No Signal sometimes after adding new splitter

[garys]

Hi,

I have a SageTV setup with Sage v6.x which has been generally rock solid for me for quite a while. Recently, I added a splitter close to where my cable comes into the house. I realized before I did it that there would be signal degradation to my Sage box, but I was keeping my fingers crossed that it would still work...

Well, it does, but only sometimes. Sometimes I get 'No Signal' when trying to tune a channel from the guide. The strange part is that if I go into the tuner setup in 'setup video sources' from any of my extenders, I get good strong signal on every single tuner! If it was simple to put an amp in before the split, I'd do that and be done with it. Unfortunately, because of where the new splitter is, that would be difficult, so I'm trying to work around it.

So, I'm wondering if maybe the tuners are taking a little longer to 'lock in' the signal and that is causing Sage to give up too soon when trying to start recording.

Does anyone know if there is some kind of timeout or delay that needs to be increased in order to get Sage to reliably be able to use the tuners to record and/or watch live tv. I have a couple pvr150s, a pvr500 and an HD Homerun. I've seen examples of this issue on both the pvrs and the HDHR.

TIA for any advice on this!

Gary

[garys]

Update: The problem now occurs 100% of the time.

Does it make sense to anyone else that all of the tuners work just fine in tuner setup, but when trying to select a channel to watch via live tv or the guide, it can't tune it and gives the 'no signal' message? What am I missing?

This is very confusing to me and I'm just thinking it must be timing out.

Anybody got an explanation, suggestion?

Gary

[Opus4]

If you changed nothing in SageTV after adding the splitter, it sounds like you cut the signal level low enough to not be reliably usable by the tuners. If you reconfigured SageTV afterwards and your problem is with digital tuners, then perhaps you didn't perform the required channel scan for every digital tuner.

- Andy

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by garys

Does anyone know if there is some kind of timeout or delay that needs to be increased in order to get Sage to reliably be able to use the tuners to record and/or watch live tv. I have a couple pvr150s, a pvr500 and an HD Homerun. I've seen examples of this issue on both the pvrs and the HDHR.

It's strange that you would see this behavior on the analog tuners (PVRxxx). With analog, as the signal is degraded it just gets "snowier". You tend to get a slow linear drop-off. Adding a splitter shouldn't take you from a good signal to no signal.

On the other hand with digital signals, you tend to have fairly sharp transitions between (a) great signal, (b) poor signal with lots of blocks on the screen, and (c) no signal. I could see how adding a splitter could take you from a to b or b to c or even a to c.

Of course none of this explains why you get good results in preview mode and poor results in normal operation...

[RocKKer]

I might try to simplify the setup by removing all but one of the tuners in STV. Test each one individually, then add them one at a time with a test in between.

Honestly, I don't know if this will help but, sometimes simplifying gives clues.

[wrems]

Double check the coax connectors. Just the other day I was messing with my splitters and when I hooked everything up my internet went out... I was like what... Went back down their checked connections and tried removing all splitters and going direct. Everything went back online. So I went back and re-connected everything and nothing again. When I looked at all the connections again I noticed that the connector was coming loose. I cut a piece of the coax off and put a new connector on and all my troubles went away. Something to check anyway.

[garys]

Thanks to opus, tiki, rockker and wrems for the suggestions.

Update: Lots of changes, but same results.

I was extremely frustrated with this situation, so I took drastic action... (unfortunately, in the end, the issue still persists )

I decided I wanted to take possible low signal out of the equation, so I re-routed the way cable comes into my house. It used to come through my attic, then into the basement. I have taken it straight into the basement now for a more direct route (cutting out an initial 25-50 ft run of cable). This also means I don't have any splits before the amp now. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while anyway, this last issue just finally pushed me to do it.

This at first seemed to have solved the issue. I power-cycled the amplifier and the Sage server and I was able to tune both analog and digital shows and watch them. I thought it was a done deal...

until...

last night, the same problem reared it's ugly head again... And, just as before, once it happens, it seems to be 100% of the time. I can't watch analog or digital, but when I go into the tuner setup, every one of them tunes channels just fine. WTH!!!

I am now completely confused. I have checked and tightened every connection, and now there are no splits and a more direct route in before hitting the amp. Also, the TVs being fed by the same amp seem to have no problem with snow on analogs and get QAM channels just fine too.

I'm thinking about trying the suggestion of cutting down the number of active tuners, just to see if that affects anything.

I'm open to other suggestions as well.

Thanks for the suggestions so far and I'll post back the results of cutting down the number of tuners.

Gary

[Tiki]

It could be a Hauppauge driver issue. If nothing else is working, you might want to try the Hauppauge HWClear utility to erase all the driver info, then re-install drivers and cards one at a time testing for a little while after installing each card.

You may also want to post what versions of the drivers you are using. It's possible that you just have a buggy version of one of your drivers.

[garys]

Update: Resolved!

This was truly a strange one...

It turns out, that Windows had mysteriously and *very* coincidentally inserted the CDROM drive into the middle of the hard drive letters around the same time I put the new splitter in. So, the CDROM was being seen by Sage as a recording drive (I guess) and the ones after that were off by 1, with the last one not being seen at all.

Once I put the drive letters back to how they should be, things started working fine again and I haven't had the problem again in several days.

So, this does seem to explain why the tuners were fine in setup, but sometimes couldn't record. It doesn't explain why Sage didn't report a problem with the recording instead of saying it couldn't tune the channel. That made this one kinda hard to diagnose...

Anyway, thought I'd update everyone on the solution. Not that it will ever happen again...

Thanks to those who offered advice and suggestions!

Gary

[panteragstk]

never would have thought to check that, very strange...glad you found the issue...