OpenDCT Missing Channels

[bcjenkins]

I am using the most recent version of the OpenDCT docker and when I perform a channel scan in SageTV only pulls in the mapped channels from my HDHomeRun.

My HDHomeRun sees 109 channels, and SageTV only shows 19 which are mapped to the stations. I would like to manually map the majority of the other channels as I have identified them.

As an example, I tried adding channel 5004 which is the Weather Channel in HD as a manual entry based on the channel list on the web page for the tuner. SageTV could not tune it because it did not know the mapping.

I am using a HDHR3-6CC-3X2 with firmware 20170612beta1 in QAM mode.

Any thoughts?

[EnterNoEscape]

OpenDCT excels with ClearQAM when it has a reference source (another tuner with a CableCARD). Otherwise I wouldn't use it for ClearQAM because you'll be just as well off using SageTV's built in support. It's not well tested in situations where a CableCARD isn't available for reference, but if you give it a channel, it should try to tune it as a vchannel as a last resort. If you can post an opendct.log log of what happened when you did a channel scan and also what happened when you tried to manually get it to tune a mapped channel, that should help get me an idea of what's happening.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

OpenDCT excels with ClearQAM when it has a reference source (another tuner with a CableCARD). Otherwise I wouldn't use it for ClearQAM because you'll be just as well off using SageTV's built in support. It's not well tested in situations where a CableCARD isn't available for reference, but if you give it a channel, it should try to tune it as a vchannel as a last resort. If you can post an opendct.log log of what happened when you did a channel scan and also what happened when you tried to manually get it to tune a mapped channel, that should help get me an idea of what's happening.

I need to look into openDCT's QAM scanning the way I did the ATSC scanning changes a while ago, but I don't have a way to test it, as I have zero clearQAM channels at my location. There's no real architectural reason why openDCT cant' be as good or better than native access for clearQAM tuning, and it would gain the ability to ffmpeg remux the streams to clear out some of the timeline issues so common on digital cable feeds.

[bcjenkins]

SageTV didn't seem to try channels above channel 158.

When trying a manually added channel it complains about the QAM frequency not being known.

I don't want to spend the money on CC because I am in an old TWC area and most of the HD is restricted.

If easier for you, I will switch to the built in devices. However, if you'd like to solve, I am willing to test. I don't use this for production, so it's not killing me.

Thanks

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

SageTV didn't seem to try channels above channel 158.

When trying a manually added channel it complains about the QAM frequency not being known.

I don't want to spend the money on CC because I am in an old TWC area and most of the HD is restricted.

If easier for you, I will switch to the built in devices. However, if you'd like to solve, I am willing to test. I don't use this for production, so it's not killing me.

Thanks

Digital Cable frequencies only go up to channel 158 (999MHz).

[Fuzzy]

Another issue may be that, as far as I can tell, OpenDCT will only use us-bcast or us-cable channel_maps, while most cable systems are probably on shifted frequencies (us-hrc or us-irc).

10:24:35.431 [HDHomeRunDiscoveryReceive-30] ERROR DeviceLoaderImpl - Unable to load the capture device 'HDHomeRun HDHR-US Tuner 10173AD8-1', id -302192804 => opendct.tuning.discovery.CaptureDeviceLoadException: The program currently does not know how to use the channel map 'us-hrc'.

[bcjenkins]

Okay, the device is the 6 tuner rack mount which is really the 2 CC units in a case. I'll play with the second device on the native lib and let me know if there is something to test with on the OpenDCT side if you guys decide to work on it.

Thanks for the replies so far.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Okay, the device is the 6 tuner rack mount which is really the 2 CC units in a case. I'll play with the second device on the native lib and let me know if there is something to test with on the OpenDCT side if you guys decide to work on it.

Thanks for the replies so far.

I'm guessing if you do a channel scan in the hdhomerun app, you'll find it is finding the stations on the hrc lineup, which means it won't currently work at all in the current opendct build (unless it's getting it's channel map from a cablecard, of course).

