QAM channel scan unreliable, reports DTV-x-y; testers wanted

[JustFred]

For as long as I've been running Sage7, doing a channel scan with any internal tuner (Hauppauge HVR 1250, 1600, 1800, 2250, etc) on my cable system (Suddenlink, which uses clear QAM) has never worked correctly.

The channel scan **usually** reported almost all program names as "DTV-x-y" instead of, e.g. "KCRA". It would often skip some channels. Subsequent channel scans almost always reported a huge number of changes since the last scan (nearly half of the 110-channel cable system), even if it was only minutes ago. It was impossible to get a stable set of scans. The presence of multiple tuners using the same channel lineup made the problem even worse. This meant a huge effort to manually identify and remap almost all of the 110 channels. The problem didn't exist in Sage6. Sadly, SageTv was bought by Google before the problem could be reported to the developers. With the cable co's frequent changes to the channel lineup, it drove me to dump my internal Hauppauge tuners and replace them with SiliconDust HDHRs several years ago. But I'd like to return to using the Hauppauge tuners.

With Sage now open source, it's been possible to track down the problem and produce a fix. It's been tested using my 4 different Hauppauge tuners as well as the HDHRs, with both OTA/ATSC and my cable co (SL). A pull request has been submitted and should be in the master repo soon.

Due to the nature of the underlying problem (and the "interesting" implementations of various program providers), it would be useful to see the fix tested on other cable systems and DVB (satellite). Please consider testing the fix even if you didn't experience the problem; that'll give confidence that we haven't regressed. Feedback from other Suddenlink users is also useful.

To try the channel-scan fix, simply replace TSSplitter.ax on your (Windows) SageTv server. I've provided 2 versions of this file. Use the Sage7 one with official Sage7 binaries (or a hybrid of mostly Sage7 files + the few Sage9 .exe's from here http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62531). Otherwise, the Sage9 .ax file is the one to use if you're running the Sage9 open source code you compiled under vs2015.

1. Download and rename (not unzip) the appropriate .ax file (they're not really .zip files; the .zip extension is just to avoid a forum limitation).
2. Shut down SageTv and stop the SageTv service, if it's running.
3. Backup the entire Sage program folder. The fix shouldn't affect your existing recordings or wiz.bin, but it may affect the existing sage.properties file when you do a channel scan.
4. Replace the existing TSSplitter.ax in SageTv\Common.
5. In the SageTv\SageTv folder, create a file NATIVE_LOG.ENABLE (this turns on debug logging).
6. Restart SageTv.
7. Do a channel scan, either a full or update scan.
8. Review the results.
9. Do another channel scan.
10. Review the results. They should be reasonably consistent with the previous scan.
11. Stop SageTv, remove the NATIVE_LOG.ENABLE file (to disable the debug logging) and restart Sage.
12. Please report your results and include the Native.log file from SageTv/SageTv. This will help determine if additional tweeks are still needed.

[rxnelson]

My machine says the zip files are invalid?

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by rxnelson

My machine says the zip files are invalid?

Re-read step 1 in the post above yours.

[rxnelson]

Directions? What are those? Ooops

[rkulagow]

If there's some way to export a QAM scan then I've already got a mechanism in the Schedules Direct JSON service to incorporate QAM data to make scanning / correlating potentially simpler for other's that are on the same headend.

[JustFred]

Has anyone tried out this fix? We were hoping to get some user feedback prior to pulling the change into the open-source repo.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by JustFred

Has anyone tried out this fix? We were hoping to get some user feedback prior to pulling the change into the open-source repo.

I try it and dosen't work with my WinTV-dualHD TV Tuner

[JustFred]

@shs: The errors in the logs are unrelated to the code-change for channel scan. Any chance the wrong TSSplitter.ax file (v9 vs. v7) was used? Which version of Sage are you running? Can you include the Native.log file?

