Live TV Plays but MC becomes unresponsive

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wtlgditc

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Live TV Plays but MC becomes unresponsive

#1

Post by wtlgditc » Mon Feb 10, 2020 6:28 am

Hi folks,

I'm having a new issue with my Windows 7 Media Center PC. It's been working (more or less) fine for years but recently, I'd say the last 2-3 weeks, if I watch live time, it will play fine but a few minutes after pressing play, the ehshell app becomes unresponsive to any other requests. I can't stop the live TV from playing, I can't go back to my recorded TV library (or any other library), about the only thing that works is pressing the mute button on the remote control.

I can use the keyboard and bring up task manager and then kill ehshell.exe. If I launch media center again, I can do everything I normally do (watch recorded TV mostly) but if try to watch live TV again, the same thing happens (watching a fully recorded show doesn't have the issue; watching a show that's currently recording does have the issue (for example, lets say I want to watch a game, I could press record on the game in the guide wait 5 minutes, then start watching - if I do this, I have the same problem with media center becoming unresponsive. BUT, if I let it record the whole thing and wait until it's over, I can watch it, fast forward, rewind, stop, whatever, at any time.

My devices in use:
TWO HD HomeRun Prime with cable Card (3 tuners) connected over the network.
Windows Media Center PC running Windows 7, Tuner Salad adjusted to accept 6 tuners, AMD graphics card R240, I believe (not in front of it at the moment). Nothing has been updated in months because it had been stable and it's a dedicated Media Center system.

The media center has been rebooted multiple times since the problem first occurred and no change.

Any thoughts/suggestions welcome!

tonywagner

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#2

Post by tonywagner » Mon Feb 10, 2020 5:22 pm

Do you know of any other tasks that might be running in the background during live TV? Do you have software like Comskip that detects / skips commercials?

Any other WMC addins you might be using?

dave_g

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#3

Post by dave_g » Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:23 pm

I have a similar issue, I have been using WMC for years and it has worked great. I haven't changed anything but recently certain channels start causing WMC to freeze or hang. It appears that the issue happens when I tune into channels that are 13.X within my QAM tuner.

My setup is Intel NUC i5-5250 8GB Ram running Windows 7 using HDhomerun Dual HDHR3. I also have almost the exact same setup running Windows 10 and it has the same issues. When it freezes, it doesn't appear to be a processor or memory issue as task manager shows 25% CPU for ehshell during the freeze and ram is less that 2GB usage. I also use EPG123, and of course that works great!

I have tried reinstalling windows and setting everything up from scratch. If I just start adding the 10 channels that fall in the 13.X QAM range they work ok, but then when I add all of the other ~90 QAM channels to WMC and start viewing any of the 13.X channels the freeze happens. When I goto any of the other non 13.X channels I don't have issues. I checked the HDhomerun log and it looks normal, no errors. Nothing else is running on the computer and when it freezes I have to reboot, just stopping WMC causes tuner conflicts until I reboot.

Does anybody have any suggestions? Of course the channels in the 13.X range are the ones the wife watches the most (food and hgtv)...

stuartm

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#4

Post by stuartm » Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:05 am

There is a known issue/bug in WMC. It has to do with tuning from a HD h.264 (MPEG-4) coded channel to a low-res mpeg-2 channel WMC has trouble detecting the proper stream encoding and the usual result is a black screen possibly with sound. You may be hitting this particular bug. In any event you can check what codec the problem channels are using via the 411-info screens. It may be something else completely, but it is worth checking.

wtlgditc

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#5

Post by wtlgditc » Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:42 am

Thanks for the input folks... At the moment, this is an annoyance. I'm somewhat tempted to reload the box, possibly with a new hard drive, since it's an aging install.

I was not aware of the h.264 bug... I don't think I've encountered it before. That said, I have my doubts this is the issue if only because I never experience the black screen. both picture and audio continue to play and if I didn't try to stop it (or pause it), I wouldn't even know there was a problem.

I definitely welcome other thoughts and if I figure this out, I'll try to post back...

dmagerl

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#6

Post by dmagerl » Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:30 pm

This may be a dumb suggestion but have you put new batteries in the remote? These are classic dying battery symptoms. Turn on tv, open guide, select program,etc, done in rapid succession all deplete the batteries and eventually the remote dies. Wait awhile, batteries recover, remote starts working. Repeat ad infinitum.

Unless you arent using the remote. Then ignore everything :-)

stuartm

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#7

Post by stuartm » Mon Feb 17, 2020 12:25 am

Sorry, your thread got kind of hijacked. I was responding to the post by dave_g where he was having play problems on certain channels. If your remote stops working then I agree, check the batteries and also try minimizing WMC there may be an alert popup of some kind that is grabbing focus away. Also, it it only remote not working. i.e. will keyboard/mouse controls function?

weg400

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#8

Post by weg400 » Fri Aug 14, 2020 10:21 pm

My WMC began to freeze up after I installed the updated epg123Setup versions: 1.3.8.10, 1.3.9.10 and 1.3.10.0. After trying all sorts of troubleshooting, I finally uninstalled the latest versions of epg123 and reinstalled version 1.3.7.30 from May 2020 and I can now shut down Windows Media Center after opening to view channels or recordings. Before reinstalling the older version, WMC wouldn't allow me to shut it down after opening. I had to open Windows 7 Task Manager in order to shut it down. I'm glad I held on to an older version of epg123. If there's a solution that would allow me to utilize the updated versions and not experience freeze ups every time I open WMC, I welcome your feedback.

stuartm

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#9

Post by stuartm » Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:25 pm

Did you post in the EPG123 subforum describing your issues? Although it seems very odd that EPG123 would have any direct effect on WMC since it's only effect is to load guide data into the WMC database. (Unless you were using some of the guide tweak features), then perhaps it might somehow directly affect WMC. Gary is usually very good at assisting with any EPG123 related problems (and even non-EPG problems).

Paint

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#10

Post by Paint » Thu Nov 05, 2020 9:41 pm

I too have stuttering and buffering sometimes with ServerWMC on Windows 7 x64 with two InfiniTV 6 Ceton cards. I am using epg123 to populate my guide.

Recently, I noticed that WMC had 9999 channels loaded (channels 1-9999). I am only using around 200 channels in the 500-900 and 1799-1850 range. I deleted the other channel blocks that I don't use and wont ever use. This has sped up my WMC and ServerWMC streams significantly! I suggest people trying this if they have similar issues.

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