Digital OTA Roulette

[Ronno6]

Here is a new wrinkle for me. The primary OTA digital channels (9-1. 2-1, etc.) are sometimes viewable, sometimes "NO SIGNAL," while the secondary channels of the same station are always viewable. No changes, except for starting the computer up. I have not got a handle on if rebooting or restarting Sage has any effect on this, I just know that sometimes they're there, sometimes not. I would have to consider that, since the secondary channels play, antenna position is not an issue. The TV with a OTA HD tuner receives them, just not Sage. The primary channels play fine in "channel setup," just no signal when normal viewing is attempted.
I have tried version 6.3, but am now back to 6.1. The situation is the same in either version.
I am truly puzzled. Any guidance??

[rethdog]

my stand alones OTA dtv tend to have better 'tuners' than my sage box.

i believe once we make the switch to OTA digital they are going to turn the tranmission power up, until that time you may need a better aerial.

[Ronno6]

But, fact remains that the secondary channels work fine, and the primaary channels are working in channel setup mode. Just not when normal viewing is attempted.

[timnelsonic]

Here's a hypothesis: The primary channels are higher resolution and I assume higher bandwidth than the secondaries, so even at the same signal strength, they're probably harder to tune. This may be choking Sage somehow, although it's hard to explain why they would work in preview mode...that doesn't make sense to me either.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Ronno6

Here is a new wrinkle for me. The primary OTA digital channels (9-1. 2-1, etc.) are sometimes viewable, sometimes "NO SIGNAL," while the secondary channels of the same station are always viewable. No changes, except for starting the computer up. I have not got a handle on if rebooting or restarting Sage has any effect on this, I just know that sometimes they're there, sometimes not. I would have to consider that, since the secondary channels play, antenna position is not an issue. The TV with a OTA HD tuner receives them, just not Sage. The primary channels play fine in "channel setup," just no signal when normal viewing is attempted.
I have tried version 6.3, but am now back to 6.1. The situation is the same in either version.
I am truly puzzled. Any guidance??

What tuner(s) are you using?

I am guessing it's a combination of the two replies above - both the fact that your PC tuner isn't as good as your TV tuner, and also that the primary channels are likely higher bandwidth (HD?) and the subchannels are SD.

[Ronno6]

I'm using a Hauppauge 1600. I've been testing this morning, and here's some info: When I started up the HTPC, The primary channels would not play, but in the channel setup mode, I could "view" them with 100% signal strength.I changed the record quality for this tuner, as I have seen that suggested in other threads, but, no help. So, I closed, then reopened Sage application, and now they work. Totally baffling to me.

[camus]

Originally Posted by timnelsonic

Here's a hypothesis: The primary channels are higher resolution and I assume higher bandwidth than the secondaries, so even at the same signal strength, they're probably harder to tune.

All the "channels" are in the same stream. So if you are getting 1, you should be getting them all.

[GKusnick]

Encoding quality has no effect on digital broadcasts, which are already encoded by the broadcaster.

The bandwidth thing is a red herring. The subchannels aren't separate frequencies with lower bandwidth; it's all one channel, on one frequency, with the subchannels encoded as separate program streams within the digital transport stream, like files in a zip archive. "Tuning" a subchannel just means choosing which bits to save and which to throw away.

My guess is that your issue may be a channel mapping issue, such that Sage doesn't always choose the right physical channel (frequency) for a given logical channel number. Either that, or there's a format issue with the transport stream such that Sage can't unpack it reliably. Probably your best bet is to open a support ticket and let them help you debug it.

[timnelsonic]

Gkusnick, thanks for the info on subchannels. I just switched from a DirecTV setup to an HD OTA setup so this space is new to me. Always glad to learn something new.

[wtsitmn]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Encoding quality has no effect on digital broadcasts, which are already encoded by the broadcaster.

Originally Posted by GKusnick

The bandwidth thing is a red herring. The subchannels aren't separate frequencies with lower bandwidth; it's all one channel, on one frequency, with the subchannels encoded as separate program streams within the digital transport stream, like files in a zip archive. "Tuning" a subchannel just means choosing which bits to save and which to throw away.

My guess is that your issue may be a channel mapping issue, such that Sage doesn't always choose the right physical channel (frequency) for a given logical channel number. Either that, or there's a format issue with the transport stream such that Sage can't unpack it reliably. Probably your best bet is to open a support ticket and let them help you debug it.

Greg, thanks so much for the tip. I wonder if that’s what’s causing me to get “No Signal” on channel 13.1 from time to time (That’s my local PBS channel here in Dallas). Other clues seem to suggest otherwise, however… I reloaded Sage from scratch, and this time through it showed a different channel in place of 13.1. Upon configuring one tuner, everything seemed fine. Then when I added a second was when problems occurred. I repeated this several times, and it always works fine with one tuner, but screws up when I add a second. Sometimes I get “No Signal” and other times I get a different channel. I tried adding the tuners in different sequences, but the results were the same—that is, the problem doesn’t seem related to a hardware defect. One tuner works fine, using two or three always screws up. FYI, I have three Cat’s Eye 150’s.

