Subscription Required NOT CHANGING Channels

[jaimeknapp]

Occasionally, a clean channel stream freezes, followed by the Subscription Required screen when there is NO channel change, scheduled recording, or any other PC or extender activities that could be requesting a channel change. There are no other tuning devices active on our cable drop at those times. Signal levels and SNR are generally +4 to +8 & 35 dB realm. Sometimes it will come back on its own after a few seconds. If not, a channel change always restores the channel.

I am generally viewing it over an extender, where I do not have immediate access to tuner diagnostics. Checking the main PC, there is no disruption occurring at the same time. My gut feel is that the problem originates with Time Warner's SDV "server" dropping this channel stream after some time has elapsed with no channel change request from our CC/TA. Is this possible? Any thoughts are appreciated.

InfinityTV4, Cisco CC & Cisco TA, Time Warner, San Antonio, TX.

[JohnW248]

If the problem is "self clearing" check your cableCARD for this:

Cisco CableCARD(tm)
Copy Protection Info Page 2

Refresh Status: OK
Refresh count: 1152
N_Host timeouts: 0
Sync Cnf timeouts: 3 ----each number here is an occurance of this issue.
CP-CA Control bits: 0x00

(To get to this information, go to the Centon WebGui and then click on cableCARD and in the links in the middle of the page click on

Cisco CableCARD CA Screen
Cisco CableCARD/Host ID Screen
Cisco CableCARD IP Service
Cisco CableCARD DAVIC Info
Cisco CableCARD CP Info =====This is the link for copy protection, when it opens click on next page at the bottom.
Cisco CableCARD Diag Screen
Cisco CableCARD ASD Info
Cisco CableCARD DSG Info
Cisco CableCARD CANH Screen

I've reported this to Ceton and TWC and TWC has reported it to Cisco and we've send diagnostics, etc. After a year and half it hasn't been fixed. If this is your issue, open a ticket with Ceton (they'll love me for that) and also open a ticket with the National CableCARD Help Desk in NY for TWC. From what I've been told this is an issue for Cisco and has to do with a timing issue on the copy protection not arriving in time---when this happens BTW all tuners on that card which are on copy protected content will be interrupted. Shows recording at the time will show Partial in history. Typically the picture freezes, then Subscription Required comes up and in less than a minute I get picture back.

Perhaps if more people on Cisco cards on TWC see this and check we can get more reports and get Cisco to move it up the ladder.

There is another Subscription Required issue that does not clear and happens to a tuned channel which can only be cleared by stopping or tuning up and back. That issue started with the last FW update I got. You can find that by going to the Diagnostic Link above and looking at that information:
Cisco CableCARD(tm)
Diagnostics
H/W Model: 0800, Ver: 0012
MAC Address: 00:21:BE:86:59:21
SL. No: PKGVGDMZK, Mode: MMODE
Boot Time
Sun Jun 16 2013, 1:00:47 PM GMT
Current Time
Tue Jun 25 2013, 8:51:20 PM GMT
Free Memory: 1534 KB
Bldr Ver: 124
OS Ver: PKEY1.5.3_F.p.0601
Build Time: Jun 19 2012, 13:34:00
Resource Status: 00021C1F00027DBF
BFS: Received, Hub ID: 44
CPU Channel, Generic Diags

If you have the second issue, check your cableCARD FW.

[jaimeknapp]

John,
Thanks:

Cisco CableCARD(tm)
Copy Protection Info Page 2

Refresh Status: OK
Refresh count: 25
N_Host timeouts: 0
Sync Cnf timeouts: 1
CP-CA Control bits: 0x00

I had completely restarted the system about 3-hours before my most recent occurrence. I assume this log is cleared on a PC restart.

Is there any potential help to request a CC hit from TWC?

[foxwood]

Is there any potential help to request a CC hit from TWC?

I don't think it's a problem with your card, so a "hit" won't help - it's a signal quality issue, and the missing bits in the signal are triggering a copy-protection response.

[JohnW248]

John,
Thanks:

Cisco CableCARD(tm)
Copy Protection Info Page 2

Refresh Status: OK
Refresh count: 25
N_Host timeouts: 0
Sync Cnf timeouts: 1
CP-CA Control bits: 0x00

I had completely restarted the system about 3-hours before my most recent occurrence. I assume this log is cleared on a PC restart.

Is there any potential help to request a CC hit from TWC?

Hits, different cableCARDS doesn't matter. Here's something that is strange, it only happens with Ceton devices. It doesn't happen with Tivo or SD Prime tuners. I don't know about the Ethernet 6 tuner Ceton--that might be exempt too.

