Already in December, the antenna signal deteriorated and DVB-T units got all “pixly”. Colleague Niklas (the antenna guy) helped me out by swapping the aerial for a new one I bought, but the measuring  equipment handy was only showing actual signal power and not signal quality so it had to be a best effort. Pros: Reception did improve for a period of time, and I got rid of the old analogue monster antenna and the ugly box that joined the two antennas. However, signal wasn’t significantly better and after a while it again it fell below the acceptable levels. Lowering the aerial on the antenna pole didn’t help.

The USB harddisk to the Wii was unreachable and started making a very frightening click sound. I have given away all physical Wii games but one, so the standard offering of games got *really* limited. LEGO Indiana Jones, which I naturally just have to hack the Wii and install USB disks. The intention was never to actually play it

Good part was I took the HiFi klubben offer for NAD speakers and the AVR-1912 (was very kindly allowed to upgrade the 1612 that was in the package). Installed the speakers (still loose cables but it’s getting there). Mmmm – NICE sound, but was also a first step on the road to hell.

The AVR-1612 channelled the  HDMI in nicely to the HDMI connected TV, but installing the AVR-1912 made the screen blank out at the point the Windows 7 normally welcome you. It worked fine in Safemode and with the ATI drivers removed. Playing with it, made me reboot the machine by pressing and holding the the power button quite a few times, and suddenly in the process, the web access was gone (general IP fine but web browsing was dead) and the MySQL part of MediaPortal was also dead. The sound settings was indicated that no speakers were connected to the HD sound port in the HDMI cable.

So basically no TV in the entire house at this point in time, HTPC (also media repository) was seriously crippled and with drivers installed it couldn’t show any picture. I guess this was rock bottom. (Edit: Little did I know

Took the indoor DVB-T antenna from the bedroom (where we have no central antenna), disconnected the external aerial and replaced it with the indoor one. So, killed the bedroom TV but won the kitchen TV by this move, and have fair signal in the rest of the central antenna system. Kitchen TV is 14″, no timeshift, no web server and no nothing. It’s almost criminally simplified, but working!

Secondly, the upstairs PC connected to the projector had a MediaPortal installation, but for some reason I installed that as a media client only, and not with it’s own TV server, even if the machine has a TV card and access to the central antenna. I am not aware of a way that you can add the TV server without installing the system again, so I uninstalled the MP (small uninstall – keeping settings and data) and reinstalled it with the server enabled. Server was there and configurable in it’s setting application, TV was an option in the media client. Things is, it didn’t work and there was no TV option in the clients configuration. So, I had to really remove the MP *totally* and reinstall it.  Generating new thumbnails for all pictures and updating the databases for music and films takes so long just the machines part, and the manual fixes needed for music and films is massive! As this PC is connected to the central antenna, I now had a second TV operational. This one has timeshift and full media portal. Where this strange real time Tv concept actually works.

Attached the Wii USB disk to the computer. Worked no problems. Attaching it to the Wii again it fired up nicely. I guess it was on sympathy strike with the other hardware. Don’t do that to me again, please!

Installed an antenna splitter from the indoor antenna, pulled a cable to the bedroom and installed a permanent cabled access to that room. The indoor antenna was also placed in a more semi-permanent manner. It can be like that for some time with no problem. TV3 now working

Back to the HTPC. Removing Avast and drivers for the LAN card totally, seems to have cured the lack of web access. Screen still black, and I presented my case in one of the many fora for owners. Explored on and eventually found that there is a total mess in the communication between the DENON unit and the ATI card. Not a very good combination. It’s not really easy as obviously pointing at one being the single source of error, but nVidia cards are said to work which gives you some indication. I was able to “solve it” by pressing windows + p (the projector settings) and blindly making a selection of another screen configuration. Not always but quite often (mind: now “always” and we all understand the WAF of “working sometimes”) this gives the picture back.

I guess I am now landing in a new stable situation. Need to re-install Media Portal on the HTPC (basically from scratch) and the other issues I still have are both related to the HDMI between the DENON unit and the HTPC. I do want screen to start when HTPC is selected  without some Win + P fiddling, and the sound still doesn’t work. It DID work at one occasion (using Realtek drivers and not the ATI ones) and this was when I had the “projector setting” to mirror the screen on the projector (where it identified itself as unit 1 and 2 on the same screen). The error message was gone but I still didn’t get any sound from the HTPC.

So, more work to do and I do need someone to look at the antenna system for me!

Edit: The HTPC refused to boot. The kitchen TV refuse to show some of the channels. Rock bottom my ass! Dante taught me there are different levels of hell and I seemingly wasn’t on the Judas level quite yet. Now I need to buy a new graphics board. FINGERS crossed I don’t also have to buy a new TV card.  Detaching the antenna for the HTPC made a few more Tv channels work on the kitchen TV.

Working:

- Upstairs PC and the projector, including Tv and everything.

- Kitchen TV

- Bedroom TV (a bit pixly but once the roof antenna is back in production, maybe this will go away).

So pending;

- Make HTPC work. Need new GFX board and picking a nVidia one would hopefully also take care of the communication with the AVR-1912.

- Re-cord the distance between antenna and the in-house system (will have to wait until spring, as crawling on the roof these days is likely lethal). The indoor antenna has drawbacks – as soon as a moped runs on the street outside, I get interference. Why mopeds???

First

What can cause this?

1) Anything relating to antenna signal is a given reason.

2) Secondly, it can actually be so that this is due to CPU of the HTPC being overloaded, so that software MPEG decoding is left with too little CPU to do it’s job.

3) Codecs and drivers can always play dirty tricks.

Well we have snow and it has happened before that the signal has been weak due to layers of snow where our hero heading for the roof actually solved the issue. So I did so – climbed the roof, and while standing on the chimney I would easily tell that there was a bit of frost, but nothing that was likely to cause the error.

I did also add a splitter to the antenna outlet as I added a kitchen TC to the multimedia experience of the home. I unplugged the splitter and put the HTPC antenna directly in the outlet. No change, but I got to think that the kitchen TV didn’t have the problem so antenna signal must be fine at the point of the outlet, and actually also after the splitter.

So, open the HTPC and ensure the TV card hadn’t slid of the PCI bus. This can actually happen as it doesn’t have any back panel – the buggers at Hauppauge didn’t supply a half height one. Looked fine.

At this point in time, I felt I could rule out the antenna. Still – going into the “manual contol” option of the TV server configuration, I could still see that the signal seemed fine but the quality bat went from 100% to 0% like a yo-yo.

Now for the other options, can this be the CPU? Any recent changes?

First; iPimp is new so that had to go. It features a server part and can potentially be a CPU eater (even if the process manager didn’t indicate this). Oblitterated it -> No change. Hrm… The process manager still shows less than 20% CPU load, 4GB memory is there and it no where near full (OK, 32 bit Windowxd XP means only 3.5 GB or thereabout is accessible, but still no where near so full that swapping can be a reason).

I didn’t do any other changes so the only thing that I can think of is the drivers. Picked up a recent set from Hauppauge (not that they seemed any newer than the ones already in production but anyway). Reinstalled the drivers for the TV card.

Still no change.

That when I realise; the plug in the splitter is black. The cable I have in the back of the HTPC is white… ARRRRGGGGHHHH! The cable is not ONE cable from the splitter to the HTPC – in the antenna chain sits the old DVB-T decoder. Open the door to the cabinet under the TV (where the Wii, PS2 and the PS2 games sit). Smiling at me, smelling like tech-stuffs version of taking a crap in the diaper is was quite evident – the Smasung  DTB-B260V was no more. It had ceased to exist, it was DEAD! Why was it there? It was there as a back-up plan. When the HTPC wasn’t fully established. When the WAF of the new unit was not fully there I needed it as a a Plan B.

Connecting the splitter to the HTPC directly solved the problem. Plan B scrapped.

On the good side; two chargeable AAA batteries found in the remote

This is the error received:

Error: [AnyDAC][Phys][MySQL][LIBMYSQL] Field ‘series’ doesn’t have a default value

Googling lead me to the MP forum, where quite a few had the same issue. I must say that what I say below does solve the problem (no error message) but I am yet to see if i’s a good thing so that it also works, or I just lost the symptom. Anyway, here’s what to do;

Fire up MySQL Administrator (I have it on the machine but it might be a separate download – i don’t remember). Log on and if you forgot, the default password for the user “root” is “MediaPortal”.

