2 card setup giving me headaches

[boulder2]

Let me explain what I wanted to do :

 

I have 2 PCI cards in my system : 1 Technotrend S2-3200 with a CI module attached to it, in which I have an Aston CAM and a TV Vlaanderen subscription card.

The other one is a Hauppauge Nova HD S2 with no CI module attached.

 

Now, what I would like to do is :

 

* make sure that the system uses the Hauppauge card by default

* only uses the Technotrend card if it needs to decode a TV Vlaanderen channel or the other card is already recording something on a different transponder than the channel I want to record from.

 

I thought this could be achieved by putting the preference of the Hauppauge to "preferred", and the Technotrend to "Normal", and then putting the TV Vlaanderen channels in a "B" group.

Then make A, B, C available to Technotrend card.

And only make A group available to Hauppauge.

That way I would think if I tune to an FTA channel, the system would always use the Hauppauge tuner, unless it is already busy.

 

Now, the behaviour I 'm seeing from DVBViewer is a bit different.

If I close DVBViewer, and leave it on BBC4 as the last channel, then when I open it again it will indeed use the Hauppauge tuner, which is the preferred one, so this is logical.

If I then switch to Ketnet/Canvas, a TV Vlaanderen channel, DVBViewer correctly chooses the Technotrend to decode this channel.

However, after that, if I go to TV5 Monde Europe (another FTA channel), DVBViewer does not change tuners anymore, and uses the "Normal" tuner instead of the preferred one.

If I then press the record button, DVBViewer will hook up the card that has the CI module and therefore the subscription card.

 

I know, I could of course remove the "A" and "C" group from the Technotrend card, thereby effectively reserving it only for TV Vlaanderen channels, but that also means that I could then no longer record from BBC4 and BBC HD simultaneously.

 

So is there a way to tell the system to always switch to the preferred decoder, unless it is busy ?

Edited September 18, 2008 by boulder2

[boulder2]

Do you need a support.zip file for this as well ?

Here it is, but I think this is more a question of how it works and maybe sort of a feature request.

 

I have not yet tested it with scheduled recordings to see if it behaves the way I would expect it to on those.

[Griga]

However, after that, if I go to TV5 Monde Europe (another FTA channel), DVBViewer does not change tuners anymore, and uses the "Normal" tuner instead of the preferred one.

That's by design. DVBViewer avoids changing the device, if possible, in order to achieve fast channel switching, thus overriding the normal/preferred settings.

 

DVBViewer GE provides an additional hardware priority level ("always when possible"), that has not been adopted by DVBViewer Pro yet. It allows to handle cases like yours. However, DVBViewer GE doesn't support CI, so it is of no avail for you... sorry, no better news. Maybe the additional level will be added in a future DVBViewer Pro version.

[boulder2]

That's by design. DVBViewer avoids changing the device, if possible, in order to achieve fast channel switching, thus overriding the normal/preferred settings.

 

DVBViewer GE provides an additional hardware priority level ("always when possible"), that has not been adopted by DVBViewer Pro yet. It allows to handle cases like yours. However, DVBViewer GE doesn't support CI, so it is of no avail for you... sorry, no better news. Maybe the additional level will be added in a future DVBViewer Pro version.

What a pity, this is exactly the setting I am looking for.

 

And what if you schedule your records via the timeline ?

Will the system then respect the order you specify ?

[Lars_MQ]

What a strange idea. Of course timers are sorted by time (and started by time) not by the order you created them.

[Moses]

Your setting is already optimal. If you just view with the technotrend card, then there is no problem, because if the card is needed for a recording, DVBViewer will switch channel (and you need to switch back, then he activates the hauppauge card). You could always perform the action "stop graph" if you want to switch from encrypted channels to FTA. With the "stop graph" action DVBViewer frees all cards that are not used for recording and then for a new channel switch command will use the preffered card again (if possible).

 

For timers, the cards are always deactivated when the recording has finished (and if they are not used for playback anymore, it's a good idea to disable AV for your recordings). So the card is free after the recording and can be used for the next one. Of course there are still some cases where the system may fail, but that's because DVBViewer has no smart strategie for which card to use for a recording (which is not easy to implement, scheduling is a NP-hard problem). Let's see some cases:

 

1. you watch FTA/encrypted with technotrend, DVBViewer wants to record FTA and uses hauppage for that => no problem

2. you watch FTA/encrypted with technotrend, DVBViewer wants to record encryptet and switches channel, your have to switch back manually, but recordings are performed => no big problem

3. you watch FTA with hauppauge, DVBViewer wants to record FTA/encrypted and uses technotrend for that. Here you got a problem, because if there is an overlapping recording on an encrypted channel the technotrend card will still be occupied be the recording on the FTA channel and the recording fails.

