OpenDCT: An open source digital cable tuner.

[jgsouthard]

Originally Posted by jgsouthard

I just installed 0.4.35 Beta, and it seems to work fine on initial testing. But I noticed something odd in the logs. The time stamps in wrapper.log are correct, but the time stamps in opendct.log are all one hour earlier than the correct time.

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

That might be a daylight savings oversight in log4j2. Have you tried restarting the service?

Stopping and restarting the service didn't resolve it, but it resolved itself at midnight last night. After looking more closely at the log, it had nothing to do with 0.4.35 but was clearly related to the Daily Savings Time change yesterday.

At 2:00 AM local time yesterday morning (Sunday), when my system time jumped ahead one hour for DST, wrapper.log time stamps immediately tracked the change and jumped ahead one hour as well, but opendct.log did not. I was still running 0.4.28 at that point. For the rest of the day yesterday, and continuing after I updated to 0.4.35, opendct.log remained one hour behind; but at midnight last night opendct.log also jumped ahead one hour and the times re-sync'd. For whatever reason, opendct.log apparently didn't recognize the time change until the date changed as well.

[waylo]

Would someone mind looking into why SageTV couldn't initiate 2 recordings last night? Oddly enough they were recorded just fine early the next AM as they were replayed on the same station.

**Looks like I had the SageTV logging turned off so I don't have those to provide, but I have turned it back on for future events.

As mentioned earlier by another user, the log timing is off by 1 hour but I suspect that's from DST, so the events start in some of the logs at 20:00, though technically it was 9pm.

[waylo]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

For a little while I thought we couldn't get the Music Choice type content to work with FFmpeg reliably and I was going to add the ability to use a different consumer based on the channel being tuned, but the reliability started to shape up and I thought that might be a little tedious. OpenDCT does also have a raw consumer, but I haven't really had a good reason to use it in a while. The raw consumer is opendct.consumer.RawSageTVConsumerImpl and would be the equivalent to dump in SageDCT.

Wow, very impressive that these options are baked in already!

You completely read my thoughts on if a channel-dependent consumer setting could be instituted. I can only imagine how tedious it could be for you!

[waylo]

Originally Posted by jarredduq

Music Choice is working for me with OpenDCT. It does take about 10 seconds to tune a music channel for some reason...

Interesting. And once tuned, it will play continuously?

Looking at your setup, you have a similar arrangement as me, except you are on Win7x32 and I'm on x64. How does your HD-PVR play into your system?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by waylo

Would you mind looking into why SageTV couldn't initiate 2 recordings last night? Oddly enough they were recorded just fine early the next AM as they were replayed on the same station.

**Looks like I had the SageTV logging turned off so I don't have those to provide, but I have turned it back on for future events.

As mentioned earlier by another user, the log timing is off by 1 hour but I suspect that's from DST, so the events start in some of the logs at 20:00, though technically it was 9pm.

Almost everything I saw suggested you had some very interesting network related event when the recordings were trying to start. I find it unlikely that all of the HDHomeRuns went down at the same time, but the communication is mostly failed attempts to talk to them with the reason being that they are unreachable. The only other explanation that I can think of for them all going down like that would be if you're running a script to reboot them periodically.

I won't say that it's not OpenDCT's fault, but we have been down this road and the HDHomeRun communication code is fairly solid now, so if it says the device was unreachable, that's probably what happened. The only thing I can think of is if the IP addresses changed suddenly, but OpenDCT will handle that situation in less than a minute.

Sorry about the channel update thing happening every second. It's static, so nothing is actually happening other than the log entry. That's the result of some well meaning code that tries to get lineups without any content updated immediately. The next release fixes it.

[waylo]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Almost everything I saw suggested you had some very interesting network related event when the recordings were trying to start. I find it unlikely that all of the HDHomeRuns went down at the same time, but the communication is mostly failed attempts to talk to them with the reason being that they are unreachable. The only other explanation that I can think of for them all going down like that would be if you're running a script to reboot them periodically.

I won't say that it's not OpenDCT's fault, but we have been down this road and the HDHomeRun communication code is fairly solid now, so if it says the device was unreachable, that's probably what happened. The only thing I can think of is if the IP addresses changed suddenly, but OpenDCT will handle that situation in less than a minute.

Sorry about the channel update thing happening every second. It's static, so nothing is actually happening other than the log entry. That's the result of some well meaning code that tries to get lineups without any content updated immediately. The next release fixes it.

Thanks for the debug attempt! Sure wish I had my Sagetv log running to see if something is happening within the program itself. Just odd that it worked 2 hours later with no hiccup.

