Change channels on DirecTV STB via ethernet

[panteragstk]

I saw another thread where you got http tuning to work with your hd-pvr. Same setup for your ati card. I use the http method for all of my dtv sources.

[Hatterasman]

Originally Posted by Ericvic

...HTTP tuning for DirecTV boxes. Like I said before I have only tested it on H24 boxes and Server 2003...

...If you use it please let me know how it works for you.

Eric

Eric,

This has been flawless for me. So simple to setup. A great upgrade from the ir blaster. Just added a second H24. Added it (mac address) to my routers static ip table. copied my .ir and changed the ip address and viola...ready for sage. Thanks so much for this great tuning method!

As a side note, since changing to the H24 and HTTP tuning I have not had a single lock-up/error message from my hd-pvr.

Jeff

[mfgolfnut]

Originally Posted by woribhabor

I agree that this is great!! The original instructions need to be edited to show that you need to go back to source after adding HTTP control and select the IP address.

Otherwise this is great!

I am confused by the go back to the source and set IP statement. In the source setup. I do not see anywhere else to set up IP address??

I am sure it is something simple I am missing. Any help understanding what I am missing would be great.

Thanks

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by mfgolfnut

I am confused by the go back to the source and set IP statement. In the source setup. I do not see anywhere else to set up IP address??

I am sure it is something simple I am missing. Any help understanding what I am missing would be great.

Thanks

It's easy to overlook. Go back into the source, so you're on the "source details" screen. Then go over to the right and select "tuner control" (last item). That'll bring up a screen where you can select the IP tuning and that's also where you can enter the IP address.

[mfgolfnut]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

It's easy to overlook. Go back into the source, so you're on the "source details" screen. Then go over to the right and select "tuner control" (last item). That'll bring up a screen where you can select the IP tuning and that's also where you can enter the IP address.

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately tuner control only has DirecTv HTTP tuning stubdevice. Under change tuning device I get nothing. I went through the options after hitting enter with no IP option. So I must have done something wrong deeper in the set up on my whs server?

My signature needs updating. But this is with h24 dtv receiver and hdpvr if that makes any difference.

Forgot to mention using eric's method

Thanks,

[mfgolfnut]

Went back and reset it up again and then found IP address as you described.Thanks for your help.

[jerryb33]

I've been running eric's version for months now (since he gave it to us) and had no problems until about a month ago. Now when I try to change channel from 242 and record it, my DTV is recording ch. 2. It seems to be like sage or switch is sending the ch. change to slow. Doing a 2 4 (no channel) and then 2.

What I had done was buy another switch and put all my computer, sage and DTV stuff on one switch after the router. Previous to this I had the computer on the router port and the rest on the switch.

On the router I have
1. different computer
2. d-link switch
3. trendnet switch
4. another d-link switch for seperate computer and 100 extender etc.(daughters apartment)

On the switch I have
1. computer
2. 300 extender
3. 100 extender
4. HDHR
5. DTV HR21 goes to HD-PVR and "whole home system"
6. DTV HR21 "whole home system"
7. DTV H24 "whole home system"
8. from router

I have three stubdevice.ir files on my computer
1 from serial x.x.x.x 38000 400 4 600 800
2 from ethernet x.x.x.x 38000 411 3 10 10
3 from firewire x.x.x.x 38000 400 3

A few questions:

Does anyone have an idea what the numbers represent after the IP address?
Found out I was using the serial stubdevice.ir

Would putting the computer back on the router port and running the switches in series help?

Does the DTV Serial Changing Mode switch have to be "fast"? Never changed it after I went from serial to ethernet.

[Polypro]

Man that was easy! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Serial wasn't too bad, but this is a lot more foolproof and now that it's in the Sage Folder, re-installs will be a snap as opposed to setting up the Paterson's again. Awesome.

P

[ScubaMedic]

Originally Posted by maynardm

I have this working on my h23 but I have a problem after a scheduled recording wakes the sage server from sleep. tuning no loner works thru sage after this. I can still tune thru a browser but not thru sage. I can only get it to work again by restarting the sage service.
If I manually wake the computer or if my hd300 wakes it then tuning still works fine.

