Tuner priority went way off, ruined three recordings

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

I had a few recordings fail this week, apparently because of an odd combination of tuner fallback glitches. I have my sources ordered with my Prime cable tuner on top, then my Quatro OTA tuner, then my HDHR5-4K (Flex) OTA tuner. A few days ago some show passes that were defaulting to cable were assigned to an OTA channel. Maybe my cable went out long enough for Channels DVR to automatically change that?

OK. But then those passes remained assigned to that OTA channel and only that OTA channel for at least five days, even though at least one more OTA channel was available for the same TV network, and even though my cable was working fine the rest of the week.

Worse, it was a "phantom channel" from another market. Hooray for the improved sensitivity of the HDHR5-4K. But oh-oh: when Channels DVR tried to record that receive path was gone, Channels DVR reported no signal, and the recordings failed.

That phantom channel was on the HDHR5-4K tuner, the lowest-priority tuner in the list. For example, when the priority channel should have been cable 1005 or 705, and the fallback should have been to OTA channel 5.1 on the Quatro, it Instead went to the HDHR-4K tuner and the phantom channel 13.1. So the fallback logic apparently selects a higher channel number even if it's on a lower-priority tuner? And apparently seeks no further if that channel fails?

OK so the phantom channel thing is not likely to happen to everyone, and in fact another show on a different channel was affected as well but it fell back to a working channel: 1009 cable to 9.1 OTA. But why did Channels DVR fall back two tuners down the list, and stay there for five days just for those four shows? If there was a cable glitch it did not persist, because other shows on cable recorded just fine all week. The DVR schedule showed no other channel on the future schedule for each of the failed shows, just that lowest-priority OTA channel alone, until I noticed while clicking around the web UI. And yes, I've hidden that phantom channel now, lol, as well as manually assigning the cable channel in those passes just to be extra safe, but I wonder if there's something else I can do or if the logic behind this can be fixed.

#2

I don’t believe this is the case. The channel order is determined by the source order and favorites. It will only fall back to non-primary sources if the primary source fails at the time of recording.

If the order of channels used by the pass changed, I would expect that source priority or favorites were changed on the DVR.

#3

Hard to make sense of anything here without looking at the logs. They will show exactly which channels were attempted and in what order.

#4

OK thanks, submitted: fcf8f87c-02c8-4e9a-a528-7ffbf94b4408

This seems to have started on 5/16. I think the first failure, 60 Minutes, is already gone from the log, but I see the second one near the top, and there were at least one or two more recordings that went awry after that over the course of this past week.

#5

I bet my log doesn't go back far enough to see when the problem started. But four passes did get automatically reassigned to a single channel on the lowest-priority tuner, a "new" channel from another market that was not receivable when the recordings started, and we missed some of those shows.

The only solution I have at the moment is to take my OTA tuners offline. I'm finished experimenting with them until ATSC 3.0 comes to my area anyway. Cable is more reliable, and for maximum WAF this cannot be one endless experiment, which why I had to give up on TVE and may have to replace one of my Fire TV devices too.

#6

Is there still no way to remove HDHR tuners as sources other than unplugging them? Or at least exclude them from recording passes? I've deleted the guide provider for my lowest-priority tuner, the one that caused the phantom channel problem described above, just to see what happens; I assume that tuner's channels will no longer be included as options for passes.

I'm starting to select a specific cable channel for each pass to avoid the OTA tuners, but I'm wondering about other options. (Also still wondering how channels from the Sacramento market were automatically selected as the only options for four passes, when my guides are all for San Jose...guess we'll never know.)

#7

Have you tried the "Delete and Re-create Database" option? Any time you make any changes to Channels' sources—especially when removing/modifying existing sources—this is always a good step to take. It will force a re-download of guide data, and recreate the recording schedule and rules using the new information. While it might sound extreme, it usually does help to remove cruft from old settings. Also, restarting the server process after the database re-creation would not be too bad of an idea, either.

#8

Your full log can be downloaded off the NAS, and there are ways to view more from the browser as well: https://getchannels.com/docs/getting-started/faqs/channels-plus/#how-can-i-view-more-of-the-channels-dvr-server-log

The 60 Minutes rule matched channel 13.1 only and that channel was not getting any signal.

2021/05/16 18:00:16.473494 [DVR] Starting job 1621213200-7 60 Minutes on ch=[13.1]
2021/05/16 18:00:22.564235 [ERR] Failed to start stream on channel 13.1 via 1080294D: HDHomeRun: 807 No Video Data
#9

Thanks! I've removed the guide provider for each OTA tuner, and then used the "Delete and Recreate Database" as you suggested. My pass schedule, guide, etc. now show only cable channels, while the OTA tuners are still available for live viewing via the HDHR app if the Prime is fully occupied. It's been many years since we consumed that much TV though.