My problem with channel 13.1 started only a couple weeks ago, and I had made no changes to my system at all. I wonder if Sage sometimes gets “confused” with data it gets from 13.1, sending it off on the wrong track or something?

[rfutscher]

I have had problems with marginal signals. I have found that if I tune to a lower resolution sub channel that it is easier for the tuner to lock. Once it has locked it then adjust itself to the signal to reject some of the multipath interference. Then I can tune the higher resolution/bit rate sub channels and it will stay locked..

[pawn]

Maybe this will help: I have the HVR1600 as well. When I first set up sage for HD over a year ago, it was pretty much useless. Choppy video, some channels that would lock in with my TV's built in tuner wouldn;t lock in with the Hauppage tuner. I pretty much gave up on it until a couple of months ago and on a whim I installe dthe latest drivers on Hauppage's site. Made all the difference in the world.

[wtsitmn]

Originally Posted by rfutscher

I have had problems with marginal signals. I have found that if I tune to a lower resolution sub channel that it is easier for the tuner to lock. Once it has locked it then adjust itself to the signal to reject some of the multipath interference. Then I can tune the higher resolution/bit rate sub channels and it will stay locked..

The signal I get for channel 13.1 is always 100%. Here is the curious part: When scanning channels, SageTV now assigns 13.1 to 1-13-1, which doesn't work at all. It used to assign to 14-13-1. When I manually change the assignment to 14-13-1, I can tune the channel using one specific tuner when it's already tuned to another channel. However, if I go straight into channel 13.1, I get "No Signal". Weird, hu?!! And if that specific tuner is used to record a program on my schedule, it will work, but not the other tuners.

[gtakacs]

wtsitmn,

I live in DFW and I have the EXACT SAME problem! Well it's very similar. I have issues with KERA 13.1 and I can't record from it. My signal reception is only 71%, not 100% but one tuner gets it perfect another one does not get it. Then when I try to record anything from KERA in the future (whether it's a favorite or a manual recording) it records, or it shows that it's recording then I get nothing at the end.

Yesterday my wife checked and KERA was blank on my TV's built in HD tuner as well, not just in Sage.

Interestingly I also use Hauppauge tuners, I use their external HVR-950.

All other shows/channels seem fine, except for the occasionaly corrupted mpeg problem with "Dancing with the Stars".

See my thread at http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33264

It is very frustrating as I'm tryign to save some kiddie shows for my son and we've been promising him "Clifford the red dog" for two weeks and I've been unsuccessful with recording it.

Please let me know if you find a solution to the problem.

[wtsitmn]

Originally Posted by gtakacs

wtsitmn,

I live in DFW and I have the EXACT SAME problem! Well it's very similar. I have issues with KERA 13.1 and I can't record from it. My signal reception is only 71%, not 100% but one tuner gets it perfect another one does not get it. Then when I try to record anything from KERA in the future (whether it's a favorite or a manual recording) it records, or it shows that it's recording then I get nothing at the end.

Yesterday my wife checked and KERA was blank on my TV's built in HD tuner as well, not just in Sage.

Interestingly I also use Hauppauge tuners, I use their external HVR-950.

All other shows/channels seem fine, except for the occasionaly corrupted mpeg problem with "Dancing with the Stars".

See my thread at http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33264

It is very frustrating as I'm tryign to save some kiddie shows for my son and we've been promising him "Clifford the red dog" for two weeks and I've been unsuccessful with recording it.

Please let me know if you find a solution to the problem.

Thanks so much for the feedback. Over the weekend, I installed SageTV on a different computer just to see what would happen. It worked. It could record from KERA just fine. However, I don't want to use that computer as my PVR (it's underpowered).

I already tried reinstalling SageTV on the computer I'm having problems with, but it didn't help. FYI, I made sure to delete the Sage directory and I even uninstalled and reinstalled the tuner drivers. I had been considering reinstalling everything from scratch, Windows and all. (What a pain!) However, since you're also having the very same problem, it gives me pause.

FYI, I also get blank recordings like you for KERA, which usually get automatically deleted as you described. I discovered that's what Sage does with when it can't tune the channel. On the computer I'm having trouble with, I tried installing other software which was able to successfully tune to KERA satisfactorily. This is a most perplexing problem!

I'm wondering now if there is something the Sage software could do to "try harder" to tune the channel. But what that might be, I haven't a clue! I seems I can't really blame only the SageTV software for not working, but this sure is frustrating!!!

[gtakacs]

Well I have ran more tests last night/this morning, you can read about them in my other thread. I don't think it's the tuners or the computer. I think it's some kind of corrupt stream that SageTV does not handle to the best of its knowledge. I think it'll be a lot of finger pointing with SageTV claiming it's a corrupt stream and there is nothing they can do while KERA will say their stream is just fine.

I also don't think it's about tuning the channel. I would have perfect reception on the channel before and after the recording yet the recording would still be empty. Heck I even have perfect recption during the recording, yet the recording would still get deleted. Hopefully my debug log will explain to Sage engineers what's really happening.

