Two new R5000's QIP-2500-3 FIOS not happy

[jmv]

Help! My R5000 QIP-2500-3 boxes just arrived yesterday, and I can not get them to work. I am using SageTV. Mostly when I try to watch something, nothing happens it just sits. A couple of times, a channel fired up, the R5000 HD app started to record, and on some of those occasions I actually saw video (mostly, just stayed black or never even left the SageMC screen where I had pressed watch). When ever it did record a stream, it always tuned the same channel and that wasn't the channel I selected. Also, the R5000 doesn't seem to change the QIP-2500 power state. Does the R5000 work while the STB is in standby, or do you need it "on" with the power button? Any ideas?

Details for how I tried to setup the R5000's

I have two QIP-2500-3's so I used the multi-instance SW 2.5f. I installed the 2.5f SW, then proceeded to plug in the first R5000 USB, find the Nextcom driver etc. Got the "can't update firmware" flash, but it seemed to install OK. Then I did it with the 2nd one. I confirmed in Hardware manager that the Nextcom driver for two occurrences showed up in the USB devices category. I then fired up the HDnet SW and entered my two keys for the SW. It proceeded to ask for the driver again, which I again pointed it to the driver. Finally, I was up. I followed the R5000 directions, set each encoder to use Sage as the preference, set 1 to 6969 one to 6968. Both said they were waiting for Sage...so I edited the Sage.properties per the instructions on the R5000 website.

I then launched sage and went in to set the channel line ups and set them. I do notice one weird thing here...Under Source Details, sage lists the second R5000 as Functioning: False; the first R5000 as Functioning: True.

Also, when I power-cycled the STB’s I noticed that the R5000-HD indicator was not changing one device showed “green” all the time, the other showed “grey” all the time. I did change the STB’s so that they would turn the power outlet on and off with the STB.

Also, the R5000-HD app does not launch automatically...is it supposed to in the regular setup, or do I need to add it to the startup menu...seems like it should has fired up automatically?

Also, other then setting up the channels in Sage, I never told the R5000 what channels I had...am I supposed to do that somewhere? Lastly, when I did power on the QIP2500's, they each listed a different channel, and neither listed the channel that had been recorded.

I am pulling my hair out…do I need to make any other settings in the R5000-HD app?

[GKusnick]

In your shoes I would probably hook up just one box at first and focus on getting that to work before trying to add a second box.

Add a shortcut to the R5000 app to your Startup group to get it to launch automatically at startup.

When configuring the video source in Sage, did you do a channel scan? If so, that should cover it. Or you can enable/disable the channels manually to match your package. The R5000 software will just tune the channels Sage tells it to tune, so no need to configure your lineup separately there.

I don't know the answer to the question about standby mode. I just leave my R5000 box powered on all the time.

[jmv]

OK, I've got it working...here is what I had to do:

1. Make sure STB is ON (you can confirm with the 5000HD Application by opening up the STB control window (green circle next to Power button)
2. Make sure 5000HD Application is set to the right kind of STB (Motorolla DCT2000 Model)
3. Make sure that the 5000HD Application does NOT use the .TS option from the SageTV options (when it was doing .ts sage wouldn't see it...black screen)
4. Launch 2 copies of the 5000HD Application (one for each R5000MOD)
5. Add the RecDelay: 2000 option to the R5000HD configuration files (same Program directory as R5000HD App)
a. You can program a delay after the channel by manually adding an entry into your configuration file: "RecDelay: <time>" where the "time" is the delay in mS (e.g. 1 sec = 1000). To add a 2 second delay after the channel add: RecDelay: 2000 the entry must be made exactly as shown with the colon after the token and a space before the value. The configuration file is found in the R5000 install directory: c:\program files\r5000hd\ and is named: <device serial#>.cfg Insert the entry last on the list but before "end" label if present.
6. Add the Nextcomwireless recommended SageTV and SageTVClient properties tweaks:
a. We recommend changing the following entries in the SageTV properties file:
seeker/fast_mux_switch=false
videoframe/fast_file_switching=false
b. The first entry forces the recording graph (the DirectShow connections) to be rebuilt on channel changes. The second forces the playback graph to be rebuilt whenever a new file is selected. SageTV is buffering to disk, so the second entry is important since watching live TV is basically playing back a file as its being recorded.

I still have two issues:

1) no matter what I seem to select, it still saves files with padding...always using the 19Mbit/s...making even SD files 9GB/hr! Any ideas here...it just refuses to save the files w/o padding.

