"No TV Signal" failed recording with TV Signal

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Kolchak

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"No TV Signal" failed recording with TV Signal

#1

Post by Kolchak » Wed Oct 30, 2019 8:26 pm

The Hardware is 2 Hauppauge HVR-1600 cards and one HVR-1800 in a PC running Windows 8.1.

Due to an FCC mandated Repack on one of my local stations I had to re-scan my tuners. The result was a signal strength of 1 out of 6 bars in the WMC UI for every tuner but was still able to view live TV, every time I pushed the record button it would hiccup, fail to record and stop live playback. Changing channels back and forth would resume live playback.

After scanning a few days later the TV signal returned to full strength and would record TV by manually pressing the record button during live playback but would fail to record some but not all scheduled programs.

Only the repacked channel is affected, anyone have any idea what is happening and how to fix it? I still do a re-scan after every failed attempt to record a program, which happens about every other day.

lawson23

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#2

Post by lawson23 » Wed Nov 20, 2019 6:42 pm

Kolchak,
I'm having the exact same issue. I came on here to post a very similar posting.
This started after the change on 10/18 for my area (Lexington, KY). Multiple channels were changed but only one (36) is having the issue. I contacted the FCC and they were a waste of my time. I was wondering if it is a hardware issue or media center issue???

I have rescanned multiple times. What I don't understand is this tower is the closest to me of all of them. It is literately like less than a mile away. Doing a signal strength scan in media center shows one red bar for this channel compared to the rest being five green bars.

I have the Hauppauge WinTV-7164 tuner in media center but it shows as a wintv-hvr-2250 in my Windows 8.1 device manager. What I purchased is Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 PCI TV Tuner.

Wondering if maybe this requires a support request to Hauppauge??

I'm more than willing to buy a new card if this is the problem. Hopefully someone supplies some suggestions as I emailed Hauppauge but they have discontinued my card so guessing they will not support me in any manor.

dmagerl

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#3

Post by dmagerl » Wed Nov 20, 2019 8:44 pm

When you rescanned, it probably kept the old channel and added the new channel to the bottom of the sources list.

WMC works down the list from the top when assigning tuners for live viewing and works up the list from the bottom when assigning tuners for recording. Thus, recording may work but live viewing may not.

Go into the guide and select the affected channel. Right click and go to Edit Channel/Edit Sources. There should be one source listed for each of your tuners. If there are more, then check the frequency for each source and disable the ones that are bad.

lawson23

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#4

Post by lawson23 » Thu Nov 21, 2019 3:08 am

Go into the guide and select the affected channel. Right click and go to Edit Channel/Edit Sources. There should be one source listed for each of your tuners. If there are more, then check the frequency for each source and disable the ones that are bad.
There were two entries here I could not tell frequency but got rid of one by clicking the split button the other one had a preview play and it was playing tv so hopefully it will work now. Actually I don't know what I did. I now have two channels showing in the guide and if I click on a different channel that has always worked there are like four listings in that one.

I do think you might be onto something though as the tonight the first recording on the channel failed then we tried going to the channel to watch live and it worked then all the other recordings for the night on that channel worked and my signal strength meter is 5 green bars. I just don't know how to really fix this.

Space

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#5

Post by Space » Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:50 am

Note that the entries in "Edit Sources" are NOT channels, they are tuner/channel combinations.

Example:

You have a cable tuner and an OTA tuner configured for use with WMC, and you are setting up you local CBS station. The cable device has three tuners and CBS is on channel 502, the OTA device has 2 tuners and CBS is on channel 2.1.

