[Solved] HDHomeRun Quatro OTA Works :-), Premium TV Does Not :-(

[urbnsr]

Why can I not watch HDHomeRun's Premium TV demo channels, but OTA is OK?

I purchased a new generation (to me) HDHomeRun Connect Quatro for the chance to quit our cable for the Premium TV.

I have the Quatro installed with the firmware 20180817 and can see the demo channels and scanned for the OTA channels. Most (all?) channels can be watched via VLC and the demo channels quit after 2 minutes. So I feel this part is OK.

I installed a fresh Ubuntu 18.04.1 O/S and installed MythTV:
MythTV Version : v29.1-13-g329c235
MythTV Branch : fixes/29
Network Protocol : 91
Library API : 29.20180316-1
QT Version : 5.9.4

After following Mr. Gary Buhrmaster's HDHR Premium TV service with MythTV PDF (Thank you!!) found here: https://lists.gt.net/mythtv/users/619977, it looks like I have a setup to view the Premium channels. I have not purchased the Premium channels until I have this setup working and my Wife signs off on this idea. I can view/record all the OTA channels in MythTV, but cannot view any demo Premium channels. After a black screen, MythTV returns to its main menu with an error that it could not recover.

While watching the output from mythbackend, it indicates:

Code: Select all

2019-01-20 12:39:47.178155 I  TVRec[1]: TuningFrequency
2019-01-20 12:39:47.180455 E  TVRec[1]: Failed to set channel to 1010. Reverting to kState_None
2019-01-20 12:39:47.180504 I  TVRec[1]: Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None
2019-01-20 12:39:47.203230 N  Finished Recording: Container: MPEG2-TS Video Codec: mpeg2video (704x480 A/R: 3 29.97fps) Audio Codec: ac3
2019-01-20 12:39:47.204517 I  TVRec[1]: FinishedRecording(10037_2019-01-20T17:39:00Z) damaged recq:<RecordingQuality overall_score="0" key="10037_2019-01-20T17:39:00Z" countinuity_error_count="0" packet_count="68476">
    <Gap start="2019-01-20T17:30:00Z" end="2019-01-20T17:39:00Z" duration="540" />
    <Gap start="2019-01-20T17:39:43Z" end="2019-01-20T18:00:00Z" duration="1216" />
</RecordingQuality>

Looking at the system log from the Quatro does not indicate any new activity (and the time indicated is not local time - maybe PTime and I am ETime).

What am I missing??

Thanks for any input!

Paul

[yawlhoo]

Like you I have a Quatro and subscribed to Premium TV for a while and was able to record Premium TV with my MythTV setup. It was an interesting experiment, but I found myself in the same place I also seem to wind up in with this kind of setup, "500 channels and nothing to watch." So I dropped my subscription, and only record and watch OTA stuff.

With no subscription I am back to what you have now. I tried to watch live TV on the Premium TV channels, thinking like you I would see the demo, but like you it immediately goes back to the main menu, with a log entry similar to yours.

I have the android HDHomerun app, with that I am able to view the demo content on my phone, so the Quatro can get this stuff.

So maybe either one has to actually be signed up for Premium TV to watch/record, or something has changed and my previously working setup (and yours) no longer works.

Sorry this is all I can offer, maybe if you posted in the Silicon Dust help forums they would be able to give you some answers: their technical staff is top-notch.

[urbnsr]

Well, it's kind of good to know I'm not alone. But, too bad we're having this problem.

I thought I had mine working at first, but found out mythhdhrrecorder was using my HDHomeRun Prime even though I specified the --hdhr [device] option pointing it to the HDHomeRun Quatro. I unplugged the Prime and reconfigured everything, but no help.

[urbnsr]

I notice when going to Watch TV from MythTV, the backend machine will send a GET for the OTA channel and when changing channels to another OTA, I see another GET request. When changing channels to a demo, I don't see the GET request.

Also, when going to live TV, which brings up successful OTA channel, the backend requests a lineup from the HDHomeRun. The result seems to only be the OTA channels and not the demos. I don't know if this dynamically teaches MythTV of the available channels (and to not request any others) or not.

Yes - I think I will ask on SD's forum.

[urbnsr]

OK - In case anyone is interested:

This is what I think is happening: MythTV gets the channel line up from Schedules Direct so the demo channels appear legit. Each time I go to Watch TV, mythhdhrrecorder asks the HDHomeRun for its current channel lineup which is returned via http://[HDHomeRun IP Address]/lineup.json. For me, this is only returning valid channels and since I have yet to subscribe to Silicondust's Premium TV, this means just the OTA channels are valid.

I am told that by subscribing, the Premium Channels would be included in the lineup.json response. I also found out on Silicondust's forum that lineup.json?show=demo returns OTA and the Demo channels. So, I modified mythhdhrrecorder to not ask and assume the line up is http://[HDHomeRun IP Address]/lineup.json?show=demo and I can now test my MythTV setup as proof that it works before I jump in with both feet.

I realize the 2 minute timeout isn't great in practice, unless there is an short attention span (like me sometimes), but it is good to know it does work. It is too bad MythTV cannot be updated dynamically like mythhdhrrecoder is updated from the tuner(s), so I can see future scheduled recordings failing because MythTV thinks the channel is available, but mythhdhrrecorder doesn't even attempt to view a channel if the channel is not returned in a lineup.json request.

The above is what I *think* I understand about this setup - today. I could be wrong - YMMV.