[vdr] Kernel freeze and ARD/RTL Problem

[Marco Fruci <frix@gmx.net>]

Hi,

it seems like I'm one of those poor people who get these problems with 
loss of audio/picture on ARD/RTL and the following kernel freeze.

I almost tried any driver version, two different kernels and different 
VDR versions. All the same...
Then I heard that this was a known issue, but eventually I have never 
been aware or conscious about it so far.
So, during the last weeks it came up more often and especially this 
kernel freeze kept/keeps me real p*ssed.

It took me some time to find out, that it just happened when I switched 
to ARD directly (by pressing the channel number on rc). After some 
researches on vdr-portal it turned out, that there were other people 
reporting about the same problem. I even found out, that there is 
conincidence between loss of audio on RTL and/or no picture on ARD.

Together with Torsten on IRC, who adviced me doing some tests, I came to 
the following results:

Having no audio on RTL and tune manually with szap between ARD and RTL 
ended up in a kernel freeze. So it seems(!) to be a plain driver problem 
and VDR is innocent.

[switching to ARD]
vdr:~# szap -a 1 -c channels.conf-dvbs-astra -n 1
reading channels from file 'channels.conf-dvbs-astra'
zapping to 'Das Erste':
sat 0, frequency = 11837 MHz H, symbolrate 27500000, vpid = 0x0065, apid 
= 0x0066
using '/dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0'
status 00 | signal abab | snr 3939 | ber 00000000 | unc 00000022 |
status 01 | signal 7777 | snr bebe | ber 00000000 | unc ffffffff |
status 1f | signal 7a7a | snr baba | ber 00000000 | unc 00000049 | 
FE_HAS_LOCK
[...]

[switching to RTL]
vdr:~# szap -a 1 -c channels.conf-dvbs-astra -n 25
reading channels from file 'channels.conf-dvbs-astra'
zapping to 'RTL Television':
sat 0, frequency = 12188 MHz H, symbolrate 27500000, vpid = 0x00a3, apid 
= 0x0068
using '/dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0'
status 01 | signal c1c1 | snr bcbc | ber 00000000 | unc ffffffff |
status 01 | signal 7979 | snr baba | ber 00000000 | unc ffffffff |
[FREEZE!!!]

Unfortunately this failure is not reproducable, when there are no 
problems with sound loss on RTL. I tried that with a little script 
switching around all the time, and there was no freeze at all (fresh 
loaded modules).
So my question is: What the hell is going on there? ;)

Greets,
Marco