4. You watch nothing (all cards are free, no TV playback), DVBViewer wants to record FTA and uses hauppauge => no problem

5. You watch nothing (all cards are free, no TV playback), DVBViewer wants to record encrypted channel and uses technotrend => no problem

 

Case 3 could only be avoided by a smart scheduling strategy, so DVBViewer would switch your hauppauge to the FTA channel (or with a mechanism to let another card take over a recording, which I some time ago proposed, it would remove the NP-hard problem and make it very simple so the current strategy is 100% sufficient, but it wasn't thought about anymore). Looking on case 1 to 3, it could be better to set technotrend to be the preffered card, but that fails on case 4, where any FTA recording overlapping with an encrypted recoding will make the encrypted recording impossible. So there is at least one case where DVBViewer will fail with the currently used system, but all other cases are handled optimaly.

[boulder2]

That's by design. DVBViewer avoids changing the device, if possible, in order to achieve fast channel switching, thus overriding the normal/preferred settings.

 

DVBViewer GE provides an additional hardware priority level ("always when possible"), that has not been adopted by DVBViewer Pro yet. It allows to handle cases like yours. However, DVBViewer GE doesn't support CI, so it is of no avail for you... sorry, no better news. Maybe the additional level will be added in a future DVBViewer Pro version.

But WHY are you giving the user features which in the end don't mean anything ?

I mean, you let me set a "preferred" card but in the end it 's a total guess which card will be used ?

The way it is implemented now means it is totally unreliable.

 

Just look at this example which I encountered right now.

I am getting a conflict where there should be absolutely none, and the only way I could solve it myself would be by buying another CI module, another CAM and another TV Vlaanderen card, have it activated, and make sure I pay a full subscription on it (because if I take a "light" subscription I 'm still not sure whether the system will not choose the wrong card, and then tell me it cannot decrypt the particular channel...).

 

So that would cost me : 70€ for the CI module for the Hauppauge, 90€ for the extra Aston CAM, 80€ for the TV Vlaanderen smartcard, 30€ to get it activated and then 20€/month to get the same Top package I have on my other card.

These are dazzling costs just because this scheduler does not work properly.

 

Going back to the example, in the setup of the hardware I have even defined that the Hauppauge card does not have a CI module, so it should never try to use that for the TV Vlaanderen channels (2Be and Ketnet/Canvas) in this example.

 

So when looking at it logically, it should use :

 

tuner 1, Technotrend with CI module and TV Vlaanderen subscription card :

 

2Be : 20:40-23:10, Panic Room

Ketnet/Canvas : 23:40-01:40, American Splendor

 

(no overlap there)

 

tuner 2, Hauppauge card, no CI module

 

Film4 : 19:55-22:20, Ladies in Lavender

BBC2 : 22:25-23:15, Have I got News for You

BBC4 : 23:15-01:40, The Name of the Rose

 

(no overlap there either)

 

 

Now I tried all kinds of ways to force the system to use the TT for the encrypted channels, and the Hauppauge for the other ones, but it did not seem to matter.

The conflict already started when I added the Film4 and 2Be ones, the order in which I added them did not seem to matter.

Nor did it seem to change when I started out being tuned on a TVV channel or starting out on an FTA channel.

Even starting out on an FTA channel with no rendering enabled gave that issue.

So the way it looks now is that I cannot reliably schedule a recording to an encrypted channel, even though I have 2 tuners, a perfectly legal CI module, CAM and subscription.

 

The only thing I have not tried yet is to define the Technotrend so that it does not accept channels from the A category, whereby it would be reserved exclusively for TVV.

But then I am permanenty assigning a tuner to the TVV setup, even though I might want to record 2 other channels simultaneously.

 

Please, can you do something about this in future updates ?

If you want to keep the fast zapping enabled, you could still have the user choose between the two possibilities, and if he chooses faster zapping, then grey out the preferred/normal settings.

[boulder2]

This must really be a bug.

I tried forcing the system to use the other card for "Ladies in Lavender" (Film4, FTA channel) by keeping the other card tuned to 2Be.

Now, it is recording from both channels, even though the scheduler keeps telling me there is a conflict and that it will not record from the TVV channels.

In order to increase the chances of recording the film on Canvas, I have added another operation to tune into that channel at 23:11, just after it has finished recording "Panic Room" on 2Be.

