r5000 and DISH: Problem with music channels

[cejota3]

Hey all:

I finally broke down and got an r5000 receiver to go with HD service from DISH. It all seems to be mostly working (and when it does, it definitely is sweet!), but I've got one nagging problem; Sage cannot "watch" any of the music stations. For example all of the Sirius stations in the 6000 range.

I'm running the lastest release of Sage, 6.4.8, and the latest beta of the NextCom DVR software, 3.0e (the latter at the recommendation of NextCom when I purchased my software key). I've made the "RecDelay: 2000" modification to my r5000 configuration file. In fact, I was having problems viewing my single and double digit "locals" channels until I did that. I've also made the recommended "seeker/fast_mux_switch=false" and "videoframe/fast_file_switching=false" changes to my sage.properties file. But still the problem persists.

The symptoms is that I change to one of the music stations, 6001 for example, and after a few seconds the "no signal" window comes up in Sage. The r5000 PVR application thinks it is recording on the station that I've attempted to change to, but the file is not growing. Interestingly, the r5000/211 STB has _definitely_ changed channels to the music station. I know this because I have the component outputs of the receiver connected directly to my TV, and when I change to them, the receiver is definitely pumping out the expected channel.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

One thing I was thinking was to increase that recording delay by another second or two since that made my other problem go away.

Thanks!
C.J.

[redondo_se]

I have an R5000 with dish 211, but I've never tried to tune one of the music only channels. But assuming you could get the file to grow, I wonder if it would even work. Do those streams have any sort of video? Will sage allow an audio only stream to play when it's expecting a "TV stream" with video? I suspect that it might just report an error with the video portion.

Sorry I'm not helping, just playing devil's advocate.

[paulbeers]

I don't use the R5000 mod to capture my audio channels via DishNetwork. My guess is since the R5000 mod captures the digital video stream exactly as it is sent, that this is the same issue with trying to capture Audio channels via clear QAM (which also captures the exact digital video stream) and that is that Sage just can't do it. When I used Clear QAM for capturing my locals, I could tun in several music channels via VLC but could not get Sage to render them. There are (or were) several threads about Sage's inability to capture these channels directly from clear QAM. If I remember correctly it had to do with the fact that the video frames updated very rarely (i.e. every few seconds), but the audio was constant and Sage did not know how to deal with that (I could be wrong).

Right now I get those channels via my Dish 311's with composite output to my Hauppauge PVR500. Unfortunately there is some low frequency audio loss, but it is at least usable.

[Slipshod]

Before I bought my R5000s I asked the Nextcom guy about limitations, and he said the audio channels are not supported. He also said that it was unlikely he would support them in the future as he hadn't seen much of a demand and the audience is pretty small.

If those stations are really important to you, your best bet would be to get another receiver, throw a cheap capture card onto it, and setup a new channel lineup on it that only had the sirius channels. Be sure to turn them off in the lineup you're using on the R5000 though.

[cejota3]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

Before I bought my R5000s I asked the Nextcom guy about limitations, and he said the audio channels are not supported. He also said that it was unlikely he would support them in the future as he hadn't seen much of a demand and the audience is pretty small.

Thanks for the info Slipshod. This is not a big deal to me, but you know, it would be nice to still have had them.

Originally Posted by Slipshod

If those stations are really important to you, your best bet would be to get another receiver, throw a cheap capture card onto it, and setup a new channel lineup on it that only had the sirius channels. Be sure to turn them off in the lineup you're using on the R5000 though.

Ya. I plan on adding a second, non-R5000 receiver soon, but one step at a time! I find the more I change with Sage at one time, the harder it is to get it stable again.

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by cjwhelan

Thanks for the info Slipshod. This is not a big deal to me, but you know, it would be nice to still have had them.

...

Ya. I plan on adding a second, non-R5000 receiver soon, but one step at a time! I find the more I change with Sage at one time, the harder it is to get it stable again.

I planned on using a third receiver for the music channels, and finally decided it wasn't worth the $7/month fee for the extra receiver. My wife thought she'd miss it, and turns out she doesn't since she has easy access to the MP3 library.