2) when I play back while recording the same file, the server CPU goes from sub 1~3% all the way up to 25 ish and starts stuttering. If the file is saved...it doesn't care and %util stays low, no stuttering...probably part of my slow raid problem...we'll see in a bit when the fast drives come in...

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by jmv

2) when I play back while recording the same file, the server CPU goes from sub 1~3% all the way up to 25 ish and starts stuttering. If the file is saved...it doesn't care and %util stays low, no stuttering...probably part of my slow raid problem...we'll see in a bit when the fast drives come in...

What CPU do you have in the server? Can you write up what's in the server?

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by jmv

1) no matter what I seem to select, it still saves files with padding...always using the 19Mbit/s...making even SD files 9GB/hr! Any ideas here...it just refuses to save the files w/o padding.

Got this from another thread, looks like you'll want to set this in the R5000 software:
Bit Rate = "Compressed (no filler pkts)"

I don't have one (yet) so I can't really give you more details. Search on it and you'll see info from others. Looks like it strips out the null padding from the stream so SD is sized appropriately instead of being same bitrate as HD.

[jmv]

What CPU do you have in the server? Can you write up what's in the server?

Server is dual 5160 Xeon (dual core x 2, 3GHz/1333 FSB/4 GB RAM) in an S5000XVN motherboard, with 3ware 9550SX RAID 5 for the storage in 64bit 133Mhz PCIx slot. Currently running 32 bit Windows XP, but I'm going to try Vista. I think the 25% CPU utilization is basically a single thread maxing out one of the 4 cores in the system...but why it happens that is the mystery...

Server accesses 2 HDHR's (4 tuners) plus the 2 R5000MODed QIP-2500's...in addition to being the kitchen touchpanel with Sage and Xlobby access, it also serves clients thorughout the house but usually only 1 or max 3 at a time.

Got this from another thread, looks like you'll want to set this in the R5000 software:
Bit Rate = "Compressed (no filler pkts)"

Yeah, I set that in the SW but it didn't matter...still getting streams of constant size regardless of what is being recorded (full 1080 HD or 480 SD)...conversely, the HDHR records 7GB/hr on HD stations (same source) and 1.5GB/hr on SD.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by jmv

Server is dual 5160 Xeon (dual core x 2, 3GHz/1333 FSB/4 GB RAM) in an S5000XVN motherboard, with 3ware 9550SX RAID 5 for the storage in 64bit 133Mhz PCIx slot. Currently running 32 bit Windows XP, but I'm going to try Vista. I think the 25% CPU utilization is basically a single thread maxing out one of the 4 cores in the system...but why it happens that is the mystery...

Server accesses 2 HDHR's (4 tuners) plus the 2 R5000MODed QIP-2500's...in addition to being the kitchen touchpanel with Sage and Xlobby access, it also serves clients thorughout the house but usually only 1 or max 3 at a time.



Yeah, I set that in the SW but it didn't matter...still getting streams of constant size regardless of what is being recorded (full 1080 HD or 480 SD)...conversely, the HDHR records 7GB/hr on HD stations (same source) and 1.5GB/hr on SD.

Are you sure about that? My r5000-hd when set in compressed mode gives me about 3 mbps for sd and lots more for hd...

What rev of the R5000-HD app and driver are you using?

[jmv]

Hmmm...well this is kind of weird...the 5000HD app continues to show the same constant bit rate coming from the tuner...but the file sizes being saved to disc are comparable between the HDHomerun and the QIP2500's...so I guess the dropping nulls is working. I am still a little perplexed with the file types as they were getting saved as .mpg...then they starting getting .ts and it seems to be random...I'll keep watching it, but this stuff is not as straight forward as I would like...

mv

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by jmv

Hmmm...well this is kind of weird...the 5000HD app continues to show the same constant bit rate coming from the tuner...but the file sizes being saved to disc are comparable between the HDHomerun and the QIP2500's...so I guess the dropping nulls is working. I am still a little perplexed with the file types as they were getting saved as .mpg...then they starting getting .ts and it seems to be random...I'll keep watching it, but this stuff is not as straight forward as I would like...

mv

If some are getting saved as .ts, you probably have some issues with your sage .properties file. The R5000-HD dvr app just takes the filename from the sage driver, and writes to it. It doesn't pick it by itself. That could explain a bunch of weirdness if for some reason you have told sage to use transport stream instead of program stream in your config. Sage says not to do that. :-)

The bitrate from the R5000 will be constant for whatever channel it is tuned to. That is, VZ is not sending you a VBR stream. If you tune to SD, it should be about 3 mbps. If you tune to HD, it will be over 10 mbps. But it will not change much while recording.