Fresh install problem with SageTV 9 and HDHR tuners

[rswoods]

Hi,

I've been using Sage since ~2009, with hardly any issues at all. In light of the upcoming EPG changes, I decided to do a fresh install with the latest version to take advantage of Schedules Direct. I made a backup of the SageTV directory, and then wiped the original directory and did a fresh install of Sage 9.1.5.683. I then restored wiz.bin to retain existing recordings, favorites, etc. Existing recordings work just fine, no issues whatsoever.

But I am having a problem setting up video sources. I have 2 HDHR tuners. Sage sees them just fine, but I am unable to watch live TV and when I try and do a channel scan I'm getting zero tunable channels. And when I try and preview a channel, I get:

There was a Capture Error in playback. Details:
ERROR (-2,0x80004005): There was a problem using a SageTV component. Please reinstall the SageTV application.

An accompanying error is:

There was a Capture Error in playback. Details:
ERROR (-2,0x80040204): There was a problem using a SageTV component. Please reinstall the SageTV application.

The System Message that is logged is:

Error - Capture Device Failure while Starting Recording
The capture device input Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 103D84ED-0 Digital TV Tuner had a failure while trying to start the recording of "showname".

When I run the HDHR software, channel scans work fine.

I've GOT to be missing something simple, but I've been messing with this for the last 3+ hours with no success. Any assistance greatly appreciated.

Thanks

edit: the server environment is still what's in my sig..

[wayner]

OTA uses MPEG-2, do you have any MPEG-2 codecs installed? V7 came with them, but V9 does not as they require a fee. If you do a V7-V9 upgrade then they will remain, if you do a fresh install you need to install LAV filters. Search hear for LAV and you will find more info.

[rswoods]

Thanks for responding...

I did not wipe the server, just the SageTV directory (after backing it up). Would I still need to check into LAV?

And FWIW, at first I did try upgrading my existing installation to the latest, but this issue cropped up, so I decided to do a clean install of Sage.

...I'm having to relearn everything... It's been so long since I've had to mess with Sage that I've forgotten much.

[wayner]

You could try LAV - it shouldn't hurt anything. You could check for sure if this is the problem by playing back content. If you can play back H.264 content, or AVIs or MKVs, but not MPEG-2 then that is the problem for sure.

[UgaData]

If you were using the Sage supplied codec you will need something else now.

Even if you still have the codecs installed within the OS, you may need to go into Setup Details and choose the codec your using. Especially since v9 does not include any codec.

Choosing the codec will also apply if you go with LAV filters (or any others codec).

[rswoods]

I can play back previously recorded shows with no problem. They're saved as MPG. Are they MPEG-2s? I can also play AVIs.

Is there a setting under General/Video-Audio that I might need to change?

It's just strange to me that all existing files play fine.

And again, this same issue appeared when I upgraded my existing installation.

[rswoods]

OK, I installed the LAV filters from here.

https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases

I restarted Sage, and in detailed setup there is no LAV listed in MPEG2 compatible codecs. In the list of all codecs, I cannot see anything related to LAV.

I searched the forum for LAV but could not find anything on how to set it up.

Thanks for your patience.....

[wnjj]

Any help in this thread?

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61660

[rswoods]

Thanks, but no...

I know the HDHR tuners work. I can watch TV using their app.

I know they used to work just fine in Sage, before upgrading.

I rebooted the server, and the LAV codecs now appear in Sage. I chose "LAV Video Decoder" and am still getting the same error message:

Error - Capture Device Failure while Starting Recording
The capture device input Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 103D84ED-0 Digital TV Tuner had a failure while trying to start the recording of "showname".

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by rswoods

Thanks, but no...

I know the HDHR tuners work. I can watch TV using their app.

I know they used to work just fine in Sage, before upgrading.

I rebooted the server, and the LAV codecs now appear in Sage. I chose "LAV Video Decoder" and am still getting the same error message:

Error - Capture Device Failure while Starting Recording
The capture device input Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 103D84ED-0 Digital TV Tuner had a failure while trying to start the recording of "showname".

At least one guy in that thread had EXACTLY your symptoms:

I received my HDHomerun and set it up on SageTV server.

SageTV did detected two tuners and installed it but when I tried to tune in the channels from SageTV channel guide, I get is black screen and no signal box. 

HDHomerun setup software are able to find all the channels and play back all the channels fine. 

I did a channel scan in SageTV itself and it found no channels.

It wasn't clear to me which thing fixed it for who and it seems some never reported back.

When you scan for channels in SageTV, I think it's supposed to make frq files in the SageTV directory. If you don't have those since you blew away the directory, that may be what's going on. Can you copy those from your backup of V7 as a hack?

[wnjj]

Also, what version of HDHR drivers are you running? If you're still using the ones from 2009, they used to require a setup inside the HDHR software that some people have had to rerun when fresh installing Sage. According to this thread you no longer have to do that with later HDHR software versions.

[rswoods]

At least one guy in that thread had EXACTLY your symptoms:

Yes, I saw that... But it did not help solve my problem...

