Parent Disabled services work on different server

Badwith Names

I have a TBS ATSC-T quad tuner PCI card. I pass it through to 2 virtual machines (vm's).

1 vm runs Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS and has the TvH 4.2.8-dirty snap installed. That instance receives 102 ATSC-T services, all of which are enabled.

2 vm runs Debian 12 and has the TvH 4.3-2344_gd2e41b553 package installed. That instance receives only 74 services, 32 of which are "parent disabled".

Question 1: What are "parent disabled" services and how to we enable them? Some Google searching hasn't come up with any answers, just more of this question. These "parent disabled" services refuse to stream from the TvH instance on vm 2 but stream fine from vm 1.

Question 2: Why is there such a vast difference between these two? vm 1 receives many more services (and are all functioning) compared to vm 2, and they are both using the same hardware (pci tuner, antenna system, etc.)

davep

Re your Question 1: as far as I can tell from a scan of the code, for a service to NOT be included in "parent disabled" (a) the network must exist and be enabled, (b) the mux must exist and be enabled (c) the service must have been verified to contain an audio or video stream, presumably from a scan. Arguably "parent disabled" is the wrong term; perhaps "valid", "verified" or "available" would be better.

Chris G

davep

(c) the service must have been verified to contain an audio or video stream

I think this part is what's causing all the issues people have.
Some channels are turned off until needed.
This means when you schedule a recording on one of these channels, it fails to find an input/turner/whatever and doesn't record.
There are a number of Sky Sport channels on 19.2E that behave this way:

Badwith Names

davep Re your Question 1: as far as I can tell from a scan of the code, for a service to NOT be included in "parent disabled" (a) the network must exist and be enabled, (b) the mux must exist and be enabled (c) the service must have been verified to contain an audio or video stream, presumably from a scan. Arguably "parent disabled" is the wrong term; perhaps "valid", "verified" or "available" would be better.

All those criteria are met on VM 2 for the "parent disabled" services, yet nearly half the services remain in a "disabled" state. All of which are "enabled" on VM 1, using all the same hardware, but for an earlier version of TvHeadend. I rescan for services on VM 2, and some of the services that were "parent disabled" reappeared and "enabled", while some of the services that were enabled on the initial scan became "parent disabled." It appears to me that this "parent disabled" state is random and arbitrary. The only difference between my 2 TvHeadend servers is the version of TvHeadend. If the software is functioning correctly, I should receive all the same services on both servers without having to jump through various hoops on one.

davep "None" hides nothing, so services which are disabled at the network, mux or service level are shown as well as unverified or data services.
"All" hides services which are disabled at the network, mux or service level as well as unverified or data services.
"parent disabled" hides services which are disabled at the network or mux level as well as unverified or data services, but includes disabled services.

Yes, I am aware of that.

Is there a way to force "parent disabled" services to enable, or is there a place where I can download an earlier debian package of TvHeadend? I don't have this problem with 4.2. The whole point of this experiment is to avoid using the snap package but it is the only one that works for me.

davep

Apologies this is confusing; the drop-down list determines what NOT to show.

"None" hides nothing, so services which are disabled at the network, mux or service level are shown as well as unverified or data services.

"All" hides services which are disabled at the network, mux or service level as well as unverified or data services.

"parent disabled" hides services which are disabled at the network or mux level as well as unverified or data services, but includes disabled services.

davep

Chris G I'm sure this is the answer. I just checked on my main system (UK, DVB-T and DVB-S) and several 'part-time' services which are currently off-air have the Verified flag unset and so don't appear in the Services tab.

Badwith Names You can test this theory by running the following, either on your tvheadend server or any linux machine on your network:

curl "http://username:password@your.server.address/api/raw/export?class=service" |jq|less
(you may need to install jq first)

and look for the "verified" key.

[Edited] Although the code to implement the "verified" flag was committed in May 2017, only selected commits were backported to 4.2 so your 4.2.8 doesn't have it. Hence (I presume) the difference between your installations.

The fact that a service disappears from the Services list has no effect on any mapped channel.

Jonas Lang

Are these encrypted services you highlighted. If so what is handling your decryption. I don’t recognise the system you’ve taken your screen caps from. What general region are you based in.

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jonas Lang I don’t recognise the system you’ve taken your screen caps from.

It looks like Kodi.

Chris G

The server is Tvheadend, decrypted using OSCam/NCam and the client is Kodi.

DeltaMikeCharlie

Badwith Names The whole point of this experiment is to avoid using the snap package but it is the only one that works for me.

If you have the appropriate skills, you can build TVH from source.

tvheadend/tvheadend
https://tvheadend.org/d/8631-perl-configuration-problems-on-linux-kubuntu/21

Chris G

davep

I'm sure this is the answer. I just checked on my main system (UK, DVB-T and DVB-S) and several 'part-time' services which are currently off-air have the Verified flag unset and so don't appear in the Services tab.

Is this something that can be fixed?
The services in these cases are there and valid, they're just not broadcasting.
They show up in the network tables/epg/whatever.

Jonas Lang

Are these card sharing services you are looking for support with here. If so you may have come to the wrong place and want to familiarise yourself with the rules of this forum.

I am aware that the Snap version of TVH does
indeed install a version of Oscam along with TVH which I find a little strange.

Does anyone know who is supporting the Snap version of TVH.

davep

Chris G I've tried to find out why this change was implemented. Unfortunately there is no comment on the commit, and I can't find any mention in the forum or issue log of the time.

However you can see what the Services tab would look like without the validation filter by setting the "Hide" drop-down to "None". On my system the number of services jumps from 320 to 421 and I then see 'streaming' services (which are only viewable on an internet-connected TV with the correct proprietary decoder software) plus various data services. Having a huge number of services which can't be used is perhaps more confusing than having a few part-time services temporarily missing.

Chris G

I'm not sure why seeing extra, possibly unavailable services, is a problem?
At the very least, we should be able to toggle this behaviour off.
I use a combination of provider and e2 bouquets to map all of my packages.

Ideally, I think TVH should adapt the entire e2 channel settings system.