Deihmos 147 Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 I am having some issues with ServerWMC. When I have something recording and I try to play a channel from a remote location my recording stops with a failure and the channel never plays. Is ServerWMC capable of streaming LiveTV remotely? I am using an HDhomerun Prime. I was able to stream recordings and shows that are in the process of recording but no Live TV and when I try it crashes my current recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 1, 2014 Author Share Posted July 1, 2014 (edited) This is the log from the server. I am recording the world cup and tried to play a SD channel then my recording was interrupted. Nothing played. I also don't see a way to ff or rewind the recording. http://pastebin.com/R9gE7YJA Edited July 1, 2014 by Deihmos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 The window's recording service is recording a show but starting a live stream causes it to stop? That's really strange. When you can, post the serverwmc log too for this case (see debug tab in serverwmc) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37046 Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 More information is needed: http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/790-how-to-report-a-problem/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 2, 2014 Author Share Posted July 2, 2014 (edited) All of a sudden it is playing in chrome. I could not get it to play reliably in IE 11 and sometimes it would play and others times I got an error. I don't know why it interrupted my recordings so I am probably going to uninstall it and give it another try later on. I also notice that the channels are not labeled correctly. Edited July 1, 2014 by Deihmos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 I did more testing and this is what happens. ServerWMC does not seem to recognize when a tuner is in use. On the Live TV page in MB3 it shows 2 available tuners but it is suppose to be just 1 available. Does Serverwmc not recognize when a tuner is unavailable? Whens I try to play live tv it interrupts my recordings. The current recording stops for a second and then starts a new recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Serverwmc should not be able to grab the tuner if its in use by the recording service. I still need the serverwmc log for when this happens for me to make any progress in understanding the problem. To keep the log clean, it would be best if you can start a recording in wmc, then start serverwmc, and have it start a live stream. Then post the server log after the error with the recording service. Also, are you running any 3rd party tuner control software? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37046 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 is anything needed from MBS in regards to channel images? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37046 Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 All of a sudden it is playing in chrome. I could not get it to play reliably in IE 11 and sometimes it would play and others times I got an error. I don't know why it interrupted my recordings so I am probably going to uninstall it and give it another try later on. I also notice that the channels are not labeled correctly. We (MBS) are still working on IE11 and will have it resolved soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 (edited) krustyreturns, on 07 Jul 2014 - 10:04 PM, said:krustyreturns, on 07 Jul 2014 - 10:04 PM, said: Serverwmc should not be able to grab the tuner if its in use by the recording service. I still need the serverwmc log for when this happens for me to make any progress in understanding the problem. To keep the log clean, it would be best if you can start a recording in wmc, then start serverwmc, and have it start a live stream. Then post the server log after the error with the recording service. Also, are you running any 3rd party tuner control software? No I am not running anything 3rd party. Just a homerun prime. Here is the log. I have one client is watching live tv and one is recording and I have one tuner available. The recording is interrupted and stops with a failure when I tried to play live tv on MBS. http://pastebin.com/z2hj80gu Edited July 8, 2014 by Deihmos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 9, 2014 Share Posted July 9, 2014 I don't understand, in the log you posted no live streams got started. They all failed, it looks like it is due to an io error. Does a live stream start in MBS at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 (edited) If 2 tuners are in use it sometimes fail. If none or just one in use it starts playing. I've basically given up on it. Maybe it isn't compatible with Windows 8.1 or the home run prime. I'm going to try it on win 7 to see if I have the same results. Too risky to use if it interrupts the recordings. Edited July 10, 2014 by Deihmos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 I don't blame you, having it mess up recordings is too risky. But we have many users with hdhr primes and win8.1 and this is the first time I have ever had anybody say it messes up in-progress recordings - so there is something very strange going on here. I really doubt that win7 will make any difference. If you haven't given up completely, when the rec service is doing a recording can you post a screen shot of the mbs tuner status? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 (edited) It only occurs if I have 2 tuners in use while recording on different clients then I try to play a stream in MBS. I did a new windows install and experienced the same behavior. Maybe someone with a homerun prime can test it out. Edited July 10, 2014 by Deihmos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 Well then send me a screenshot of the mbs tuner status when two tuners are in use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 (edited) Wait a minute, what do you mean by 'recording on two different clients'? Recording can only happen on the server. Are you running more than one instance of serverwmc? Edited July 10, 2014 by krustyreturns Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 (edited) I am running one instance of serverwmc. If someone is looking at television in the bedroom and I am recording something on my server which leaves one tuner available then I try to play something on MBS the recording interrupts on the server and it still does not play. Another scenario is playing live tv on 2 different clients then tried to play a stream caused live tv to stop on one of the clients. Stream did not start. If I use 2 tuners on the same PC that has ServerWMC it does not seem to cause any problems. The problem only occurs if a stream is being used by another client. I installed serverwmc and MB3 on a different computer experienced the same results. It has something to do with tuners being used by other clients. All 3 tuners work fine and I can look at TV in 3 different rooms without any problems. Edited July 10, 2014 by Deihmos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 Ok. Is the live stream running in wmc? Then can you post a screenshot of the tuner status for this case (two tuners in use)? To show the tuner status open MBS in a browser and go to the Settings page (i.e. the 'Configure Media Browser' page). Then choose 'Live TV' on the left side of this page, and you should see the tuner status on the right. make a screen shot of that, and post it here. