New Sage install not tuning HDHR!

[rob_campbell]

Hello, I installed Sage on my new machine (Win XP) and I can not get it to tune the channels through the software, but they tune fine through VLC! I have the HDHR current drivers installed and the most current version of Sage. I tried everything I could find in the forums so far to try to set this up.

Here is what I did:

- Set the HDHR tuners to use SageTV. Did a channel scan in the HDHR window, all channels show up. I am able to tune the channels fine through the VLC viewer with the HDHR preview button.
- In Sage, go to the video sources setup, select the HDHR, cable, location etc. Do a channel scan, which does the "quick" scan, getting info from the HDHR .scn files and finding my enabled channels. Good so far. Mapping of the channels looks correct with respect to HDHR info.
- Now I try to tune the channels and always get a "No Signal" through Sage. No error message, just no signal. I do not see any activity in the HDHR window of it trying to tune anything either.

NOTE : I have the windows firewall disabled. I also installed the same versions of HDHR/Sage on my other XP machine and set up the same, and it tunes fine there.
Also, I had to reinstall windows for a separate issue, and before I did so, I had Sage tuning channels fine as well, so I know it is not a hardware issue!

Please give me some guidance as to how to troubleshoot this problem. Is there some log file or something I can look at to see what it is trying to send to HDHR?

Thanks!
Rob Campbell

[gplasky]

When you scanned the channels from the HDHR app did you go to Zap2It and verify the station name? For instance HDHR returns WXYZ for a HD station for me but the Zap2It name is actually WXYZDT. You need to verify every station name for the ones you want to use. Then configure in Sage and scan the channels again.

Gerry

[rob_campbell]

Hi Gerry,
Yes I did check the station names. They appear to be correct. And I tried all the channels that come up and none work. Doesn't appear to be trying to talk to the HDHR at all. I am stumped. Especially since I installed the same versions on my other destktop and did the same process and that one tunes fine.

Any other things to try?

Thanks!
Rob

[gplasky]

Here's what I did when I recently reinstalled mine. Make sure the redist. for visual studio 2005 and 2008 are installed. Not sure which ones are required. Use 20081231 drivers. Get it installed and verify channel names with Zap2It. Reboot the SageTV server and get a clean load. Make sure everything loads including BDA drivers. Check you event log to make sure. If they didn't run HDHR setup program and go to the last tab and reinstall both sets of drivers. Restart again. Go into SageTV. If the tuners are already there go into the channel setup of one. Tell it to rescan the channels. When it is done pick a channel and view. You should get audio, then a signal strength meter and then video. If that doesn't work remove both tuner sources and set them up again. Repeat the scan and test with the view button. Hope that works.

Gerry

[Taddeusz]

After I'd upgraded my HDHR drivers I was having trouble getting them to tune correctly. The thing that worked for me was not only to verify the station ID but enter the appropriate channel number into the Guide Number column in the HDHR setup. Their instructions say it is optional but that was the only thing that seemed to get it to work for me. So if XYZDT shows up on your cable lineup as 704 you enter that into the Guide Number column for that channel.

[rob_campbell]

Thanks for the tips guys! BTW, where does the HDHR log file get written to? I don't see it in the install directory.

[Taddeusz]

Thanks for the tips guys! BTW, where does the HDHR log file get written to? I don't see it in the install directory.

I believe he's talking about the Windows Event Log. Which you'd get to by right-clicking on "My Computer" and select Manage. You'll find it in the left hand pane of the window.

[rob_campbell]

I did the reinstalls of the BDA drivers and got no errors. Installed the 2005 and 2008 redists of Visual C++ which were not present. Restarted, etc, but still nothing at all in Sage.
However, I checked the event log and I see no reference to BDA anything, so I assume I do not have the drivers installed, unless I am missing something. Can you tell me what I am looking for here?
Just for heck of it, I installed TotalMedia and it is able to tune channels just fine. Does TM use the BDA drivers?

Can you give me a few more ideas on what to look for next?

Thanks!

[gplasky]

The event log would give you an error if the BDA drivers weren't installed or installed incorrectly. No error is a good thing. So you removed it as a source, readded it and enabled the channels you want? SO your channels are in the form of WXYZDT and 232 is the channel number? (Of course your stations and channel numbers will be different. That example is mine.) Or are you using 5.2 as the channel numbers? And you scanned both tuners in the HDHR setup? Did you try the view button and did you see a strength signal meter? Any audio? Worse case you can open a support ticket with SiliconDust and enable debug logging. They might see something. Or shutdown Sage and set debug_logging=TRUE in your sage.properties file. Sage will generate a log file of errors.

