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[CHaun]

I have a ceton box with a cablecard which had previously been working great with MC22. About a week ago I lost a lot of channels which were previously working. The channels display grey-screen with electric distortion audio or no audio, or sometimes say "waiting for signal lock" and then stay black.

I had originally thought it to be a provider issue, so over the last week I have swapped cable cards, ceton boxes, had technicians out testing signal, etc.

Today, I did the "smarter" thing and installed WMC on this computer (It's windows 7 and I had originally uninstalled WMC so as not to interfere with MC22) and all of the missing channels display properly in WMC.

The missing channels are always the same ones, but they are channels without anything in common and just from here or there around the guide. For example, FS1 (Fox Sports 1 channel 583) doesn't work, while channel 584 (Fox Sports 2) does work.

I have logs if you need them.

[Yaobing]

This is puzzling.  I don't have a clue. 

The channel lineup has not changed?  I mean, Fox Sports 1 is still on channel 583?  Has it been DRMed recently?

It is not likely that the logs will tell much in this situation, but send them in anyway.

[CHaun]

The channel lineup has not changed, and nothing has changed on DRM that I am aware of. If it had, I'm sure that all of the foxsports channels would have been affected. Also, the missing channels are all over the place and were previously working, and some were even recording (i.e.232, 300, 301, 425, 427, 553, 571, etc... very random).

Up until today I was running v 22.0.21 and I updated to 22.0.28 to try and troubleshoot the issue. I don't know what version I was running prior to 22.0.21 or whether it has ever run properly on that version. It's not something that I kept track of because I was having no issues.

I have attached 2 logs, the earlier log was tuning to 583 (failed) and the one a couple of minutes later was tuning to 584 (success) after a log reset.

[Yaobing]

Are you saying these channels did not work in build 21 and later, but did work in earlier?  Do you mind trying rolling back a few builds and see if you can find one that works?

If you can not find such a version, I feel maybe there is something changed on the formatting of the TV channels.  We will have to see what they are.

From your logs, channel 583 uses MPEG-2 video, channel 584 uses H.264 video.  We support both.  Besides, if anything fails, MPEG-2 should not, unless the channel really is not MPEG-2 but falsely advertised itself as MPEG-2.

[RoderickGI]

I would suggest that you re-scan your channels to pick up format changes, but I assume you or the technician did that when you swapped cable cards and ceton boxes.

Compare what MC and WMC say about the channels. I suspect that the channels which no longer work used to be MPEG-2, and are now H.264, but MC doesn't know this (even though it is shown in the logs). The changes could be in audio format as well, from MPEG to AAC or AC3. WMC would know about these changes, because you re-installed it after the change happened, and it picked up the new format.

Just a guess. But I've had to re-scan my OTA channels a few times now as broadcasters change formats to better utilise their bandwidth, and provide at least one 1080i H.264 channel. I'm sure cable companies are doing similar things as people's expectations and technology changes.

[Yaobing]

Good point about re-scanning channels, but not for picking up video format info.  CableCARD channels do not carry format info.  The channels are obtained from xmltv file.  Assuming mc2xml (or which ever epg mode you select) contains up to date info, re-scanning will eliminate possibilities of having out-dated channel lineup. My cable provider changes lineup from time to time.

[CHaun]

That sounds like a very strong possibility. Do you know how I can tell from within WMC what the format is of the otherwise misbehaving channels?

Also, I have gone through the MC22 television setup several times, selecting all boxes on cleanup and reset tv data without any change in behavior.

Are you saying these channels did not work in build 21 and later, but did work in earlier?  Do you mind trying rolling back a few builds and see if you can find one that works?

I'm just saying I don't know because I did not pay attention to when versions updated. I can try, but I think the format info may be more likely. I had posted a week or so ago about channels not lining up in the epg and I was shown how to manually adjust some. Those channels are correctly updated  now in the mc2xml, so somrthing has been updated there, and possibly incorrectly for some channels.

[RoderickGI]

Do you know how I can tell from within WMC what the format is of the otherwise misbehaving channels?

Sorry, I can't remember enough about WMC to direct you. No doubt there is a lot of information on WMC forums.

If what you need to compare is in the XMLTV file used for EPG though, then you just need to get each file from WMC and MC and see what they say. I know the MC XMLTV file when when using PercData is in  "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\J River\media center 21\Settings\PercData\", but I don't remember where it is if using Rovi, or if it can be seen. I assume it is the same directory structure, since both PercData and Rovi use mc2xml for EPG data collection. i.e. Look under  "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\J River\media center 21\Settings\".


