Have had this happen for a 2nd time, so thought I'd make a post. Have been using ServerWMC with the DLNA option for a while and it's been working pretty well. But last week I had an odd occurrence where a single channel wouldn't work. Every other channel was OK and I could view that one channel in WMC (both client and server systems) so the HDHRPrime was working OK as well. I tried restarting just about everything and even power cycled the HDHR, but it didn't clear up. Then the next day everything was working fine. Now this evening it happened again with a different channel. Here are the logs from both:
Trying to tune in ESPNU (ch 573):
client log
ServerWMC log
Trying to tune in BTN (585)
client log
ServerWMC log
Additional note - I found I also can't tune channel 584, the one right below BTN. And the symptoms are that I get the "buffering" icon appearing in the upper right, but no video/audio. Then I am bumped back to either the channel list or EPG, depending on where I started. Also the audible navigation clicks go silent until I choose another channel.
When DLNA mode is enabled, when the Kodi client requests the channel list off ServerWMC at first startup, each channel has a DLNA URL specified. From that point on, when viewing a live channel, Kodi will just hitup that stream URL directly, with no interaction with ServerWMC. So unsurprisingly, the ServerWMC log doesnt show anything going on in these cases. Also, restarting ServerWMC etc in that case wouldnt achieve anything either. It's between Kodi and the HDHR.
The Kodi log is hard for me to decipher but it seems like it says it cant find a stream. Cant see much more than that because you dont have DEBUG logging enabled on the Kodi side. If you do it with AdvancedSettings.xml you can have Kodi creating debug logs all the time, without displaying the annoying overlay on your screen that you get when enabling it through the menus. That can be useful if it's hard to reproduce, so the next time it happens you will have Kodi debug log for it, without it affecting your actual viewing activities.
Next time this happens try to tune to the problem channel using the hdhomerun tool. If that works, then add the dlna tuners as a video source in kodi (if you haven't already) and try to watch the same channel that way.
You mean the HDHR QuickTV app? I think I might have tried that the first time and it worked. I do have the tuners added in Kodi, didn't think about trying those, will remember that if it happens again. I also was thinking it's odd this happened only when I actually wanted to watch something on those specific channels, which makes me wonder if its happening more often but I don't notice it since I usually watch programs recorded previously.
you might also find a better area in the forum where people who know more about how Kodi accesses streams etc could analyse your debug log and tell you what to look at next etc. Since this isnt much to do with ServerWMC and is more about how Kodi and the HDHR work, plus the fact that I havent even played with DLNA because the Aussie HDHR doesnt support DLNA on the current model, there's not too much help I can contribute
Thanks. I think I had read the description of how DLNA works here a few times but it hadn't sunk in. But I just conducted an experiment. While viewing live TV on my remote Kodi client, I closed ServerWMC on the server side. At that point, I couldn't change channels, the screen froze. Once I restarted ServerWMC, the channel change went through. So it seems there is some interaction between the Kodi client and ServerWMC?
if you dont try and change channels can you keep watching that channel you were on even after you kill ServerWMC?
It's funny you have stumbled across it as I actually noticed this in somebodies log the other day - we have a bug where when viewing in DLNA mode, when you stop viewing, the addon is sending a CloseLiveStream() call to ServerWMC eventhough there is nothing for ServerWMC to do since it never opened a live stream in the first place. Basically just an oversight where obviously when stopping watching a channel we need to know if it was DLNA or not, so we dont try and send a Close() to serverWMC if it isnt required. If ServerWMC is up and running it does no harm, but as youve run into obviously if it isnt there things wont be happy. When changing channels, Kodi closes the current one then opens the next, so i suspect you've uncovered what id already noticed anyway. That's assuming that if you dont change channels, you can continue watching the source of course...
