Continuity counter error = bad signal?

Chris G

As the title suggests are these messages telling me the signal is no good or could it be something else? If it helps the picture is unwatchable and there is no sound. Using a pctv 292e USB tuner.

2018-10-25 18:10:09.468 TS: Cable/266.25MHz/Channel 5: MPEG2VIDEO

#1101 Continuity counter error (total 6482)
2018-10-25 18:10:09.468 TS: Cable/266.25MHz/Channel 5: MPEG2AUDIO

 #1111 Continuity counter error (total 2460)
2018-10-25 18:10:09.468 TS: Cable/266.25MHz/Channel 5: MPEG2AUDIO

#1141 Continuity counter error (total 2465)
2018-10-25 18:10:10.766 TS: Cable/266.25MHz/Channel 5: TELETEXT

 #1151 Continuity counter error (total 435)

Here is a pic of the stream details. You can see the signal is "unkown". On a different line in my house it says -40db. This is obviously not good and I guess "unkown" means this line is even worse? Whats strange is that cable boxes have no problem on the same lines.

Any input is apreciated.

Chris

mpmc

Isn't this encrypted on Virgin Cable? Could be an encryption issue, unfortunately we can't talk about it on here.

Chris G

TVH says it isnt. It plays video really badly (sometimes you can make out people on screen etc) and no sound.

I would have thought encrypted would have shown nothing?

I havent gotten to the decrypting part just yet. I want to set this up as a proof of concept with this cheap USB tuner before I invest on better hardware and sub to some n-lines.

Chris

Chris G

Hi anyone can help with this?

I set up a DVB-T network with identical results.

I uploaded a pic that shows the quality I'm getting and one that shows the status.

Seen lots of mixed resons for this online including bad kernels. Tried (to the best of my knowledge) kernel 4.5.50 which is supposed to be for sure working and it didnt help.

Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
TVH stable 4.2.7-17~g45cc65a03

PCTV 292e (hauppage triple stick)

Any help is apreciated.

Thanks,

Chris

https://tvheadend.org/attachments/download/7044/Screenshot_2.png

https://tvheadend.org/attachments/download/7045/Screenshot_1.png

mpmc

New achievement earned! [Discovered Curse of the Silcon Lab Tuners]

I earned this a while ago, but being serious now..

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Different versions of the chipset don't like certain firmware revisions. I have two versions of this chipset, one that is somewhat okay with firmware version 4.0.11 but refuses to work right with 4.0.25, leaving the other two tuners borked (I have three, one older two newer). To make things more annoying they're all named the same, and will swap adaptor numbers (between the defined values) on a reboot!

You can somewhat work around the glitching by retuning (stopping/starting the streams) or setting "Number of tune repeats" to something like 5. However, this doesn't always work!

Chris G

Thanks for the reply.

Right OK I was starting to think it was just a crappy tuner. Not completely terrible, but crap in Linux, since it worked OK in Windows.

Is there anything I can do about the firmware version? How do I know what I am running?

Changing the tune repeats to 5 did seem to have a effect, but still terrible.

When you say stopping/starting, do you mean in VLC etc or is this something in TVH?

Thanks,

Chris

EDIT: I see what you mean about the different firmware versions now. I will try them all. Thanks

mpmc

Chris Gironi wrote:
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> Right OK I was starting to think it was just a crappy tuner. Not completely terrible, but crap in Linux, since it worked OK in Windows.
>
> Is there anything I can do about the firmware version? How do I know what I am running?
>

> Changing the tune repeats to 5 did seem to have a effect, but still terrible.

Once you find the correct firmware it's not too bad.

> When you say stopping/starting, do you mean in VLC etc or is this something in TVH?

Basically stop the usage of the tuner, enabling/disabling it should do it.

>
> Thanks,
> Chris
>

> EDIT: I see what you mean about the different firmware versions now. I will try them all. Thanks

using "Skip initial bytes" can help too.