But if you can't get the XMLTV files, re-scan your channels anyway. I'm not sure if cleaning up the TV settings removes the channel list or not. I assume it does. I know it removes the EPG setup and some other stuff. I guess with cable channels when using a CableCARD device you need to set up the EPG collection, collect the data, and then scan for channels so they are read from the EPG data? I don't know, as I don't use the EPG data collection within MC, and don't use Cable.

[CHaun]

The only thing in the settings\mc2xml folder was an opencable.dat file which included only this data:

Frontier TV Tampa Digital
N9cWGc3HJP5Os4YmZ58iUHl+VsE/JwuptbcNtsiUq68x+RuKaOcYzs+e+qsbY4AvCZisV8UTfiyOHlxhwDOvLuhyfjS1S60yq75yYHlIYuDltuTnP4Wq3AA8ikWPIdNSdpD6uU9iuTzo5m4GiFClug==

[RoderickGI]

I should have mentioned, I believe the XMLTV file gets deleted after a while. You may need to run the EPG data collection and then look for the file. I can't remember how long it stays there. A day? An hour? I know it is long enough to be able to find it and copy it out to some other location if required.

There was discussion about this a while back, but as I say, I don't use it, so I don't try to remember the details.

[Yaobing]

Sorry, there is some inconsistency in where we store xmltv data.
Unlike PercData, the Rovi data from mc2xml are in "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\J River\media center 22\temp\", which is emptied on MC restart.  So you need to get there right after EPG loading, without restart.

[CHaun]

I found the data, but it doesn't appear to hold any video formatting information, just the channels themselves:
 

Code: [Select]

577 FSNHD 577 FSNHD Fox Sports Florida 24/7 HDTV (Rays, Marlins, Panthers)  583 FS1HD 583 FS1HD Fox Sports 1 HDTV  584 FS2HD 584 FS2HD Fox Sports 2 HDTV
I tried to attach the whole "OpenCable - 4112 (2)" file, but it was 3300KB after zipping and too large to go.

In this snippet, 577 and 584 play fine, 583 is gray screen with sporadic electronic noise.

From your logs, channel 583 uses MPEG-2 video, channel 584 uses H.264 video.  We support both.  Besides, if anything fails, MPEG-2 should not, unless the channel really is not MPEG-2 but falsely advertised itself as MPEG-2.

Would it be normal for stations so similar to use different formats? Would there be some way to test MC by playing the bad channels as a different format? I have attached a new log file to see if the offending channels have something in common. On this log, I have tuned to channel 620 (working), 621 (gray screen), 690 (working), 691 (gray screen), 896 (working) and finally 899 (gray screen).

Thanks very much for helping me with this matter.

[Yaobing]

All 6 channels reported MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio.

I did an experiment on my computer.  I switched MPEG-2 video with H.264 video, and vice versa.  MC still played fine.  That means current LAV Video decoder is smart enough to figure out these two formats, even if MC tells it the wrong format.  This does not help with your situation at all.  I am still puzzled.

[CHaun]

I suppose the next logical step would be to install a previous version and see if it works.

Is that as simple as backing up the library, uninstalling the current version, installing the previous version and restoring the library?

[JimH]

Just install an earlier MC22 version.

[CHaun]

Just as an update: I reinstalled 22.0.15 which was the original version I had downloaded and was originally working, but to no avail. There's no difference in the issue.

Is there some directory I should possibly clear before reinstalling?

[Yaobing]

Is there some directory I should possibly clear before reinstalling?

No there is no need to clear anything.

[Yaobing]

Please provide a sample recording of a short piece using Windows Media Center, on a problem channel.

[CHaun]

I recorded about 15 seconds in MC22 and then about 15 seconds in WMC. Both/either of the files were too large to attach. I zipped them and uploaded to dropbox with this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oi793809cr7ney2/Recordings.zip?dl=0

[Yaobing]

Thanks for the sample.  It is indeed copy-right issue.  The WMC recording can not be played on my computer.  WMC says "Copying Prohibited".  See attached screenshot.

[CHaun]

Sadly, I think you are correct. I tried playing some samples from other working and non-working channels on a separate computer. It appears that Frontier may have recently flagged several channels "copy once" that probably should not be flagged that way, or possibly should have been all along and fell through the cracks (perhaps with more to come).

Thanks for all of the help and time and effort put into my issue.