Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[greymould]

I'm evaluating MC17 as a replacement for Windows Media Center on Windows 7 64bit.  However it doesn't seem to be able to find any TV channels.  I'm based in the UK, using DVB-T.  I have a Hauppauge Nova-DT Dual DVB-T tuner PCI card.  This has no problems find channels in Windows MCE or Hauppauge WinTV.  However, JRMC17 spends a few minutes scanning channels and then gives up (scanning window disappears) without finding any.  I've done some of the following, picked up from various forum/google searches:
- run as administrator
- turn off windows firewall
- check frequency table (seems to include frequencies that were found in WinTV)

From some of the reviews I read this software looked to be a good improvement over Windows MCE for an HTPC, but at the moment I'm surprised finding TV channels is so difficult compared to the other software I've used.  I'm really keen to get this to work, so any other advice would be welcome.

Some more info on my system (from the system info option in JRMC17, although it doesn't seem very accurate - the CPU is AMD Athlon DC 5050e and the system has 3GB RAM):

Media Center 17.0.75.0 C:\Program Files (x86)\J River\Media Center 17\

 Workstation 6.1  (Build 7600)
AMD Unknown 285186957 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 524 MB

Internet Explorer: 8.0.7601.17514 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82.7601 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.1.7601 / Shell32.dll: 6.1.7601 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive F:   Mode:ModeSecure  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive F: TSSTcorp DVDWBD SH-B123L    Addr: 3:1:0  Speed:48  MaxSpeed:48  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /

Portable Device Info
  Removed devices:


Interface Plugins:
  TiVo Server (Active)

[Yaobing]

We have UK based users who use MC for TV and do not have major problems.  They are able to find channels, including DVB-T2 channels.

Please turn on logging and try again.  Then email me a log.  I am yaobing at jriver dot com

Look into this thread, to learn about emailing logs.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Sometimes other programs will 'hog' the Tuner card. I had trouble with MediaPortal when I installed it because its TV server kicks in on boot and *any* other DVB program couldn't tune any channels. I had to do a full uninstall of MediaPortal before things came back to normal. I've not used Wndows Media Center more than about twice and it was before I started using tv in JRiver, so I can't really comment on whether WMC has a similar 'hogging' of the tuner card. It has a TV server aspect, so it may.

Try rebooting the PC and then tuning channels in MC before you do anything in WMC. I find that sometimes a complete shutdown and restart rather than a soft restart helped. This resets the tuner association.

One time after I did a clean install of JRiver it failed to find channels, but after I played a video in it, suddenly it found channels again. I'm not sure about it, but I think MC tries to silently play the channels to get more info about them during the tuning process (ie it builds a filter graph whilst it tunes). I'm not sure whether the filters it needs to do this are downloaded automatically on first install or whether playing the first video does it. Like I said it only happened once, so I thought it was random.

I've disabled WMC in the Control Panel options, so I guarantee no Microsoft interferance in JRiver MC!

If you still have trouble, keep posting, we will get it working for you!

Cheers - and welcome to the forum!

SBR

[Yaobing]

Thank you, SBR, for your good advices.

If there is still a problem after making sure other applications are not hogging the tuner, then it could be a device-specific graph-building issue.  If this is the case, a log file along with the "television related filter info" (item 5. in the "how to send MC logs..." thread) will help me figure out the problem. 

[greymould]

Thanks for the welcome and for your great suggestions.  I've had a go at disabling windows media center and rebooting, but I still seem to have the same problem.  I've just e-mailed Yaobing a log file, so hopefully that may shed a bit more light on the exact problem.

[Yaobing]

Thanks for the log file.  It does not reveal any graph-building problem, but it does show that the graph failed to run.  This is consistent with the possibility that the device was hogged by some other application.  Maybe it was not WMC, but some other application.  Do you have other TV application on your computer?  Some applications run TV as a server.  So even though you do not run it explicitly it may still hog your tuner device.