Again according to the Timer it cannot do that, but maybe it will be the same with this time, where it says it cannot do it, and be doing it at the very same time

[boulder2]

Your setting is already optimal. If you just view with the technotrend card, then there is no problem, because if the card is needed for a recording, DVBViewer will switch channel (and you need to switch back, then he activates the hauppauge card). You could always perform the action "stop graph" if you want to switch from encrypted channels to FTA. With the "stop graph" action DVBViewer frees all cards that are not used for recording and then for a new channel switch command will use the preffered card again (if possible).

 

I have found a way to manually correct things for scheduled recordings (which is what I use 99% of the time).

Setup :

 

Tuner1 has the CI module, the CAM and the smartcard from your paytv provider, priority is set to preferred, all channels (A,B,C) are enabled on this card.

Tuner2 has no CI module, priority is set to normal, channels A and C are enabled on this card (all payTV channels are put in category B manually).

 

Now, suppose you start programming and you come up with a conflict in the scheduler (it turns RED in the timer window) :

For example. (first screenshot)

Now, as you can see a lot of things go wrong here, although the system has enough tuners to record everything, still things go wrong.

The reason is that at 18:20, the system chose tuner1 to record from TV5 Monde Europe, and at 19:15 it wants to record from VT4.

VT4 is an encrypted channel however so it needs tuner1 to record from that, but tuner1 is still busy (until 20:30) recording from TV5Monde Europe.

 

So how do we fix this manually ?

The best way is to keep tuner1 to be in use just before the system starts recording from TV5ME, we can do this by scheduling a recording from a paytv channel just at the time it would use that tuner.

The recording only needs to be two minutes or so, just enough to make sure the paytv tuner is not free, and to force the scheduler to use the other tuner.

So we make a dummy recording, just make it two minutes, and make sure you choose a PAYTV channel for your dummy recording, as that is the only way to be sure it will keep the right tuner busy.

 

Now, when looking at the second screenshot, you can see that the dummy recording solved all conflicts but one : "L' appartement" on Ketnet/Canvas is not recorded because the scheduler chose the wrong tuner at 22:55 for the BBC2 recording "Live at the Apollo", we can solve that again by making a dummy recording at 22:54-22:56 choosing a PAYTV channel, so that we are sure that the payTV tuner is being used, and not the other card.

 

Notice that the system does seem to get confused after a while however (screenshot 3), as it is now telling me there is still a conflict at 19:15, and that it will not record "The Simpsons", etc., even though it is recording TV5ME (indicated by the yellow bar) with the tuner that is not using the CI module.

I 'll see if recordings are performed correctly or not, but I think this is a bug in the timer, and that recordings will be performed correctly anyway.

Edited September 27, 2008 by boulder2

[boulder2]

Just to confirm that all recordings succeeded this way, despite the red warnings.

[patti]

That's by design. DVBViewer avoids changing the device, if possible, in order to achieve fast channel switching, thus overriding the normal/preferred settings.

 

DVBViewer GE provides an additional hardware priority level ("always when possible"), that has not been adopted by DVBViewer Pro yet. It allows to handle cases like yours. However, DVBViewer GE doesn't support CI, so it is of no avail for you... sorry, no better news. Maybe the additional level will be added in a future DVBViewer Pro version.

 

Any idea when and if this will be implemented to DVBViewer? I have a similar situation as Boulder2 has and I am really surprised that something as crucial as tuner priorities have this kind of problems in otherwise great software. It is not once or twice (more like a hundred times) that I have been unable to switch to a channel that I would like to watch because the tuner is already recording something else in the background

 

I also tested the fast channel switching thing and in my system a switch from tuner to tuner was as fast as a switch on the same tuner and in my opinion a reliable functioning of the software is more important than a second here or there. Tuner changes do not occur that often that it would make any big deal if that change takes a bit longer. Besides, the setting in hardware options does say "preferred" at the moment and it is more than misleading and confusing.

 

Please, fix this one soon!

 

Thanks,

 

PK

Edited May 25, 2009 by patti

[boulder2]

I know we're not supposed to discuss this option, but my provider (TV Vlaanderen) implicitly allows Smartwi as can be seen from their support pages about the new Mediaguard3 smartcard (it literally says : "SmartWi

De SmartWi werkt beter met de Mediaguard 3 smartcard, indien deze is voorzien van de SmartWi2.43Beta9T0 software. Deze kunt u vinden op www.smartwi.net. Op deze website vindt u instructies over hoe u uw SmartWi kunt upgraden.")

So by using this hardware device, I was able to share the smartcard for the two tuners.

The two tuners now believe they have an identical smartcard in it, and that solves the issue for the time being.

Of course, I would still have a problem if I wanted to use 2 smartcards from 2 different providers.