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[tzr916]

This is a rare occasion, but last night there was an area wide comcast outage (internet and cable tv signal), and the MC Server had some scheduled recordings about to happen. I was actually watching a previously recorded tv show right as the first one was supposed to start recording. It caused playback to stop and MC went into Not Responding - spinning mouse. I had to use CTRL-ALT-DEL to kill MC.

After restarting MC, it didn't take long before MC tried to start recording again, and went unresponsive again. To stop the vicious cycle, I had to unplug the power cords to my cable card tuners BEFORE starting up MC, then go into scheduled recordings and cancel the offending entries.

I hoped that comcast would restore signal before the 3AM replay of said scheduled recording, so I powered on the cable card tuner devices and set the recording for 3AM. I finished watching the previously recorded show that got interrupted, even went upstairs and watched some other stuff on a client... But when I got up at 6AM and looked at the Server, it was in fact Not Responding and the 3AM recording did not happen.

I didn't have logging turned on, but I can easily recreate the problem if you need a log. I'm sure you could do the same by disconnecting the cable signal coax and try to record. This can be a big issue if the comcast signal goes out when I have other scheduled recordings or trying to watch my OTA tuner, or if I am trying to watch or listen to files, or if I am on vacation, etc....

MC v27.0.85 - If this issue can be fixed, I'll finally have a good reason to utilize my MC28 license.

[muzicman0]

This is basically the same behavior I saw when Cox went DRM a few weeks back.  As soon as a recording tried to start, the UI completely froze.

[Yaobing]

For an upcoming new build:

1. Fixed: MC could hang if TV recording was started on a channel with no signal.
2. Changed: If an OpenCABLE or Sat>IP channel has no signal for 30 consecutive seconds, a notification is sent to TV engine and the tuner will be shutdown.

[tzr916]

...notification is sent to TV engine and the tuner will be shutdown.

The upgrade to MC28 went incredibly smooth! Finally ALL settings are transferred over automatically- skins, sizing, cover art, and even theater view custom zip... Everything seems fine, except I'm not sure about logic behind "and the tuner will be shutdown". Appears that I accidentally discovered what actually happens, when I had a record timer set for a channel that comcast seems to have removed from my cable card tuners.

I was watching a previously recorded show when I suddenly started getting "Critical Error" pop ups over and over (as seen in another topic). When I looked over at my cable tuner boxes the lights on the front were all blinking like a christmas tree! I'm thinking, oh no another comcast outage.

Thankfully the Server did not crash, but it appears to have been endlessly trying to access all six of my cable tuners for this one record timer, and never releasing them (aka the tuner will be shut down). Not understanding what was going on yet, I hard rebooted the tuners and restarted MC Server, but the christmas tree lights came right back! Apparently MC kept on trying, and kept on shutting them down?

When I fired up my client and looked at the upcoming record timer list, all upcoming cable timers were yellow, which indicates no cable tuners available. This is when I looked at the tuner web pages and realized this channel doesn't even exist. So cancelled the offending timer, restarted the Server, and rebooted the cable tuners. Finally the christmas tree lights were out, and all upcoming timers looked good.

I really appreciate that MC doesn't hang/crash now, and how it pops up a notification, and that it tries all possible tuners. But why would it need to shut the tuner down? Or maybe it was just endlessly trying all tuners? I don't know... Hopefully there's a better way. Seems like it would have just continued trying all the cable tuners for a full hour, meanwhile no other cable recordings could take place.

[Yaobing]

"Shutting down tuner" is probably just bad terminology.  What it means is that the TV playback engine involving that particular tuner will be shut down and MC will try a different tuner as MC is no able to truly determine the cause of the failure (is it the tuner hardware failure, or is it just the cable company failure).  By the way, "critical error" is also a bad term and is related to this situation, and someone complained about it.

The current method to deal with the situation is clearly not ideal and I am going to work out a better solution.  The reason the error message keeps coming up, is we don't want to really put the device out of service for a long time because in all likelihood the error is cause by lack of signal rather than the failure of the hardware, so we put the tuner out of service only for a few minutes.  My plan is to put the offending recording rule on hold instead of putting the hardware on hold.  That should make the behavior much better.

[tzr916]

Thanks for all the work on this. Just glancing at the Server Tv Logs page MC tried more than 40 times to make the recording happen across all six of my cable card tuners. All just in the 10 minutes where I didn't know what was going on, before I manually cancelled the recording rule. Unclear what would have occurred if I had other recording rules, or tried live tv while this was going on.