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Continuity Counter Errors on Raspberry Pi B+ with DVB-C HVR-930C

Added by Philipp Keck about 8 years ago

I'm using two Hauppauge HVR-930C tuners on a DVB-C network (Unitymedia Germany). As Windows is constantly letting me down, I looked into alternatives and was amazed to find TvHeadend, which is generally an awesome application.

The only actual issue I'm facing are some optical glitches in live TV or recordings, accompanied by log outputs like this:
2016-10-15 12:51:39.026 TS: DVB-C Network/138MHz/RTL HD: H264 #523 Continuity counter error (total 1)
2016-10-15 12:52:36.634 TS: DVB-C Network/138MHz/RTL HD: H264 #523 Continuity counter error (total 2)
2016-10-15 12:52:36.634 TS: DVB-C Network/138MHz/RTL HD: TELETEXT #528 Continuity counter error (total 1)
2016-10-15 12:52:51.370 TS: DVB-C Network/138MHz/RTL HD: H264 #523 Continuity counter error (total 8)
2016-10-15 12:54:26.752 TS: DVB-C Network/138MHz/RTL HD: H264 #523 Continuity counter error (total 10)
...
2016-10-15 13:19:37.867 TS: DVB-C Network/138MHz/RTL HD: AC3 #524 Continuity counter error (total 1)
2016-10-15 13:20:38.320 TS: DVB-C Network/138MHz/RTL HD: H264 #523 Continuity counter error (total 44)
2016-10-15 13:20:38.329 TS: DVB-C Network/138MHz/RTL HD: AC3 #524 Continuity counter error (total 2)

This also happens for MPEG2 and the "total" numbers go as high as 200.

I've found many threads about this issue here and in other forums. Thus I tried using only one of the tuners, directly plugged into the Raspberry Pi instead of using a hub; I installed the MPEG codec license; I compiled the latest TvHeadend version (4.1-2275~gea1f43f); I searched for the "Full mux reception" option, but apparently that's long gone and hopefully turned off by default?

None of that has helped, so I wonder what else I could try. I'm pretty certain that it's not a signal strength problem, as the same tuner USB sticks were plugged into the same TV socket at the same place in my house, and they worked perfectly fine. However, they were plugged into a different computer (running Windows 7; same driver version though) and not into the Raspberry Pi.

When I record a program and watch it or even transfer the recorded file manually, the glitches are always in the same places, so it is definitely not a streaming problem from the Raspberry Pi to the PC that I view it on.
When I stream/record two channels at once, the problem gets significantly worse. Could the Raspberry's single USB 2.0 host be the bottleneck that causes these problems?

And for my understanding: when I tune into a MPEG/H264 channel and want to watch it live on another computer on the network (no timeshift, no recording), what does the Raspberry have to do? Does it essentially just read the encoded data from the tuner and pass it through to its Ethernet port? Or does it have to decode/transcode in any way?

I'm happy about any tips on how to fix or improve this!

Cheers,
Philipp


Replies (5)

RE: Continuity Counter Errors on Raspberry Pi B+ with DVB-C HVR-930C - Added by Dave Pickles about 8 years ago

I had a similar problem recently with an RPi 2, but only on DVB-T2 (HD).

This particular Raspberry Pi runs several web applications and has a static routed IP address. Since I don't trust the firewall in my router the Pi runs the iptables firewall, and since I like to see what the hackers are up to iptables logged all blocked incoming traffic. I eventually discovered that the timestamps of the TVH continuity errors coincided exactly with the iptables log entries - removing the logging from iptables completely cured the continuity errors.

I suspect that filtering the network traffic then creating the log entry takes the kernel so long that it misses the next USB data frame.

Dave

RE: Continuity Counter Errors on Raspberry Pi B+ with DVB-C HVR-930C - Added by Robert Cameron about 8 years ago

It's a combination on the Pi's USB bus and the Ethernet controller. I believe the Pi shares the bus between the USB and the Ethernet.

RE: Continuity Counter Errors on Raspberry Pi B+ with DVB-C HVR-930C - Added by Philipp Keck about 8 years ago

To anyone getting the same errors on a first-generation Raspberry: I tried the exact same Raspbian installation with TVHeadend (same SIM card) on a Raspberry Pi 3 B. There were no continuity counter errors at first. It took a lot of stress testing to get the first error: I recorded three shows at once (with two tuners; two of the shows running on the same mux) and simultaneously timeshifted in one of them and played another recording one on another device. This resulted in two continuity counter errors (counter below 10; no visible glitch), whereas it was often above 100 with the first-generation Pi.

As far as I know, the Pi 3 also shares the same bus for USB and ethernet, but regardless it's a lot more powerful and that seems to be enough.

RE: Continuity Counter Errors on Raspberry Pi B+ with DVB-C HVR-930C - Added by Robert K over 5 years ago

I'm having the same issue on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+. Everything seems to be working perfectly fine, but after some hours of having the System running the Continuity Counter Errors start to appear, to a point where it's basically unwatchable. After restarting the Raspberry everything seems to be fine again for a while. I see no heavy CPU nor RAM usage, nor I see anything unusual in the logs. In my case its a Haupauge Dual Tuner (USB).

RE: Continuity Counter Errors on Raspberry Pi B+ with DVB-C HVR-930C - Added by Lisa White over 5 years ago

I felt your pain and had the same problems. I had enough and put the pie to rest. I now use rasp pi3 as a client. It was annoying to deal with the continuity interference issues and I couldn't take it anymore.

I purchased a mini server from dell on black Friday for 200.00 and setup a linux server using xubuntu 18.04 and tvheadend. It was a little pricey for a hobby but I have more options especially with PVR storage space and addons. I pipped everything through ffmpeg and it works flawlessly. I run 5 tv's through my server and might experience a quick freeze once a day, if lucky.

I had decent results with Libreelec tvheadend on my pie. They have there own website and there is a ton of information to help if you run into a snag.

Good luck,
Lisa:D

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