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 (edited) I use WMC on all the PCs. The tuner shows as available when 2 are in use. Edited July 10, 2014 by Deihmos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 What is happening in this screenshot? I assume the server is running one live stream and another pc is running another live stream? Can you test to see if it functions correctly if two tuners are being used on the server pc? For instance, have the server either record two shows, or watch one show and record another - but all on the server machine. Does mbs then show the correct tuner status? And not conflict with the recording if it starts a live stream? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 Fog clearing from brain... I think I finally get it now. You have multiple wmc's on all your client machines. Serverwmc causes recording problems when you use any machine - OTHER than the machine that has serverwmc - to do a recording. Right? I bet as long as the serverwmc machine does the recording, there is no problem starting a live stream with mbs - is that right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 (edited) It shows the correct available tuners if they are in use on the server pc but not if a tuner is used by another pc. I don't usually record on the other computers and it does not matter if it is a recording or just live TV. The recording is interrupted on the server pc and even live TV is interrupted If all the tuners are used on the server pc everything works without an interruption. The problem only occurs if a tuner is used by another pc. Edited July 10, 2014 by Deihmos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fraenhawk 58 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 I'm just trying to see if I understand this because I've been contemplating ServerWMC. The issue is that rather than use the LiveTV options in MBC to watch Live TV through ServerWMC, he's using the local WMCs to talk directly to the tuners. ServerWMC isn't polling the status of the tuners from the HDHR, instead just tracking what it knows it's doing with the tuners. If you're running ServerWMC is it recommended you only work through it and turn off all other access to the tuner? I know for people with tuners physically in the server it's a no brainer, but the HDHR puts a twist on things. My current setup sounds similar to Deihmos. I have 3 HTPCs all running WMC/MBC that can talk to the HRHR - that's the point after all, networked tuner. Is there much benefit to running ServerWMC in a scenario where you have full HTPCs? Is the only benefit to be able to stream Live TV to non-HTPCs (web, tablets)? And if I've read correctly, I have a CableCard (Prime) so I would still need to directly access to watch DRM channels? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krustyreturns 191 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 Serverwmc was written to allow xbmc clients running on a variety of platforms (r-pi, android, mac,linux etc), to use a central wmc enabled computer as a pvr server. Later we extended it to let mbs do the same. Even your windows computers that don't have wmc can do live-tv/pvr by using xbmc/mbs and serverwmc. It breaks down though if all your networked computers have wmc - so instead of a central computer being a pvr server - they are all doing pvr. Really wmc breaks down in this usage model too, independent of serverwmc. If you set your recordings up across three different wmc computers, sharing networked tuners, the record scheduler on one computer has no idea if the tuner is really available for a recording in the future, because wmc has no way of polling the record scheduler on another computer. Wmc was not meant to run that way. In this distributed wmc mode, the only viable way to make that work using networked tuners (again not using serverwmc) is to designate one computer for doing recordings (a server, if you will), the other wmc's can play recorded content or watch live-streams, but they shouldn't also schedule recordings. Which is tricky since the respective wmc's will all happily schedule a recording thinking all the tuners are their own. So ServerWMC enforces only one computer acting as a pvr, meaning that only one computer is responsible for recording upcoming episodes and handing out live streams. Since serverwmc's only clients are xbmc or mbs that works naturally. If you try to make all your other wmcs also schedule recordings - it breaks - just like wmc breaks. As long as the active recordings are ONLY happening on the serverwmc machine, serverwmc will not disrupt recordings when it's client requests a live stream. Now live streams are different, I agree that you should be able to watch live streams on your other wmc machines (which are talking directly to the network tuners) and serverwmc should be able to detect that this tuner is busy and leave that tuner alone. Currently though, serverwmc does not detect this. This was a known issue in the early stages of this project, but frankly I forgot about this limitation. I guess because multiple wmcs aren't common anymore - our users all run xbmc or mbs on their networked machines. We need to fix this issue with serverwmc, but in order to do that I need to work with a user who has this setup, since in my house its no longer possible (well not without breaking things anyway), same is true for the other developer. Hopefully there is a way to fix this that is not specific to hdhr. So in summary: serverwmc will never support multiple wmc machines handing parallel recording schedules with shared tuners. However we would like to solve the issue of detecting that wmc, running on a remote machine, has grabbed a network tuner, but I need a volunteer to work with on that usage case (if there are any out there, let me know). Sorry for the long post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deihmos 147 Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 I didn't say that. I said you can't rely on multiple wmc's to correctly schedule recordings in parallel, since they don't communicate with each other. Ok. I really don't record anything in the bedroom. Either way it isn't a big deal because I understand that it is designed for a central server using XBMC or MB3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts