Hi list,
Having another go at a long-standing problem on Freecom USB tuners - a bit more testing: Using VDR 1.6.0.2, and the problem seems to be that the tuners run out of hardware PID's. The problem can be reliably repeated tuning to BBC1 & BBC2 on freeview, when 1 channel is already recording on that multiplex What's appears unusual about these channels is that they need 4 PID's like so:
May 10 17:36:54 ha-server vdr: [7018] changing pids of channel 1 from 600+600:601=eng,602=eng:0:0 to 600+600:601=eng,602=eng:605=eng:0
And tuning to another channel on that TS that uses 3 PID's (e.g BBC news) works OK:
May 10 17:36:53 ha-server vdr: [7018] changing pids of channel 5 from 640+640:641=eng:0:0 to 640+640:641=eng:643=eng:0
The tuners report a capacity of 15 PID's from dmesg so:
[ 42.437874] DVB: registering new adapter (WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (Typhoon/Freecom)) [ 42.449952] DVB: registering frontend 0 (WideView USB DVB-T)... [ 42.464022] input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb4/4-3/input/input4 [ 42.475543] dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 300 msecs. [ 42.486250] dvb-usb: WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (Typhoon/Freecom) successfully initialized and connected. [ 42.755308] usb 4-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5 [ 42.895930] usb 4-5: new device found, idVendor=14aa, idProduct=0221 [ 42.907350] usb 4-5: new device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0 [ 42.918743] usb 4-5: Product: Digital TV Receiver [ 42.930060] usb 4-5: Manufacturer: Digital TV Receiver [ 42.941813] usb 4-5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice [ 42.953252] dvb-usb: found a 'WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (Typhoon/Freecom)' in warm state. [ 42.967224] dvb-usb: will use the device's hardware PID filter (table count: 15).
Some basic investigation... Looking at the PID's being used during recording of a single channel, using lsof -n | grep adapter1.demux0 I see :
vdr 7008 vdr 7u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 15u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 21u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 22u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 24u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 26u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 27u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 34u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 35u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 36u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 37u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 39u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0
So 12 filters in use, which is several more than needed by the channel being recorded (I assume these are other channels being monitored for epg etc, or is this other stuff in the TS being filtered...?). When nothing is being recorded the following is typically output:
vdr 7008 vdr 7u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 15u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 21u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 22u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 24u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 26u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 27u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 28u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 39u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0
Sometimes this count is lower (e.g. 8, in which case 2 channels can be recorded). When it fails, VDR still tries to allocate the PID's for the channel that requires 4:
May 16 19:47:51 ha-server vdr: [7022] ERROR: /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0: Too many open files May 16 19:47:51 ha-server vdr: [7022] ERROR (dvbdevice.c,658): Too many open files
Sometimes, after multiple retries, the 2 channels fit the total of 15 (presumably some other PID's discarded) and it records 2 channels OK. Then after stopping 2 simultaneous recordings (BBC1 + BBC2), and the residual PID count is now just 5.
vdr 7008 vdr 7u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 15u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 21u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 22u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0 vdr 7008 vdr 26u CHR 212,68 6038 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0
The question is can the total PID count be reduced when VDR is idle, or is there an assumption that a channel uses fewer than 4 PID's in calculating how many to leave spare for recordings (if that's how it works)? Or is it that these USB sticks are just old now, and I need one that has more hardware filters - if so does anyone have recommendations?
Thanks!