How to get HDHR QAM working with v6.2

[carlgar]

Just to be clear, you should see the attached image. The highlighted turners are the ones you need to have configured to use the BDA drivers. The ones with the blue circle are what you should currently have and give you the network encoders. You should only have one or the other selected.

[thatdude90210]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Did you install the Silicondust software in the SageTV directory? By default it wants to go in Program files. (If on Windows XP)
Gerry

Just tried that, no difference between that and installing into hdhomerun's own directory. The BDA drivers are going into windows system32 anyway right, so this shouldn't make a difference. Worth a try though.

Originally Posted by carlgar

Just to be clear, you should see the attached image. The highlighted turners are the ones you need to have configured to use the BDA drivers. The ones with the blue circle are what you should currently have and give you the network encoders. You should only have one or the other selected.

Yep, don't see anything like those "Silicondust hdhomerun tuner..." It's always either Hdhomerun ATSC capture on..." or nothing (besides my ATI analog tuners).

[Polypro]

Same here. Tried all combos to try and get the BDA tuners to show up in 6.2 RC1, no joy.

P

[dstay]

Just want to add to the chorus...I've been watching this thread with interest and I also have been trying to get BDA to work and it just won't. The HDHR manager is the only way I can get those digital tuners working. I've tried the latest SD releases and the Sage Beta, I've also tried it for grins on 6.1.9, no luck.

Let me pose another question: What is so great about BDA? If the HDHR manager does the job, why go through this hassle to switch?

[carlgar]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadca...r_Architecture for more information about BDA (Broadcast Driver Architecture). I switched from the network encoders becaused I would get corrupted files that would hang Sage. The files also had bad timestamps that would prevent the skip from work properly. The BDA drivers were supposed to correct these and it currently appears to, at least for me. If you do not see any problems then you probably should just stick with the network encoders.

[Polypro]

My timelines are occasionally messed up and I get S-T-U-T-T-E-R after watching about 15 minutes of an in-progress recording (Big Brother 8, 1080i QAM). I'd like to get BDA working. I am trying to switch from network encoding, but I may try a clean install...I can't believe this thing is kicking my butt

P

[bialio]

I wrestled the HDHR / BDA giant to the ground last night. It took a while but I finally got it working.

SageTV Version : 6.2.6 RC
HDHomerun Version : 20070820beta1

This was on a clean install of the SageTV server.

Install Sage - remove any HDHR tuners that you have configured. Stop the Sage Service and Exit the Client. Proceed to HDHomerun Setup.

HDHomeRun Setup:
1) Remove all previous versions of HDHomeRun Software
2) Install 20070820beta1 in the default directory (C:\Program Files\....) - it installs HDHomeRun BDA drivers.
3) During the HDHomeRun setup, ensure SageTV is disabled for both tuners
4) In the Lineup Tab, select "Digital Cable" as the signal source. Click Apply.
5) Click on the 'Channel Editor' button

Channel Editor:
1) Scan for channels. This takes a while.
2) Once it's done scanning, click on the 'Save' Button - this saves a copy of the channels it found. If it finds more than 69 channels, it will give you an error. So you have to deselect some channels to get the total count down below 69.
3) At this point, you will probably have a text label of "UNKNOWN" for all the channels. If you know what they are, you can label them. You can also click on 'View' to open a VLC window to identify the channel.
4) Select the channels you want to be available with the check box. The name DOES NOT MATTER for Sage. It is just a comment in the .remap file. Then click 'Save' again.

At this point you have a hdhomerun_bda.remap file in the C:\ directory. Here's what mine looked like after I had gone through the steps above.

;
; Format:
; - Fake virtual channel number ("Digital TV Channel" field in MCE).
; - Fake ATSC physical channel number ("Assigned Frequency" field in MCE).
; - Channel command to be sent to the HDHomeRun.
; - Program number to be sent to the HDHomeRun.
;

; CSPAN3
80-1 2 qam256:549000000 10

; Lifetime
80-2 3 qam256:573000000 8

; WE
80-3 4 qam256:657000000 6

; VH1SOUL
80-4 5 qam256:681000000 5

; DHD
80-5 6 qam256:687000000 3

; KTVTDT
80-6 7 qam256:693000000 1

; TNTHD
80-7 8 qam256:693000000 2

; KTXADT
80-8 9 qam256:693000000 3

; KERADT
80-9 10 qam256:699000000 1

; WFAADT
81-1 11 qam256:699000000 2

; KDAFDT
81-2 12 qam256:699000000 3

; KDFWDT
81-3 13 qam256:711000000 1

This is a space delimited file. The fields are :
1) Virtual Channel - once you get into Sage, this is the virtual channel in the Channel Setup.
2) HDHR Virtual Channel - this field is important - each should be unique, and 2 through 69 are the valid numbers.
3) Frequency of the channel
4) Program number of the channel

So now we are ready to get into Sage and configure the tuner.

Before you open up Sage, make sure that in the properties file (sage.properties) that Silicondust is not mentioned anywhere in the mmc/ignore_encoders line. This step was not necessary for me - I think a clean install of 6.2.6 already has this taken care of. If you upgraded to 6.2.6 from one of the 6.1.x versions, then you will need to do this while the Sage service and client are not running.

1) Open up Sage, and go to 'Setup Video Sources'
2) Select one of the HDHR tuners - it should be listed as 'Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner xxxxxxxx-x'
3) Choose TV Tuner / Cable TV at each option.
4) Select an unused Channel Lineup - reusing an old one is problematic
5) It will ask if you want to scan for channels - say no.
6) Disable all Channels
7) Now do a channel scan. Once it has found the number of channels you selected in the hdhomerun_bda.remap file you can hit stop.

