Daily Frustrations when being a HTPC enthusiast

[umdivx]

[quote=”swoon”]
Have you used the HDHR and Ceton diagnostic tools. HDHR has some nice tools like the command-line tool to test the tuner and tell you the cause of the error. I can provide you the instruction if you’ve never used it before.

Since you work with RF, do you have access to a spectrum analyzer to verify whether there is some sort of interference at this frequency that is seemingly caused by the HDHR?
[/quote]

Yea I do have access to a spectrum analyzer however it’s a bench analyzer, and way too expensive just to haul out of the shop and take it home with me 😉

[umdivx]

[quote=”Meester.Rip”]
Can you disable the Ceton tuner in Device manager to see if the HDHR still works fine?[/quote]

yea both tuners work perfectly fine independent of each other.  but when both together both the cable card tuned CBS 233 in my case and the ota atsc 4.1 both do not work.

[quote]
Can you go into the guide settings and disable the Ceton tuner from being a source for CBS. Not in the guide from the main screen I mean the settings that you drill down into from tasks. [/quote]

yea tried that still doesnt work.

[quote]
Do you already have a support ticket in at CETON and SD?[/quote]

have a ticket open with Ceton, but haven’t heard anything form SD yet.

[Adidas4275]

i had the mistake of telling my wife how stable our HTPCs have been over the last 6 months…

and then mediabrowser auto updated and deleted the movies tab and then CBS was only in SD on the HD channel…. super LAME

HTPCs are not easy……  but i have had a good and stable system for a long time. 

[jmallory]

After going back and reviewing….I can only think of two things.

1.)  Some kind of driver issue between the HD Homerun and the Ceton (doubtful: I have this combination, as do many others, but I don’t use the HTPC for live TV too often but I haven’t seen what you are describing).

2.)  Are you using a separate NIC for the HD Homerun?  If so, what type?  What you could be seeing is that while the HD Homerun is in place the HD Homerun is creating additional interrupts which is causing an additional load on the system.

[Aaron Ledger]

[quote=”jmallory”]
After going back and reviewing….I can only think of two things.

1.)  Some kind of driver issue between the HD Homerun and the Ceton (doubtful: I have this combination, as do many others, but I don’t use the HTPC for live TV too often but I haven’t seen what you are describing).

2.)  Are you using a separate NIC for the HD Homerun?  If so, what type?  What you could be seeing is that while the HD Homerun is in place the HD Homerun is creating additional interrupts which is causing an additional load on the system.

[/quote]

#2 is certainly possible. This is one reason why I was asking if the HDHR command-line debug tool had been run. It would be able to tell at least whether the issue was RF-related or network/system related. You can also use it to pump up the NIC, hard drive and system with more activity than normal and then check out system resources to see if something can be identified.

Something else to throw out there, is that I remember reading on TGB about a stuttering video if the broadcast is switching rapidly between 59.94 hz and 29.97 hz. It seems unlikely that it would only show up in this certain hardware configuration, but perhaps it is worth investigating.

[umdivx]

[quote=”jmallory”]

2.)  Are you using a separate NIC for the HD Homerun?  If so, what type?  What you could be seeing is that while the HD Homerun is in place the HD Homerun is creating additional interrupts which is causing an additional load on the system.

[/quote]

yea I am using an Intel gigabit nic plugged directly from that into my HD HR, no switches or hubs or anything like that.

-Josh

[Aaron Ledger]

[quote=”umdivx”]
[quote=”jmallory”]

2.)  Are you using a separate NIC for the HD Homerun?  If so, what type?  What you could be seeing is that while the HD Homerun is in place the HD Homerun is creating additional interrupts which is causing an additional load on the system.

[/quote]

yea I am using an Intel gigabit nic plugged directly from that into my HD HR, no switches or hubs or anything like that.

-Josh
[/quote]

Something to try if you haven’t done so is to set the interrupt moderation to extreme and increase the receive buffers. This would help to increase system resource availability to some degree.

[jmallory]

Actually, I have found that no interrupt moderation seems to help performance but it is  very dependent on the particular hardware and software being used but hey worth a shot at this point. 

[Author]

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