OpenDCT: An open source digital cable tuner.

[KryptoNyte]

Thank you, waylo. I got the same suggestion from the staff there. I'll give it a shot.

... and yeah, I still need to solve the tuning problem, that's probably highest on the list at this point. The folks over at Silicondust are determined to make this happen, and let's face it, this could give SageTV some legs for some time yet.

[waylo]

Are you sure your firewalls are open appropriately? OpenDCT does ask automatically I believe, but good to double check, if it's a brand new install.

Can you post your sagetv logs also?

While you're troubleshooting, I would switch the port back to 9000 as I believe that's a prerequisite for how OpenDCT works.

Do you have any other HDHR devices you can use to troubleshoot your new install?

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Thank you, waylo. I got the same suggestion from the staff there. I'll give it a shot.

... and yeah, I still need to solve the tuning problem, that's probably highest on the list at this point. The folks over at Silicondust are determined to make this happen, and let's face it, this could give SageTV some legs for some time yet.

As mentioned on the SD forums, I have this working and I didn't have to do anything weird. One thing that looks like it may be different in my approach is I do not have any of the OTA channels active and no antenna hooked up. Maybe that's confusing things?

[tmiranda]

I recently put together a new Linux server and am using OpenDCT to tune from my HDHR Prime. Comcast is my cable provider.

Shows broadcast in 480 record fine. Shows broadcast in 1080 stutter and are unwatchable. I thought I solved this issue by changing the format of the recording drives from NTFS (the drivers were previously used on a Windows Sage server) to ext4 but alas, it didn't work.

I've searched through this thread and from what I can gather I *think* I should be using the FFMPEG consumer. Is this correct? What specific properties do I need to edit to use this consumer? (There are several that have similar names.)

What is the best way to rule out drive performance as a contributing factor?

Sorry for the silly questions. In the past OpenDCT "just worked" and I never had to mess with it.

Tom

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I recently put together a new Linux server and am using OpenDCT to tune from my HDHR Prime. Comcast is my cable provider.

Shows broadcast in 480 record fine. Shows broadcast in 1080 stutter and are unwatchable. I thought I solved this issue by changing the format of the recording drives from NTFS (the drivers were previously used on a Windows Sage server) to ext4 but alas, it didn't work.

I've searched through this thread and from what I can gather I *think* I should be using the FFMPEG consumer. Is this correct? What specific properties do I need to edit to use this consumer? (There are several that have similar names.)

What is the best way to rule out drive performance as a contributing factor?

Sorry for the silly questions. In the past OpenDCT "just worked" and I never had to mess with it.

Tom

A while back after scouring this thread for best practices I ended up setting the following for each tuner on my Prime (a change to 3 lines as I believe the Docker container I use overwrites the "default" line, so couldn't just change it there):

sagetv.device.374695429.consumer=opendct.consumer.FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl

I/O issues I've forgotten how to diagnose, sorry. I know I switched comskip to run after a show was complete and made it so only one or two instances were running at once because I was getting stuttering.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

As mentioned on the SD forums, I have this working and I didn't have to do anything weird. One thing that looks like it may be different in my approach is I do not have any of the OTA channels active and no antenna hooked up. Maybe that's confusing things?

How strange. My first run at this was via OpenDCT with no antenna connected, worked on it for about 6 hours on Saturday but would always get a "no signal" in SageTV. When selecting tuners in SageTV I do see the short tuner name (SD) and longer tuner name (OpenDCT), and I have eventually tried both with the same results (no signal). I'll PM you an email address and if you're willing to share your OpenDCT properties file and SageTV properties file, I'd sure appreciate it.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

How strange. My first run at this was via OpenDCT with no antenna connected, worked on it for about 6 hours on Saturday but would always get a "no signal" in SageTV. When selecting tuners in SageTV I do see the short tuner name (SD) and longer tuner name (OpenDCT), and I have eventually tried both with the same results (no signal). I'll PM you an email address and if you're willing to share your OpenDCT properties file and SageTV properties file, I'd sure appreciate it.

Hm, I don't see a way to attach a file there, but here you go.

[KarylFStein]

FYI, here's with the Quatro installed. Right now I'm recording 4 streams (2 Premium TV and 2 OTA) on the Quatro for the next few hours with channel changes as well as back-to-back to see what happens, but am able to preview in setup, tune live TV and watch parts of the recordings in progress OK. Note that I did assign a tuner to be OTA (native SageTV tuner device) or streaming (OpenDCT device), but not both.

Are you using OpenDCT for anything else like a Prime? Even if so maybe let it rebuild the properties file for you from scratch. The only thing I've fiddled with manually in the opendct.properties is the consumer type on my Prime devices.

Did you do a channel scan on the HDHR web GUI? I think for the Prime I had to do that for some reason. Not sure about the Duo / Quatro, but did out of habit.

[KryptoNyte]

Thanks, Karyl. I've done all the suggestions at this point except review the SageTV log closely. Once I stop banging my head against the wall, I'll get back into this. It can't be this complicated.

