One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!)

I know you are probably tired of these Continuity Counter Error related issues, but take a look at this:

I’ve been messing around with dvr software for 4+ years with DVB-C and the norwegian provider Get. Mostly using Tvheadend, but also mediaportal on occasion.

Over the years I’ve had a lot of trouble with continuity counter errors in Tvheadend. With some versions / OS installs working better than others. But lately it has become such a big issue, that I’ve used a couple days doing some research.

Most post regarding this says that it relates to bad signal. In my case i’ve changed splitters and cables, with no apparent result. I have also tried a lot of different tuners, including HDHomerun, Sundtek USB, Digital Devices Cine-CT and TerraTec Cinergy C DVB-C. What ever tuner i use, i always get continuity counter errors.

I have also tried with different computers, everything from old/slow ones with core duo processors, amd e350 systems to faster ones with Intel Xeon E3-1245 cpus. I always use Ubuntu, but tried (among others) 10.04, 12.04 and 13.10.

My HDHomerun reports my signal strength to this:
Signal Strength 100% (10.4 dBmV)
Signal Quality 100% (37.9 dB)
Symbol Quality 100%

According to everything I’ve read, this should absolutely be sufficient for DVB-C.

After struggling with this for a while, I decided to try Mediaportal again. To be sure, I installed it on a computer that I was using tvheadend on, with the continuity counter errors. I kept the same tuners, same cables and splitters. Didn’t change anything regarding to hardware.

Where tvheadend struggled with stream errors to the point that the channels where unwatchable, Mediaportal showed no sign of problems with the streams. Everything works perfect! Mediaportal reports the signal strength and quality to be very good.

I also transferred the same muxlist from tvheadend to mediaportal, so there should be any difference there.

In light of my research, I cannot see any other reason for my continuity counter errors than software related issues.

Can someone please help me with this? It’s really driving med nuts! Right now, i think i’ll have to stick with mediaportal. But hate using windows, and I love the simplicity of tvheadend!

I don’t know if any of the developers are using DVB-C, but I am willing to give one of the developers (i guess thats mainly Adam Sutton atm) full access to a box with a couple of different tuners for debug purposes.

Regards,
Andreas (andreasb- on IRC)

Replies (11)

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Bengt Madeberg over 10 years ago

I have also this problem. On PC with FC18 (tvh 3.9.438~gd328f74) and and a TBS6985 (quad S/S2) card. It counter errors all the time....If you look at tbs forum thare are some threads about this issue. The TV-card works perfect in another machine with FC16 (tvh 3.2.18). I don't know if it's a SW or HW related problem. Another card TBS6284 (quad T/T2) seems to work in both machines...

I want to "turn off" my old machine with FC16 but since I can't get tvh working on the FC18 I'm forced to run both machines....

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Adam Sutton over 10 years ago

I have had some thoughts on this, I can't see any obvious errors in the current code and I don't see any of this myself. However I have thought about tweaking the bottom level input thread to make the processing more resilient.

Just out of curiosity what sort of box you running this on?

Adam

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Andreas B over 10 years ago

Thanks for your reply!

The box i tested both mediaportal and tvheadend got the following specs:
Intel Xeon E3-1245
Asus P8B WS mainboard (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8B_WS/)
16GB RAM
Digital Devices Cine CT dual tuner
2x Sundtek USB tuners

My box for daily use (production) of tvheadend consists of this:
Ubuntu 12.04
AMD E350
Asus motherboard (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/E35M1M_PRO/ )
8GB Ram
1x HDHomerun 4DC quad tuner
1x Sundtek USB tuner

I have a third box as well, with the following specs:
Ubuntu 13.04 (i think)
Intel E8600 dual core
P5QL PRO (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5QL_PRO/ )
4GB RAM
2x TerraTec Cinergy C DVB-C

Andreas

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Andreas B over 10 years ago

Just wanted to give an update on this.

Using MuMuDVB it as a "man in the middle" works great. No issues with the streams whatsoever.
So I guess we can rule out problems with my signal, hardware or drivers for the DVB-C cards.