Select “Catalog”, followed by “mptvdb”. Select table “schedule” and then in there you see the field “series”. There are possibly several ways to solve this. The MP forum suggests you set the default value to “1″. This might do it, but it’s in my opinion possibly fixing it by introducing a source of error.What I did was unticking the “Not Null” check-mark. I tried both options and both seem to work, but I would suggest you take my advice on this. My suggestion is having the program accept no value, rather than fooling the checks by introducing a dummy value that could potentially cause error later in the process…

PLEASE mind: Do not follow the suggestion above. It proves that recording stopped working and accessing the guide turned strangely slow. The suggestions found that haven’t been claimed utterly stupid are these;

http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/516773-post1120.html
http://code.google.com/p/mp-web-interface/issues/detail?id=34

Updating it is a bit of a hassle if you followed the betas, but the work is just about the same as for migrating from RC3 to RC4 so if you did that, then you are just about to be needing to do it again.

1. So just download and install it

Here – Good start, isn’t it?

2. Update the EPG fetching

I still don’t understand why this is still so much hassle. If you don’t have XMLTV installed (which you should) – download it from here and RTFM. Set up a batch file to set things up. Add the XMLTV plug-in (included – just needs to be activated) and configure it. You have to set up mapping between the channels found by media portal when channels were scanned, and the channels that are imported using XMLTV. This bitch needs to be done AGAIN! Reload and find partials worked fairly well for me so the manual load isn’t what it was when I tested it the first time. Ensure the xmltv.dtd file is in the same directory as the xmltv.xml file, or it won’t work. In all, it’s great stuff – for people with an engineering degree, too much spare time and take pride and joy in configuration of textfiles (i.e. a Linux lover … <ducking>).

Do also ensure that the batch file is run on a regular basis (and mail me to tell how it’s done . I tried the regular Windows scheduling but didn’t make it the first time around at least … Sigh …

3. Update the config for the MediaPortal Webplugin

The name of the database is updated, so in case you installed the MediaPortal Web plug-in (a MUST!!!) then be prepared to set up this component again. For some reason the component on the Media-portal page is an old version so do pick up an updated version from the projects own page.

4. MDAPI

Heerfordt produced a new MDAPI version called MDAPI 2008. If your MediaPortal access a card sharing server, then this is also a must. You need to set it up again from scratch. There is a fully explanatory guide in the archive. Join the leading forum for these matters, and have a discussion with the guys that does it. here

If you are as I, and use Swedish DVB-T provider Boxer, you may need to adjust the providerId. I described this before here

You also need to pick up WinCSC. Again, do look for WinCSC v. 1.2.0.2477

5. Enjoy one of the leading HTPC distributions

Drawbacks?

I had to set-up the EPG feed again. Mapping of channels was gone and had to be done basically from scratch. To be honest, the EPG part of things is a section where I fiddle along until things show up in the Guide, but I am never quite sure what did the trick. Still beats me why this has to be so IMMENSELY complicated. I have set-up XMLTV (as a plug-in to the Tv server) and a script that I manually run ever now and then (fetching two weeks of data) and the WebEPG (supplied with MediaPortal)).

Also, it took me some missed scheduled recording before I realised that the Database was migratedand thet the TV engine didn’t bother about the stuff I set in the MP Web Interface. The RC2 and RC3 used an MS SQL database named MpTvDbRC2 but this one now uses MpTvDbRC4. Typically I guess you wouldn’t even notice, but if you use the MP web interface, you have to remember to update. You can also remove the MpTvDbRC2 SQL Server Management Stuido Express, which the installed doesn’t propose for you.

More significantly, Heerford launched an updated version of MDAPI, called version 3.0 quickly followed by version 3.1. This is all good news, if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t get it to work.

I installed it like before but the code doesn’t do what it should. I don’t get access to scrambled channels. It’s actually the opposite; FTA channels are gone to!

