HR2x CE Release 10/2 v.35F

[nhra328z]

I'm less than 24 hours from an entire week without a reset on any of my receivers. In the last 24 hours I have noticed a problem. Although the video playback with MRV is still good, there is a problem surfacing with the "delete or keep" at the end of a recorded program. If I watch an entire program, I usually just hit FF to go all the way to the end and then just hit delete. However tonight, it would FF all the way to the end, but then would just sit there for quite awhile. Several times tonight I thought it was totally hung up. Each time it did finally present the "delete or keep" screen, but I would guess it was 20-30 seconds on some of them. Nothing like I had experienced the rest of the week.

Hope this helps...

 

[cfb]

That keep or delete behavior has been standard for me since MRV was implemented way back when. If you're in FF and hit the end, it sits there for about 5-6 seconds then gives the KOD message. If you hit play as soon as it hits the end, it'll pop up the dialog box immediately.

 

[dnater]

running 35b on a hr20 and hr21. MRV was working fine for many days. I did a repeat satellite setup on the hr21 (because I had the wrong satellite type setting) After a reset i can no longer play recordings from the 'other' receiver. On the one that got reset I get a message that says my smart card is not valid. On the non-reset receiver I get this message "cannot plat dtcp content. ake failed"

 

[cfb]

Do a keyword search for 'losemrv', reboot, redo the network setup, then do a keyword search for 'bringmrvback'. You might need to reboot again. I got into that state a few times and it seemed that turning everything off and redoing everything knocked it back into service.

 

[cfb]

Reporting on my new setup, which is 35f with a cat5e wire running directly between the two receivers, no switch, no router, static assigned addresses and putting the units into standby at night.

No reboots or freezes. A few periods where things get slow for a few minutes. The remote response during MRV is frequently quite bad...5-10 seconds before responding to a key press in the menus and trickplay can be equally bad at times. Sometimes rewind or ff just shows one frame for 4-5 seconds and then jumps.

MRV both ways at the same time is iffy. Sometimes it works okay, sometimes it stutters and glitches. One way MRV is almost flawless.

So far removing the esata in favor of installing the drive internally (which I did several months ago) seems to have brought some additional stability. Eliminating a router, network peers and the internet from the HR20's sphere of communications seems to have also helped it. Using standby for ~8 hours a day also seems to have helped it.

In this configuration, it seems stable and the performance pretty acceptable, although the remote response and trickplay in MRV could improve.

As far as the two-way mrv glitching and persistence of SOME glitching even when doing single way mrv, I've noticed an interesting item. Over in tivoland, the series 3/HD tivo (which uses substantially the same hardware as the HR2x) the series 3 is limited to somewhere between 12 and 18Mb/s and the tivo hd is limited to 8.5-12Mb/s. The S3 is a lot like the HR20 while the HD is a lot like the 21/22/23.

OTA mpeg2 broadcasts can easily exceed 12-15Mb/s. Even some mpeg2 local satellite channels can get pretty close to exceeding those limits, even with directv's over compression. I've noticed my worst MRV glitching happening during 1080i mpeg2 football games.

It might just be that the erratic MRV performance is a limitation of the total network throughput of the platform, and since the performance capacity is somewhat variable on both sides, that explains why its erratic.

All this other stuff I eliminated just took work away from the box. I know the HR2x handles the esata differently from the internal when one is present...its not just invisibly replacing it. I know some people have had performance issues that were solved by unplugging the network cable. The most recent info that the box can do some things in standby quickly and perhaps only when its in standby was interesting since I never used standby before ever.

So lots more data points about MRV. Besides networks that arent up to snuff, the box may have an inadequate physical limitation and asking it to do other network stuff besides mrv may make that worse. Combinations of which HR model, what kind of network, what else is on the network, whether theres an esata or not, etc can explain why some people have better results with mrv than others.

 

[armchair]

Reporting on my new setup, which is 35f with a cat5e wire running directly between the two receivers, no switch, no router, static assigned addresses and putting the units into standby at night.