Although now I think about it, the other thing to bear in mind is that Kodi itself is firing off background requests to the PVR backends quite frequently (every 10 seconds i think) to get things like the number of recordings/channels/timers and available disk space from the backend. So potentially even these background requests may cause everything to halt if the backend disapears but im not sure if those background type tasks will affect an ongoing DLNA stream or not. Generally Kodi isnt too happy when it cant tak to the backend and disables the addon etc and since it is sending these very frequent calls (which im not entirely sure of the usefulness of to be honest!) it may well be the case that if you stop your backend (regardless if its ServerWMC or one of the others) your current PVR interactions may be on a very short lifespan.
Yes, the live stream still works w/o ServerWMC as long as I stay on that channel. I posted that test because I remembered a while back when my server had rebooted mysteriously and ServerWMC wasn't running so I had that same channel change freeze. I was also wondering if when using DLNA and the server went into sleep mode if things would still function on the client, but it sounds like Kodi won't let that happen, good to know.
OK, this is happening again this evening, ironically with one of the same channels as before. This time I tried selecting the HDHR tuner as a video device and am able to play the channel that way in the Kodi client. So I guess that points to something in the kodi PVR client playback?
We really aren't doing anything in dlna mode, except forming an address for the device & channel and giving it to kodi when it starts. If its my fault, all I can think is that I am forming the address incorrectly for this channel - why that would very day to day makes it seem unlikely though. I just checked the code and I apparently didn't put in a logging message to see the dlna address being returned - my bad. If its still misbehaving though, change the following in the settings file, serach for LogRequestFull, and replace the line it is on with this:
<LogRequestFull>GetRecordings</LogRequestFull>
Then save the file and restart swmc. Start kodi and after kodi starts up, post the log file. Also let me know the channel to check.
Is there any chance the times it is misbehaving has something to do with the state of your tuner? Like is one of the tuners in the device being used for something else?
Thanks for that, I was going to ask if there was any way to see what addresses were getting loaded by the server side. Next time I'll try that, but I agree also there's probably not a whole lot for you guys to do. I guess I could post in the general PVR forum as well and maybe the Kodi Windows forum.
When I check the tuner status in both ServerWMC and the HDHR web status page, they both show only one tuner in use and it's correctly tuned to the desired channel. And Kodi shows the "buffering" icon at the top, so it seems there is the correct connection made, just nothing gets displayed.
Before you post to the wider forum, I'd like to check the log (described above) first whenever you get the error again. I don't want to waste other's time if it is an error on our side.
Was about to post about this exact same problem I'm having. Good thing I did a quick search first before starting a new thread.
My problem is identical. Random channels stop working at random times. "Buffering..." and then kick out to EPG screen as jdlive reports. This happens to random channels a few times a week. The channel then resumes operation again at some point in the future when seemingly nothing has changed.
For example, I was watching a college basketball game yesterday on channel X. It was half time, so I switched to channel Y. Fifteen minutes later, channel X wouldn't work. Nothing had changed in the interim. At that time, there was only one Kodi instance using a tuner. I have an HDHR Prime and my Kodi box is an Asus Chromebox running openELEC 5.0.
Because that game was particularly important to me (alma mater), I turned on my Windows 8.1 laptop, fired up Kodi Helix, and enabled the PVR frontend. Tuned to channel X and it worked. Watched the rest of the game on my laptop.
I have logs but I don't think they are particularly more useful than jdlives's. I'll post them anyway.
Kodi:
http://pastebin.com/CdPPAkBh (this log is right after a reboot)
swmc:
http://tny.cz/b82fedba (log too long for pastebin) (kodi-livingroom is the Chromebox; yoga is the laptop)
I'll enable some of the more advanced logging features like you said, krusty, and will report more when I have more.
Also, completely unrelated problem: I have .log files associated with Notepad++ in my Windows default associations settings. However, every time I click "current log" within swmc, it opens in the generic Notepad application. If I click "log directory," all of the files in there open correctly with Notepad++.
When you used your laptop, were you connecting to the same instance of serverwmc that the other kodi (that one with the problem) was connected to?