I am having the same issue. Once I restart Sage it works fine.

Any ideas?

[freewheeling]

I followed the instructions at the top of the page and during setup of my video Sources was given the option of the ExeMultiTuner. When I use it to change a channel, however, the channel doesn't change.https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...MultiTuner.PNG

I checked the network address of the directv tuner box with is 192.168.000.021 which seems accurate. The picture is how I set up the registry entry. Does it matter that I have one of the new All Home set top boxes?

[Skirge01]

I'm not familiar with the exemultituner setup. Any reason you didn't use this method instead? I think most people find that one easier.

[freewheeling]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I'm not familiar with the exemultituner setup. Any reason you didn't use this method instead? I think most people find that one easier.

Alright, I uninstaled the ExeMultiTuner and set up the one above, and it still doesn't work. I've tried a query of (http://192.168.0.21:8080/info/getOptions) using the Chrome browser and got the following gobbledogook, which demonstrates that it's at least the correct address:

{
"options": [
{
"command": "/info/getLocations",
"description": "List of available client locations. Warning: This command may change or be disabled in the future.",
"formControls": [],
"urlParameters": [
{
"isRequired": false,
"name": "wrapper",
"type": "string"
},
{
"isRequired": false,
"name": "callback",
"type": "string"
..., etc.
"status": {
"code": 200,
"commandResult": 0,
"msg": "OK.",
"query": "/info/getOptions"
}
}

So, I don't know what's wrong. Oh, have turned off the firewall too, just in case that's getting in the way.

Update: I didn't realize that I had to actually change the contents of the *.ir file not just the name. Anyway, did that and then changed the tuner to the right designation with the IP address and it works. Haven't assigned a permanent IP address because I don't have access to the router yet, but will do. Anyway, works now. Thanks.

[SHS]

Frist thing you need to do is assign each DirecTV box an IP Address Reservation with specify IP Address like I did on my router you need to do the same depend on your router you my have manual assign on the DirecTV box in network configuration options
http://www.shspvr.com/images_other/s...ip_address.jpg

Download this SageTV Directv HTTP Tuning zip file.
All the file need go in to C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\Common\
Then as you add them it end up lookin like this
http://www.shspvr.com/images_other/s...ip_address.jpg

[aaronb]

Has anyone been able to do IP tuning with a Directv Genie box? These boxes cannot be accessed directly, and instead you send the command to the DVR and it passes it through to the Genie.

The IP of my Genie is 192.168.0.46, the main box is 192.168.0.48

So instead of this:

http://192.168.0.46:8080/tv/tune?major=501

I have to do this:

http://192.168.0.48:8080/tv/tune?maj...tAddr=xxxxxxxx

where xxxxxxxx is the MAC address of the Genie. Doing that in the browser works, but as far as I can tell none of the existing options for IP tuning allow you to input that additional parameter

[aaronb]

I was able to hack together a solution. Since the IP tuning on DTV boxes is as simple as sending a command to the box with a URL, I created a simple batch file that takes the channel number as an argument and referenced that as the external blaster in the Hauppauge software. It didn't like it as a straight batch file, so I used a batch to exe converter to make it an executable and now it works great. I hardcoded IP and MAC addresses specific to my situation, but it would be easy to modify it, I can share here if anyone else needs to tune a Genie box over IP.

[KryptoNyte]

Aaron, I'm not a Directv customer [yet], but I would respectfully ask that you go ahead and share any knowledge that you have here to keep it a part of the SageTV family archive of [very] useful information.

Thank you for the info.

