Struggles with HDHR

[jlindborg]

I'm installing a fresh server with Sage 7b10 on it with Windows 7 32 bit - I have HDHR flying on my 6.6 version no problem, but switching it over to 7 has been pretty annoying.

Running through the instructions on Silicon's site and in the forums here this should be pretty straight forward. But the Sage scan turns up zero chanels and takes _forever_ to run. So - I checked to see what was in the .SCN file created by Silicone. The scan itself works fine, all the chanels are found and play via VLC no problem. However when you hit "apply" on your chanel list there is no .SCN file created anywhere - I searched the entire hard drive for any file with .scn extension and there's jack squat. It only creates a "Digital Cable.xml" file in the ProgramData tree - that's it.

I have SiliconDust selected under the Application on the HDHR setup and I've disabled the firewall as a test and tried forcing the BDA Driver to "Block" as per another suggestion in another thread. Zero joy.

Am I missing something really big here? Other folks seem to have this flying on win7 so I'm assuming I stumbled somewhere but I don't see anything in the docs or the forums that shedding any light on this...

[jlindborg]

casting around - I turned off UAC entirely - now the SCN file is being created.

That's odd and a bit lame - I ran the SD setup tool with admin rights and there was no warning that the file creation failed. I suspect they spawn another application that ends up dumping the file into Sage's program file and the "run as administrator" doesn't inherit or something to that effect. Short version Sillicon Dust's stuff is not really Win7 ready if it doesn't support UAC - turn it off, generate the SCN files and then turn it back on.

[teedublu]

Or maybe more like Sage doesn't support Win7 properly since it violates UAC and virtual store rules.....

[jlindborg]

yeah - could be.

Now I'm onto the next problem - signal strength is fine (90 plus) on all chanels and it plays fine via VLC but Sage shows "no signal" for all chanels anyway. Sigh. I'm guessing a firewall issue or something...

[iammexx]

My HDHR has been having issues since upgrading to V7. It will work fine for a couple of hours and then no signal. I just checked it and tuner 0 has no signal in Sage but tuner 1 does. If I stop sage and restart I will get signal back but again it only works for an hour or so.

It worked fine under V6x.

[rmiller]

I have had this issue in V6 AND V7. My HDHR runs fine in VLC and Windows Media Center, but in SageTV I have 3 channels that show "No Signal" even though I have a 90% plus signal. This has been plaguing me for a few months now.

[texneus]

Try this fix, it resolved all the HDHR issues I was having (third post from the end). Note when you reset the .scn & .frq files, UAC must be off. If that doesn't do it, request help on the Silicon Dust forums. They will have you enable logging on the HDHR and they can tell you pretty much exactly what is going on.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8736

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by jlindborg

yeah - could be.

Now I'm onto the next problem - signal strength is fine (90 plus) on all chanels and it plays fine via VLC but Sage shows "no signal" for all chanels anyway. Sigh. I'm guessing a firewall issue or something...

Does it work if you disable the firewall? I had the same issue, and I had to open UDP ports 5002 & 5004 in the windows firewall. After that, everything worked fine.

-Dan

[teedublu]

There must be an additional issue with Sage 7b10, at least in Win764.
I've removed the lineups and deleted the scn and frq files manually.
And rescan in HDHR setup -- where all channels it finds works.
But in Sage, at least 1 of the channels refuse to tune properly. The light goes on, but says No Signal. The info in the scn and frq match and seems right The HDHR Config gui shows the same channel numbers when the quickTV tunes it fine. It must be a file parsing error by Sage7.

My next attempt will be to roll back to v 6.6 -- (I guess leave work early again to duke it out with Sage) if it works, as I suspect it will, then that eliminates Win7-64. Frankly there are enough other GUI glitches in this beta that I certainly won't miss Sage7 (plus the WAF score = 0).

TW

[rmiller]

Originally Posted by texneus

Try this fix, it resolved all the HDHR issues I was having (third post from the end). Note when you reset the .scn & .frq files, UAC must be off. If that doesn't do it, request help on the Silicon Dust forums. They will have you enable logging on the HDHR and they can tell you pretty much exactly what is going on.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8736

That solved my issue. THANKS!

[jlindborg]

Originally Posted by CyRex

Does it work if you disable the firewall? I had the same issue, and I had to open UDP ports 5002 & 5004 in the windows firewall. After that, everything worked fine.

-Dan

yeah, I found a post that mentioned those ports and now it's flying right.

[jasonl]

We're working on better handling of the scn file creation when SageTV 7 is installed. Look for a new HDHomeRun software beta some time in the next few days.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2484

Until then, as others have noted, just disable UAC when creating the files.

Jason
Silicondust

[teedublu]

Jason,

There seems to be more at issue in Win7-64 than putting SCN files in the right place.

For one thing, I did a full uninstall-reinstall (not just the repair function in the HDHRsetup program), and this time I notice it saying it's applying firewall rules, and voila, I'm able to enable the firewall. So, for some reason the first install didn't do this.

But I still have Sage tune issues on a few channels.

Win764 environment is also causing unstable calls even between your HDHR-Setup program and Quick-TV -- Particularly of Note: the same channels that Sage is unable to tune (Sage reports no signal error). The bad tune by HDHR-setup may cause QTV to pull the wrong channel and the data rate reported by config GUI may shoot up to over 30mbps (for a SD ch). Repeat the View command and it works. But tuning in QTV is right every time. So, I wonder if the Sage call for the offending channel is having similar problem as your Setup program -- only worse as Sage is consistently failing on these problem channels. I did notice that after the Sage tune failure, that config-GUI reports good tune at normal data rate. I'm not so sure config-GUI is reporting tune channel/prog/freq correctly though cause the frequency number doesn't seem to correlate with anything.

I'll be in touch later after I turn on HDHR logging for these scenarios.

TW

[jasonl]

teedublu, that sounds like an isolated issue. Please open a trouble ticket and we will work with you to investigate.
http://www.silicondust.com/tickets/


For everyone else, the latest beta HDHomeRun software has been released and it includes improvements to SCN file generation. SCN files will now always be placed in the SageTV directory and never in the VirtualStore, regardless of UAC settings. This should work correctly with both versions 6 and 7. Please report any issues on our forums or via a ticket.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2484

Jason
Silicondust

[donkey]

If you get "no signal" on a QAM channel in V7 that works in V6, try an update
http://download.sage.tv/users/qian/7.0.10/TSSplitter.ax.

if it doesn't fix, post you native log.

Qian

[naln]

Just FYI - there was a firmware upgrade for HDHR that I realized was available as I was doing a fresh install of win7 and sage7 on my server. It is something released earlier this year I guess - number ends with 2010 vs the 2009beta that I had on there before. Just thought this would help someone having trouble with a similar setup.

So far so good - channel changes etc are the same as before if not quicker, live TV and recorded shows all work really well.
I have the UAC turned off as recommended in one of the posts here. Just wanted to share my experience. Firewall remains on.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by donkey

If you get "no signal" on a QAM channel in V7 that works in V6, try an update
http://download.sage.tv/users/qian/7.0.10/TSSplitter.ax.

if it doesn't fix, post you native log.

Qian

This should be a sticky I spent all day trying to setup a new install with HDHomerun for my neighbor would not tune... come to find out this fixed it.

[teedublu]

Not necessarily -- that splitter file didn't fix QAM tune problems for me.

Had to wait for the next beta release (.11 and later), which fixed clear QAM tune issues (that I was having on just some specific channels).

Also, the latest HDHR software does not require disabling UAC from what I've seen (haven't tried it myself but others report it fixed).

TW