[gtakacs]

wtsitmn,

I think I have kind of figured it out, at least for my problem. It seems like my Tuner #1 can't tune to KERA 13.1, no matter what. My other two tuners, #2 and #3 have no problems with tuning onto KERA at any time.

So I figured a solution would be to change the tuner's merit score so tuners 2 and 3 would have a higher merit than tuner 1. This would allow Sage to use tuner 3 and 2 for recordings before it would use tuner 1. The only time this system would possibly break down is if I'm recording 3 shows at the same time, one from KERA and Sage would schedule that one for tuner 1.

I made the change in my sage.properties file and bumped the mmc/encoders/<SomeNumber>/encoder_merit to 1 for tuner 1 and 2 (Sage starts counting tuners at number 0, so 1 and 2, are 2 and 3 respectively)

Actually there was another problem with this solution. While Sage would now schedule all my recordings using tuner 3 as the first candidate and tuner 2 as the second candidate and only use tuner 1 if I had 3 consecutive shows going, it would still use tuner 1 at random for live TV. This meant that I could not tune to KERA with live TV at times, when Sage would decide to use Tuner 1 for Live TV.

So I had to come up with another solution. I have selected a separate EPG for Tuner 1 than for tuners 2 and 3. This way I could disable KERA on Tuner 1 and still have it for Tuner 2 and 3. Sage only allows channel groups per EPG not per tuner (major mistake, IMHO). Luckily there is a "Dallas/Fort Worth Digital Broadcast" and a "Dallas/Fort Worth Local Broadcast" EPG available with all digital channels so I could use one for tuner 1 and the other for tuners 2 and 3.

Now thanks to the encoder merit Sage still uses tuners 2 and 3 before it would touch tuner 1 but if I go to live TV and it uses Tuner 1 for live TV it switches over to tuner 2 or 3 as soon as select 13.1 as Sage thinks that 13.1 is not available on tuner 1 (and sadly that seems to be the case).

So the bottom line is that one of my hauppauge 950 tuners is broken and can't tune to KERA while the other 2 can just fine. I could toss it and get a replacement or just live with the above solution which seems to work for me fine for now.

I'll give you an update if anything changes.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by gtakacs

wtsitmn,

I think I have kind of figured it out, at least for my problem. It seems like my Tuner #1 can't tune to KERA 13.1, no matter what. My other two tuners, #2 and #3 have no problems with tuning onto KERA at any time.

So I figured a solution would be to change the tuner's merit score so tuners 2 and 3 would have a higher merit than tuner 1. This would allow Sage to use tuner 3 and 2 for recordings before it would use tuner 1. The only time this system would possibly break down is if I'm recording 3 shows at the same time, one from KERA and Sage would schedule that one for tuner 1.

I made the change in my sage.properties file and bumped the mmc/encoders/<SomeNumber>/encoder_merit to 1 for tuner 1 and 2 (Sage starts counting tuners at number 0, so 1 and 2, are 2 and 3 respectively)

Actually there was another problem with this solution. While Sage would now schedule all my recordings using tuner 3 as the first candidate and tuner 2 as the second candidate and only use tuner 1 if I had 3 consecutive shows going, it would still use tuner 1 at random for live TV. This meant that I could not tune to KERA with live TV at times, when Sage would decide to use Tuner 1 for Live TV.

So I had to come up with another solution. I have selected a separate EPG for Tuner 1 than for tuners 2 and 3. This way I could disable KERA on Tuner 1 and still have it for Tuner 2 and 3. Sage only allows channel groups per EPG not per tuner (major mistake, IMHO). Luckily there is a "Dallas/Fort Worth Digital Broadcast" and a "Dallas/Fort Worth Local Broadcast" EPG available with all digital channels so I could use one for tuner 1 and the other for tuners 2 and 3.

Now thanks to the encoder merit Sage still uses tuners 2 and 3 before it would touch tuner 1 but if I go to live TV and it uses Tuner 1 for live TV it switches over to tuner 2 or 3 as soon as select 13.1 as Sage thinks that 13.1 is not available on tuner 1 (and sadly that seems to be the case).

So the bottom line is that one of my hauppauge 950 tuners is broken and can't tune to KERA while the other 2 can just fine. I could toss it and get a replacement or just live with the above solution which seems to work for me fine for now.

I'll give you an update if anything changes.

Check out the current Beta release. It allows for EPG per tuner

[gtakacs]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Check out the current Beta release. It allows for EPG per tuner

I am running the latest 6.4.3 beta. If I have the same EPG set up for all 3 tuners as soon as I take out one channel for one tuner it gets removed for the other as well... Right now my workaround seems to work for me, I'll stick with this setup unless I run into more problems.

[Jesse]

Originally Posted by gtakacs

I am running the latest 6.4.3 beta. If I have the same EPG set up for all 3 tuners as soon as I take out one channel for one tuner it gets removed for the other as well... Right now my workaround seems to work for me, I'll stick with this setup unless I run into more problems.

The new tuner setup is tricky. I missed it when I setup my hdpvr using a directv stb. When you set up a new tuner you have to select something like copy an existing channel lineup rather than use an existing lineup.

HTH

Jesse