Gerry

[rob_campbell]

OK, so I did some comparisons between the machine that is working and my DVR which is not tuning. AI compared the .frq and .scn files and they are set up the same. HOWEVER, one big differecne I see now is that on the DVR box, when I go to channel setup, I see the remap buttons, but NO "VIEW" buttons. So I assume something is very amiss here. I will search around for the issue, but if you can let me know any ideas fo what I have set up wrong maybe you could save me some time.
Also, I enabled debugging and checked the logs and everything there looks good as far as I can tell.

Thanks again for the help!
Rob

[Opus4]

OK, so I did some comparisons between the machine that is working and my DVR which is not tuning. AI compared the .frq and .scn files and they are set up the same.Are they both trying to use the HDHR at the same time?

HOWEVER, one big differecne I see now is that on the DVR box, when I go to channel setup, I see the remap buttons, but NO "VIEW" buttons. So I assume something is very amiss here.That simply means that you have video playback on menus disabled. Use the Options command while on the Channel Setup menu to get to the Video Menu Options.


I'm assuming you've followed these instructions exactly: HDHR setup for Windows.

If it seems to be configured fine with the latest HDHR drivers & the latest SageTV beta for v6.5, then do what Gerry said & contact tech support. If you contact SageTV, they will probably eventually ask to see both the debug log and native log, from this FAQ.

- Andy

[rob_campbell]

Are they both trying to use the HDHR at the same time?

That simply means that you have video playback on menus disabled. Use the Options command while on the Channel Setup menu to get to the Video Menu Options.


I'm assuming you've followed these instructions exactly: HDHR setup for Windows.

If it seems to be configured fine with the latest HDHR drivers & the latest SageTV beta for v6.5, then do what Gerry said & contact tech support. If you contact SageTV, they will probably eventually ask to see both the debug log and native log, from this FAQ.

- Andy

Andy,
I will try to follow that document exactly tonight and see what happens. And no, the other machine is not trying to tune at the same time. Made sure of that, and also since I am able to tune channels through TotalMedia successfully. I enabled the video on menus and now I see that View button on the channel setup screen. And when I click it, I immediately get the 0% signal strength bar.

Thanks,
Rob

[Clift]

Silly question:
Did you close down SageTv (and the service if in service mode) after doing the scan? I remember there being something like that when i set up my HDHR where if you didn't exit out of Sage and start back up you wouldn't get a signal from the HDHR.

[rob_campbell]

Silly question:
Did you close down SageTv (and the service if in service mode) after doing the scan? I remember there being something like that when i set up my HDHR where if you didn't exit out of Sage and start back up you wouldn't get a signal from the HDHR.

I'm not sure if I did or not. I will also give that a try and see if it helps at all. Thanks!

[gplasky]

Andy,
I will try to follow that document exactly tonight and see what happens. And no, the other machine is not trying to tune at the same time. Made sure of that, and also since I am able to tune channels through TotalMedia successfully. I enabled the video on menus and now I see that View button on the channel setup screen. And when I click it, I immediately get the 0% signal strength bar.

Thanks,
Rob

If you're getting 0% signal when you click the view button something is configured wrong. Even when I got no signal, using the view button I got my signal strength of 85%-100% showing. I just had to rescan the channels to get the picture and audio back.

Gerry

[rob_campbell]

If you're getting 0% signal when you click the view button something is configured wrong. Even when I got no signal, using the view button I got my signal strength of 85%-100% showing. I just had to rescan the channels to get the picture and audio back.

Gerry

Yep, that's kind of what I figured. Especially since I am able to tune fine in the other TotalMedia app. I will try again tonight and if not successful, I will post some snippets of the setup from the HDHR and Sage side. I am just surprised things would not be correct after following the same setup procedure I have done on the other machine which worked right out of the box with no special tinkering.

Thanks again.

[gplasky]

Either something's missing or something is in the way. You may want to amke sure to remove Sage completely from the server. (Uninstall and delete the directory) Do you have any other tuners? If you did I would get Sage working with those first.

Quick question-once you changed the station name and number in the HDHR app, did you "Map to different Logical Number" after your scan in Sage? So that when you were done adding the source in Sage and remapping and enabled it the first line in for each Channel Setup would look like 231-WXYZDT-[82-1008-231]

Gerry

[rob_campbell]

OK, So I collected some debugging info, and sent it to Sage support. If you have a minute and are good with the Sage logs, I have attached what I sent to them. I can see some problems when it does the channel scan, but I am not sure what to read into the logs.