No reboots or freezes. A few periods where things get slow for a few minutes. The remote response during MRV is frequently quite bad...5-10 seconds before responding to a key press in the menus and trickplay can be equally bad at times. Sometimes rewind or ff just shows one frame for 4-5 seconds and then jumps.

MRV both ways at the same time is iffy. Sometimes it works okay, sometimes it stutters and glitches. One way MRV is almost flawless.

So far removing the esata in favor of installing the drive internally (which I did several months ago) seems to have brought some additional stability. Eliminating a router, network peers and the internet from the HR20's sphere of communications seems to have also helped it. Using standby for ~8 hours a day also seems to have helped it.

In this configuration, it seems stable and the performance pretty acceptable, although the remote response and trickplay in MRV could improve.

As far as the two-way mrv glitching and persistence of SOME glitching even when doing single way mrv, I've noticed an interesting item. Over in tivoland, the series 3/HD tivo (which uses substantially the same hardware as the HR2x) the series 3 is limited to somewhere between 12 and 18Mb/s and the tivo hd is limited to 8.5-12Mb/s. The S3 is a lot like the HR20 while the HD is a lot like the 21/22/23.

OTA mpeg2 broadcasts can easily exceed 12-15Mb/s. Even some mpeg2 local satellite channels can get pretty close to exceeding those limits, even with directv's over compression. I've noticed my worst MRV glitching happening during 1080i mpeg2 football games.

It might just be that the erratic MRV performance is a limitation of the total network throughput of the platform, and since the performance capacity is somewhat variable on both sides, that explains why its erratic.

All this other stuff I eliminated just took work away from the box. I know the HR2x handles the esata differently from the internal when one is present...its not just invisibly replacing it. I know some people have had performance issues that were solved by unplugging the network cable. The most recent info that the box can do some things in standby quickly and perhaps only when its in standby was interesting since I never used standby before ever.

So lots more data points about MRV. Besides networks that arent up to snuff, the box may have an inadequate physical limitation and asking it to do other network stuff besides mrv may make that worse. Combinations of which HR model, what kind of network, what else is on the network, whether theres an esata or not, etc can explain why some people have better results with mrv than others.

Rather than removing the network or network cable, is there a way to setup port triggering to get the same "near flawless" MRV playback in one direction results?

 

[cfb]

Possible, but I think the problem is more that when the HR20 sees a router, a path to the internet and peers, it decides to do an awful lot of other stuff and most of it is stuff I dont care about. VOD is practically useless to me. I dont care if the unit does its reports by the phone line or the network. I dont send reports to directv. I dont use media share.

It'd also take some work, if it'd even work. The switch inside most routers is somewhat invisible to the host router when communications are between two ports on that integrated switch. I could prevent the HR20's from seeing the internet or from opening certain standardized ports that require the routers assistance, but any peer related protocols that dont require the default gateways help or the routers services would still happen with or without any port configurations on the router.

If I had a really sophisticated managed switch, I could isolate communications to just between certain ports. But thats pretty expensive when a $20 cable does it for me.

Mostly I just wanted to take everything away one at a time and see what made a difference. I'm not sure what they changed in the code over the last 4-5 weeks since it was all 'under the hood'. So since it'll probably be 3-4 weeks before we see another MRV enabled CE, maybe I'll start adding things back in one at a time and see what mucks it up.

Pretty much got it to the point now that minus the bad/erratic remote response and the random playlist jumping that it works pretty well for us. Hasnt crashed or needed a reboot in 5 days (which is a record), the MRV pretty much works, my wife hasnt cursed at it in a couple of days, and I havent had the urge to throw the remote control through the tv since last thursday.

 

[armchair]

Possible, but I think the problem is more that when the HR20 sees a router, a path to the internet and peers, it decides to do an awful lot of other stuff and most of it is stuff I dont care about. VOD is practically useless to me. I dont care if the unit does its reports by the phone line or the network. I dont send reports to directv. I dont use media share.

