I've been using dabdig to control my Nebula DigiTV from Digiguide for years, and it has always behaved perfectly. However, at some point over the course of the past couple of days it has all stopped working for no reason that I can think of. Digiguide is still running fine, and I can schedule recordings from DigiTV's own interface, and they're fine, but when I schedule recordings from Digiguide via Dabdig, they just seem to disappear down a black hole. I've tried reinstalling Dabdig, but that made no difference.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Tony

Hello Tony,

No good reason why it should start to go wrong when nothing else has changed.

Is DABDig set to schedule via registry (default) or web interface to DigiTV?

Newer versions of DigiTV don't read the registry while running ... but if it was working fine and no software was updated then it really should continue to work.

Happy to help diagnose.

DABDig creator

Hi Paul,

I entirely agree that it shouldn't just stop working if nothing has apparently changed, but...

It's set to schedule via the registry (or, at least, it should be...). I've tried installing the latest version of the DigiTV app (I had been running one that was a couple of versions old) and the latest DabDig, but that hasn't changed anything.

Is there any logging/diagnostics that I can turn on in DabDig to show what it's trying to write to the registry, and where exactly it's trying to write it?

Cheers,

Tony

YOu can increase the DABDig logging levels (TRACEFLAGS) but I don't think it will show the registry key names.

However - from memory it is

HKLM/SOftware/Nebula/DigiTV/Timers

But - modern versions of DigiTV no longer read that ... except on start-up.

EVen worse - DigiTV overwrites the keys every minute.

Scheduling using DABDig via the DigiTV web interface should work - in fact I helped someone use it last week-end.

(On his it needed a change to the BASEYEAR field in the DigiTV section of dabdig.ini)

DABDig creator

Hi Paul,

I've changed my configuration so that it uses the web interface, and that *nearly* works. I guess that I have the same problem as the other chap you helped, because I set the BASEYEAR field to 2009 (seemed sensible to me), but that resulted in a recording being scheduled with a start date of 13-11-2001. A tedious process of trial & error revealed that it apparently needs to be set to 2001...

Cheers,

Tony

BTW, it seems that email notification of topic replies is not working...

Re BASEYEAR - yes - they seem to have moved the base on by one in their HTML.

Also - once you are happy that it is working you can turn off DABDig launching the default browser and make it do the HTTP send itself - INTERNALWEBSEND.

It cannot show you errors so best to get it working reliably first.

Email notifications - unfortunately true. I think it is because of SPF checks (maybe if I change the originator address to be the same domain as this forum then it will work ... will try).

DABDig creator

Hi Paul,

Yes, it all seems to be behaving itself now - I scheduled a few recordings via Digiguide & they all triggered correctly.

My next question was going to be whether there was any way to stop a new tab being opened in Firefox when a new recording was scheduled, so your pre-emptive mention of INTERNALWEBSEND was very well timed

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,

Tony

You're not alone -- I've also been using DabDig to control Digiguide for years, and until yesterday it worked without any problems (using the registry). But overnight it stopped working and now fails to schedule any recordings. I tried most of the steps mentioned above, but it didn't help.

I've taken the advice here and switched to the web interface, which seems to be working smoothly.

Very odd.

If you stop DigiTV - and tell DABDig not to run it (NebulaDigiTVRestartOnRecord=0) and turn of the webscheduling part then schedule something that has already started ... then wait a minute r so and see if an entry appears in

HKLM/Software/Nebula/DigiTV/Timers

If it does - then ... start DigiTV and see if it starts recording then at least it shows that the timer entry was correct.

If it does not start recording then perhaps the LCN (channel number) is the problem.

Perhaps you have done a rescan on your DigiTV recently (because of the analogue switch off) and numbers have changed.

DABDig creator

Paul,

Followed your guidelines and scheduled a programme that had already started. Timer appeared in HKLM/Software/Nebula/DigiTV/Timers and DigiTV started recording once I launched it. Which just makes it all the more mysterious.

And I think I spoke too soon about the web interface. I've had mixed results (some missed recordings) so far, so I've had to resort to using the Nebula EPG.

All very mysterious.

If you set INTERNALWEBSEND=0 in dabdig.ini then you should get a web page coming up in your default browser when DABDig tries to queue a recording to DigiTV (assuming you have left DABDig configured to use web).

In theory at least, DigiTV see this request exactly as if it was submitted interactively.

Hopefully you will then see DigiTV report an error via the web page.

DABDig creator