#10

Thanks, but at this point even with n=10000 or higher my log apparently doesn't go back more than one week, to May 20th. Is that correct? We need to see earlier than May 16th to figure out what happened.

The 60 Minutes rule was previously matched to 1009 and 709 from my #1 priority source, and 9.1 from my #2 and #3 sources. Yet somehow starting May 16th it matched only to the newly-found 13.1 on my #3 priority source.

13.1 is a channel from another market: Sacramento. My guide is for San Jose so I don't know why suddenly 13.1 was the only choice for 60 Minutes. And apparently 13.1 is received only intermittently here, so when 60 Minutes started in the evening there was no signal detected.

I don't know how edge case this is, but I'd love to help you figure out what happened, even though I'm going with the brute force solution of removing my OTA tuners from the mix for now.

#11

Try 100000 or download /volume1/@appstore/ChannelsDVR/channels-dvr/data/channels-dvr.log directly.

#12

Looks like on 5/14 the number of channels on your OTA went from 70 to 74

Previously, you had 60 minutes scheduled for 7pm:

2021/05/08 09:44:03.557683 [DVR] Rule '60 Minutes' (7) found 1 new airings
2021/05/08 09:44:03.748240 [DVR] queued recording job for SH000000350000-1621821600 @ Sun May 23 7:00:00PM (1621821600-7)

after it changed to 6pm:

2021/05/14 09:34:14.427469 [DVR] Rule '60 Minutes' (7) found 2 new airings
2021/05/14 09:34:14.618091 [DVR] queued recording job for EP000000351577 @ Sun May 16 6:00:00PM (1621213200-7)
2021/05/14 09:34:14.815850 [DVR] queued recording job for SH000000350000-1621818000 @ Sun May 23 6:00:00PM (1621818000-7)
2021/05/14 09:34:21.330203 [DVR] Deleting job with expired serial: 1621216800-7 60 Minutes (SH000000350000-1621216800)

This was presumably the 13.1 airing. Since it was an hour earlier, the other channels weren't tried at that time, and the job failed:

2021/05/16 18:00:00.018225 [DVR] Starting job 1621213200-7 60 Minutes on ch=[13.1]
2021/05/16 18:00:06.120091 [ERR] Failed to start stream on channel 13.1 via 1080294D: HDHomeRun: 807 No Video Data
2021/05/16 18:00:07.958501 [DVR] Error running job 1621213200-7 60 Minutes: could not start stream on channels=[13.1]: HDHomeRun: 807 No Video Data

#13

Thanks, I managed to grab a log back to earlier in the month, and sent it to you in an e-mail with the subject "Channel 13.1". The remaining question is why 13.1 became the only match for that pass, which as you say moved 60 Minutes to 6 PM, so higher priority channels were no longer an option.

In the log I've now found a similar situation for an Amanpour and Company pass that somehow became matched to only channel 22.1 at an earlier time as well. I did not notice because 22.1 remained receivable. I believe 22.1 is in both the Sacramento and SF/San Jose markets, so I don't know which tuner that was but based on my source priority, the matches should have started with cable channels followed by closer OTA channels.

So I guess Channels DVR selects the earliest time, and then forgets about the other channels. One or both of those newly received channels are not even in our market and should not be in our guide, but I guess they are somehow included, yes? Or did a Sacramento guide download as well? Regardless, this makes OTA way too messy for maximum WAF. Luckily both shows were recorded by our backup TiVo.

#14

I made some improvements based on your logs, so next time it should notice after the 6pm airing failed and try to record the 7pm airing automatically.

3 Likes
#15

Thank you! Wow, imagine trying to have this conversation with any other DVR company.

2 Likes
#16

I would assume the HDHR picked them up during a channel scan you did, or one of its background scans it does (every 3 days or so, I think).

#17

It was a background scan. What I was saying was that I was surprised they were in the guide data, but I guess they are. Anyway, yes, background scan: the new HDHR 4K is more sensitive than the Quatro, and it has found new channels randomly over time. As I often say this is a nice problem to have, but it's been an urgent game of Whack-A-Mole to find and hide those channels as they appear. The improvement Aman just made will hopefully solve the extreme scenario described above. But distant channels can cause other problems too, so I'm done experimenting with OTA until ATSC 3.0 launches in my area.