One thing you can try, is to change priority order of your tuners.  The tuner MC tried to use was "Nova-DT DVB-T Tuner (Dev1 Path0)".  You can try moving it down a few notches on the MC TV Settings list, so MC will try a different tuner first during playback.  When you do scanning, you can manually select a different tuner (you should have at least one more since your Nova device has two tuners, the second one is "Nova-DT DVB-T Tuner (Dev1 Path1)") .

[greymould]

I've tried changing the priority with no success.  Also, to check the 'hogging issue' I tried scanning with WMC in the background showing a TV channel. As soon as the scanning started in MC, WMC reported a tuner error - so I think MC is able to use the tuner card.  However it still seems to show the scanning window, with no progress, which then disappears after a while.  I'm fairly sure I have no other TV applications installed, and I've also tried going through Windows services to turn off all WMC services.   I've also tried putting the specific frequencies in the xml file, taken from the following website (http://www.ukfree.tv/txdetail.php?a=SD660144) but this doesn't seem to have made any difference.

I did find another post on the forums (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=63928.msg427247#msg427247), but this issue never seems to have been resolved either.

I feel like I'm starting to exhaust potential solutions for this...

[CountryBumkin]

Make sure to look at your device in Windows Device Manager and make sure it is showing as operating/set-up properly. I had an issue setting up my Hauppage Colossus when I moved from the WinTV program to MC. I spent a bunch of time trying things to get it seen/detected until I finally  notced a "yellow exclaimation mark" on the device in Device Manager. I never could get it resolved and eventually had to reinstall Win7 to get it working.
... Just saying...

[Yaobing]

It looks like there is some incompatibility between MC and this particular device.  I am puzzled, as what we do are pretty standard.  I made a test build of the TV component, with a small change, the only change that I can think of and emailed it to you.  Please test and let me know if it helps.

[greymould]

Yaobing - you are an absolute genius 

That file you sent seems to have sorted the problem, and I'm now picking up TV channels from the scan.  Out of interest, can you explain how you solved the problem?

[Yaobing]

Yaobing - you are an absolute genius 

That file you sent seems to have sorted the problem, and I'm now picking up TV channels from the scan.  Out of interest, can you explain how you solved the problem?

In one word, NetworkProvider.  This is a Microsoft component.

Microsoft provides two versions, a network-specific version which is older, and a newer generic version.  We attempt to use the generic version, and only to use the network-specific version when the former fails to load.

The problem is, with your Hauppauge Nova device, the generic version loads without error, but it would not work.  This seems to be a driver problem.  We have to load the older version of NetworkProvider for this device.

[gandt]

i have exactly the same prblem could you send me the fix too or tell me how to do it?


graham

[Yaobing]

i have exactly the same prblem could you send me the fix too or tell me how to do it?


graham

If you can wait for a few days,  the fix is in an upcoming build.

If you can not wait, send me an email.

[gandt]

would like to have a play at the weekend is the build ready by then do you think?

thanks


graham

[gandt]

OK Just an Update for anybody following this thread I got a slightly adapted version of the fix Yaobing offered up earlier - My card is the single tuner varient of the NOVA T which is I think quite popular in the UK. With fix it now scans and I have pretty much all the channels Id expect. Here are a few other updates for anybody who treads the same path

a) I had terrible sync issues - resolved by turning off the hardware acceleration in the options video section
b) I still have a wierd problem with, so far as I can tell, just BBC channels the producing an artifact (an overlay upside down green T shape on the bottom right of the screen) Im going to fiddle with some of the decoder renderer settings but it seems unlikely that just some channels would be affected - dont get the artifact in WIN TV...

but progress for sure...


Graham

[Yaobing]

JohnT made the following suggestions:

The sync problem that went away by disabling acceleration might be because he has the Intel QuickSync feature on his cpu which we just started utilizing a couple builds ago.  Other users have reported similar issues.
I'm not sure about the green video artifact.  Maybe he could try using a different decoder in a custom graph to see if it's anything to do with LAV video.

John