[mythtv-users] canceled recording (Recorder Failed) mystery

[Bob Gamble]

David,

Thanks again.  I will report back this weekend on any results should I need
to do this.  An interesting thing is happening since I wiped the
cards and schedule source two nights ago.  When reconfiguring this time I
tried the external channel change command:
/usr/local/bin/directv.pl

on its own, with  no parameters.  I haven't had a failed recording since
then.  I'm skeptical in can be "that easy" but stranger things have
happened.  If/when I do get a failure I will use the instructions and test
script to get more information.  If you want, even if there are no more
odd failures I can set my system back to the way it was when the failures
were happening to see what was going on.

Either way I will report back this weekend and hope that I can close the
book on this problem.  Thanks again.

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 9:07 AM, David Gesswein <djg at pdp8online.com> wrote:

> I put a test copy of the script at
> http://www.pdp8online.com/directv/directv_test.pl
>
> > When changing channels watching live tv and attempting to change
> channels, I
> > see "Irrecoverable Recorder Error" on the screen after it returns to the
> > main Frontend menu.
> >
> What I was wanting to see was the video out of the H21 while the channel
> change in trying to occur. You can either do that by directly plugging a
> TV into the box or it should work if you watch live tv on myth then run the
> script manually from a terminal window.
>
> With the current script the channel change is done by sending the channel
> number as button presses on the remote like you would do it manually so
> you should see that occur (rapidly) on the screen. Since it turns the OSD
> off after sending the channel change it may be hard to see.
>
> First using the current script and either by watching a directly connected
> tv or manually running the script change channels until it fails then
> see what the box says.
>
> To run it manually run it with the same arguments you specified in your
> external channel change command.
> /usr/local/bin/directv.pl setup_channel #
> where # is the channel to change to. I assume you edited the script to
> set the default box type etc since you didn't have that on your external
> channel change command.
>
> Assuming that fails and its not obvious why then try the new script the
> same way. The only change in this case is I increased the time before
> turning off the OSD so you should be able to see whats going on better.
> (I changed to $clear_osd_delay = 3.2;)
>
> Assuming that fails and its not obvious why then you can try setting the
> box_type to H21. The directv protocol has two ways of changing channels.
> On some boxes the firmware doesn't process the direct channel change
> command
> so the H20 setting is using the remote key method. The H21 setting will
> now use the other channel change command. See how that works.
>
> The last option is trying hardware flow control.
> First try the statserial command to see what your serial port control
> signals are set to. (you may need to install statserial package)
> statserial /dev/ttyS0 (or whatever port you are using)
> if it shows
> CTS      5    8      in          0   Clear To Send
> the hardware flow control signals probably aren't set/hooked up so you
> will likely just get timeouts.
>
> Run the new script with the hardflow option and see if it works any
> different.
> /usr/local/bin/directv.pl hardflow setup_channel #
>
> Let me know what the results of these tests are. You can also add
> verbose to the start of the arguments to see the data transfered which
> may show something.
>
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