Problem with pvr.wmc on Vero 4K

Hi, new Vero 4K user here. I have a Ceton tv card set up in a Windows 7 computer that runs server.wmc, along with several windows machines running Kodi with pvr.wmc for watching live and recorded TV. My windows boxes have always played live and recorded TV without any playback issues. I got a Vero 4K recently and have been trying to get pvr.wmc to run on it unsuccessfully. I have gotten to the point where the system will open the pvr addon and load the channel listings and recorded TV list, however when I try to either playback a recorded show or watch live TV, the system shows the spinning icon for a few seconds then does nothing - I’m still just at the list of shows. I’m not sure if this is a OSMC issue or a pvr.wmc issue, but I thought I would post here first since I’ve never had any issues on my other computers.

The OSMC log is posted here: https://paste.osmc.tv/ixigoqifar - timestamp 2020-01-25 17:36:58.665
The ServerWMC log is posted here: https://pastebin.com/pb9KcLjx - row 2751

The show I was trying to start was “The Daily Show” so if you search for that in the logs you will find the spot where I was testing.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, would love to get this awesome little piece of hardware working so I can get a bunch more to replace my aging windows fleet.

Thanks!

John

Hi

Can you please reboot the device, enable debugging logging and re-upload some new logs?

Thanks

Sam

Sorry about that, didn’t realize I had the wrong logs. Will do that tonight and repost. Thanks for the quick response!

John

No problem. At a guess I’d say it’ll be a permissions issue. Debug logs should confirm that or show if there is a different issue.

I can confrim vero 4k does work with serverWMC, I was running it for over a year. The folder set up was the pain on the windows10 pc, as it had to be shared on windows a certain way

Hi Sam,

I went to re-run the logs with debugging enabled last night and ran into a new error that I can’t seem to get past. As soon as Kodi boots up I get the following error:

PVR clients: PVR WMC Client
Add-on couldn’t be loaded.
An unknown error has occurred.

I turned on debugging and tried restarting a couple times, disabled and re-enabled the pvr.wmc addon, but kept getting the error. If I go to the TV section and click into recordings or guide the notification pops up that the PVR is loading but just stays on 0%. From the logs it looks like it’s not finding the server, but I can confirm that the server is running and working fine on my other computers. No settings were changed from the previous night when I was able to see the listing but not play back anything. I was also able to connect to and playback from the emby plugin that connects to the same server as pvr.wmc.

OSMC logs: https://paste.osmc.tv/roconunoze and https://paste.osmc.tv/oyivuhemar (looks like the same error but these were from two different restarts)

Thanks for your help!

John

2020-01-28 23:34:14.219 T:3958551264   DEBUG: AddOnLog: PVR WMC Client: Settings: host='192.168.86.250', port=9080
2020-01-28 23:34:14.219 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'PVR WMC Client' requests setting 'wake_on_lan'
2020-01-28 23:34:14.220 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: loading setting definitions
2020-01-28 23:34:14.220 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: trying to load setting definitions from old format...
2020-01-28 23:34:14.221 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: loading setting values
2020-01-28 23:34:14.232 T:3958551264   ERROR: AddOnLog: PVR WMC Client: Using ServerWMC MAC address from custom addondata '80:EE:73:32:93:1C'
2020-01-28 23:34:14.232 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'PVR WMC Client' requests setting 'signal'
2020-01-28 23:34:14.232 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: loading setting definitions
2020-01-28 23:34:14.232 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: trying to load setting definitions from old format...
2020-01-28 23:34:14.233 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: loading setting values
2020-01-28 23:34:14.233 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'PVR WMC Client' requests setting 'signal_throttle'
2020-01-28 23:34:14.234 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: loading setting definitions
2020-01-28 23:34:14.234 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: trying to load setting definitions from old format...
2020-01-28 23:34:14.235 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: loading setting values
2020-01-28 23:34:14.235 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonCallbacksAddon - GetAddonSetting - add-on 'PVR WMC Client' requests setting 'multiResume'
2020-01-28 23:34:14.236 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: loading setting definitions
2020-01-28 23:34:14.236 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: trying to load setting definitions from old format...
2020-01-28 23:34:14.237 T:3958551264   DEBUG: CAddonSettings[pvr.wmc]: loading setting values
2020-01-28 23:34:14.238 T:4065026048   DEBUG: [Warning] CGUITextureManager::GetTexturePath: could not find texture 'icons/home/addons.png'
2020-01-28 23:34:14.238 T:3958551264   DEBUG: AddOnLog: PVR WMC Client: Socket::GetVector> Send request "GetServiceStatus|2.4.4|linux"
2020-01-28 23:34:14.239 T:3958551264   ERROR: AddOnLog: PVR WMC Client: Socket::connect 192.168.86.250:9080
2020-01-28 23:34:14.239 T:3730907872   DEBUG: ffmpeg[DE6122E0]: [swscaler] No accelerated colorspace conversion found from yuv420p to bgra.
2020-01-28 23:34:14.239 T:3958551264   ERROR: AddOnLog: PVR WMC Client: Socket::connect: (errno=101) (null)
2020-01-28 23:34:14.239 T:3958551264   ERROR: AddOnLog: PVR WMC Client: Socket::GetVector> Server is down
2020-01-28 23:34:14.239 T:3958551264   DEBUG: AddOnLog: PVR WMC Client: Socket::GetVector> Retrying in 1000ms

I don’t know this addon PVR.WMC but it seems to try to communicate to a system in your network with ip 192.168.86.250 port 9080 … and can’t. Might be related to the behvaviour you see.

