[kirkvanslyke]

I too am having this same problem. Never had a problem with ServerWMC and PVR WMC Client while on Gotham. After upgrading to Kodi 14, saw it occasionally, but most times everything worked just great. For some reason tonight, I'm hitting it repeatedly. Will happen either while changing to a new channel, or while in the middle of watching a show it will simply exit back to the EPG screen. If I try to open any channel from the EPG, I get this error. Tried resetting the EPG database (no help), tried exiting Kodi, exiting Server WMC and restarting both, still no help. Only way to get it to allow me to open a channel again is to completely restart the Windows 8.1 PC.
Re
Checked drive space (lots free), and I am able to navigate to the "\Recorded TV" file share (which is on the same PC).Also verified that the \TempSWMC folder is empty. WMC is recording scheduled programs normally behind the scenes. But Live TV is not working well. Live TV is working normally in WMC native client.

Any ideas? I can upload a log, but have never done it here before. Thanks!

[krustyreturns]

Yeah, we need a log after you have this error. See debug tab in swmc to get the log. Then post it on pastebin.com and put a link to it here.

[Najman]

I also have this problem. I had the "LiveTV error, exited early" on my HTPC which is run by an i3. If I restarted the PC the problem went away for a day or so...Both ServerWMC and Kodi 14.1 were on the same PC there. I couldn't find a pattern to which made the problem re-occur. The Log files at that time were the same as now. I'll post them to pastebin.com as suggested and links below. To simplify what I "think" I found, the log file had an error with a string "String wzFilename" and a reference to a video stream. I have some coding experience so I figured from this there was either a syntax coding error, a problem with the file location its self, or some issue with the video stream or the reference to the stream. About three lines below there is a similar error for a function that just has the wzFilename as input, this lead me to believe it was a file permission issue. I googled the issue and there wasn't much, just this thread with no solution or anyone posting any real debug logs. The suggestion seemed to be that there was a permission issue...but this didn't make sense being as both server and kodi were running on the same computer with the ip address of 127.0.0.1...which points to its self. I was having trouble with channels not always loading and taking more than 20 seconds to load as well. I figured it was possibly weak cpu problem. I moved ServerWMC to my main desktop an OC i5 @ 4.3Ghz with 16GB of ram a 240ssd and moved the 2TB HD(for recordings) to my desktop.

Now channel changing is WAY more stable and quicker YAH! I've had it this was for a few weeks now, no LiveTV error...untill tonight. This morning at 7am everything worked fine, even after I updated to 1190. Tonight, last night now that I took so long to write this, at about 10pm after the kids went to bed and ppl wanted to watch TV...all of the Kodi devices said "LiveTV error, exited early". The ONLY difference was Kodi on my desktop said there was an error and to check the logs. I check the logs, same as before.

And yes, I tried all of the simple stuff. I restarted Kodi, then ServerWMC, then the PC. Nothing. On the i3 I went so far as to reformat the computer thinking I had screwed something up...nope. Moved to the i5, problem went away till now...I uninstalled 1190 and resinstalled 1175, no effect. Restarted the PC again, nothing. The only thing I haven't tried so far is to do the WMC setup again...But there HAS to be some bug in the code that is, for a lack of a better term, forgetting the live tv folder.

I did a courtesy check of WMC to see if it can watch tv...irritatingly yup...also the media location for TV is correct.

Also I can play recordings as well as files from the "recording now" folder...just not live tv...

Krusty, if you would like you could send me a ServerWMC version with a more verbose log file, ie spitting out the variables that made the function crash. I may be able to assist in figuring this out, at least id like to try.

ServerWMC 1190 log - http://pastebin.com/w3zdjew9
Kodi 14.1 log - http://pastebin.com/vWbt6XtD
they will be good for 1 month

edit: A warm PC reboot didn't do squat...a cold boot how ever fixed the problem, at least for now. But please still look at the log Krusty, I'd appreciate it.

[krustyreturns]

The exception being thrown is on the command swmc calls from the wmc COM library that tells it to start capturing tuner data to a wtv file, the name of the file being 'wzFilename' (its a fullpath to where the wtv file will be stored, which is always in the rec tv folder). I have received this error too in development, when for whatever weird thing I was doing, the recorded tv folder was not writable or available when this command is called. For instance, its actually the wmc rec service which is actually doing the writing, not swmc, and the sevice didn't have permission to write to that folder. Anyway its rare, and I don't know why you are having trouble with it.

