SOLVED: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

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BgeeCaver
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SOLVED: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by BgeeCaver »

Due to some hardware failures I need to redo the capture card setup for my HDHomeRun HDHR3. It is an older device with two tuners both connected to the same antenna input. When I go to the System Information screen in MythFrontend, the Input Status screen says that tuner one is good and tuner two is "Errored". What am I missing?

The host system is Fedora 36 (64-bit) running MythTV packages from the Fedora repositories. The output of mythutil --version is:

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[bgee@mythtv ~]$ mythutil --version
Please attach all output as a file in bug reports.
MythTV Version : v32.0-v32.0-44-g4cf469cbbf
MythTV Branch : fixes/32
Network Protocol : 91
Library API : 32.20200101-1
QT Version : 5.15.3
Options compiled in:
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The HDHomeRun reports firmware version 20210422 which I think is the latest. The model is reported as "hdhomerun3_atsc" and the hardware is reported as "HDHR3-US".

The last time I did this - some years ago! - I had to tell the setup program which tuner to use for each capture card. I do not see any options for that in version 32. Does it still require setting up two capture cards, one for each tuner? If so, how do I tell it which tuner to use?

Thanks - Bill Gee
Last edited by BgeeCaver on Fri Sep 30, 2022 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Steve Goodey
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by Steve Goodey »

Hello,

Does this help by any chance?

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Channel_Sca ... Run_tuners

Steve.
Don't forget the Wiki.
BgeeCaver
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by BgeeCaver »

Hi Steve - I have been through that section of the documentation several times. It says I need to create two capture cards - but says nothing about how to tell each capture card which tuner to use. I went through it anyway before posting my question, with the result that the second input just shows "Error" for the status.

When I get to the Video Source field on the Inputs screen, there are only two choices - None and MyChannels. The name of the input is either None or MPEG2TS. No other choices are offered, and it is the same for both capture cards.

Bill Gee
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Steve Goodey
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by Steve Goodey »

Ah sorry, worth a try. I'll shut up, hopefully someone who knows what they're talking about will come by and help. :D
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pgbennett
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by pgbennett »

Tuners are numbered from 0 so the tuners would be 0 and 1. Is it possible that you have instead specified them as 1 and 2?
BgeeCaver
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by BgeeCaver »

Hmmm ... I do not see a place to specify tuner numbers at all, so there is no way I could have set them to 1 and 2. That is the crux of my question - How and where are tuners numbers specified? It used to be with a "-0" or "-1" appended to the TCP/IP address of the HDHomeRun. I do not see a way to do that in the current version.

I did change the Display Name on the Inputs screen to "Tuner 0" and "Tuner 1". However, that is just a descriptive string. Both inputs have the same source which is MPEG2TS. No other sources are offered in the drop-down list.
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bill6502
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by bill6502 »

No need to have a number anymore. Both tuners will have the HDHR abcd0123 like number.

This happened when sharing was introduced, such that you could just assign one tuner to MythTV
and let another be used by some other program.

See Commit [57a0ad8] for details.
BgeeCaver
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by BgeeCaver »

Hmmm ... OK, so do I still need two capture cards? Do I still need two inputs? And why do I get "Errored" on one of the tuners?

Would it help to have a screen shot of the error message?

I have no other program to use the tuners, so both should be assigned to MythTV.
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bill6502
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by bill6502 »

Yes, two cards, two inputs (one source). Maybe this will help with the Errored issue: hdhomerun_config discover .
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kmdewaal
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by kmdewaal »

A tuner (capture card) is reported as Errored when it is not connected to a video source.
The video source represents the RF input of the HDHomeRun.
Each capture card (tuner) must be logically connected with the Video Source.
It could be that only the first tuner is connected to the Video Source and the second tuner is not.
BgeeCaver
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by BgeeCaver »

Running the discover command tells me nothing I did not already know. I added a few more items from hdhomerun_config in case they might be useful.