[aaronb]

Sure. Like I mentioned above, if you have a Genie box you can't do HTTP tuning directly on the box. It gets an IP from your router, but is not accessible through the HTTP tuning capabilities DTV built in. You can ping the box, but trying to send commands to it will fail. All commands to the Genie client have to be sent using the IP of your primary DVR box. The command is the same except it needs the additional argument:

&clientAddr=

with the MAC address of the Genie so that it will pass it through to the right box. You can get the MAC address off the sticker on the bottom of the Genie, but enter it without any colons or spaces. Another way to get it is to send this command to the main DVR:

http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_DVR:8080/info/getLocations

The 8080 port is standard. That will return output like this:

{
  "locations": [
    {
      "clientAddr": "0",
      "locationName": "LIVING ROOM"
    },
    {
      "clientAddr": "XXXXXXXXXXXX",
      "locationName": "BASEMENT"
    }
  ],
  "status": {
    "code": 200,
    "commandResult": 0,
    "msg": "OK.",
    "query": "/info/getLocations"
  }
}

And the Xs will be the MAC address, formatted how you need it to change channels.

I was setting this up for Windows Media Center on a test server, but hopefully someone can adapt this for Sage as well. In the Hauppauge Device Central software you check the box for external blaster:



The changechannel.exe is my hacked together script. It's a very simple batch script turned into an executable. The code:

set "str1=http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_DVR:8080/tv/tune?major="
set "str2=^&clientAddr=MAC_ADDRESS_OF_GENIE"
set "str3=%str1%%1%str2%"
C:\wget\bin\wget --delete-after %str3%

Need to have wget installed as in the last line, or edit the location accordingly. The "--delete-after" just prevents wget from downloading a text file with the output the DVR returns to the channel change command. wget was the only simple way I knew how to just generically call a URL and it works to send the command. That code saved into a .bat file, and then converted to an executable here (or with your favorite batch to exe converter):

www.f2ko.de/programs.php?lang=en&pid=ob2e

It has to be converted to .exe, I tried it with the batch file and the Hauppauge software doesn't recognize it. The %c is the command the Hauppauge software uses to send the channel number, and the command takes that as an argument. You can test it from the command line by just running without quotes "changechannel.exe 206" when the Genie is on and it should change to ESPN.

I hope this helps someone, and I'm glad to explain or clarify if anything wasn't clear.

[bill321]

Originally Posted by aaronb

Has anyone been able to do IP tuning with a Directv Genie box? These boxes cannot be accessed directly, and instead you send the command to the DVR and it passes it through to the Genie.

The IP of my Genie is 192.168.0.46, the main box is 192.168.0.48

So instead of this:

http://192.168.0.46:8080/tv/tune?major=501

I have to do this:

http://192.168.0.48:8080/tv/tune?maj...tAddr=xxxxxxxx

where xxxxxxxx is the MAC address of the Genie. Doing that in the browser works, but as far as I can tell none of the existing options for IP tuning allow you to input that additional parameter

Another way to do it is with the exemultituner plugin using the batch file method as modified in this post:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...655#post553655

[aaronb]

Originally Posted by bill321

Another way to do it is with the exemultituner plugin using the batch file method as modified in this post:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...655#post553655

Having trouble getting this method to work. I used your modified batch file, and the batch file works fine if I call it from the command line, changes the channel on the Genie box as expected. But within SageTV it will not work.

The relevant lines from sage.properties:

mmc/encoders/1424382901/6/0/device_name=HauppaugeColossusCapture0
mmc/encoders/1424382901/6/0/tuning_plugin=C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\SageTV\\Common\\EXEMultiTunerPlugin.dll

Then I have this file :
C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\EXEMultiTunerPlugin\HauppaugeColossusCapture0.ir

with one line, and a carriage return:
HauppaugeColossusCapture0 38000 400 3

The dll is saved here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin.dll

and the batch file is saved here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\DirecTVMultiChg.bat

Finally, I added the registry entry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin\command

with the value: DirecTVMultiChg.bat %DEVICE% %CHANNEL%

And within Sage I assigned the EXEMultiTunerPlugin as the tuning method for the tuner

From everything I've read this seems to be the correct setup, and the batch file works on it's own, but it won't work within Sage. Any ideas? I'm at my wits end

[Tiki]

does the dll file need to be registered?