[WhyIsItSoDifficult]

Problems problems problems. Im kind of new to linux. Setup is Rpi 2 (2amp power supply), osmc, tvheadend 4.0.5, Kodi 15.2, ps3 playtv twin tuner with powered hub, and a powered usb 3 external hd formatted to ext4 with a samsung pro u1 32gb sd card.
Getting it all going was a lot harder than I thought ( web interfaces, muxes, linux, installing obscure drivers (dib0700.fw), screens not gviving me any feedback on if it is doing something or just hanged etc etc. Basically I just want a pvr with a good size hard disk that can be replaced if it goes wrong. I dont care about hd channels sd channels are fine.

I am in the uk with freeview

So what doesnt work ?
Well it crashes when it changes channels, every few channels.
I have reduced the live tv time to 12 minutes, as I have read that setting up a buffer can be a problem. This helped, but has not fixed it. I have bought a mpeg 2 license, again this has helped ( I can change more channels before crashing) but hasnt fixed it.
Basically if I change channels too quickly then after a few channels osmc gives me a sad face, which I think is its blue screen of death.
If I stop the channel with the square stop button on screen then it doesnt crash. When I next select a channel it might freeze saying buffering, it might say tvheadend no input detected, it might change channels!, but it doesnt give me the blue screen of death.
Even if a channel says "tvheadend no input detected", on reboot it can generally play the channel again straight away!

It can record 2 channels at once. I think when I had the timeshift on the sd card it worked, but the timeshift in memory doesnt work. Maybe I need to set up a memory file or something ??
https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/10013?r=18268 This post says a bug was fixed, but Im not sure if they actually fixed anything or just closed the thread !

Also the epg often goes blank and I need to go to settings->tv->guide and select clear data to get it going again. (Also dont chache to local database needs to be ticked)

Im not sure if this is Kodi, osmc, tvheadend or the playtv drivers or what. (Though I suspect its tvheadend).

So my basic question is this:- Does anyone else have a similar setup and does it work or do you have similar problems to me ? Particularly do you have tvheadend working with a sony playtv adapter on any kind of linux based system in a way that you hop around channels without it crashing ?
I would say it seems a lot slower at changing channels than my sagem freeview recorder. I have set channel change timeout to 10 secs. Even this is not always enough. I have been swapping the ariel between this and my freeview recorder, so I know the ariel is pretty good ( 60 to 70 percent signal strength I think) (The sagem freeview recorder works fine with it)

I would like to hear from anyone for whom it works or doesnt work. If it works, what do you think is different ? There is a section for skip bytes when changing channels. Any idea what this should be set to, or should I increase the freeview buffer size ?
Is this a hardware issue, is this just bug ridden code that hasnt been fixed in the last 4 years because no one uses playtv anymore or what

Thanks in advance

[WhyIsItSoDifficult]

Further to my previous post I have got it to crash again and added a debug log. Though it did take more trying than I remembered to get it to crash this time !
I now think the sad face isnt a total blue screen of death but rather heralds the death of some part of the mediacenter ?

http://paste.osmc.io/ewanuwenoh

I think the key part is around Unhandled fault: alignment exception (0x001) at 0x5c007369

When looking at my signal strength its shown 67 - 73 percent. Though I think it being worse than 67 might be why some channels dont get signals or take so long to change, but I dont think it accounts for all of the problems.
I think ticking the restart on error in the tvheadend configuration->stream->stream profiles->pass through might have helped it change channels better (though it was unticked during this log and it did crash with it ticked before).

[Atreyu]

Hi,

I have quite a different setup than you do, so i cannot comment on some specifics, but i can confirm the EPG issue (losing it's content and/or not updating).
I have been playing with this as i suspected the power plan settings or some other OS-related component to be the culprit, but atm i really believe it's a core Kodi issue.
I never realized the problem was there until i configured a Nuc that functions as ' always on' back- and frontend...

[WhyIsItSoDifficult]

Thanks for the reply. I suspect you may be right about the epg disappearing being a Kodi issue, because the data is still there on the backend. Though Im not sure if it goes from the backend to the pvr client to kodi or straght to kodi from the backend!
I have tvheadend htsp clilent 2.1.18 as my frontend client thing. Though Im not really sure how it all hangs together.

Also Im not sure if this thread is in the right forum, as I couldnt even find it when I looked for it ! Though I am not sure which forum it should be in. pvr->tvheadend ? or bugs maybe ?

Also I seem to be having another issue where it doesnt crash, but doesnt chage to the channel and just says working with a little spinning thing ! I might investigate that and timeshifting some more tomorrow.

Anyway given the general lack of replies though I am starting to figure I am the only one mad enough to be using a sony playtv adapter, or maybe this is just in the wrong forum, whichever forum this is !

[nickr]

Moved to support area, please do not post support requests to "Discussion".

[taiebot]

I have reported same problem here. http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=245683

[WhyIsItSoDifficult]

Just to update anyone who is interested on where I am with his now.

Summary :-
1) Changing channels mostly works, if I do it slowly. Too fast and it sometimes crashes
2) Timeshift is a lot more stable, but by no means perfect ( I updated to tvheadend 4.195 I think (downloaded from github, compiled it and installed it))
3) My epg stuff still sometimes disappears and needs reloading

The longer version :-
My playtv adapter has 2 interal adapters which I have numbered 0 and 1
I think a lot of my errors were occuring on my number "1" adapter. Not sure if this is a hardware fault or just because its at about 67 vs 73 perecent signal strength!
I think the error rate (transport and continuity errors I think) on my #1 adapter was causing lots of problems with the timeshift which was destabilising other things.
I think re importing the epg guide from back end was also causing issues as it did it every 45mins (this might have been my choice can't remember) Anyway I set that to 16 hours, so its less likely to do it when Im watching tv

I have just disabled this #1 adapter to see how stable it is with my good adapter. Unfortunately sometimes it still crashes Kodi with a sad face if I change channels too fast.
Until taiebot pointed it out I didnt realise that tvheadend was still running during this crash! On the tvheadend web status page it had a lot of uncorrected blocks and a lot of continuity errors ( a couple of thousand of each I think), but no transport errors ( I think). ( This is when I checked out the status straight after the kodi sad face appeared).

I think moving the timeshift back to my sd card before the upgrade to a newer version of tvheadend did make it more stable, though I have since moved it back to the hard disk to save wear on my sd card. It does appear to be more stable with the newer tvheadend, but I still have issues. E.g. some parts I skip to wont play, sometimes its silent, sometimes the picture doesnt quite catch up to the voice and when I use the timeshift after a while the picture just freezes ! But I dont think its totally locked up the system like it did before !

I am not quite sure if the epg keep disappearing is totally linked to other crashes and freezes, but it still sometimes disappears, though maybe not as much as it did.

I might have a bash at debugging the timeshift stuff, but as Im new to linux and not very good with threading,so I wouldnt hold your breath !

Anyway I hope this update might have been of some use to someone!

[wrxtasy]

Disable the Timeshifting completely, its unreliable and does not work well with slow write speeds you get on microSDHC cards with ARM devices. A HDD or SSD would be much better

[spooker1]

I have the same issue. Kodi 15.2 with tvHeadend will crash on the raspberry pi B+ when changing channels.
I have reverted my pi to Kodi 14.2 for now where everything works.

[taiebot]

Hey i have been experimenting on omxplayer instead of mmal in Settings > video > acceleration.

While channel switching is slower i do not experience crashes anymore. Can anyone confirm?