[SHS]

Originally Posted by JustFred

@shs: The errors in the logs are unrelated to the code-change for channel scan. Any chance the wrong TSSplitter.ax file (v9 vs. v7) was used? Which version of Sage are you running? Can you include the Native.log file?

v9.0.4 exe with v9.0.3.178 jar with your TSSplitter.ax 328kb in fact I try both ver and that was no go as there point in a starting a scan as will not start any way
All that in it is
01/06/2016 18:28:11 QAM Cache is disabled
01/06/2016 18:28:11 Channel is open (ver 3.0.4)

Now I was to restore the stock TSSplitter.ax that come with SageTV it come with
01/06/2016 18:29:50 QAM Cache is disabled
01/06/2016 18:29:50 Channel is open (ver 3.0.4)
01/06/2016 18:29:50 Create Remuxer
01/06/2016 18:29:50 TS Filter created ( ver.2.0.9 )
01/06/2016 18:29:50 PSI Filter created ( ver.2.0.1 )
01/06/2016 18:29:50 PSI format Unknown
01/06/2016 18:29:50 TS Parser is created version 2.0.4 .
01/06/2016 18:29:50 Maxium PAT number:6 PMT number:80 Packet length:188
01/06/2016 18:29:50 PTSFIX threshold:0:0:5.000'000.0
01/06/2016 18:29:51 Open slot 0.
01/06/2016 18:29:51 PS Builder is created version 2.0.1 ZQ..
01/06/2016 18:29:51 Set default EPG language "eng".
01/06/2016 18:29:51 Set default audio language "eng".
01/06/2016 18:29:51 'Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD TS Capture.par' is not exist.
01/06/2016 18:29:51 Set parser delay time 500 on 'Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD TS Capture'.

[JustFred]

No idea what's causing the failure. The log shows that it doesn't even get to the point of executing my new code.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by JustFred

No idea what's causing the failure. The log shows that it doesn't even get to the point of executing my new code.

I guest I could dig the my HVR 2250 and test it

[SHS]

That still go with HVR 2250 in my Server
There have be some thing miss
May be some you have that we don't Install
Have test on system that only has SageTV install and Java with no other apps

[SHS]

Bingo after hex editing your file I fig out what up you forgot to add one very Super IMPORTANT Note: that WE need to install the Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable for your file to work

[SHS]

It dose better then stock SageTV TSSplitter.ax filter but no where near as good as WinTV when it should be only pick up 105 channel and not any local as they are not viewable
Here three set of logs

[JustFred]

It's expected that the TSSplitter.ax for v9 requires the vs2015 redistributable run-time libraries. Anyone running the "full" set of Sage v9 binaries that they compiled would need these libraries. The v9 .ax file is only for use with the full set of v9 native binaries. Microsoft says that these runtime libraries are inherently present in Win10, but I haven't verified this myself.

On the other hand, the v7 .ax file shouldn't have been referencing the VS2015 libraries and was intended to work using the libraries already present for Sage7. It looks like there's a problem with my build environment (compiler configuration) used to build the v7 version. The v7 version was successfully tested on two of my Sage7 boxes, so I need to look further into this.

The good news: Looking at your logs, the channel scan fix is working correctly with your cable company (which doesn't seem to present any unexpected program stream pkts).

Like you, I've also noticed that Hauppauge's WinTv channel scan generally does a much better job than does Sage. WinTv is also much faster: approx 30 seconds vs. Sage's 30 minutes, in my case.

My current fix doesn't attempt to address anything other than Sage's inability to report the correct channel names. One thing at a time.

[SHS]

It not in Windows 10 that sure as it on my laptop system that was using Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD on.

Originally Posted by JustFred

My current fix doesn't attempt to address anything other than Sage's inability to report the correct channel names. One thing at a time.

Ok sound good

[JustFred]

@shs: Can you give me some more details about what you found using the hex editor on the v7 file? I see only the expected references to the msvcr120-vintage runtime libraries that Sage7 uses.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by JustFred

@shs: Can you give me some more details about what you found using the hex editor on the v7 file? I see only the expected references to the msvcr120-vintage runtime libraries that Sage7 uses.

v9 dll
I haven't look at v7 dll

[SHS]

Originally Posted by JustFred

@shs: Can you give me some more details about what you found using the hex editor on the v7 file? I see only the expected references to the msvcr120-vintage runtime libraries that Sage7 uses.

Your up date TSSplitter.ax for v7 dose need Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable that dose fix it
SageTV vintage runtime libraries is base on Visual C++ 2005

[JustFred]

I fixed the compiler problem that caused the Sage 7 .ax file to reference the wrong runtime libraries. The new binary has been verified on several Sage systems. Posting #1 in this thread has been updated with the new download.