minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

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kens
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minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kens »

Hi all,

I've just tried testing minisatip as a Sat/ip source for a Myth 0.32 system. Occasionally the minisatip system is detected by MythTV Setup, But most of the time it can't find it. When it is detected channel scans fail.

I can tune minisatip from vlc and it streams just fine. Is there some subtlety in the setup that I'm missing such as a timeout value. I notice that MythTV Setup only waits 3 seconds to find the Satip service in the network and maybe it misses the network advertisments.

I'm using a RHEL clone to do this and I have minidlna, port 1900 enabled in the firewall

Any suggestions

Thanks

Ken
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kmdewaal
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kmdewaal »

Can you try disabling the firewall and check if it then works?
kens
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kens »

Thank you - my thoughts were going the same way, I'll try that first before I start hacking away with Wireshark

:-) Ken
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kmdewaal
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kmdewaal »

It could be that VLC uses HTTP to receive a single program. In MythTV RTP/RTCP is used to access it at a lower level so that what we receive is similar to what we get from a PCIe tuner card, and thus things like channel scanning, multirec etc. do work the same.
I run this only inside my own home network and I do not have firewalls between my own computers and here it works OK.
I will add a note to the WIki page https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Channel_Sca ... EIP_tuners about the firewall if that is what causes your problems.

Klaas.
kens
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kens »

Thank you Klaas, with the firewall turned off I could get a channel scan of two DVB-S2 tuners. But the scan of a two DVB-T2 tuners failed. I can see the log of the tuning frequencies from MythtvSetup. Is there some setting somewhere that I have missed?

I appreciate the difference between the how VLC interfaces to satip compared with Myth. I just wanted to prove to myself that the tuners were alive.

Thanks

Ken
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kmdewaal
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kmdewaal »

I assume that you are using minisatip to access the DVB-T2 tuners, but that should just work. Maybe you can post the commandline that you use to start minisatip?
As a general note, if you have not yet done that you might want to read the Channel Scanning Wiki page https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Channel_Scanning.
kens
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kens »

Exactly. The system has two Hauppauge HVR-5525 that present as 4 tuners. 2 are S2 and they work and 2 are T2 that don't work.

I've tried with just minisatip -f and with

minisatip -f --delsys 0:dvbs2,1:dvbt2,2:dvbs2,3:dvbt2 -l general,adapter,satipc -L 0:9750-10600-11700,2:9750-10600-11700

mythtvsetup finds all 4 adaptors. It identifies the S2 and the T2. But a channel scan of the T2 fails. Whereas the S2 is fine.

There's probably a setting or option I've overlooked. Although there is a channel frequency table for UK DTV built in to Myth should I be specifying the frequency of where the scan should start? In the UK thats Channel 23 on 474Mhz (CORRECTION this should have said channel 21)

:-) Ken
Last edited by kens on Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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kmdewaal
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kmdewaal »

I just tested this with my USB DVB-T2 dongle and it does work here with "minisatip -f -e 4" command. The "-e 4" starts minisatip only that tuner.
If you use the "-v pmt" option with minisatip then it also shows the full name of the device at startup, Which is useful to make sure the correct device is used.
With DVB-T2 scanning you should use the "Full Scan" method. The most often encountered problem here is that you do need to select the country. This then selects the frequency table that is used in the "Full Scan". See the Wiki section https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Channel_Scanning#Full_Scan
This should just work.
I do not have a Hauppauge HVR-5525 but please check that it really has four tuners. I have a TBS card that can do DVB-S/S2/C/T2 and that has separate connectors for DVB-C/T2 and for DVB-S/S2 but it can only do one at any given time.
If your card is like that then minisatip should be started with only the DVB-T/T2 devices.
kens
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kens »

Thank you for your suggestions Klaas, much appreciated.

Sorry this is a bit long....

You may have seen elsewhere that I'd been having trouble with the drivers for the Hauppauge HVR-5525 on a machine with a Xeon processor, apparently there are known issues with cx23885 chips with Zeon's and Ryzen's. I'd moved both HVR-5525 to an i3 machine and set that up as a slave MythBackend. That was more reliable but I found that the master MythBackend would sometimes report that slave backend was not available. A service restart of the slave every 12 hours or so appeared to be needed. (My Myth 0.24 system has an uptime of several years!)