When you scan for channels in SageTV, I think it's supposed to make frq files in the SageTV directory. If you don't have those since you blew away the directory, that may be what's going on. Can you copy those from your backup of V7 as a hack?

There were new frq files in the new installation directory. I renamed them and replaced them with the files from the backup. Now the error I'm getting is:

ERROR (-12): There was a null object requested to playback.

This is aggravating...

[rswoods]

Also, what version of HDHR drivers are you running?

The latest and greatest. Just updated them today.

[wayner]

I have HDHRs as well but I don't bother doing the scans. The EPG pulls down the channels that I need and then I just manually enable/disable the ones that I want and/or that have a strong enough signal. But I don't think that will help you in this instance anyhow since you seem to not be able to view any content from the tuners.

[rswoods]

I have HDHRs as well but I don't bother doing the scans. The EPG pulls down the channels that I need and then I just manually enable/disable the ones that I want and/or that have a strong enough signal. But I don't think that will help you in this instance anyhow since you seem to not be able to view any content from the tuners.

Correct.

I cannot view live TV (from within Sage), and channel scans throw errors and do not find any tunable channels.

I do not think this is codec related (could be wrong...).

[rswoods]

I'm dyin' here....

When I go to do a channel scan, the .mpgbuf file is generated in the recording directory, but the errors mentioned above are generated, and no channels are found.

If it is codecs, can someone please tell me exactly how to set up the LAV codecs? Or point me to a post, or instructions?

Thanks.

I'll be away from the PC for a while, will check back later.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by rswoods

The latest and greatest. Just updated them today.

Maybe the driver update reset the BDA Compatibility Mode setting? Did you check if it's still set to SageTV in the hdhomerun setup?

[rswoods]

Yeah, it's still set to SageTV.

I see this thread was moved to hardware issues. Not sure about that.... The problems arose when updating to the latest version of Sage. Before updating everything worked fine.

[Tiki]

I assume this is a regular 2-tuner HD Homerun?
I also assume you are trying to use this directly through Sage, not via a network tuner such as OpenDCT?
Did you say if you are using this with digital cable (clear QAM) or over the air (OTA, ATSC)?

If it's QAM, you need to do the scan in the HDHR software first, and that software needs to be set for SageTV, and you need to do it for both tuners. This should create .scn files in the Sage install folder. Then you can go into Sage and have it scan for channels (on both tuners). This scan should be very fast, since it just reads the .scn files and uses them to create few files.

If it's OTA, you shouldn't need to scan in the HDHR software. Just do the scan in Sage (for both tuners). The scan should take a long time as Sage attempts to tune every possible channel, looking for good signals (similar to when you run an auto channel scan on your TV).

If you're using one of the newer HDHR versions that can transcode, you must use the HDHR software to disable the transcoding first. Otherwise, it may send h.264 transcoded data when Sage is the expecting MPEG2 data. By default Sage puts the data from HDHR in a .ts file (MPEG2 transport stream). This container format does not support h.264 encoding. You can also edit the Sage .properties file to force it to store in .mpg files (MPEG2 program stream) instead. This should work with MPEG2 or h.264 encoding.

If f you're using a network encoder, there might be other issues to think about.

[rswoods]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I assume this is a regular 2-tuner HD Homerun?

Yes. I have two of them.

I also assume you are trying to use this directly through Sage, not via a network tuner such as OpenDCT?

Correct. Directly through Sage.

Did you say if you are using this with digital cable (clear QAM) or over the air (OTA, ATSC)?

If it's QAM, you need to do the scan in the HDHR software first, and that software needs to be set for SageTV, and you need to do it for both tuners. This should create .scn files in the Sage install folder. Then you can go into Sage and have it scan for channels (on both tuners). This scan should be very fast, since it just reads the .scn files and uses them to create few files.

If it's OTA, you shouldn't need to scan in the HDHR software. Just do the scan in Sage (for both tuners). The scan should take a long time as Sage attempts to tune every possible channel, looking for good signals (similar to when you run an auto channel scan on your TV).

It's OTA.

The problem is I cannot do a scan in Sage. As soon as I select one of the HDHR tuners as a video source, and click on "Digital TV Tuner", Sage throws an error:

ERROR (-2,0x80004005): There was a problem using a SageTV component. Please reinstall the SageTV application.

If you're using one of the newer HDHR versions that can transcode, you must use the HDHR software to disable the transcoding first.

I do not see an option to disable the transcoding in the HDHomeRun Setup program.

Otherwise, it may send h.264 transcoded data when Sage is the expecting MPEG2 data. By default Sage puts the data from HDHR in a .ts file (MPEG2 transport stream). This container format does not support h.264 encoding. You can also edit the Sage .properties file to force it to store in .mpg files (MPEG2 program stream) instead. This should work with MPEG2 or h.264 encoding.

If f you're using a network encoder, there might be other issues to think about.

I am not using a network encoder.

Thanks for the input. If you can tell me how to disable transcoding for the HDHRs, I would appreciate it. It may be something to try.