I do not have any reboot scripts that I am aware of. I have used SageDCT and PNE previously, but the SageDCT service is not running anymore, and I removed the runnable class entry for PNE. I don't think either have restart scripts built into their default function (I have not erased their mmc/encoder entries from the sage.properties file, but if SageTV is not configured to use those entries, I can not imagine that affecting anything).

I do have WMC (for DRM viewing) and a Kodi PVR server plugin running on the same system (perhaps a little too much of everything), but none were doing anything to the HDHR Prime at that time.

When running PNE, I'd have similar issues with difficult starts of recording (usually if there was a recording overlap), with occasional total aborts of recording just like above. For some reason Sunday nights tended to really set it off.

I'll keep an eye out for the next repeat occurrence and hopefully will have better revealing logs.

Re: music stations, I tried the newer 'trans' consumer but unfortunately have the same results. I'll try the raw/dump consumer next just for thoroughness. Is there any drawback to using the raw consumer in general?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by waylo

Thanks for the debug attempt! Sure wish I had my Sagetv log running to see if something is happening within the program itself. Somewhat odd that it worked 2 hours later with no hiccup.

When running PNE, I'd have similar issues with difficult starts of recording (usually if there was a recording overlap), with occasional total aborts of recording just like above. For some reason Sunday nights tended to really set it off.

I'll keep an eye out for the next repeat occurrence and hopefully will have better revealing logs.

Re: music stations, I tried the newer 'trans' consumer but unfortunately have the same results. I'll try the raw/dump consumer next just for thoroughness. Is there any drawback to using the raw consumer in general?

The only real drawback to doing raw is that you run a higher chance of creating recordings that SageTV can't playback without remuxing the file post recording. With FiOS, I was using dump and SageDCT almost the entire way up to when I changed over to OpenDCT full time. Less than 5% of my recordings needed to be remuxed. It was just enough to be noticed, but not enough to get really irritated. I understand with Comcast things can be far worse without remuxing. If raw works for you I'll add the ability to select the consumer based on the channel in the future.

[jarredduq]

Originally Posted by waylo

Interesting. And once tuned, it will play continuously?

Looking at your setup, you have a similar arrangement as me, except you are on Win7x32 and I'm on x64. How does your HD-PVR play into your system?

I had music playing for over 3 hours today with no issues. The HD-PVR is hooked up to a cable box for HBO and other premium channels. I use a USB-UIRT infrared blaster to change channels on the cable box.

[waylo]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

The only real drawback to doing raw is that you run a higher chance of creating recordings that SageTV can't playback without remuxing the file post recording. With FiOS, I was using dump and SageDCT almost the entire way up to when I changed over to OpenDCT full time. Less than 5% of my recordings needed to be remuxed. It was just enough to be noticed, but not enough to get really irritated. I understand with Comcast things can be far worse without remuxing. If raw works for you I'll add the ability to select the consumer based on the channel in the future.

Just ran the raw consumer and the music stations are working well again, as we might have guessed!

Ahh, I do remember getting those SageDCT playback errors. I don't remember the exact percentage, but they were a bit frustrating when they occurred, as it was unpredictable as to which recordings were boobytrapped, and attempts to play them would freeze the system for several minutes at least!

[pjaffray]

I am getting a bunch "Halt Detected" messages still with 0.4.35.

Environment is:
Win 10 Pro x64
Java 8 update 73 (32-bit)
OpenDCT 0.4.35 (32-bit)
SageTV v9

I (hope I) have attached the OpenDCT and Wrapper log files.

Any helpful advice is appreciated.

Paul

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by pjaffray

I am getting a bunch "Halt Detected" messages still with 0.4.35.

Environment is:
Win 10 Pro x64
Java 8 update 73 (32-bit)
OpenDCT 0.4.35 (32-bit)
SageTV v9

I (hope I) have attached the OpenDCT and Wrapper log files.

Any helpful advice is appreciated.

Paul

I'm reasonably sure it has the correct local IP address of 192.168.200.2 since you're using the card internally. The log is literally saying OpenDCT is not receiving any UDP packets from the InfiniTV. The InfiniTV doesn't appear to be having any problems accepting the tuning requests.

One possible scenario is you have a firewall problem. Make sure none of your interfaces are using the public firewall profile. Someone else ran into that about a month ago and that was the problem. If you're not using the Windows firewall, try disabling the third party firewall temporarily.

The other one might be that you don't have a good enough signal. The CCI is coming in as None which means either the channel is not encrypted or nothing is coming in at all. Your signal level of -45.1 dBmV is well below the good range of -12 and +12 with 0 dBmV being ideal. Also make certain that the coax didn't snap out of your card. Check out the link below for more details.

http://www.cetoncorp.com/support/ind...evel-explained

[pjaffray]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I'm reasonably sure it has the correct local IP address of 192.168.200.2 since you're using the card internally. The log is literally saying OpenDCT is not receiving any UDP packets from the InfiniTV. The InfiniTV doesn't appear to be having any problems accepting the tuning requests.

