"Tuning => Failing" and PES header errors

[dhwalker]

Over the past few weeks, I've been recording failures on a few of my channels (703 - NBC HD, 705 - CBS HD, and 707 - ABC HD) from Comcast in the San Francisco East Bay. I haven't tested all channels, but I haven't found any others that fail.

Sometimes I end up with 0 byte recording, associated with log records like:

• Mar 3 18:58:04 fitlet2 mythbackend: mythbackend[2986]: I CoreContext scheduler.cpp:729 (UpdateRecStatus) Updating status for "707 (KGODT)":"2021-03-03 19:00:00" on cardid [1] (Tuning => Failing)

Other times, I get recordings with a large enough number of corruptions that it's not possible to play all the way through. Large numbers of log records like the following are associated when this happens.

• Feb 17 19:48:34 fitlet2 mythbackend: mythbackend[2808]: E HDHRStreamHandler recorders/dtvrecorder.cpp:922 (FindH264Keyframes) DTVRec[1]: PES packet headers overflow to next TS packet, aborting keyframe search

• Feb 17 19:48:35 fitlet2 mythbackend: mythbackend[2808]: E HDHRStreamHandler recorders/dtvrecorder.cpp:896 (FindH264Keyframes) DTVRec[1]: PES start code not found in TS packet with PUSI set

Any ideas? I'm currently on v30 with an HDHR3-CC tuner; might an upgrade to v31 help? I suspect this is a Comcast failing, but I thought I'd start here before fighting with Comcast tech support.

David

[kmdewaal]

Try scanning for channels.
An upgrade to v31 will not solve your recording failures but v31 does have better channel scanning and it is documented in https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Channel_Scanning

[pgbennett]

If it is a cable-card (AFAIK required for Comcast) then there is no channel scan possible.

In my experience, with a Ceton cable-card tuner, the message "PES start code not found in TS packet with PUSI set" comes in large quantity if you try to record from a channel to which you are not subscribed.

[dhwalker]

Thanks. It is a cable card tuner, so I haven't done a channel scan. These are also channels that are part of my subscription (they work fine with a Comcast-provided set top box), but that makes me think that the cable card may need some re-provisioning. Anyway, I guess I've got an afternoon with Comcast tech support in my future.