Fallback Remote Receiver

[gra]

Just took delivery of a New V2.
As i didn't get additional USB tuners i tried to setup
'Enable fallback remote receiver' (see pic) ip address is the T4

tuner Fallback.PNG (247.03 KiB) Viewed 2202 times

i did have this running many years ago with a T3 and T4.
i have tried every which way with the 3 boxes with no success
my question is am i missing a step in setup or
has the firmware changed in time to be not supported anymore?

[Grumpy_Geoff]

I'll give it a burl and report back.

[MrQuade]

No problems on my V2.

You're not going through a router or anything odd?

[Grumpy_Geoff]

No problems on my V2.

Same, same, me - T4 falling back to a T2.

gra - double/triple check that IP address of the fallback receiver.

[Paul_oz53]

I've been using it for a while between the U4 and the T3 quite successfully. Deliberately recorded on 5 networks to prove it works.

Plain old http://[ip address of T3]:8001 was the only setting I entered.

[MrQuade]

Plain old http://[ip address of T3]:8001 was the only setting I entered.

You don't even have to enter the url fluff. Just enter the network name and all the rest gets filled in for you.

[gra]

Thanks for the response
I have double checked the URL, it was correct.
I have entered the T4 url on the T2.
this time i did a reboot of the T2 and tested it
all is good.
I didn't reboot any wiz after entering the url before. a reboot may be the key.
i will try the V2 tomorrow.

[Paul_oz53]

Plain old http://[ip address of T3]:8001 was the only setting I entered.

You don't even have to enter the url fluff. Just enter the network name and all the rest gets filled in for you.

Old habits die hard

Back when I had a flaky network I got into the habit of using IPs. Not easy to change!

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Plain old http://[ip address of T3]:8001 was the only setting I entered.

You don't even have to enter the url fluff. Just enter the network name and all the rest gets filled in for you.

Old habits die hard

Back when I had a flaky network I got into the habit of using IPs. Not easy to change!

Don't beat yourself up there tiger, at one stage fallback by network name stopped working and the entry had to be as an IP address.
Mine are still entered as IPs.

[Paul_oz53]

Plain old http://[ip address of T3]:8001 was the only setting I entered.

You don't even have to enter the url fluff. Just enter the network name and all the rest gets filled in for you.

Old habits die hard

Back when I had a flaky network I got into the habit of using IPs. Not easy to change!

Don't beat yourself up there tiger, at one stage fallback by network name stopped working and the entry had to be as an IP address.
Mine are still entered as IPs.

[Henk]

How many tuners of an additional second V2 (which would have no USB tuner(s) added) would be used when sharing out a tuner?

[MrQuade]

How many tuners of an additional second V2 (which would have no USB tuner(s) added) would be used when sharing out a tuner?

You can only have one fallback tuner, and when you are on the fallback, it can only be used for live viewing. No recording, and no timeshift.

[Barboots]

I've been using it for a while between the U4 and the T3 quite successfully. Deliberately recorded on 5 networks to prove it works.

You can only have one fallback tuner, and when you are on the fallback, it can only be used for live viewing. No recording, and no timeshift.

I've been tearing my non-existent hair out trying to work out why I couldn't get more than two networks to record on one V2 using Fallback to another V2. I didn't want to ask and look stupid.

So V2 Fallback only adds a single additional non-recording tuner? Bummer... should have bought a USB tuner after all.

Funny thing is, at one point I was sure I saw it working with 4x recordings on different networks. I must have been dreaming, or not observing the ABC/SBS unity.

Cheers for the clarification MrQuade.

[prl]

If you want to record from more different broadcasters on a V2, add a USB (perhaps dual) tuner.

[Barboots]

If you want to record from more different broadcasters on a V2, add a USB (perhaps dual) tuner.

Yes, this is perfectly clear... now.

However this being a V2 specific thread, content within indicated that a second V2 offered me an overall better solution. What U and T Series machines can achieve with Fallback was irrelevant to the discussion.

Whilst one reader confirmed in advance, one did not

I'm now curious what it is with the V2 which limits the usefulness of Fallback so significantly. It is possible that it may be improved through firmware updates?

Cheers, Steve

[MrQuade]

I'm now curious what it is with the V2 which limits the usefulness of Fallback so significantly. It is possible that it may be improved through firmware updates?

Without knowing the deep magic under the hood, there shouldn't really be much of a reason that the Wiz couldn't be used as a source for timeshifting and recording.

