SA 4240HDC

[bill321]

My Scientific Atlanta 4240HDC cable box (Time Warner San Antonio) keeps shutting itself off. This used to happen only once a month or so, but now it is happening at least twice a week (and at least once a week during the day sometime).

I use firewire channel changing and can find no way to send a power signal to turn the box on (have tried all the possible options).

Is there nothing short of using a USB-UIRT with a utility to make sure the box stays on (or is turned back on)? This is getting annoying - my HD-PVR is quite stable now, but the cable box is not!

[SDeGonge]

Originally Posted by bill321

My Scientific Atlanta 4240HDC cable box (Time Warner San Antonio) keeps shutting itself off. This used to happen only once a month or so, but now it is happening at least twice a week (and at least once a week during the day sometime).

I use firewire channel changing and can find no way to send a power signal to turn the box on (have tried all the possible options).

Is there nothing short of using a USB-UIRT with a utility to make sure the box stays on (or is turned back on)? This is getting annoying - my HD-PVR is quite stable now, but the cable box is not!

Same problem here with my SA4250HD box. With some cable companies you can send codes to power on/off but doesn't work with mine & Cablevision.

[Graygeek]

My SA4250HDC has a setting to power on when a number key is pressed, has worked like a champ. If the box is off and a channel xhange happens it powers up and does the change. Granted I'm TWC and using an IR Blaster from my HAVA box. But, perhaps yours has same setting in the configuration menu? Hope this helps.

[wayner]

Look for what Graygeek suggested as I am pretty sure this should work, even for firewire channel chaning - I am pretty sure it works for my SA3250HD boxes. If that doesn't work looks for STBKeepAlive which is a Sage utility to turn on your STB.

[bill321]

Originally Posted by Graygeek

My SA4250HDC has a setting to power on when a number key is pressed, has worked like a champ. If the box is off and a channel xhange happens it powers up and does the change. Granted I'll TWC and using an IR Blaster from my HAVA box. But, perhaps yours has same setting in the configuration menu? Hope this helps.

Thanks

I'll give it a shot when I get home and let you all know. This would be an easy fix if it works.

Bill

[bill321]

Originally Posted by wayner

... If that doesn't work looks for STBKeepAlive which is a Sage utility to turn on your STB.

Thanks
STBKeepAlive requires a USB-UIRT, though, I suppose? That will be the next thing to try if the change to the setting doesn't work.

[bill321]

SUCCESS!

It worked - thanks to the suggestion in this thread, I enabled the option to turn on power by channel changing. The only problem then was that the power was turning on when the firewire changes channels, but the command was too quick to also change the channel (the command was always starting the STB at the default channel and leaving it there).

Fixed this by using a suggestion in this thread - http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...98&postcount=6

All I did was change the registry entry to call a batch file that changes the channel, waits 4 seconds and then changes the channel again. Seems to be working great.

Thanks again

Bill

[bill321]

Had to change the delay to 5 seconds - the 4 second delay was sometimes unreliable.

Now to figure out if I can tell Sage to wait before starting the recording so that the channel change is not visible at the start of every recording.

[Graygeek]

Originally Posted by bill321

Had to change the delay to 5 seconds - the 4 second delay was sometimes unreliable.

Now to figure out if I can tell Sage to wait before starting the recording so that the channel change is not visible at the start of every recording.

Good news .... I've set Sage to start recording 1 minute early, then the channel dance is lost in the extra minute before the show. Also, if you make the first tune a specific non-SDV channel, that helps work around TWC putting your receiver to sleep if you set to long on an SDV channel. I tune a local network HD then to the desired channel.

[bill321]

Thanks again for all the help.

I'm still having a problem with reliability with the HD-PVR. When the STB has rebooted, the channel change wakes it up and the second channel change (5 seconds later) is working fine to get to the correct channel.

However, sometimes, the HD-PVR seems to give up before it recognizes any channel - then it basically turns itself off and nothing gets recorded. If I execute a new channel change, the HD-PVR works normally.

I've set the delay_to_wait_after_tuning=6000 in sage properties - maybe I should shorten that? Any ideas about other parameters that would tell the HD-PVR to wait longer?

Bill

[Graygeek]

Originally Posted by bill321

Thanks again for all the help.

I'm still having a problem with reliability with the HD-PVR. When the STB has rebooted, the channel change wakes it up and the second channel change (5 seconds later) is working fine to get to the correct channel.

However, sometimes, the HD-PVR seems to give up before it recognizes any channel - then it basically turns itself off and nothing gets recorded. If I execute a new channel change, the HD-PVR works normally.

I've set the delay_to_wait_after_tuning=6000 in sage properties - maybe I should shorten that? Any ideas about other parameters that would tell the HD-PVR to wait longer?

Bill

I'm with you .... I'd think "delay_to_wait_after_tuning" would be the ticket.

[bill321]

Thanks again.

Just to close this out, I hope.

It seems that the channel changing glitches are not occurring when a show is set to be recorded or when I change channels using the HD200.

Only the Placeshifter client is having the trouble. I never use the Placeshifter client except for setup and testing (sage is on a WHS server), so I think the problem is not happening in conditions that matter to me.