Watching "randomly" stops

[TMonster]

My MythTV (combined BE/FE, 30.0) has recently started to stop during both live TV and watching old recordings

It's just like an activity timer because when it stops, it shows the https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Idle_Screen

• Live TV Idle Timeout is set to 0 (which I believe should disable this feature)
• I don't believe that there's a timeout for watching recordings?
• Standby Mode timer is set to 30 mins

I'm assuming that something is not seeing the FE is working, so the Standby Mode timer is my first suspect... but, it's not every 30 mins (we watched an entire film last night...)

journalctl doesn't show anything major:

Code: Select all

Feb 03 07:11:46 tranquilitybase mythbackend[818]: 2020-02-03 07:11:46.394280 I  TVRec[1]: Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None
Feb 03 07:11:46 tranquilitybase mythbackend[818]: 2020-02-03 07:11:46.485348 N  Finished Recording: Container: MPEG2-TS Video Codec: mpeg2video (704x576 A/R: 3 25fps) Audio Codec: mp2
Feb 03 07:11:46 tranquilitybase mythbackend[818]: 2020-02-03 07:11:46.486795 I  TVRec[1]: FinishedRecording(1001_2020-02-03T06:41:47Z) damaged recq:<RecordingQuality overall_score="0" key="1001_2020-02-03T06:41>
Feb 03 07:11:46 tranquilitybase mythbackend[818]:     <Gap start="2020-02-03T06:00:00Z" end="2020-02-03T06:41:47Z" duration="2507" />
Feb 03 07:11:46 tranquilitybase mythbackend[818]:     <Gap start="2020-02-03T07:11:44Z" end="2020-02-03T09:15:00Z" duration="7395" />
Feb 03 07:11:46 tranquilitybase mythbackend[818]: </RecordingQuality>
Feb 03 07:11:46 tranquilitybase mythbackend[818]: 2020-02-03 07:11:46.507496 I  Playback sock(562f5de11e00) 'tranquilitybase' disconnected

I've had a search of the forum and a search on the internet, but it seems that I'm the only person that this has ever happened to ( ), so before I start diving into this, has anyone seen anything like this before?

Just looking for some direction on places to start looking...

Thanks

[TMonster]

After further testing, it does seem to be the Standby Mode timer... I'm guessing that when we are watching the TV / Film, then we must be pressing a volume control or pausing less than the 30 minutes currently set.

So, has anyone else started having problems with this?

[TMonster]

Back to this again...

OK, so I left a video running for ~1 hour and that didn't stop

Watching Live TV stopped...

So. I guess the frontend isn't seeing that Live TV is active and thinks it's idle.

Anyone know where this is triggered?

[bill6502]

Only one idea from me: is "Live TV idle timeout (mins)" set to something
other than 0? Although, if that's the case, I wouldn't expect Live TV timeouts
to be random.

[TMonster]

Hi,

Yes, after my first bit of investigation, this isn't "random" at all.

I think the relevant settings are:

• Live TV Idle Timeout is set to 0 (which I believe should disable this feature)
• I don't believe that there's a timeout for watching recordings?
• Standby Mode timer is set to 30 mins

And it seems to be the "Standby Mode" timer

I have only just learned of the Frontend APIs, and found this:

Code: Select all

<FrontendStatus version="1.1" serializerVersion="1.1">
  <Name>tranquilitybase</Name>
  <Version>v30.0-76a78d844cf</Version>
  <State>
    <String>
      <Key>currentlocation</Key>
      <Value>mainmenu</Value>
    </String>
    <String>
      <Key>menutheme</Key>
      <Value>classic</Value>
    </String>
    <String>
      <Key>state</Key>
      <Value>idle</Value>
    </String>
  </State>
  <ChapterTimes/>
  <SubtitleTracks/>
  <AudioTracks/>
</FrontendStatus>

Which, to me, implies that MythFrontend thinks that I'm just looking at the mainmenu (lines 6 & 7 above) doing nothing (lines 14 & 15), rather than actually watching TV.

However, listening to Music, watching Videos or watching TV Recordings also shows that same status, and they don't "timeout".

So... to summarise, it looks like the Standby Timer is kicking in whilst watching Live TV (and the Live TV Idle Timeout is disabled)

Any ideas?

[MikeB2013]

Depending on your internet browser settings, it might be using cached data, so you don't see up to date data from the Services API call.
For me, using either Firefox or Chromium, holding down shift key and clicking reload button bypasses the cache.

Mike

[TMonster]

Aha! OK, thanks @MikeB2013 - I should've considered that. (FYI, CTRL+F5 is also a full refresh in Firefox)

I appreciate any input here

I now see in the myriad XML "States":

Code: Select all

<String>
<Key>state</Key>
<Value>WatchingLiveTV</Value>
</String>

So, Frontend knows that I'm watching live tv, yet it's timing out following the standby timer

I changed the Live TV Idle Timeout to 5 minutes and saw the "MythTV has been idle for 5 minutes..." countdown (which is NOT what I see in the original problem).

That was then reset back to 0.

The journal has the following logs at that time:

Code: Select all

Mar 03 20:57:51 tranquilitybase mythbackend[805]: 2020-03-03 20:57:50.940011 I  TVRec[3]: Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None
Mar 03 20:57:51 tranquilitybase mythbackend[805]: 2020-03-03 20:57:51.038550 N  Finished Recording: Container: MPEG2-TS Video Codec: mpeg2video (704x576 A/R: 3 25fps) Audio Codec: mp2
Mar 03 20:57:51 tranquilitybase mythbackend[805]: 2020-03-03 20:57:51.039753 I  TVRec[3]: FinishedRecording(1001_2020-03-03T20:52:06Z) damaged recq:<RecordingQuality overall_score="0" key="1001_2020-03-03T20:52:06Z" countinuity_error_count="0" packet_count="1164406">
Mar 03 20:57:51 tranquilitybase mythbackend[805]:     <Gap start="2020-03-03T19:30:00Z" end="2020-03-03T20:52:05Z" duration="4925" />
Mar 03 20:57:51 tranquilitybase mythbackend[805]:     <Gap start="2020-03-03T20:57:46Z" end="2020-03-03T22:00:00Z" duration="3733" />
Mar 03 20:57:51 tranquilitybase mythbackend[805]: </RecordingQuality>
Mar 03 20:57:51 tranquilitybase mythbackend[805]: 2020-03-03 20:57:51.064374 I  Playback sock(5579b400aa80) 'tranquilitybase' disconnected

I then changed the Standby Timer to 15 minutes...and it looks like that's the culprit...

So, if the frontend API is recognising that I'm watching Live TV, then the Standby Timer appears to be unaware...

Any pointers on where to look next?

Thanks