After reviewing the SageTV logs, I believe I'll install one of the openDCT HDHR quatro tuners on my older SageTV server instead of this test machine. I'm wondering if I'm missing something with the clean Sage V9 install on a clean Win7 install.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

A while back after scouring this thread for best practices I ended up setting the following for each tuner on my Prime (a change to 3 lines as I believe the Docker container I use overwrites the "default" line, so couldn't just change it there):

sagetv.device.374695429.consumer=opendct.consumer.FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl

I/O issues I've forgotten how to diagnose, sorry. I know I switched comskip to run after a show was complete and made it so only one or two instances were running at once because I was getting stuttering.

I have the consumer set like this too and also only have one comskip job running at a time. No love. The stuttering and pixelation is terrible and the timeline is totally corrupted.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I have the consumer set like this too and also only have one comskip job running at a time. No love. The stuttering and pixelation is terrible and the timeline is totally corrupted.

Determining I/O issues could be as easy as looking at the logs right after recording something that didn't record well. I don't think I saw you post any of them.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Thanks, Karyl. I've done all the suggestions at this point except review the SageTV log closely. Once I stop banging my head against the wall, I'll get back into this. It can't be this complicated.

After reviewing the SageTV logs, I believe I'll install one of the openDCT HDHR quatro tuners on my older SageTV server instead of this test machine. I'm wondering if I'm missing something with the clean Sage V9 install on a clean Win7 install.

If you can post the logs right after attempting to tune into a station, I'll take a look.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Determining I/O issues could be as easy as looking at the logs right after recording something that didn't record well. I don't think I saw you post any of them.

Attached. Thanks for looking into this.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

If you can post the logs right after attempting to tune into a station, I'll take a look.

Will do, as soon as I get home this evening.

Any of you that have the Premium TV service/device working in SageTV, do you also have a cable card tuner, and it an HDHR or Ceton?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Will do, as soon as I get home this evening.

Any of you that have the Premium TV service/device working in SageTV, do you also have a cable card tuner, and it an HDHR or Ceton?

I did not do anything Special ... I just removed the Quatro from SageTV .. made sure I did a scan in the web-page... I then just added the quatro as a digital tuner using OPENDCT ... Selected the PremiumTV lineup in Schedules direct and that was it. No Scan or nothing needed. I do not recommend using the tuner for both OTA and Premium TV .. can lead to missed recordings.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Will do, as soon as I get home this evening.

Any of you that have the Premium TV service/device working in SageTV, do you also have a cable card tuner, and it an HDHR or Ceton?

I have an HDHR Prime.

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I did not do anything Special ... I just removed the Quatro from SageTV .. made sure I did a scan in the web-page... I then just added the quatro as a digital tuner using OPENDCT ... Selected the PremiumTV lineup in Schedules direct and that was it. No Scan or nothing needed. I do not recommend using the tuner for both OTA and Premium TV .. can lead to missed recordings.

How could you miss recordings?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

I have an HDHR Prime.



How could you miss recordings?

We did some testing on this ....

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...postcount=2382

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...postcount=2388

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

If you can post the logs right after attempting to tune into a station, I'll take a look.

Files are attached. Thanks for any suggestions.

This system is running on a Win 7 64bit laptop, fresh Win 7 and Sage install. The Ceton tuners will appear as they are running on my primary SageTV server on the same network.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Attached. Thanks for looking into this.

I don't think you have a disk I/O problem from that log. It looks like maybe you're one of the few people with issues using HTTP streaming from the HDHomeRun. Try this:

1. Stop OpenDCT service
2. Change hdhr.allow_http_tuning=true to hdhr.allow_http_tuning=false in opendct.properties
3. Start OpenDCT service

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Files are attached. Thanks for any suggestions.

This system is running on a Win 7 64bit laptop, fresh Win 7 and Sage install. The Ceton tuners will appear as they are running on my primary SageTV server on the same network.

You appear to be in a special situation. Do the following:

1. Stop OpenDCT
2. Open atsc_hdhomerun_10757234.properties
3. You'll notice the channels are make up of comma delimited values. Change the value of columns 7 and 8 from 0 to 1 for non-ATSC entries.
e.g. channel.1010=1010,1010,true,QVC,http\://192.168.254.213\:5004/auto/v1010,,0,0,,0,UNKNOWN,false
to
channel.1010=1010,1010,true,QVC,http\://192.168.254.213\:5004/auto/v1010,,1,1,,0,UNKNOWN,false
4. Start OpenDCT

This might be enough to get around the problem. I'm seeing this log entry: 16:44:49.091 [SageTVRequestHandler-96:HDHomeRun HDHR5-4US Tuner 10757234-0] ERROR HDHRNativeCaptureDevice - The channel '1402' does not have a frequency on the lineup 'atsc_hdhomerun_10757234'.
and I can't figure out where in the code this is being logged from which is really bugging me. The error should only happen in ClearQAM mode. ATSC doesn't check for this kind of thing because we can derive it from the channel requested, yet we see a log entry contradicting that.