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[mwillems]

So I've had a series of TV tuner related problems since I had to redo my tuner setup after a recent build required resetting up TV.  Three times in the last week or two my server has refused to record or watch TV indicating that "no tuner is available," beginning shortly after the build that required me to re-do TV setup.  However, at these times my network tuner device (an HD Homerun Prime tuner) always indicates that it's idle (both on the hardware display, and the network interface), and I can access the tuner in other programs.  For the reasons I'll explain below, I think the issue is related to the way MC detects network/DLNA devices.

Attempts to use the new setup dialogs stalled because MC detected no tuners in the dialogs. Powercycling the tuner, MC, and the router did not fix the issues.  The first two times, the only way I managed to fix it was to reset all TV settings and reinstall MC.  At that point, the tuner appeared in the setup dialogs.  The Third time it happened, I spent some more time debugging, and noticed that the tuner still appeared as a DLNA device under Libraries on the Tree, but there was otherwise no evidence that MC could detect it.

So investigating the DLNA detection, I right-clicked the "Library" tree item, I saw "Delete Dynamic Libraries" and looked under it, and found my Tuner's DLNA device listed five different times under two different names.  I deleted all five "dynamic libraries" related to my tuner, and MC instantly detected the tuner again, and I could watch and record TV.

Has anyone else seen anything like this with networked tuners since the new TV setup came through?  Any thoughts on what might be causing it?  I know how to fix it, but I don't usually know it's a problem until I start missing recordings so it would be good to fix the problem at the root.

[JimH]

Is it possible that the firewall is the problem?

[mwillems]

I wondered that myself; when things stopped working, I checked to make sure that MC was allowed through the firewall on the server PC, and it was.  I also used the tuner's own software to access the tuner on the same PC and had no trouble. 

It was also odd that clearing all of all the DLNA library aliases fixed the problem immediately with no further configuration steps.

[JimH]

Maybe outbound was open and working but inbound wasn't.  Or something like that.  Firewalls don't always do what they are supposed to do.

It could still be our problem.

[mwillems]

Maybe outbound was open and working but inbound wasn't.  Or something like that.  Firewalls don't always do what they are supposed to do.

It could still be our problem.

Next time it happens (if it happens again), I'll try some packet sniffing and see what I can come up with.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

TV had been relatively trouble free for me via HD Homerun Prime.  But, I did also get the no free tuners message after the latest JR update for the first time ever.  My solution: power cycled the HD Homerun Prime and all was well.

[jrdiandrea]

I have also had problems using HD Homerun Prime. It seems to be sporadic....sometimes i will go to one of my client devices to watch live tv and I get this error message. Yet, it will work on another client. Then hours later it will start working. I don't have the technical computer knowledge that many of you do so my trouble shooting is limited and more hap-hazard. So in those rare occasions I finally did get it working I really can't pin point why.

[Yaobing]

The device detection should not have changed.  I am puzzled.

[kstuart]

It could be a MC20 bug with the "network" part and not specifically "TV Tuners"...

[mwillems]

To close the loop, I think I figured out the issue here.  When I disable the "DLNA Controller" checkbox on my server, eventually it fails to detect my networked TV tuner and TV stops working.  If I enable the DLNA Controller checkbox on my server, it seems to continue to detect the tuner just fine for extended periods.  That is, at the moment, completely reproducible (although it sometimes takes time after controller is turned off for non-detection to occur).

It wasn't clear to me that the DLNA functions were related to the TV tuner functions, or I'd have tried that sooner.  I generally don't enable the DLNA controller feature on most of the boxes in my house to prevent certain kinds of user error (and certain issues I have with some of my renderers), but it seems that it's required, at least on the TV server.

Is that consistent with your experience Yaobing?  If so, it might be worth amending the "no tuner" dialog to make that clear (it currently just says to "turn on media network" for cablecard tuners, but doesn't say anything about the DLNA functions).  I guess they're maybe on by default?  It's been a long time since I used an unconfigured instance of mediacenter, so I don't have a clear memory of what's default and what's not.

[Yaobing]

“Use Media Network to share this library and enable DLNA" is the option.  It is essentially the only option under "Media Network".

[mwillems]

Sure, but once the media network box is checked there are a million other options below, many of which allow you to tweak the DLNA functionality, and it isn't clear which of those are tied to TV functionality (I would not have assumed that JRiver's TV implementation had anything to do with the specific DLNA roles).  

You can have the "Use Media Network to share this library and enable DLNA" option checked and still have the specific DLNA role boxes unchecked, obviously.  So I'd see the cablecard torubleshooting message suggesting I check the "media network" box, verify that it was indeed checked, and move on to other troubleshooting paths because it wasn't clear that other specific configuration options on the media network tab were also necessary.  
The other DLNA options (renderer and server) seem to have no effect on TV playback (that I can determine), and the library server function requires none of the three DLNA role boxes to be checked (only the "media network" box), so it wasn't obvious that TV and DLNA were necessarily connected (e.g. I was happily using library client/servers for days with no DLNA boxes checked on the server, TV was the only thing not consistently working).

Are you confirming that enabling the DLNA controller checkbox is necessary for using networked tuners? If so, it's easy enough to keep it on, but if not, I'd like to figure out what's wrong with my setup.

For example, the attached configuration works great as a library server or a library client, and can play TV as a client, but cannot detect any tuners when it's a library server.  If that's expected behavior, that's fine, but if not, I'd like to finish running this to ground.

[Yaobing]

You are absolutely right.  DLNA Controller option must be enabled in order to load CableCARD devices.