I recently moved on to the wonderful world of multiple DVB-T cards in my VDR and also set up streamdev-server for use with VLC for HTTP/PES-streams to a remote PC. However I ran into a problem with how streamdev and my primary output coexist.
Software: - vdr-1.3.43 - DVB drivers from 2.6.15-gentoo-r1 kernel - dxr3-0.2.5 plugin - Latest streamdev-cvs (Jan 20)
Hardware: - 2x Airstar2 budget DVB-T (FlexCopIIb) - DXR3 (Hollywood+) - P3/800 + 1.5GB RAM
And how / what happens:
- I restart VDR "fresh" with only dxr3 and streamdev plugin loaded - I switch my primary output (dxr3) to the preferred channel, works fine - I connect via the streamdev HTTP server to a channel which is on another mux and my dxr3 output switches to the first channel in that mux. Apparently the streamdev is somehow grabbing the same budget card and forcing the mux switch. - If I disconnect the streamdev client and reattach it to yet another mux the dxr3 changes channels again. It "follows" my streamdev actions. - After a few channel switches the dxr3 video freezes into a still frame but I can still attach to streamdev via HTTP to any channel/mux without any problems. - If I now switch a channel on the dxr3 output to anything on the same mux as the streamdev, it works fine but the picture freezes again every time I switch to another mux from the streamdev. - If I switch the dxr3 channel to another mux while the streamdev HTTP is serving something, the entire problem goes away. After this I can independently use dxr3 and the streamdev without any conflicts until the next VDR restart.
My not-so-educated guess is that the streamdev receiver device is using GetDevice to find a tuner and it manages to magically grab the primary device every time whether it's in use or not. If the dxr3 is using the primary device, it gets thrown over to the other mux by virtue of using that tuner. If I change the channel on the dxr3 while the streamdev is connected, the dxr3 gets assigned to the other DVB card and from then on they both coexist peacefully.
This is a minor nuisance in the sense that I can live with my live tv being knocked onto another channel now and then but what I'm worried about is recordings.. If I have a recording on the primary device and the HTTP streamdev client connects, the recording might get cut off or switch to the wrong channel.
I did a bit of source-code surfing to try and understand the mechanism by which streamdev gets a tuner device but I couldn't really identify any clearly faulty logic. I'd suppose that others would have run into this issue already but mailing list search and Google turned up nothing really relevant. Since this is easily reproducible here and I'm running pretty much latest everything here, I could try and patch this up if someone points me in the right direction.
- Jukka Vaisanen