STB errors displayed onscreen

[DaveS]

I have an HD-PVR and I have a Scientific Atlanta 4250HD STB. Lately I’ve been getting errors from the STB displayed onscreen (and recorded) that block most of the picture. The error is “Please press Select (ok) to continue to watch this channel, otherwise it may become temporarily unavailable. SEL continue watching.”

I’ve called Cox but they’ve never heard of this error. They say there are similar errors used by their DVR boxes which relate to an inactivity timer, but I’m using a standard HD box, not a DVR, and my box isn’t inactive. I’ve gotten this error within an hour of changing channel and recording a show.

Has anyone had any experience with this?

[phareous]

You could program your IR configuration to send OK before channel changes. This is what I do with my dish network boxes.

[DaveS]

I'm not sure I follow. I do change the channel and still get the error within a couple of hours. I'm using firewire for channel changing...it works much better than an IR blaster. Also, the errors only happen occasionally...I can't find a pattern to why it happens.

[phareous]

Ok..if you were using a blaster you could do this to at least fix it at the start of each recording - assuming it didn't go into inactivity during your recording. But with firewire, I have no idea. I guess you could try to google and see if you can figure out why their box is doing that and if there is any way to fix it...and barring that, perhaps you can push them a little harder to get some answers (i.e. escalate to their engineers or their manufacturer)

[DaveS]

Thanks for the reply. I haven't had any luck finding any reference to this error on the internet. Calls to my cable co's tech support haven't helped at all. I've scheduled a service call. Sure hope they can identify the cause of the error, but I suspect they'll not be much help.

[mc50]

That message is caused by SDV (Switched Digital Video). If you do a Google search on "sdv Please press Select (ok) to continue to watch this channel", you will find some good answers as to why you get this message.

You can try making sure that in Sage - Setup - Detailed Setup - Customize, that "Always tune channel" is set to yes. I'm not sure if this will help in your case, but you never know.

[DaveS]

I don't understand why it would be a SDV issue. I'm recording with HD-PVR which uses the signal that comes out of the STB via component cables.

The other day I was watching a show, changed the channel, watched for about half an hour and the message came up. It lasted exactly 3 minutes and went away. Approximately 30 minutes later it reappeared for exactly 3 minutes and then went away again.

Cox came out today and couldn't find anything wrong (no surprise there.) I had the error message recorded so I showed it to the technician and he, like tech support via telephone, said they never saw or heard of that error before. The technician suggested that it wasn't a STB error at all, but rather a Sagetv error. I think he's wrong, but not sure. Here's a picture of the message.

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I tried searching, but couldn't find this error anywhere on the internet. I'll research SDV, but if I was watching TV directly from the STB, Cox says I wouldn't get this error. Why would it be created if I'm using an HD-PVR which uses the component outputs from the STB and not get it if the STB were connected directly to my TV using the same component outputs?

[DaveS]

I called Cox tech support and mentioned SDV and they determined that the message relates to it. Then I asked that if I was recording something would I get the message in the recording. I implied I had a Cox DVR. They didn't know the answer.

Does anyone know if SDV is going to cause issues with Sage and if it will cause the same issues with a cable company supplied DVR?

[DaveS]

I have a follow up question for anyone that may be able to help.

Cox has agreed that the message I see is a SDV issue, but they seem to be surprised I get it. I have not be able to get any details about the causes from them. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with Firewire channel changing. My STB is turned on 24/7, and I use FW to change channels, so there is never an IR signal being received by the box. The message requires me to press SEL on the remote to clear it, suggesting that the STB is looking for an IR input. Could it be that the lack of normal IR input is causing the issue? I would really hate to move back to the USB UIRT because FW is so much faster and much more dependable. I may experiment with my old USB UIRT though, and see if that eliminates the problem.

Has anyone experienced this issue?

[Beefcake550]

I think you are going to find a very limited number of people using FW channel changing. I'm not saying they don't exist, but it's probably few and far between.

Sorry to hear about your problem.

Is there come kind of benign key press you can send via SJQ that would stop the message from happening and not effect your recordings?

[DaveS]

Thanks for the response...I don't know the answer. I actually thought that FW channel changing was very popular. While it's a little tricky setting up, it beats IR blasters for speed and dependability. I'm thinking I can't be the only one having this problem, but maybe you're right and FW isn't used that much.

I was considering sending a code to turn the box off, then back on, then to the correct channel using a FW program I saw on the forum today, each time I select a channel. Or, I may try using the IR blaster again and dump FW. I'm going to attempt to get a better answer from Cox...

[DaveS]

Further to my previous threads, every time I watch a show on a 'premium' channel, I get a STB warning to "press OK to continue watching." I determined that this is caused by the cable company's inactivity timer associated with SDV. Apparently changing channels with Firewire does not reset the cable company's inactivity timer.

I removed FW and reinstalled my USB UIRT and apparently the IR blaster channel changing method does reset the inactivity timer with SDV because the problems went away. This makes sense since the cable company's technical support never heard of the error message I was getting. 99.99% of their customers (everyone but me!) must use their remote which works via IR.

I guess this means that the FW drivers bypass something in the STB that notifies the cable company that the STB is being actively used and not simply turned on and unattended. I thought of trying to write a batch file to turn the box off and then back on during channel change, but if the cable company doesn't recognize a channel change, I doubt that turning the box off and on via FW is going to help.

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but I suspect as SDV becomes more prevalent, FW channel changing with SDV is going to become unusable.

[wayner]

I use firewire and some of my channels are SDV with my cable co (Rogers Cable in Canada) and I have two SA boxes connected to sage - a SA4250HD and a SA3250HD and haven't had the problems that you have described, touch wood. The timeout on my system is quite long and I never seem to have these issues, even though I do a LOT of recoring on Setanta Sports HD which is an SDV channel with my cable co.

Nut this is a very interesting story - I guess the rest of us using FW will have to watch out for this. One problem is that the firewire drivers haven't really been maintained in years. But I still like firewire and it keeps me using a 32 bit OS, at least for now.

If you think that there was a way to send a firewire "select" and have your STB recognize it as the same as an IR input then there are likely scripts that could help, but there probably doesn't seem to be much point in your case.

[DaveS]

Thanks for the reply, Wayner. I thought of maybe trying to send a "select" via FW assuming I could figure out how to do it, but since the channel change doesn't reset the inactivity timer, I figured there was no point. BTW, my STB doesn't power down or become inactive in any way. There must be an inactivity timer somewhere before the STB and my the cable company's distribution center.

Anyway, apparently my cable company has only listed a small number of their HD channels as SDV. I only experience the problem with 2 of the dozens of stations they offer. It may be that few people have experienced this issue because only a small percentage of users are using FW for changing channels and the number of SDV channels is still small.

Using USB UIRT (or the Hauppauge IR blaster had I chose to use it) seems to have solved the problem. I'm going to miss FW channel changing, it's a much better system.

[wayner]

I was having other problems where I would occasionally lose the audio when my STB sat on the same channel for a long period of time. The problem was fixed if you changed the channel but if your next recording was on the same channel then you had no audio as even though Sage sends the channel change to the STB the box is smart enough to not actually retune the channel if it is already on that channel. Therefore I wrote a small script that changed that channel to a channel that I did not watch - this happened each morning at 3 am or something like that.