Restarting the system will wipe the cableCARD on a PCIe card, a USB will stay up. Leave your system running, there is nothing you or TWC can do about this....it's a Cisco problem so the more noise to TWC to go back to Cisco, the better. I was told that Cisco refused to work with Ceton on this since Ceton is not their customer, but TWC and Cisco are tight and the problem has been verified, the more reports that get filed, the better. BTW the card gets verified every 10 minutes

MKS Period: 600 seconds
VerifyKey Status: OK

And those errors can hit 24 hours a day, once you keep that tab open in a browser and refesh it you can see how often you're getting hit. The top number is a ten min. interval. You can ballpark time of day only if you're watching or you have a recording hit. MC will automatically reschedule a recording that gets hit and marked as partial just make sure your series recordings are set to HD only if you only want a HD recording made if there is an error.

John

[jaimeknapp]

John,

A side question, if I may:

The Media Center PC is in the den, where my wife watched through the day. In my home office, I have an XBox extender on its own screen and several other PCs on the same subnet as the Media PC. I do not use network tuners, but if I did, would a remote PC have access the Ceton diagnostic screens either through Media Center, or their web GUI? Or, is there some other simple method to access diagnostic information remotely?

Thank.

[JohnW248]

Not sure I can answer that, but I'm sure Mikino could, he wrote the original network sharing of the PCIe tuner. I never set one up that way, but I wonder if you just bridged the adapter in networks & sharing, change adapter settings, if you could then access the web gui by it's IP address of 192.168.200.1. If you can do that you could see the cableCARD and Tuning adapter stuff which is called by java from the web gui.

One other thing to remember is you can dedicate a browser page to the web gui and keep it open on the home machine along with the cableCARD tabs and the TA diagnostic map. You don't have to be at the machine when the subscription required hits, it'll be recorded, for example I just had one hit on the card in the Dell
Cisco CableCARD(tm)
Copy Protection Info Page 2

Refresh Status: OK
Refresh count: 1412
N_Host timeouts: 0
Sync Cnf timeouts: 5
CP-CA Control bits: 0x00

It self recovered, but there is a recording going on right now (Best in Show on EcoreHD) which will have a "partial" and MC will reschedule it, there doesn't seem to be any time frame to this problem, and it doesn't hit all the devices at the same time, for example here is a USB tuner on the same machine: (no hit on it).
Copy Protection Info Page 2

Refresh Status: OK
Refresh count: 247
N_Host timeouts: 0
Sync Cnf timeouts: 0
CP-CA Control bits: 0x00

[foxwood]

Rather than tweaking the network configuration of the tuner, which has the potential to cause even more problems, setting the Win7 machine up to allow concurrent RDP access might be a better solution - then you could just RDP into the Win7 machine, without affecting your wifes foreground session, and check the Ceton diags directly yourself.

It involves a hack, and the instructions come with scarey warnings, but it's a solution that a number of people on this forum have found quite useful.
http://www.missingremote.com/guide/how- ... pack-1-rtm

[jaimeknapp]

I thought this reply from the TWC support site forums.timewarnercable.com interesting, albeit either right or wrong:

"Switched Digital Video (SDV) is a technology that allows us to expand the programming you receive by sending certain channels to customer homes only when the channels are requested. The SDV server uses this communication to determine if someone is actively watching the channel or if the TV was simply tuned to that
channel when it was turned off. This also happens on a TWC provided cable box( error would be: please select A if your still watching this channel). The concept of a SDV channel is, if the channel not being watched it no longer needs to be displayed. You get the error message do to the inactivity on the channel. The channel is restored when you change the channel, due to you sending the request for the channel again."

If this were an accurate statement, would not there be some consistent interval to these events?

[JohnW248]

I thought this reply from the TWC support site forums.timewarnercable.com interesting, albeit either right or wrong:

"Switched Digital Video (SDV) is a technology that allows us to expand the programming you receive by sending certain channels to customer homes only when the channels are requested. The SDV server uses this communication to determine if someone is actively watching the channel or if the TV was simply tuned to that
channel when it was turned off. This also happens on a TWC provided cable box( error would be: please select A if your still watching this channel). The concept of a SDV channel is, if the channel not being watched it no longer needs to be displayed. You get the error message do to the inactivity on the channel. The channel is restored when you change the channel, due to you sending the request for the channel again."

If this were an accurate statement, would not there be some consistent interval to these events?

A year ago February when I was working with TWC & Ceton to determine this problem, we disconnected the TA and still had the timing configuration errors and ruled out TA and SDV as cause of this issue. It seems it is related to the CP signal which is refreshed every 10 minutes and the timing window on the cableCARD and its communication with the Ceton devices. Once again, this error does not occur on Tivo or Silicon Dust devices, just Ceton MOCUR devices....just why those devices are sensitive to this and why it'll strike one of my devices and not the other two at the same time, I don't know. I do know that all three of the Ceton devices get these errors and the Tivo and SD devices do not.