2nd tuner suddenly not working

[Surtr]

SageTV Server 4.0 on win2k

All of a sudden, my secondary PVR-150 isn't working in sage -- anything I try to view on it just flat out doesn't work. Just get a black screen. I tried removing sources and re-adding them, but it's all the same. Anyone have any ideas what I might try?

Thanks.

-Justin

[doc]

First off I would try the hauppage WinTV application and see if that works. If so then its probably sage, if not then its not sage.

If it doesnt work I'd try going to just one TV card and seeing if that works with hauppauge. Are your cards both the same? Try haupauge with the good card only, then swap it for the other card. Its a case of elimination to track it down to either a u/s tv card, drivers, or sage.

Theres nothing worse than spending a weekend with the PC in bits is there

[Surtr]

Ya, the two cards are the same, both PVR-150 OEMs (with FM radio). I'll try it with the hauppauge app tonight. You're probably right, it's probably the card that flaked out. I'll post back this weekend to let you know what I find. I gotta get it fixed before preseason football!

Anyone reading this know who has the best deals on PVR-150's? Any experience with Hauppauge's warrantee service?

[Surtr]

Well, I can't get the thing working with WinTV2000 -- the app just hangs. I reinstalled drivers, and now the second tuner doesn't even show up in SageTV. Device Manager shows both tuners, but Sage only shows the first. I think I've got a hosed card...

[pgitta]

This may not be your problem, but I just spent two days losing my mind with the same problem of the second tuner/no signal.

I reloaded drivers, moved cards around, reloaded this, reloaded that, and every time I reloaded SageTV, they would work for a while, and then the second one would stop.

Suddenly it occurred to me, that "for a while" was exactly how long it took for me to do a manual channel scan. And that's what broke it.

Apparently, the guide data/channels that SageTV loads up for your tuners are applied to every source, but if you do a scan on one source, you have to do a scan for EACH source or you will get "no signal" on the ones that didn't get a scan.

It's all very confusing because SageTV attaches the exact channel results from the scan to every source, but doesn't bother to tell you:

"Hey, just because these channels appear, doesn't mean they will work"

Suggestion for SageTV dudes:

When clicking "Scan for channels" how bout a pop-up something like:

"About to perform manual channel scan. You must repeat this process on each additional source in order for them to tune channels properly"

[Surtr]

Thanks for the info; I don't think that's the same issue I'm having though. Turns out I can use the second tuner with wintv (reinstalled drivers), but only if I disable the first (I didn't see a way to have wintv select which tuner to use). When I go to "Add Source", the second tuner doesn't even show up -- makes me think it's not the tuner after all, but rather something going on with Sage. Is there sometheing specific (like a property setting perhaps) that I have to use to get sage to see the second tuner?

[Surtr]

Originally Posted by jds23

Hi there, I just had a VERY similar problem happen to me. Long story short, the ONLY way I could fix it was by reinstalling Sage completely fresh. Backup your Sagetv dir and try it if you haven't done so, you can always copy your Sagetv folder back over if I am wrong, but I am telling you it was just about exactly what you are experiencing, just different cards. There is no doubt in my mind it was something relative to the way Sage gets information on the cards, but I just didn't have enough information to pinpoint exactly what it was. A fresh install, and then reimporting all my STV's did the trick. GL

Man, I think your prob was exactly the same as mine!

I did (finally) get it mostly fixed. I had to shut down sageTV service, open sage.properties, remove the entry "Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture \#2" from the property "mmc/ignore_encoders" and delete all of the properties starting with "mmc/encoders/551195575". Now the tuner works in sage, except that I can't watch NFL network -- it shows in the program guide, just with no program data, and I can't change to that channel on Live TV. I think I'm just gonna reinstall with v5...

Anyway, it looks like somehow a property in sage.properties having to do with that specific tuner got hosed somehow. I hope that this helps anyone else who has similar issues in the future.

-Justin

[pgitta]

The only other thing I can think of is to make sure all the hardware appears in device manager without #2's or #3's after them and if so, use the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices to remove any orphaned hardware from the registry.

Maybe you moved a card to a different slot before removing it from the Windows system? If so, I can see that causing confusion for Sage.

[Surtr]

Originally Posted by pgitta

The only other thing I can think of is to make sure all the hardware appears in device manager without #2's or #3's after them and if so, use the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices to remove any orphaned hardware from the registry.

Maybe you moved a card to a different slot before removing it from the Windows system? If so, I can see that causing confusion for Sage.

Both cards looked identical in device manager. Didn't make any changes to the system when this happened, software or hardware. As a matter of fact, my family was on vacation when this happened. I dunno what the heck caused it...

NFL Network came back, I think it was just a network prob.

Thanks for all the help everyone!

-Justin