It'd also take some work, if it'd even work. The switch inside most routers is somewhat invisible to the host router when communications are between two ports on that integrated switch. I could prevent the HR20's from seeing the internet or from opening certain standardized ports that require the routers assistance, but any peer related protocols that dont require the default gateways help or the routers services would still happen with or without any port configurations on the router.

If I had a really sophisticated managed switch, I could isolate communications to just between certain ports. But thats pretty expensive when a $20 cable does it for me.

Mostly I just wanted to take everything away one at a time and see what made a difference. I'm not sure what they changed in the code over the last 4-5 weeks since it was all 'under the hood'. So since it'll probably be 3-4 weeks before we see another MRV enabled CE, maybe I'll start adding things back in one at a time and see what mucks it up.

Pretty much got it to the point now that minus the bad/erratic remote response and the random playlist jumping that it works pretty well for us. Hasnt crashed or needed a reboot in 5 days (which is a record), the MRV pretty much works, my wife hasnt cursed at it in a couple of days, and I havent had the urge to throw the remote control through the tv since last thursday.

I'm trying a managed switch (Netgear GS108T) now but I'm in over my head with this setting up, I keep getting a message about trunked ports when setting some Qos and switch settings that aren't allowed.

I tried Link Aggregation (LAG) just to expirement and I found capibilities but no aggregation (see MY HR22-100 port information below):

802.3 Set Details
Auto-Negotiation Supported And Enabled
Aggregator Status Can be Aggregated but currently not in aggregation
Aggregator Id 0
Max Frame Size 1518

MED Set Details
Capabilities LLDP-MED Capabilities, Network Policy, Location Identification, Extended Power via MDI - PD
Device Type Network Connectivity
Location Format Coordinate based LCI
Location ID To Be Implemented
Power Type Unknown
Power Source N/A
Power Priority N/A
Power Value N/A
(all policies are N/A)


Not sure if I missed something in the setup or if the LAG is disabled at the box. And don't even know if LAG would do anything for improving MRV but I found a description of LLDP that made me wonder if the switch could help MRV packets along if the MRV server knew the rate of the network and could thereby estimate a better Egress rate that would manage the Client buffer without overflowing it. Details I found are below:

An LLDP agent can transmit information about the capabilities and current status of the system associated with its MSAP identifier. The LLDP agent can also receive information about the capabilities and current status of the system associated with a remote MSAP identifier.

 

[Apx]

Link aggregation is combining multiple ports together which I doubt the receivers are capable of doing. This is used by uplinks, servers and vmware for example.

Trunks are definitely the wrong setup and you should just configure a switched port and make sure all ports are setup in the same VLAN. You can try hard setting the ports but auto should be fine.

Check the port details for errors like CRC which would indicate cable problems or speed/duplex mismatches.

 

[Apx]

Oops.. forgot the LLDP. Link layer discovery protocol. This is to pass vlan info, managment ip all that kind of info. It has nothing to do with better passing on packets.

Just make sure the boxes are in the same subnet and all traffic will be switched. Routing would definitely slow you down.

Not sure but I always though a standard raw feed should not be much more then 3 to 6 Mbit/s so when you have a 100Mbit full duplex connection you should have plenty.

As I mentioned before.. check your cables, port details for errors and all that good stuff. This is the first place to look when having performance problems especially when all the traffic is just switched.

Good luck!

 

[cfb]

Armchair...I've found QOS to be tragically not very useful to me. Within a home LAN, bandwidth is generally not a major problem especially using a non blocking gigabit switch. Outside the LAN, trying to throttle incoming traffic can create more problems than it solves.

Given my situation there is absolutely, positively nothing slowing down or interfering with the flow of data and I still get glitching here and there so at least part of the problem is unsolvable by anyone that isnt a directv software engineer. The glitching is not as bad as when I was connected to the switch but I think all of that has to do with the HR2x having to take on a more limited role on the network. Theres nobody else there to talk to.

I'm beginning to see that MRV is a venn diagram with software, box capabilities, size of hard drive and internal vs external, probably some usage stuff like # of series links, number of recordings per day, other network stuff, user perception, specific box models, yada yada yada.