In fact, I think it is actually possible to record from the network stream, but the Wiz will only let you make as many simultaneous timers as it has tuners. It does this, partially because it has no way of verifying if the network stream will be available when the timers fire, and doesn't really have any mechanism for determining which recording might be more important to you (if it has to drop one).

There may be some justification in allowing the user to override that safety mechanism, but its a matter of adding to software complexity too.

I'm not sure what the limitation on timeshift is, but there may be a driver reason for that.

[prl]

I had a bit of a dig around in the code, and the C++ recording code certainly appears to try to use the fallback tuner (lib/service/{servicedvb,servicedvbrecord}.cpp). I haven't dug into it all that much and I don't know why it doesn't appear to work for recordings.

I didn't see any tests in the code that would suggest that it would work differently on the V2 than on other models.

I don't think I'd be inclined to use it for recording unless the two PVRs were on wired Ethernet.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

You can only have one fallback tuner, and when you are on the fallback, it can only be used for live viewing. No recording, and no timeshift.

You can timeshift on a fallback tuner, at least on with a U4 falling back to a T4, as below with all 4 U4 tuners in use and timeshifted viewing from the fifth. In fact, viewing from the timeshift buffer gave a better visual experience than live. Both boxes on ethernet (same switch).
You can save the timeshift as well.

[MrQuade]

You can timeshift on a fallback tuner, at least on with a U4 falling back to a T4, as below with all 4 U4 tuners in use and timeshifted viewing from the fifth. In fact, viewing from the timeshift buffer gave a better visual experience than live. Both boxes on ethernet (same switch).
You can save the timeshift as well.

Now that's interesting!
You definitely can't timeshift when streaming from another Wiz when using "remoteiptvclient", and there is a popup warning when you switch to one of those IP streams (there is even a setting to disable the popup, which I use).

Interesting that the fallback tuner doesn't have a problem with it.

Apologies for the misleading info there then!

The timer/tuner limit still applies for regular recordings though .

[Paul_oz53]

You can only have one fallback tuner, and when you are on the fallback, it can only be used for live viewing. No recording, and no timeshift.

You can timeshift on a fallback tuner, at least on with a U4 falling back to a T4, as below with all 4 U4 tuners in use and timeshifted viewing from the fifth. In fact, viewing from the timeshift buffer gave a better visual experience than live. Both boxes on ethernet (same switch).
You can save the timeshift as well.

Been a while since I did it but watching the timeshift is familiar. An ordinary recording on the fifth tuner would be empty. Provided it was left undisturbed on a service, I could save a program from timeshift.

Having multiple recorders all networked, I abandoned the fallback approach.Instead, we simply recorded on another machine and watched the 5th network in chaseplay mode.

On rare occasions I needed a fifth tuner because I use significant post padding. This would cause a recording on the 5th network to fail.

[MrQuade]

Having multiple recorders all networked, I abandoned the fallback approach.Instead, we simply recorded on another machine and watched the 5th network in chaseplay mode.

On rare occasions I needed a fifth tuner because I use significant post padding. This would cause a recording on the 5th network to fail.

Thanks for the confirmation on the operation .

Sounds very much like a feature with lots of moving parts, and would not be something you should rely on.

Though having basic timeshift and the ability to save it is pretty handy

[Henk]

I had a bit of a dig around in the code, and the C++ recording code certainly appears to try to use the fallback tuner (lib/service/{servicedvb,servicedvbrecord}.cpp). I haven't dug into it all that much and I don't know why it doesn't appear to work for recordings.

I didn't see any tests in the code that would suggest that it would work differently on the V2 than on other models.

I don't think I'd be inclined to use it for recording unless the two PVRs were on wired Ethernet.

Hello prl,

is this issue being looked at for the next firmware update at all?

[MrQuade]

is this issue being looked at for the next firmware update at all?

I'll butt in and say in all likelyhood, the answer is no.

The problem with adding a feature like this is that the fallback tuner cannot be relied upon the be available, so you can't make sensible assumptions about tuner contention.


I have been playing around with the fallback tuner feature more recently, As I have been using the spare TV more during the pandemic period.
I have notced that while the timeshift function does work, the T3 (which I am using this on), has real trouble returning to live playback after pressing STOP. I usually need to zap to another service and back to resume normal playback, which wipes out the timeshift buffer. It's a bit of a "better than nothing" feature I think.

[prl]

+1

[Paul_oz53]

+1

+1