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[bgee@mythtv ~]$ hdhomerun_config discover
hdhomerun device 103C90FD found at 192.168.17.99
[bgee@mythtv ~]$ hdhomerun_config 103c90fd get /tuner0/status
ch=none lock=none ss=0 snq=0 seq=0 bps=0 pps=0
[bgee@mythtv ~]$ hdhomerun_config 103c90fd get /tuner1/status
ch=none lock=none ss=0 snq=0 seq=0 bps=0 pps=0
[bgee@mythtv ~]$  hdhomerun_config 103c90fd get /sys/features
channelmap: us-bcast us-cable us-hrc us-irc kr-bcast kr-cable
modulation: 8vsb qam256 qam64
auto-modulation: auto auto6t auto6c qam
How about this idea ... I have two capture cards which are, as far as I can tell, identical. I have one video source which is called MyChannels. I have two inputs which both use the same video source. Except for display name they are also identical. Could it be that I need to create another video source? Could the second tuner be balking at using the same video source as the first?
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kmdewaal
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by kmdewaal »

Could it be that I need to create another video source? Could the second tuner be balking at using the same video source as the first?
No.
BgeeCaver
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by BgeeCaver »

Is there a log file or a debug routine that can give more information about the "Errored" status?

I looked in /var/og/mythtv and found a couple of mythbackend*.log files. Looking through the I see nothing unusual. There are AutoExpire jobs running about every 15 minutes, but that is just normal activity. There are also a bunch of mythdatalookup.* files, none of which contains anything suggestive for this problem. I looked through the options for mythutil and did not see anything that might help.

Here is something interesting ... In MythWeb the Backend Status screen shows only one encoder. The schedule shows at least one case where two shows overlap and will therefore require two tuners. No error or conflict is noted. Could it be that one capture card is sufficient??? That contradicts the documentation.

The Upcoming Recordings list also shows no conflicts. All shows are scheduled for "Tuner 0" which is the Display Name I gave to one of the inputs.
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kmdewaal
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by kmdewaal »

Can you give some database table info?
First you have to login into the database, like this (after the -p is your password):

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> mysql -u mythtv -pmythtv mythconverg
Then please post the output of these two sql commands:

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MariaDB [mythconverg]> select * from videosource;
and

Code: Select all

MariaDB [mythconverg]>  select cardid,parentid,videodevice,sourceid,hostname,cardtype,inputname,displayname from capturecard;
This might give enough information to figure out if it is a configuration issue or something else.
BgeeCaver
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Re: HDHomeRun 3 setting up dual tuners

Post by BgeeCaver »

Now this is interesting! As a stop-gap, after posting my last note here I removed the second capture card. The system now has only one capture card defined. When I run the two SQL queries, I get this:

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MariaDB [mythconverg]> select * from videosource;
+----------+------------+-------------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------+--------+------------+------------+------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+
| sourceid | name       | xmltvgrabber      | userid | freqtable | lineupid | password | useeit | configpath | dvb_nit_id | bouquet_id | region_id | scanfrequency | lcnoffset |
+----------+------------+-------------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------+--------+------------+------------+------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+
|        1 | MyChannels | tv_grab_zz_sdjson | NULL   | us-bcast  | PC:66061 | NULL     |      0 | NULL       |         -1 |          0 |         0 |             0 |         0 |
+----------+------------+-------------------+--------+-----------+----------+----------+--------+------------+------------+------------+-----------+---------------+-----------+
1 row in set (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [mythconverg]> select cardid,parentid,videodevice,sourceid,hostname,cardtype,inputname,displayname from capturecard;
+--------+----------+-------------+----------+----------------------+-----------+-----------+-------------+
| cardid | parentid | videodevice | sourceid | hostname             | cardtype  | inputname | displayname |
+--------+----------+-------------+----------+----------------------+-----------+-----------+-------------+
|      1 |        0 | 103C90FD    |        1 | mythtv.billgee.local | HDHOMERUN | MPEG2TS   | Tuner 0     |
|      3 |        1 | 103C90FD    |        1 | mythtv.billgee.local | HDHOMERUN | MPEG2TS   | Tuner 0     |
+--------+----------+-------------+----------+----------------------+-----------+-----------+-------------+
2 rows in set (0.000 sec)

Two cards are shown in the second query even though only one capture card is defined in the setup program. Is that what I should see?

Also - Last night it successfully recorded two programs that started at the same time. Both programs were on the local PBS station, so perhaps it got them from multiplex. I kind of doubt that, though, as the multiplex recording feature seems a bit outre.

Bill Gee
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