Andreas

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Nisse Nilsson over 10 years ago

andreas öman B
Hi...

I have the same Continuity Counter Errors on my system...
I thought I would set up MuMuDVB (1.7.1) to see if it works better.. but I cant get tvheadend to connect to it...?

How did you do it?

I've searched IPTV on the forum, but I only found old posts... :/

Hope you can help me... Thanx!

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Bengt Madeberg over 10 years ago

I did the test with mumudvb "in the middle" (http unicast) today but I still have counter errors....It seems that we have different type of problems...

014-04-12 14:46:14.082 TS: http://192.168.0.100:4242/bysid/6941/BBC One HD: H264 @ #5400: Continuity counter error

2014-04-12 14:46:47.438 TS: http://192.168.0.100:4242/bysid/6941/BBC One HD: H264 @ #5400: Continuity counter error

2014-04-12 14:46:59.917 TS: http://192.168.0.100:4242/bysid/6941/BBC One HD: H264 @ #5400: Continuity counter error

2014-04-12 14:47:49.233 TS: http://192.168.0.100:4242/bysid/6941/BBC One HD: H264 @ #5400: Continuity counter error

2014-04-12 14:47:57.832 TS: http://192.168.0.100:4242/bysid/6941/BBC One HD: H264 @ #5400: Continuity counter error, 2 duplicate log lines suppressed

2014-04-12 14:48:02.964 TS: http://192.168.0.100:4242/bysid/6941/BBC One HD: H264 @ #5400: Continuity counter error, 3 duplicate log lines suppressed

2014-04-12 14:48:42.851 TS: http://192.168.0.100:4242/bysid/6941/BBC One HD: H264 @ #5400: Continuity counter error

2014-04-12 14:49:11.480 TS: http://192.168.0.100:4242/bysid/6941/BBC One HD: AC3 @ #5401: Continuity counter error

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Adam Sutton over 10 years ago

Please try branch feature/mpegts-threading

Adam

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Nisse Nilsson over 10 years ago

Is branch 'feature/mpegts-threading' just for IPTV or overall testing for Continuity counter errors?
I'm running this branch now.. and get Continuity errors..(no IPTV) :/

any special settings??

anyway... thanx for all your great work Adam! (..and anyone else working on tvheadend!)

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Adam Sutton over 10 years ago

Ah interesting, didn't notice that it was HTTP/IPTV. Not sure you should even get CC errors with that as its a garaunteed connection, though I guess it depends on what buffering there is server side.

But the branch was aimed at all potential inputs, it might be there is something more to it than I'd first thought. Also might have to consider threading priorities, not bothered up to now.

Adam

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Nisse Nilsson over 10 years ago

Adam Bark
I would like to help debug the CC problem...
Just tell me what you want in logs and how I would get it...

I get CC errors every day... and to my knowledge I've tried everything...
I think it only happens on scrambled channels.. at least for me...??

RE: One more Continuity Counter Error post (but please take a look!) - Added by Andreas B over 10 years ago

I tried the 'feature/mpegts-threading' branch today, but still have the same issues as before.

Seems like I only get CC errors on HD channels (with both mpegts-threading branch and master). All my HD channels are scrambled, so i'm not able to test if its related to decryption or not. I also tried configuring TVH with libdvbcsa instead of ffdecsa(?), without result. When watching 1 HD channel my CPU load is about 8%, so there's plenty of CPU power available.

I'm not sure if its relevant, but TVH finds a lot of non existent services on init scan. Where w-scan finds a total of 232 services, TVH finds a total of 395 (same number of muxes). Most of these extra servives are empty, but there are some duplicates of existing services. As an example, TVH finds two instances of TV3 on one mux, just with different Service IDs. Of course, just one of them actually works.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I have no issues with mumudvb on the same box. I have also tried VDR this week. It works without any issues at all with encrypted SD and HD channels.

My offer on full access to one of my linux boxes with 2-3 DVB-C tuners still stands

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