However there are a few thing you just need to add;

MP Web Interface – Allows you to remotely added the database and schedule recordings. Find it amongst the other plug-ins but the projects own homepage has a newer version. Find it here

Elecard MPEG-2 Decoder – I am still exploring this, but this is said to be needed in order to compress your recordings to DivX, Xvid or some other MPEG4 format. This should run in the background when the computer is idle, which sounds nice. Other forums suggest using Handbrake. Might also be an option (fairly system independent tool) but it’s manual and doesn’t really work together with the database functionality of MediaPortal..

WebEPG - I don’t get it. This is a piece of software included in the distribution but it takes careful reading to find it and to make it work. The program guides can naturally be captured from the broadcast itself (at least if you run DVB) but this is typically limited in time. XMLTV is a most likely a great tool – but it’s totally imcomprehencible to be a bit blunt! WebEPG does the trick. I have installed and configured several different solutions and it does work, but I am not quite sure WHAT actually works. My assumption is WebEPG

- Install MediaPortal 1.0 (RC3 is the most recent at the time of writing)

If you want to use a shared card, you need this:

- Install MDAPI – HomePage here – File here

- Install WinCSC – File here

If you want to be able to access the machine via web

- Install MP WebInterface – Homepage here – File here

Special credits must go to Heerford – a genuine DVB hero! he provides for example the Electronic program Guice (EPG) that I am soon to get running

- Install EPG Service – Homepage – File here

Interesting post in public forum

- Here

* My daughters PC is based on an ASUS motherboard, but it seems that the NIC (Network Interface Card) doesn’t work. There are a few more or less complex solutions to it, but it seems no plug and play solution is obtainable. Also, in general applying fixes to a faulty NIC function is messy as it means running around the house using a USB stick, where the downloaded stuff is on the stick. This lack of drivers and Plug ‘n Play that is Plug ‘n Pray drives me nuts. I downloaded an ISO of the Ubuntu 8.10 beta, but booting that freaked the monitor. It defaulted to 1152*whatever (which I know as the monitors warning system told me) on a 17″ monitor that can only do 1024*768. Oh, how do I HATE this!

* My HTPC has a GRUB based dual boot, and I just booted the Mythbuntu partition where my account was suddenly gone.

That’s it. Mythbuntu is getting out of here! I’m killing that partition right here and now! Exit my life you incomplete retarded piece of cracp!

Installing it was fine, and configuring it was also fine. There was only ONE small problem – the TV card didn’t work! Twinhan 3030 is a nice card. If can do 1080p and it has a port for a CA module.

There are drivers on the Twinhan, but they are for another distribution. The recommended option is to use the general Mantis ones. Modus operandi described below. Or should I say; below you find a tutorial on how to do it. It still doesn’t work of course, but it’s doing it as it should be done and if the download would have worked then it would be a proper way to get them to work. Now I can just recommend running another OS for this, or use another TV card. The advantage using the Twinhan card – the CA slot – is after all slim if you can use cardsharing or a dedicated reader for your own legit card…

cd /tmp
#make sure_ krenel sources are installed
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
#downloading driver
wget -c http://jusst.de/hg/mantis/archive/tip.tar.bz2

#unpacking driver
tar -xf tip.tar.bz2
#copying new dvb_net to correct directory
cd mantis-83e2af36efe7
#run installation
make
sudo make install

My first trial was a no-name one. I see that it appears under different names. Click here for an example (the one on the lower part of the screen). To cut things short – it’s crap, rotten, bad, junk… Did I forget to mention that it was really bad? Hard to control, no battery saving so it had always ran out of juice, keys repeated when they shouldn’t (and didn’t when they should). Let me know if you are interested in purchasing mine The drivers I just tried downloading are from August 2006, so not updated since I tried it.

I hence do run a normal corded keyboard and a normal corded mouse. It’s NOT convenient, but I have managed so far. The Microsoft Remote (LINK) is however GREAT!

One very promising item is now this; (LINK). Sandberg produce a lot of high quality accessories, and I would then hope that this keyboard with tochpad meets the standards I normally expect from Sandberg. Please share your views!