DVB signal quality and alerts

The DVB adapters page shows for each mux not just whether it “works”, but how well it works — so you can see a signal problem before your viewers do.

On each adapter

• Mux state — live, tuning, no signal, error, stopped or disabled.
• Level and quality — how strong and how clean the signal is. Some drivers do not report these figures; the panel then says so explicitly (the figures are missing, not zero).
• Mux bitrate · last 5 min — the chart of the last 5 minutes.
• CC errors / min — continuity errors (lost packets) across the whole mux in the last minute. 0 = clean.
• buffer full / min — packets lost between the card and the server (CPU or disk at the limit), not caused by the signal.
• retunes — how many times the adapter was retuned. If the number keeps growing by itself, the signal is marginal. Castreon also retunes automatically a tuner that stays “locked on signal” but no longer delivers data.

On each service

In the mux service list you see, for each program:

• the continuity errors in the last minute: 0 = clean, yellow = occasional losses (marginal signal), red = broken picture;
• Last error — when the last one happened;
• Channels — which Castreon channels use it right now;
• whether the service is not flowing now (the operator stopped it or removed it temporarily).

Alerts

The panel tells you by itself about situations that need attention, for example:

• a service configured on a channel disappeared from the mux;
• two channels on the same program (usually a configuration mistake);
• an adapter with no signal or with repeated continuity errors.

A channel whose program is missing enters the waiting state: it does not restart in a loop and starts by itself when the program returns.

Network map

For each mux, Castreon also reads what the network announces about its muxes. If the operator moved a mux to another frequency or changed its parameters, the panel warns you that the configured values differ from the announced ones — so you can update them before channels are lost.

What you can do when the signal is weak

• check the cable, connectors and splitters (every splitter loses signal);
• compare the level with another tuner on the same mux;
• if the errors only show up in buffer full / min, the problem is server load, not the signal.