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'm guessing if you do a channel scan in the hdhomerun app, you'll find it is finding the stations on the hrc lineup, which means it won't currently work at all in the current opendct build (unless it's getting it's channel map from a cablecard, of course).

That makes very little sense to me. What cable companies are using anything other than standard QAM64 or QAM256? us-cable should be a match for anyone on ClearQAM.

Edit: I can't even find any option to select anything other than us-bcast or us-cable via their own software; I'm not sure how that became selected.

[EnterNoEscape]

If you can post http://192.168.43.147:80/lineup.xml, that should help me narrow down why it didn't return everything.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

That makes very little sense to me. What cable companies are using anything other than standard QAM64 or QAM256? us-cable should be a match for anyone on ClearQAM.

Edit: I can't even find any option to select anything other than us-bcast or us-cable via their own software; I'm not sure how that became selected.

I see now how that happens. When you do the channel scan it automatically changes it if needed.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

That makes very little sense to me. What cable companies are using anything other than standard QAM64 or QAM256? us-cable should be a match for anyone on ClearQAM.

Edit: I can't even find any option to select anything other than us-bcast or us-cable via their own software; I'm not sure how that became selected.

QAM is the modulation. HRC, IRC, CABLE, etc is the frequency table of each channel.

As an example. Channel 7 is NOT the same frequency on each of them. The HDHR will use the following for each channel map selection:

us-bcast: 177000000
us-cable: 177000000
us-hrc: 175758700
us-irc: 189000000

So when you are telling the HDHR to tun to 177000000 to get physical channel 7 tuned in, it will not lock onto anything if you are on an HRC cable system.

I think I've already gotten it sorted, but it will need to be tested (I only have one clearQAM channel, and it is unnamed and audio only), so it's a pretty limited test.

bcjenkins, if you want to give it a try, you can unzip the attached jar file into opendct's lib folder (backing up your original opendct-0.5.28.jar), and then set the hdhr to use us-hrc channelmaps from a windows pc with

hrhomerun_config XXXXXXXX set /tuner0/channelmap us-hrc
hrhomerun_config XXXXXXXX set /tuner1/channelmap us-hrc
hrhomerun_config XXXXXXXX set /tuner2/channelmap us-hrc

then startup opendct (with the new JAR in place) and try a scan from sage. I'm hoping it will find the channels that are available to you.

I was having trouble getting opendct to set the channelmap to use from an .properties setting, so that's why you have to configure it elsewhere right now (without a setting, opendct will simply use whatever map that particular tuner is already set to).

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

If you can post http://192.168.43.147:80/lineup.xml, that should help me narrow down why it didn't return everything.

Lineup attached.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Lineup attached.

Thanks. That's really interesting that OpenDCT didn't return that entire list to SageTV. I'll be looking into this.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Thanks. That's really interesting that OpenDCT didn't return that entire list to SageTV. I'll be looking into this.

I solved that issue by setting the ignore duplicates to false in the settings.

channels.prime.remove_duplicate_channels=false

I still have the same problem when tuning though -

09:23:14.489 [SageTVRequestHandler-132:HDHomeRun HDHR3-6CC-3X2 Tuner 13206200-0] INFO HDHRNativeCaptureDevice - Starting the encoding for the channel '5004' from the device 'HDHomeRun HDHR3-6CC-3X2 Tuner 13206200-0' to the file '/var/media/tv/9_5004_0727_0923-0.ts' via the upload id '399295985'...
09:23:14.490 [SageTVRequestHandler-132:HDHomeRun HDHR3-6CC-3X2 Tuner 13206200-0] INFO ChannelManager - Auto-map failed to get the frequency and program for the channel '5004'.
09:23:14.490 [SageTVRequestHandler-132:HDHomeRun HDHR3-6CC-3X2 Tuner 13206200-0] ERROR HDHRNativeCaptureDevice - Unable to tune channel because no references were found for this channel number.
09:23:14.490 [SageTVRequestHandler-132:HDHomeRun HDHR3-6CC-3X2 Tuner 13206200-0] ERROR SageTVRequestHandler - SageTV sent: 'START HDHomeRun HDHR3-6CC-3X2 Tuner 13206200-0 Digital TV Tuner|399295985|5004|3002323586964|/var/media/tv/9_5004_0727_0923-0.ts|Great', Replied: 'ERROR Device Start Failed'
09:23:14.491 [SageTVRequestHandler-132:HDHomeRun HDHR3-6CC-3X2 Tuner 13206200-0] ERROR SageTVRequestHandler - Encoder device is unable to start.