Hi Jim - agreed, it looks like it can’t find the server. The strange thing is that the OSMC box has the pvr.wmc addon configured with exactly the same IP/port address as several of my other kodi boxes but this is the only one that can’t find the server. In addition, it was able to connect a couple days ago with the same configuration, but now can’t. Is there anything else I should be looking into or testing to debug this issue? Thanks for your help!

Do you know how to use SSH?

Hi - I am not super familiar with SSH but I do have it set up on the Vero box and can connect from my laptop and get to the command prompt.

2020-01-28 23:34:20.966 T:3623850720  NOTICE: Emby.emby.core.http -> ERROR:: HTTPConnectionPool(host='192.168.86.250', port=8096): Max retries exceeded with url: /emby/system/info/public (Caused by NewConnectionError('<requests.packages.urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0xdb2d2490>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 101] Network is unreachable',))

Besides pvr.wmc also this emby add-on cannot reach 192.168.86.250.

  • Has your PC got a new IP address?
  • can you ssh into the (e.g. using the PuTTY program, user osmc, password osmc) and cut’n paste here the result of "ping -c 5 192.168.86.250"?

This should prove whether the PC in the network can even be reached from the Vero.

Hi Jim - no changes to any of the network or systems. My windows PC is set to that IP at the router so will always be the same address. I did the ping and below are the results so it doesn’t look like there is actually a connection problem, but that is what the logs are eluding to. Any ideas of what to try next? Thanks!

osmc@osmc:~$ ping -c 5 192.168.86.250
PING 192.168.86.250 (192.168.86.250): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.86.250: seq=0 ttl=128 time=1.038 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.86.250: seq=1 ttl=128 time=1.174 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.86.250: seq=2 ttl=128 time=1.405 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.86.250: seq=3 ttl=128 time=1.033 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.86.250: seq=4 ttl=128 time=1.033 ms

— 192.168.86.250 ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 1.033/1.136/1.405 ms

Can check the ports being open.
On the Vero install nmap.
sudo apt-get install nmap
sudo nmap –p 9080 192.168.86.250

Looks like all was fine on that end too.

osmc@osmc:~$ sudo nmap -p 9080 192.168.86.250

Starting Nmap 7.40 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2020-01-30 22:44 EST
Nmap scan report for 192.168.86.250
Host is up (0.00093s latency).
PORT STATE SERVICE
9080/tcp open glrpc
MAC Address: 80:EE:73:32:93:1C (Shuttle)

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.99 seconds

Ok, that looks good. So guess have to dig deeper into pvr.wmc addon.
Are the versions same on all machines?
Also not sure how the actually streams are shared as this comment confuses me.

Maybe @Cah1982 can clarify.

So, update since last night. I figured it was worth a shot to reset kodi back to default settings and try again. After doing that and re-configuring pvr.wmc I was able to load the list of recorded shows and guide. However, I still was not able to playback any media. In addition, upon a restart, the same problem as before occurs with the add-on error and the pvr not loading. This behavior repeats upon restart. I was able to get a debug log from when the pvr loaded and could not playback (search for “American Housewife” in the log) which is attached here:

https://paste.osmc.tv/etuyamayon

The recorded shows are shared on the windows 7 PC with username TV password “tv”.

I’ll keep experimenting with resetting, but figured I’d post an update.

Thanks!

John

Just a heads-up that today’s update includes PVR changes

Sam

Shared as in SMB shared?
Have you tried changing the SMB version in Kodi?

Hi all, sorry for the delay in responding, haven’t had any time to devote to this lately. I was able to get the addon to start, but now am running into playback issues. I reached out to the pvr.wmc developer for help as well and provided the following logs:

The Kodi log is here: https://paste.osmc.tv/qacifusale
The ServerWMC log is here: https://1drv.ms/t/s!Ag-8j3gIetGdgcVcmhxi…g?e=G0gJ03

The recording that I tried to play in this test was “American Idol”. The result was that the waiting icon spun for a few seconds then the client just went back to the list of recorded shows.

His response was this:

"Well, the good news is your OSMC client is having no trouble opening the wtv file, so you need to look elsewhere for the cause of the playback problem. Does OSMC still require you to purchase an mpeg2 license? Maybe look into that first. This was in the kodi log:

2020-02-16 23:22:34.861 T:3931874016 DEBUG: ffmpeg[EA5BA2E0]: [wtv] Could not find codec parameters for stream 2 (Video: mpeg2video, none(tv), 704x480): unspecified pixel format"

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Had some more time to spend on this and I have figured out a fact pattern that is repeatable.

  1. If the Vero box is restarted with pvr.wmc enabled prior to the restart, I get the ‘addon cannot be loaded’ error (log example here: https://paste.osmc.tv/aveneyiceg ). From there that will repeat on any number of restarts.

  2. If I disable the pvr.wmc addon, then restart, then re-enable it, it connects successfully and loads the guide and recording info. At that point if I try to watch a recording or watch live TV, it will spin for about 20-30 seconds then I see the video start but after about 0.5 seconds of playing it freezes and says ‘buffering’ and ends up getting through about 1 second of playback each minute (log example here: http://paste.osmc.tv/gubawodoho , search for “Grey’s Anatomy” for the show I played in this example.) and I see in the log there is an ffmpeg error that the pvr.wmc developer noticed as noted in my last post. What I’m experiencing in this instance seems like what happens when you don’t have a mpeg 2 license active and the box is trying to decode it using software. One thing I notice when trying to playback the recording is that CPU #0 and #3 are running at 100% when the stream is open, which would again indicate it’s working really hard to decode the recording.

Would love to get your thoughts on both of these issues as if I can solve them I’d be a super happy Vero customer and really want to replace my windows boxes with something more stable.

Thanks in advance for your help!

John