If you look at the channel in WMC you should see all 5 of the tuners above merged in to one main channel (either 502 or 2.1, not sure which it would choose), note that this main channel does not have to have a direct relationship to the actual channel that is tuned when you view this channel (although in many setups there is a direct one to one relationship). You might see something like the following in "Edit Sources" for this channel:

Main channel 502:

1. Digital Cable (HDHomeRun Prime Tuner XXXXX-0 Channel Number: 502)
2. Digital Cable (HDHomeRun Prime Tuner XXXXX-1 Channel Number: 502)
3. Digital Cable (HDHomeRun Prime Tuner XXXXX-2 Channel Number: 502)
4. Digital Antenna (ATSC) (SiliconDust HDHomerun Tuner XXXXX-0 Channel Number: 2.1)
5. Digital Antenna (ATSC) (SiliconDust HDHomerun Tuner XXXXX-1 Channel Number: 2.1)

(Note that you have to scroll down if there are more than 4 tuners, and that when you have the tuner highlighted it will show additional info about the channel on the bottom of the screen, such as the channel number and frequency for OTA channels)

So there you see that when WMC tries to record from the main channel 502 above, it will try source #1 first (which is the first tuner on the cable device, tuned to channel 502), and if not available, then source #2, etc (it is a little more complicated than this, but you get the idea).

Now, based on your post, I think you saw only two sources here and then "split" them. This was probably not the correct thing to do as you've created two separate "main" channels that both tune to the same channel, however one will only use tuner 0 and the other will only use tuner 1. What you probably want to do is join them back again so that you have all the sources you want under the same main channel. Note that you don't HAVE to join all sources for the same network to the same main channel. If you want to control what tuner you record certain things from, you can have a 502 channel (to record from cable) and a separate 2.1 channel (to record from OTA). In this case main channel 502 would have the 3 cable tuners that turn to channel 502, and main channel 2.1 would have the 2 OTA tuners that record from channel 2.1.

stuartm

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#6

Post by stuartm » Thu Nov 21, 2019 5:41 pm

I believe that according to this thread:viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7364 The tuner selection will not be #1 if recording but the last ATSC tuner. i.e. in your scenario #5

lawson23

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#7

Post by lawson23 » Thu Nov 21, 2019 11:18 pm

So how do I join them back?
OK everything is merged back using this:
https://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/index ... l-merging/

Then is there a way to just fix all this with out losing my recording schedule? Basically a way to do what dmagerl was suggesting but for all channels? I just don't understand why the problem channel works sometimes like last night but not others.

I also found it is not the PVR-150 I have in my system but Hauppauge 1229 WinTV-HVR-2255 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder. I have the 150 in a different system I have not used in years.

I sure hope what we are learning here is helping the original poster.

Space

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#8

Post by Space » Fri Nov 22, 2019 12:51 am

stuartm wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 5:41 pm I believe that according to this thread:viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7364 The tuner selection will not be #1 if recording but the last ATSC tuner. i.e. in your scenario #5
Yeah, I got the order for Live and recording mixed up (plus forgot about it treating the tuner types separately)
lawson23 wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 11:18 pm So how do I join them back?
OK everything is merged back using this:
https://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/index ... l-merging/

Then is there a way to just fix all this with out losing my recording schedule? Basically a way to do what dmagerl was suggesting but for all channels? I just don't understand why the problem channel works sometimes like last night but not others.

I also found it is not the PVR-150 I have in my system but Hauppauge 1229 WinTV-HVR-2255 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder. I have the 150 in a different system I have not used in years.

I sure hope what we are learning here is helping the original poster.
When you are on the "Edit Sources" page for a channel, you can toggle the "Show Preview" option. With this option enabled, when you highlight each source it will attempt to tune to that source and display the video in the background. In this way you can verify that the source is good and is displaying the proper network. If any of the sources for a particular "main" channel do not work, you can uncheck them so that they will not be used for recording or live TV (note that if you have no sources selected, live TV will still work (using one of the unchecked sources) but recordings will not).

dmagerl

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#9

Post by dmagerl » Fri Nov 22, 2019 1:10 am

The reason it works some times is that WMC doesnt always follow the rule of liveTV from the top and Recording from the bottom. Thats only its initial state. Once WMC has been in service fore a while, WMC remembers which tuner was last used to tune a particular channel. If you have 4 tuners and you're recording 4 programs, then the tuner thats at the top is being used for recording and the next time a recording happens, that same tuner will be used and the recording will succeed. meanwhile, if your watching live TV and the tuner was last used for a recording, it will use that tuner from the bottom of the stack and it will fail.

