[TM-TWIN-OE] Intermittent "Tune Fail" - receiver sometimes selects wrong tuner

[Rob van der Does]

Then I suggest to reconfigure tuner A and to eliminate the DiSEqC-settings from it.

All in all: I suggest one more try. Flash the receiver, no restore, only use ABM for getting settings and install the softcam you need. And of course configure the tuners. Nothing more.
If you now get the same issues, I'm pretty sure it's a hardware issue.

 

[m1maj]

Then I suggest to reconfigure tuner A and to eliminate the DiSEqC-settings from it.

All in all: I suggest one more try. Flash the receiver, no restore, only use ABM for getting settings and install the softcam you need. And of course configure the tuners. Nothing more.
If you now get the same issues, I'm pretty sure it's a hardware issue.

OK. I shouldn't take me too long to do another fresh start. It's really a very simple setup; pure FTA, no CAMs at all. I've done so little since the last re-flash that I don't hold out much hope, but it's worth a try.

If it is hardware, it's an odd one isn't it? Given that I can work around the issue by flipping to the other tuner and back, I might imagine that the software could work around it too. I have to decide whether I can just live with it. I never see a problem if I don't use standby, and if I want reliable recordings I can just leave the thing on. The main downside of this is that having the receiver on occupies a tuner, so if I want it to record two things at once I have to make sure that I leave it on the right transponder.

 

[Rob van der Does]

I can´t see how the firmware could work/around an incidental hardware issue like yours.

 

[m1maj]

I can´t see how the firmware could work/around an incidental hardware issue like yours.

Without a deep understanding of what is going on, neither do I, in detail. But it is an invariant property of the "broken state" that tuner A is idle, and the software wants to use tuner B and fails (and there's evidence that it is actually "hearing" tuner A). I can always get it working again by selecting a channel on tuner A and then repeating the tuning of tuner B. Works every time, and it stays working 100% until the next time the receiver goes into standby.

Whatever I'm doing by that brief selection of tuner A must be poking something that gets the receiver out of the dodgy state, regardless of whether the root cause is hardware, firmware, software or any other kind of ware. If I can do it, code can do it!

 

[m1maj]

All in all: I suggest one more try. Flash the receiver, no restore, only use ABM for getting settings and install the softcam you need. And of course configure the tuners. Nothing more.
If you now get the same issues, I'm pretty sure it's a hardware issue.

OK, done. After taking a backup, I reflashed Apollo.119 from USB. Declined the restore. Set up the bare minimum of video configuration and tuner setup. Manually scanned 13.0E and 28.2E to get some channels. Established that both tuners were working.

Set up test recordings and went to standby.

Same problem: tuner B recording failed.

While still in standby, tried streaming tuner B (i.e. a channel on 13.0E) over the web interface. Failed. Tried streaming 28.2E channel. Worked. Went back and tried the same 13.0E channel. Worked.

In other words, exactly the same as before.

I think I might as well restore from the backup to save having to re-do the rest of the configuration.

 

[Rob van der Does]

So it seems to be a hardware issue to me (possibly a driver issue).

 

[m1maj]

So it seems to be a hardware issue to me (possibly a driver issue).

Yes it seems likely.

Presumably it could be some inadvertent reliance on some hardware behaviour that is "undefined" and might behave differently on different instances.

Whatever, it seems unlikely that we will nail the issue, so I suppose I must either live with it or change the box.