The attached zip contains my SCN and FRQ files, sage.properties, log file from the channel scan.

Gerry,
FYI, I do not have any other tuners in this box, and I have uninstalled and re-installed sage twice to try to fix this (deleting the whole dir when I did it)
An example channel from the scan looks like this in the SCN and FRQ files:
CH:4 major:11 minor:1 prog:2 phy:75 frq:529250000 mod:0 #:KARE
which then shows up on my Sage channel listing as
11-1 - KARE - [75-11-1]
I did not remap anything with these channels, as they look correct as far as I can tell.

Thanks.
Rob

[malbec]

This may sound weird, but this was my experience ... FWIW.

Had all the same issues you had, then finally noticed in the HD Homerun setup interface the signal strength for one tuner was much weaker than the other. It turned out to be a shotty coax cable. Nonetheless, VLC would pick up the good tuner (everything looked okay), but Sage would tune into the bad tuner ("no signal" message received)

After replacing the cable, it worked ... except for a few channels that worked intermittently. Upon pursuing further, my signal strength would hover between 78% and 85% on these channels. After getting a booster, the signal strength jumped to 93-98%. I have had no problems since and have had considerably fewer problems playing back recorded files ... other than having to reinstall the BDA drivers after updating Sage to a new version... you have already tried that one though.

Anyway, in case it helps. Good luck!

[gplasky]

OK, So I collected some debugging info, and sent it to Sage support. If you have a minute and are good with the Sage logs, I have attached what I sent to them. I can see some problems when it does the channel scan, but I am not sure what to read into the logs.

The attached zip contains my SCN and FRQ files, sage.properties, log file from the channel scan.

Gerry,
FYI, I do not have any other tuners in this box, and I have uninstalled and re-installed sage twice to try to fix this (deleting the whole dir when I did it)
An example channel from the scan looks like this in the SCN and FRQ files:
CH:4 major:11 minor:1 prog:2 phy:75 frq:529250000 mod:0 #:KARE
which then shows up on my Sage channel listing as
11-1 - KARE - [75-11-1]
I did not remap anything with these channels, as they look correct as far as I can tell.

Thanks.
Rob

I just took a quick look. I'm assuming in the system info text file you edited your IP address? If not-you don't have a legit IP address on that machine.

Gerry

[carlgar]

The attached zip contains my SCN and FRQ files, sage.properties, log file from the channel scan.

Where is the Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 10157BB8-1-0-QAM.frq file? Are you scanning both tuners or just one? You need to scan both.

[rob_campbell]

Where is the Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 10157BB8-1-0-QAM.frq file? Are you scanning both tuners or just one? You need to scan both.

I did scan both, but just attached the one. They both were identical.

[rob_campbell]

I just took a quick look. I'm assuming in the system info text file you edited your IP address? If not-you don't have a legit IP address on that machine.

Gerry

I did not edit the IP in the system info text. I will have to check tonight, but I wonder if the snapshot automatically masks it for security reasons? If not, yes it definitely looks bunk. Something else to check.

Thanks.

[rob_campbell]

One more random setup question:
- Where does HDHR store its state information..IE : zip code, what app the tuners are set to use, enabled channels, etc.?
The reason I ask is that I have uninstalled HDHR software and wiped that directory out, then when I reinstalled it, it comes up with my current zip code, tuners set to use Sage, and has the same channels enabled/disabled that I set before I uninstalled. I am wondering if there is some bad config information that is getting cached somewhere that I need to wipe out and reinstall HDHR.

Thanks.

[gplasky]

One more random setup question:
- Where does HDHR store its state information..IE : zip code, what app the tuners are set to use, enabled channels, etc.?
The reason I ask is that I have uninstalled HDHR software and wiped that directory out, then when I reinstalled it, it comes up with my current zip code, tuners set to use Sage, and has the same channels enabled/disabled that I set before I uninstalled. I am wondering if there is some bad config information that is getting cached somewhere that I need to wipe out and reinstall HDHR.

Thanks.
It's called Digital Cable.xml and it is stored in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Silicondust\HDHomeRun directory. (On XP and WHS. Vista under Default User I believe.)

Gerry

[rob_campbell]

BTW, I checked the system info today after restating, and it now shows my valid IP. But still didn't make a difference in tuning the HDHR. I will have to wait and see what the Sage support guy says. Thanks for the help.

Rob