The channels work great when using VLC, though. Full log is attached.

[bcjenkins]

Incidentally, I do have this set

hdhr.allow_qam_http_tuning=true

And I am wondering the meaning of these:

channels.qam.automap_reference_lookup=true
channels.qam.automap_tuning_lookup=true

Would setting them to false do anything to force something?

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

QAM is the modulation. HRC, IRC, CABLE, etc is the frequency table of each channel.

As an example. Channel 7 is NOT the same frequency on each of them. The HDHR will use the following for each channel map selection:

us-bcast: 177000000
us-cable: 177000000
us-hrc: 175758700
us-irc: 189000000

So when you are telling the HDHR to tun to 177000000 to get physical channel 7 tuned in, it will not lock onto anything if you are on an HRC cable system.

I think I've already gotten it sorted, but it will need to be tested (I only have one clearQAM channel, and it is unnamed and audio only), so it's a pretty limited test.

bcjenkins, if you want to give it a try, you can unzip the attached jar file into opendct's lib folder (backing up your original opendct-0.5.28.jar), and then set the hdhr to use us-hrc channelmaps from a windows pc with

hrhomerun_config XXXXXXXX set /tuner0/channelmap us-hrc
hrhomerun_config XXXXXXXX set /tuner1/channelmap us-hrc
hrhomerun_config XXXXXXXX set /tuner2/channelmap us-hrc

then startup opendct (with the new JAR in place) and try a scan from sage. I'm hoping it will find the channels that are available to you.

I was having trouble getting opendct to set the channelmap to use from an .properties setting, so that's why you have to configure it elsewhere right now (without a setting, opendct will simply use whatever map that particular tuner is already set to).

Fuzzy - I did try this as well and it had no impact. It doesn't seem to scan, but just pull in the channel lineup.

I opened a stream to channel 5004 in VLC and ran a status from the cli.

hdhomerun_config 13206200 get /tuner0/status
ch=qam256:513000000 lock=qam256 ss=100 snq=100 seq=100 bps=15792000 pps=1500

Hopefully that helps.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Fuzzy - I did try this as well and it had no impact. It doesn't seem to scan, but just pull in the channel lineup.

I opened a stream to channel 5004 in VLC and ran a status from the cli.

hdhomerun_config 13206200 get /tuner0/status
ch=qam256:513000000 lock=qam256 ss=100 snq=100 seq=100 bps=15792000 pps=1500

Hopefully that helps.

Yeah, I hadn't realized that you were using a prime, which, since it has the channel map capability, doesn't use the bits of code i was fixing. What I was fixing was for the older 'dumb' hdhomerun devices that don't have their own lineup.xml type service.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Incidentally, I do have this set

hdhr.allow_qam_http_tuning=true

And I am wondering the meaning of these:

channels.qam.automap_reference_lookup=true
channels.qam.automap_tuning_lookup=true

Would setting them to false do anything to force something?

hdhr.allow_qam_http_tuning adds checking all of the ClearQAM URL's to see if any of them match the automapping from a CableCARD tuner and if it finds a match, it will use the HTTP connection instead of RTP. That should default to false because it can be time consuming and sometimes doesn't result in anything other than wasting time.

Changing those other two options will not hurt anything, but I doubt they will change the outcome. Instead of attempting to do a lookup that will fail, they skip it and fail because there are no mappings saved.

[Fuzzy]

Off hand, is there a switch to force the 'new' tuners to use the legacy tuning? (I'm at work and can't dig into the code right now). Just wondering, because Sage itself usually does a pretty good job at QAM scanning (in my previous experience before everything went encrypted).