After you found that wmc worked, did you try going back to kodi and see if it worked then too? Because wmc could have corrected it.

There is really nothing different in what 1190 does here vs the older version, so that fact that it happened to you after the update is probably a fluke (famous last words). Are you running some anti-virus that could be getting in the way? I have had users reporting some similar problems and it was related to this.

[Najman]

Thank you for getting back to me so promptly!

Yes I had tried running Kodi after WMC, still nothing. From the log file it now makes sense that the error is probably a wierd WMC error because the function called is from ehiproxy and Microsoft. So it sounds like swmc is a high powered wrapper class?

The only AV I'm running is MS essentials...which seems to play nice with just about everything.

I'm wondering if it has something to do with the HD sleeping...I've noticed that if no one watches TV for several hours the HD sleeps to save its self...that's fine but the problem for live TV is when you request a channel the HD has to wake up first THEN start writing and transcoding the wtv file. This results in a channel not available error. I just select the channel again and it loads as normal.

I'm wondering if there is something in WMC eh code that has a flag when the HD is no longer available to write to and thats why a cold pc reboot is needed to fix that.

Is there somewhere that a small call to the HD could be added to wake it up? I believe when loading the EPG or Channel section in Kodi would be the most logical, that when they load they do a small call to the HD. It could be as simple as getting the contents of a dir. But placed there so the HD would have the 5 or so seconds to wake up before a read/write operation started...

I suppose I, or someone smarter, could write a small bat file that just pings the HD to keep it awake and spinning...that would shorten the HD lifespan but may solve this weird error. But this wouldn't answer why you also got this while in dev...so...put that in your pipe and smoke it...

This makes me want to write my own program that actually reads the stream from the cablecard device directly and remove WMC from the equation totally...I do how ever realize that would be biting off unbelievable more than I can chew. Is there a reason why no one has done that?

[scarecrow420]

If you don't want the hd to sleep at all there shouldn't be a need to constantly access it, just adjust the windows power settings

Regarding your last sentence there are programs that access the tuners themselves such as mediaportal argustv tvheadend etc. In our particular case we intentionally hook into WMC because it gives support for a huge range of tuner hardware and broadcast formats the world over, plus there are large amounts of windows/wmc users that this provides a migration path to xbmc/Kodi pvr for.

The approach definitely has its positives and negatives although personally I feel if your problem is related to your particular setup that it isn't anything particularly to do with Windows or WMC since the majority of people don't have this issue.

Personally I leave my TV backend on all the time and it's actually a vm with its hard drive mounted over iscsi from my nas which is also always on

[Najman]

The PC is on 24/7 and the windows power settings...are...not what I thought they are...I will have to try that. Thank you.

That nas setup sounds fantastic. I recently got a nas but found out wmc restrictions for recording to nas locations...even mapped drives. I found there were some workarounds but the ones I found weren't reliable. How do you have yours setup? specifically. We are getting a tad off topic but what hardware do you use for TV? I got a Ceton ETH because it has 6 tuners and I have lots of TV watchers in the house...I'd be interested if there was a better option for US TV and the Ceton device..thanks!

And I agree I'm having some weird issue, it could be as simple as a bad HD I suppose. Just don't have another right now to test.

Turned the HD to 0 (Never turn off). I'll try to report back to see if this problem crops up again.

[krustyreturns]

Just to add more info: on our family mediaserver (which runs swmc obviously) I have full sleep enabled (including HD) and it never has this problem. Also I only meant to say you can trigger the problem you are seeing by choosing a file location on any drive that doesn't have permissions for the recvr writes - which is what I was experimenting with in development.

To your other point, swmc makes heavy use of the recvr and epg service that - when you install and configure wmc - get started in the background. This is the same thing the main wmc program does - so in a sense we are a wrapper, but then so is wmc. Like scarecrow says our design philosophy is to leverage the wide hardware independence that is built into wmc as much as possible. We have veered away from that somewhat has we get further into things, like the enabling dlna streaming with the hdhr tuners specifically. But some rules just ask to be broken.

And as for tuners I have two hdhr primes (so six tuners also) and I am very happy with them and they seem to be the most popular as far as our users go. I don't have any experience with ceton's but we have plenty of users who use them successfully.