your suggestion. I implemented as you suggested and have not seen the issue since doing so. Thanks for the suggestion and for reaching out!

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