Now you will have your clear QAM channels embedded in the channel lineup - and they are enabled by default. So just scroll down until you see green dots. This is what the top line will look like :

// hdhomerun_bda.remap
; WFAADT
81-1 11 qam256:699000000 2

// representation in Sage Channel Setup
81-1 - 81-1 - [11-108-2]

At this point you can remap this - both to a real station (I mapped the above to WFAADT in my channel lineup) and to a different virtual channel (I mapped the above to virtual channel 8 so that it shows up as channel 8 in the guide)

8 - WFAADT - [11-108-2]

That's pretty much it. Remap all your channels to where you want them and you are set.

It is working real nice for me - tuning is quick (faster than it was the old network encoder way) and PQ is as good as ever.

btl.

[Polypro]

Thanks. I hate to admit it, but I may have made the simple mistake of *not* shutting down SageService (It was 4am before work...I'll try again tonight). I have an empty remap.bda in C:\, but a good, current, lineup.xml in C:\Users\Default...what gets used? (Gerry has a post about this in the HDHR Forum).

Thanks again,

P

[kevine]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Thanks. I hate to admit it, but I may have made the simple mistake of *not* shutting down SageService (It was 4am before work...I'll try again tonight). I have an empty remap.bda in C:\, but a good, current, lineup.xml in C:\Users\Default...what gets used? (Gerry has a post about this in the HDHR Forum).

Thanks again,

P

Yes, I agree. However, I think bialio is correct too. I am going under the conconclusion that once you go to the network encoders you cannot go to BDA. I did the same as bialio above except it does NOT create any damn .remap file. I have tried creating it myself with no luck. Mine saves it to the lineup.xml like above. The only difference in what I did from what bialio did was from a clean install of Sage. I will try that next.

[bialio]

There is a lineup.xml file on my server, but it is not used as far as I can tell - at least not by Sage.

I manually edited the remap once the HDHR Setup utility had created it, and I see those changes in Sage when I import the HDHR channels.

btl.

[Polypro]

Ok. If I can get Sage to see the tuners, I'll maually enter the lineup.xml info into the remap.bda...using the correct format.

Thanks,

P

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by bialio

There is a lineup.xml file on my server, but it is not used as far as I can tell - at least not by Sage.

I manually edited the remap once the HDHR Setup utility had created it, and I see those changes in Sage when I import the HDHR channels.

btl.

If you have the latest firmware and software then that .remap file was created by a previous version. For grins and giggles you can pull that file out of there and click save on your channel editor. I'm pretty sure you won't see anothe .remap file there. I have posted and pm'd jafa (Nick) to understand if Sage is a little behind the curve in not reading the lineup.xml file. That's my guess because mine will only work with a .remap file but the latest version no longer creates that.

Gerry

[technazz]

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4076

There is new drivers for 6.26

[bialio]

That link leads you to the 20070820beta1 that I installed as per the post above. I didn't have to edit the
'mmc/dshow_cap_dev_categories'
line in the .properties file to get it working though......

[thatdude90210]

Originally Posted by technazz

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4076

There is new drivers for 6.26

Thanks for spotting that, the new instructions did it. I did these 2 and was finally able to detect the silicondust bda tuners:

3) Edit the Sage.properties file...

Change the appropriate line to the following:
mmc/dshow_cap_dev_categories={65E8773D-8F56-11D0-A3B9-00A0C9223196},{FD0A5AF4-B41D-11d2-9C95-00C04F7971E0},{71985F48-1CA1-11d3-9CC8-00C04F7971E0}

Remove the mmc/ignore_encoders line.

[Polypro]

Yup, thanks to Jafa, Bialio, and Gerry....I got it working. I added to the property file (Jafa), transferred lineup.xml to remap.bda (Gerry), and scanned / remapped the guide (Bialio). The one thing I did differently was to select the last option in the remap screen: Map a different channel to this physical number....seemed the easiest and least confusing. Definitely not plug and play but we'll see how the BDA works. It's nice to have both options available with the HDHR, great box.

Thanks all,

P

Edit: I did a restart after I made the remap file, and you need to scan for channels with both tuners (0 & 1)...this creates two seperate .frq files in Sage's root directory.

[bialio]

True - mapping of the channels is one of the more confusing things in Sage. Luckily once it's done, it's done.

I ended up doing both the remapping you refer to and remapping the virtual channel number (the first option in the remap list) - I don't like having non whole numbers in the guide! All this sub-channel crap is for the birds.

One of the reasons I love Sage - a fully integrated channel guide that lets me remap stuff where-ever I want it to be.

btl.

[Polypro]

Last night's Big Brother was a great test for the BDA drivers for me. Using network encoding would introduce a bad stutter about 15 minutes into a recording in progress...you would have to wait 'til it finnished for perfect playback. With the BDA drivers, playback was was fine. At one point I thought I saw some micro-stutter starting, but it cleared out and could have been the broadcaster. All in all, thumbs up to Silicon Dust and SageTV.

P

[dstay]

I got my BDA drivers working too with the Sage RC and the Silicondust Beta1. Thank you all for sharing your trials.

I did have an issue when you go the the Sage channel scan: About 10 channels into the scan, Sage would lock up: "Sage has encountered an error and needs to close, report to Microsoft Y/N?" Anyone else have a problem with the Sage channel scan after making a remap.dba file? I finally got it to complete a scan this morning and therefore make a complete .frq file. I could also stop the scan after recognizing a few channels and that would at least write what it found so far to the .frq file. I filed a bug report, we'll see what happens.

[technazz]

There new beta2 drivers at Silicon Dust

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2484