[mythtv-users] mythfrontend timeout when tuning HVR-950Q

[Bob Cunningham]

On 10/28/2009 04:03 PM, Bob Cunningham wrote:
> I just finished a fresh install of 0.22 RC1 from
> rpmfusion-updates-testing on Fedora 11.
>
> Everything went well from the start:
> - Configuration OK (including XMLTV load for QAM SD, and channel scan
> for QAM HD)
> - mythfilldatabase OK
> - MythMusic OK
> - MythWeb OK (still need to clean up channel mapping and tweak other
> settings)
>
> But I can't watch LiveTV! My HVR-950Q works fine with tvtime (SD) and
> xine (HD).
>
> Neither the frontend nor the backend are crashing. Google searches yield
> no help.
>
> The output from mythfrontend is:
>
> 2009-10-27 16:40:12.573 TV: Attempting to change from None to Watching
> WatchingLiveTV
> 2009-10-27 16:40:12.578 MythContext: Connecting to backend server:
> 127.0.0.1:6543 (try 1 of 1)
> 2009-10-27 16:40:12.579 Using protocol version 50
> 2009-10-27 16:40:12.582 Spawning LiveTV Recorder -- begin
> 2009-10-27 16:40:19.586 MythSocket(887ddd8:40): readStringList: Error,
> timed out after 7000 ms.
> 2009-10-27 16:40:19.587 RemoteEncoder::SendReceiveStringList(): No
> response.
> 2009-10-27 16:40:19.587 Spawning LiveTV Recorder -- end
> 2009-10-27 16:40:19.587 GetEntryAt(-1) failed.
> 2009-10-27 16:40:19.589 EntryToProgram(0 at Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 1969)
> failed to get pginfo
> 2009-10-27 16:40:19.589 TV Error: HandleStateChange(): LiveTV not
> successfully started
> 2009-10-27 16:40:19.589 We have a RingBuffer
> 2009-10-27 16:40:19.639 TV Error: LiveTV not successfully started
>
> /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log contains no errors or warnings.
>
> Since I'm using an HVR-950Q, and since the HD channel scan worked fine,
> my guess is the problem may be the slow firmware load, which takes about
> 8 seconds, but it seems mythfrontend times out in 7 seconds.
>
> The driver seems to reload the firmware at every possible opportunity,
> independent of the hardware state, each time either the SD or HD device
> is opened, such as when changing from an SD channel on /dev/video0 to an
> HD channel on /dev/dvb/adapter0. So this delay will happen a lot.
>
> Any way to have the frontend be a bit more patient?

This is due to the value of kShortTimeout being hard-coded to 7000 in mythsocket.cpp.

Can this be changed to a configurable setting?  Perhaps the tuner configuration in mythsetup should have a checkbox for "Slow Tuner" that the frontend could read for LiveTV, that would cause the timeout to double.

If it has to stay as a constant, it should be set higher.

Should I open a bug on this?

> Or can I tell the driver to ease up on the firmware reloads?

If nobody here has any suggestions, I'll ask on the linux-media list.