After running WMC for a while, tuners are totally mixed up.

BTW, the frequency of the selected source is shown in the lower right hand corner of the screen underneath the list of sources.

Edit:
I give up. After some testing, I cant figure out what it's doing. I dont think it follows what i previously said.
If you try to record a program that is being watched live, it will use the same tuner as the live tv tuner. If the live tv channel is changed, a different tuner will be assigned. In this case, its not following the aforementioned top/bottom rule. End result, after some time, the record/livetv tuner assignments can be thouroughly mixed up.

Space

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#10

Post by Space » Fri Nov 22, 2019 10:43 am

I have seen no evidence that the tuner priorities get "mixed up" in this way. Yes, in certain circumstances it will use certain tuners, but in general it will use the priority that the tuners are listed in "Edit Sources" (which you can change). Live TV uses tuners from the top, recordings from the bottom. It will prefer OTA over cable, etc.

But as you discovered, if you are already using a tuner to view live TV, and start to record that channel by pressing the record button, it will use the same tuner you are viewing (assuming there isn't another show scheduled to record on that tuner that conflicts). However if you are watching a show, and then a new show is starting on that channel that was scheduled to record previously on that same channel, it will record that show on whatever tuner was assigned at the time the show was scheduled, not necessarily the tuner you are using to view live TV (even though it is the same channel). In this case you will have two separate tuners tuned to the same channel which usually doesn't happen unless you use the 10-minute padding option.

If you are already recording a channel on a certain tuner, and a back-to-back show on the same channel is scheduled to record, it will generally use the same tuner for that following show, although not always, like if that tuner was already assigned to a different show, which can happen depending on the order in which shows are scheduled or prioritized, then it may switch tuners. The reason it usually uses the same tuner is because it is usually the same Series that is being used to record both episodes, so they are the same priority. If the first episode was scheduled by one Series and the second back-to-back episode was scheduled by another Series, and they had different priorities, then there is more of a chance they would have been scheduled on different tuners (assuming other shows that are conflicting with those shows have higher priorities than the second episode but lower than the first episode, etc)

There are some complicated things going on, and it's not always obvious why WMC does something. And I am not pretending to know everything about it, just what I've observed over the years and what I can remember about how it works. I am certainly not the expert on these things (if there any experts about them, anymore).

For instance, while the WMC scheduling algorithm is decent, it is not perfect, and it may tell you a show can't be recorded due to conflict, even though you can manually change the priorities of Series to make it record alternate airings of some of the shows and therefore be able to record all of them with no conflicts. What's good is that you have the ability to prioritize every Series to minimize this problem. In general you should prioritize Series that don't repeat the episode multiple times during the week (like shows airing on the major broadcast networks). In this way that single airing will be assigned a tuner first and Series that conflict with that time slot will be scheduled at alternate times.

In general, the Series priority is just the order in which an episode is scheduled, highest priority is scheduled first, then second priority, then third, etc. If you have 4 shows to record that all air at the same time, but only the highest priority show has multiple re-airings of the same episode (all the lower priority shows only air once) one of those shows (generally the lowest priority one) will not record due to conflict, even though it could have scheduled that multiple-airing show at a different time and allowed the three once-only airing shows to all record at the earlier time slot.

This priority system also has a big effect on what tuners get assigned to record each airing of a show.

lawson23

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#11

Post by lawson23 » Sat Nov 23, 2019 3:34 pm

So my question is do you think this issue is because of wmc or because of a hardware issue somewhere? Hauppauge suggested that it is wmc's guide data not having the new frequency and that this should be manually adjusted but does any of that explain why sometimes it comes in and sometimes it does not? I also do not know how I could adjust the frequency manually. My guess is it is really getting time to give up on WMC and move to a different platform.

I also wanted to add a big thank you to everyone who has been trying to help.

Kolchak

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#12

Post by Kolchak » Fri Jan 10, 2020 2:32 am

It started working after 3 failed recordings with a new scan during a 1.5 week time period. So if a local station re-provisions its channel and you can watch but not record, just keep scanning, it will eventually work its self out.

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