I tried and tried to throw network stuff and a little money at it to optimize the network. Right now unless I moved the two boxes closer together and used a shorter cable, I cant optimize it any further from where it is now!

Its at least a software problem, perhaps a receiver specific hardware issue, and perhaps an architectural issue. They might just not be able to do this type of streaming and everything else they're trying to do at the same time.

 

[armchair]

I thought I would throw my questions about the managed switch out there when cfb mentioned maybe a managed switch would work better to isolate the INTERNET and other discovery protocols and communication, etc, ect...

So I thank Apx for jumping in the forum and sharing information. Welcome to Satguys CE forum!

What I would like to do try is something very much like cfb suggested: to get my 2 DVRs connected back together via a single cat6 cable and route the INTERNET to one DVR via the managed switch in a fashion that would limit all activity to only my request for either TV Apps or the free VODs. I'm not sure if the Directv VODs that Directv downloads are via the satellite or INTERNET. If INTERNET is the path, I would like to block it if possible. I don't want it interrupting MRV streams or stealing bandwidth doing something I find totally useless.

Anyone know of a good setup using my switch?

 

[cfb]

The guide based vod comes from the internet but the 'directv cinema' pseudo on-demand stuff is sent over the satellite.

 

[Apx]

Thanks!

I am new here but have been a network engineer for about 13 years ;-)

Anyways, I have not setup MRV myself yet and jumped on here after I heard the CE software has it available and am waiting for the next available download.

I am not sure if you can connect the DVR's back to back with a straight cable instead of a cross over, but if they support MDIX auto which is not very uncommon then yes this will work. Also, since they have 2 ethernet ports and it doesn't even mater which port you use to connect to this means these are switched ports.

So you could do this:
DVR1 port1 <-cat5e/6-> p1DVR2
Test if this works and if so then add the uplink to your dsl/cable modem
DVR1 port1 <-cat5e/6-> p1DVR2-DVR2p2 <-cat5e/6-> Modem

This way you are fully switched without using any extra switch at all
I don't know what the receivers use to switch this traffic and it could be horrible or not.

What I can say is that a busy receiver will definitely impact performance the same as a busy server.

You can always test your setup:
PC1 <-cat5e/6-> p2DVR1-DVR1p1 <-cat5e/6-> p1DVR2-DVR2p2 <-cat5e/6-> PC2

Transfer a large file from PC1 to PC2 and see what speed you are getting.
Remember not to confuse bits and bytes ;-)
1 byte is 8 bit (transfering at 10Mbyte is transfering at 80Mbit which is pretty much your max on a 100/full connection.


Also, I don't know if the receivers support 1G connections because I don't have a 1G switch myself at home so I can't test this. What I can say is that some hardware has problems detecting the speed and duplex on Gig switches and this is what I was trying to get to before. When your receiver doesn't detect your switch the right way and sets the ports at 100 full or half duplex and your switch detects 1000 full or half you have a major problem and traffic will performance will be horrible. So make sure your speeds and duplex settings match.

I would doubt the VOD would make much of a difference having it connected to the internet because even with a 7-10Mbit uplink to the internet this is only 10-15% of your full network speed when completely used which is mot of the time not even the case. But when the receiver gets busy because of VOD then yes it might impact IP performance because it's doing so many things at the same time.

Hope my rambling makes any sense since I tend to be all over the place ;-)

Before i forget, what you can also do to keep your traffic isolated is just setup the IP and subnet on the boxes. so only setup for example 192.168.0.100 with subnet 255.255.255.0 and on the other box 192.168.0.101 with subnet 255.255.255.0 and without a gateway it won't be able to send any traffic outside this subnet. So no internet traffic from your receiver.

 

[armchair]

The guide based vod comes from the internet but the 'directv cinema' pseudo on-demand stuff is sent over the satellite.

Thanks cfb,

So as I was hoping, only my requests for VOD content are downloaded via the INTERNET unless it's already been loaded by satellite for purchase.