One possible scenario is you have a firewall problem. Make sure none of your interfaces are using the public firewall profile. Someone else ran into that about a month ago and that was the problem. If you're not using the Windows firewall, try disabling the third party firewall temporarily.

The other one might be that you don't have a good enough signal. The CCI is coming in as None which means either the channel is not encrypted or nothing is coming in at all. Your signal level of -45.1 dBmV is well below the good range of -12 and +12 with 0 dBmV being ideal. Also make certain that the coax didn't snap out of your card. Check out the link below for more details.

http://www.cetoncorp.com/support/ind...evel-explained

Thanks for the quick response. I have the Windows Firewalls turned off so that shouldn't be an issue. I will check the coax connection on the back. It looks like a pretty fragile connection and I did physically move the box yesterday.

FYI, my signature is way out of date. I just noticed it so I will be updating that as well.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by pjaffray

Thanks for the quick response. I have the Windows Firewalls turned off so that shouldn't be an issue. I will check the coax connection on the back. It looks like a pretty fragile connection and I did physically move the box yesterday.

FYI, my signature is way out of date. I just noticed it so I will be updating that as well.

I actually broke the connector off of my InfiniTV 4 last year. Ceton told me they don't support that model anymore, so I ordered the broken part from China for 50 cents and replaced it myself. The card is now used as a ClearQAM tuner. 12 DCT's is more than enough; I really don't need 18.

[pjaffray]

So, I scheduled a bunch of concurrent recordings (I think I had 5 shows recording at the same time) last night and everything worked great, no Halts, no Missed Recordings.

Thanks for all your hard work on this.

[Brent94Z]

Just wanted to say THANKS for this!

I've been using 2 HDHRs (4 tuners total) and an HDPVR for quite some time. I've had a HDHR Prime for well over and been paying for the cable card but never used it because I never quite got SageDCT up and running properly, didn't have time, and just kind of gave up.

I decided to give this a shot. While I can get around a computer pretty good, I'm not at all good with much of anything you plugin guys do and know second hand. I will say I tried following the instructions but they were a bit confusing for me (like how to not look at tuners... just wanted to look at the Prime unit and not my two older HDHRs) so I ended up just going through it to where OpenDCT looked at everything. That seemed to work OK for me because I only selected the Prime tuners when I got into Sage. It didn't take long at all to have everything up and running just fine!

I've set the encoder merit so my HDHRs are first (get most networks) and the 3 Prime tuners are next, then last is the HD PVR. I've had it going for a few days now with no changes to any settings and it just seems to work and work well!

Thank you!

[EnterNoEscape]

You are welcome. I have very much have been enjoying working on this project. Strangely one of the most rewarding things for me feature-wise is being able to use the channel preview and it actually works as well as any other tuner in SageTV.

We really wanted to make it easy as possible if you don't want anything special. The defaults are pretty much the just make it work settings.

Excluding tuners is really only necessary if you don't want to see them as an option in SageTV or you have devices such as the InfiniTV in use somewhere else that don't have a way to say they are currently in use by another application which would block OpenDCT from stopping them unintentionally when the service stops.

[jarredduq]

I noticed that close captions are working on OWN, channel 820 on Comcast in the Bay Area, which is an MPEG4 H.264 conversion.

I'm using the latest beta 0.4.35.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

......If raw works for you I'll add the ability to select the consumer based on the channel in the future.

If you end up adding this you should consider doing in a way similar to the way comskip does: individual channel numbers and/or channel number range i.e. 500-600.

That way not all channels need to be handeled individually.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

If you end up adding this you should consider doing in a way similar to the way comskip does: individual channel numbers and/or channel number range i.e. 500-600.

That way not all channels need to be handeled individually.

There is one problem with this. SageTV does not actually use numbers for channels. They are actually strings. For example when tuning ATSC, OpenDCT could get 49-8-1. Without the internal remapping for ClearQAM, the situation would be the same there too. How does the Comskip plugin know if it's supposed to be a range or if it is literally a channel? Is it just that if there are two dashes it's not a range?

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

......How does the Comskip plugin know if it's supposed to be a range or if it is literally a channel? Is it just that if there are two dashes it's not a range?

I don't remember the nitty gritty details of how it worked but - you could set up channels/ranges to ignore. I was using DirecTV at the time and didn't need to run comskip on my premium channels so I configured 500-599 to be excluded by comskip.

I suppose you could use another seperator in listings for ranges i.e. 10-1,17-1,500~599 where 10-1 & 17-1 are individual channels and 500~599 is a range.