I have seen the same error message from the cx23885 driver on the i3 slave machine that previously showed up much more often on the Xeon system. To try to separate out whether the HVR-5525 driver is the issue on the i3 slave system or something is awry with Myth I decided to experiment with MiniSatIP to see if I could get a reliable configuration.

The HVR-5525 presents as two adaptors with a single frontend each. I have two of those giving a total of 4 adaptors in my configuration. Like this:-

Adaptor0+Frontend0 is Card0 DVBS2,
Adaptor1+Frontend0 is Card0 DVBT2,
Adaptor2+Frontend0 is Card1 DVBS2,
Adaptor3+Frontend0 is Card1 DVBT2.

I ran several tests yesterday. With the system operating as a myth slave backend I could similtaneously have 2 frontends running at the same time, one showing DVBS2 from Card0 and the other showing DVBT2 from Card0.

I reconfigured it with minisatip and I tried your suggestion, Klaas, of the "-e" option on minisatip. Running the system with minisatip I tried a few tests of the "-e" option

1) no -e option - Four devices showing in Myth, only the two DVBS2 devices working, both DVBT2 fail :?
2) -e 1 - Single DVBT2 device showing in Myth and working :D
3) -e 0,1 - DVBS2 and DVBT2 devices showing in Myth only the DVBS2 works, DVBT2 fails :?
4) -e 1,3 - Two DVBT2 devices showing in Myth and both working :D
5) -e 0,1,2,3 - Four devices showing in Myth, only the two DVBS2 devices working, both DVBT2 fail :?
6) -e 0,2 - Two DVBS2 devices showing in Myth and both working :D

I have logfiles from minisatip and mythtvsetup for each of these tests

Interestingly, when using the -e option with minisatip, the DVBT2 device shows options in mythtvsetup of ATSCC, DVBC and DVBT2 whereas without the -e option those options don't show.

From the tests above it seems that two DVBT2 devices or two DVBS2 devices will work. But a mixture of DVBS2 and DVBT2 fail. Its as if minisatip seems to only accept one DVB service from each card, despite my test using mythbackend slave showing that the two tuners on the HVR-5525 are independent.

For the moment I'm testing with minisatip and myth configured with two DVBS2 devices. I have seen the livetv tuning error reported elsewhere in this configuration.

Thanks

Ken
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kmdewaal
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kmdewaal »

Looking up the HVR-5525, I really think that this is a single tuner device. It is capable of receiving anything but only one at a time. If it was not like that it would have been advertised as "dual tuner" or so.
The presence of difference interfaces in Linux for DVB-S/S2 and for DVB-C/T/T2 is needed because of how the tuning API works and does not mean that you really have two tuners that you can use at the same time.

I think that minisatip keeps the card open so that when it first does the DVB-S2 device then opening the DVB-T2 does fail. If you do not open the DVB-S2 by using the "-e" option then it can open the DVB-T2 device. As shown by your minisatip tests.

Why it works sometimes in MythTV is probably because MythTV has the "Open card on demand" option which is selected by default. This means that you can configure both the DVB-T2 and the DVB-S2 tuner cards and using any one of them will work but not at the same time.
If memory serves me right, in MythTV you can even configure "Input groups" so that the scheduler understands this limitation and schedules accordingly.

Note that if you configure EIT for a device then that device will be always in use.

Hope this helps,
Klaas.
kens
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Re: minisatip Myth 0.32 unreliable PnP

Post by kens »

Even though I'm convinced I managed to do a simultaneous DVB-T and DVB-S recording with the HVR-5525 card this FAQ entry on the Hauppauge site sealed the deal for me.
  • Can I record one show while watching another with the WinTV-HVR-55XX?

    The WinTV-HVR-5525 only has one TV tuner. But if you have two WinTV-HVR-5525's in one PC, you can record one TV program while viewing the other, or even record both simultaneously. While recording a digital TV channel, you can be watching an analog TV channel or visa versa.
Thank you Klass for your help here. I have ended up switching to TBS capture cards now that I have got the drivers to compile.

:-) Ken
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