I also tested the DVR to DVR ETHERNET connection last night and MRV was no different and remote response was so slow; however, this morning the remote response was zippy again so I'll test the MRV again.

 

[nhra328z]

I am two days away from a full two weeks without reseting either of my DVR's. Aside from the things that CFB has mentioned, it's working relatively well. I use MRV every day. I usually only use it "one way" as cfb put it. I basically use it as though my HR23 has 4 tuners. The only issue that I would add to CFB's list is the "auto rewind" when you hit play. It's way off when watching something on the other DVR.

Also... I'm not running some fancy switch by any means. I'm literally using the router that Verizon gave me when they hooked up my DSL. It has a 4 port switch in the back of it.

 

[cfb]

So as I was hoping, only my requests for VOD content are downloaded via the INTERNET unless it's already been loaded by satellite for purchase.

Yep. It does also have to continuously pull down and update the VOD guide data with the regular guide data. If you remember when you first installed the DVR, first got the firmware that did VOD, or the last time you flushed your guide data, the VOD stuff populates at a different rate than the regular guide data...I dont know if that comes over the internet (doubt it) or the satellite, but its one more thing for the box to do.

 

[cfb]

So far the oddities still persist, but MRV glitchiness has been good to very good. I'm still getting some recordings that show in the history as 'canceled' with a reported guide data change or unexpected guide data. I'm going to do a double reboot to flush the guide data and reacquire it to see if that helps.

Deleting shows remotely seems to have many quirks. I noticed that in the last week or two of ce's with mrv still enabled, that both local and remote deletes took longer. While you used to be able to remote delete a show that was still being watched locally or via MRV and you could still continue to finish watching that show, you now get an error that says you cant delete that show because someone else is watching it.

Couple of times during a delete it hung for about 3 seconds, said it was unable to communicate with the other receiver, then went ahead and did the deletion and continued without issue.

Once when I had a show run all the way to the end by itself without fast forwarding, at the very end and just before it popped the delete dialog box, it said 'searching for authorized content', flipped back about a minute in the show, continued playing the minute and then gave me the keep/delete dialog.

Once when watching a show locally, we got the 'keep or delete' dialog box with neither highlit and it just bonked no matter what key was pressed on the remote. I put the unit into standby and brought it out, no change. Put it into and out of standby again and it started working properly, but a day and a half later my wife said she was watching a show via mrv and all of a sudden she got just a black screen and no remote response, so she rebooted the box without letting me look at it first. Bad wife!

So in a week, we've had a couple of weirdities that were solved with a standby/poweron, we've rebooted one box although there may have been other remedies, minimal MRV glitching, some oddities on program deletion, occasionally horrible remote control response times (up to 8-10 seconds for it to respond to a button push, or randomly ignoring button presses and with extreme variability in response time), and fair to poor response in trickplay on mrv recordings.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln enjoyed the play immensely.

 

[cfb]

Here's a very weird one, never had this happen.

Had a couple of football games scheduled to record and just decided to check and make sure they were going. One wasnt.

History says "Program not recorded due to higher priority task 52/0". Not a higher priority recording, a higher priority TASK.

Very strange. Watch your important recordings if you're still hanging out on the MRV release.

 

[nhra328z]

Here's a very weird one, never had this happen.

Had a couple of football games scheduled to record and just decided to check and make sure they were going. One wasnt.

History says "Program not recorded due to higher priority task 52/0". Not a higher priority recording, a higher priority TASK.

Very strange. Watch your important recordings if you're still hanging out on the MRV release.

I had something very similar happen. I went in and manually recorded two shows last night. (found them in the guide, and hit the record button) Apparently, the Task Manager had also planned a couple recordings as well for the same time period. When it came time to record the shows, the window popped up that said Record Both, or Cancel 1/Cancel 2. I was watching the race so I decided to cancel the show that the Task Manager had scheduled. In my case, I hit the Cancel 1 option. I ended up doing this twice, once at 8 and again at 9. When I went to watch the shows later that evening, it had not recorded either show. I think we might have found a Troublem...