Issue with DirecTV serial channel changing after change to Win7

[71_Cuda]

I recently upgraded my system from Windows XP to Windows 7 (64 bit). Before the change, I had the serial channel changing on my DirecTV HR20 working flawlessly for quite some time. I'm using the USB to Serial/Null Modem solution. Following the change, I struggled for a while getting the drivers to load for the USB to Serial devices. Once I got that done, the channel changing was not working. While selecting channels through the guide, twice it did suddenly start changing channels, but then stopped working again. I've been struggling with this for a while. As part of my diagnostic efforts, I downloaded the DirecTV Control application from www.dtvcontrol.com. What's confusing me is that application works for some commands and not for others. It will turn the box on and off and tune channels from the direct channel selections (e.g. Fox News, SciFi, etc.) among other things. But when I try to enter numbers from the number pad, it doesn't work (I get a "F0 Valid Command" followed by the number command then "F2 Processing...." and "F5 Failed"). I assume SageTV sends the channel change commands as individual numbers and that's why it's not working for me.

Has anyone else experienced this before? Anyone have any ideas what could be wrong?

[GKusnick]

I don't have an answer for you on the serial issue but your HR20 should support Ethernet tuning if you want to try that as an alternative. No special cables or drivers; just hook the box up to your LAN and install the HTTP tuning plugin.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...9&postcount=28

[71_Cuda]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I don't have an answer for you on the serial issue but your HR20 should support Ethernet tuning if you want to try that as an alternative. No special cables or drivers; just hook the box up to your LAN and install the HTTP tuning plugin.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...9&postcount=28

Thanks. I had read that thread and found it intriguing. It would mean running additional cat5 cables and expanding my ethernet hub, though. So I wanted to exhaust all possibilities to get the serial working again first.

[SWKerr]

I just went thru this over the weekend. I moved my Win7-64 system on a SSD drive which required a full reload of the OS. My USB cables don't have a signed driver so I had to do the test mode hack to get them working. Once the Com ports were working I thought I had it working as some point but it seemed to stop. I tried all sorts of things to get it working but nothing seemed to do a thing. I was also having an issue where sometimes The SageTV GUI would start before the Service Mode on reboot so something strange was going on in any event.

I ended up reinstalling SageTV again but still had issues getting it working. In the end I am not 100% certain exactly what fixed it but I will tell you what I did.

First make sure you have the Fast Channel change option selected in the detailed SageTV setup.

For me the DTVcontrol requires me to open it up as administrator to work. It seemed to work but I just tested by turning the DirecTV H20 STB on and off. I could tell Sage was using the ports because I had to turn the SageTV service mode off to get the DTVcontrol program to work.

What I did was turn off service mode and open up the SageTV GUI in administrator mode. I setup the Colossus tuner and serial control tuning again and it seemed to work. When I restarted the SageTV service mode it worked as well. This all seems odd but I think that is what fixed it. I don't recall having this much of an issue the first time I set it up but this time was a challenge.

Hope this helps.

[71_Cuda]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

First make sure you have the Fast Channel change option selected in the detailed SageTV setup.

Already tried that, and switching back and forth numerous times.

Originally Posted by SWKerr

For me the DTVcontrol requires me to open it up as administrator to work. It seemed to work but I just tested by turning the DirecTV H20 STB on and off. I could tell Sage was using the ports because I had to turn the SageTV service mode off to get the DTVcontrol program to work.

I'll try running as administrator to see if additional functions work, but I can't see why that would matter if some commands already work. I was excited when the DTVControl turned the box off and on - until I realized some other commands didn't work. If you get a chance could you try sending numbers from the number pad using DTVControl and let me know if that works? I'll try running it with the SageTV service running to make sure Sage is using the port.

Originally Posted by SWKerr

What I did was turn off service mode and open up the SageTV GUI in administrator mode. I setup the Colossus tuner and serial control tuning again and it seemed to work. When I restarted the SageTV service mode it worked as well. This all seems odd but I think that is what fixed it. I don't recall having this much of an issue the first time I set it up but this time was a challenge.

That is odd. If I understand correctly, when you set up the tuner and tuning with service mode off, your setting go into the Sage Properties file. When you turn the service mode back on, you're using the Sage Client Properties file. I guess it's behavior doesn't make sense to me, so it's worth a try. I'll try it this evening.

Thanks.

[Beefcake550]

It sounds like if DTV control does ANY commands, it's working. You might need to check the command set that is being used. Functions like power on seem to be universal, but others like "channel up" are not. also check your serial speed. 9600 worked great for me.

[71_Cuda]

Okay, well I've made a lot of progress on understanding the behaviors, but I still don't understand the problem.

Here's what I've done and found...

I tried running DirecTV Control while the sage service was running as SWKerr mentioned, and found that it worked - which meant that Sage was not using the port. Since I had so many problems installing the drivers initially which somehow resulted in a bunch of COM ports being tied up (it was assigning COM13) and I had just installed Win7, I decided to start over with a clean install.

Using what I had learned, everything went much cleaner this time installing the drivers and getting the COM port assignments. After confirming channel changing worked with DirecTV Control (although as before some functions didn't work), I proceeded to install Sage. After the initial set-up, I was delighted to find that channel changing worked. Unfortunately, however, that changed when I switched over to service mode. Channel changing isn't working in Service Mode - which is how I need to run. I also tried turning service mode off and setting up the source again (as SWKerr mentioned) with no luck. In fact, if I run Sage as administrator (with the service turned off), it won't change channels.

So my current state is:

• Channel Changing works with the service turned off, unless I run as Administrator
• Channel Changing DOES NOT WORK running with the service on.

I tried running DirecTV Control when the service was enabled and found that it worked, which means Sage was not using the port. I thought this was the key to the problem until I ran as administrator with the service off and found that sometimes it seems to be using the port and other times its not. Even when it seemed to be using the port it would not change the channels.

Any other ideas? I really need to be able to run in service mode.

[GKusnick]

I'm not a Win7 expert, but it sounds like a permissions issue to me. I'm guessing you installed the drivers and/or the DirecTV Control app while logged in as your normal user login, so only that user has permission to use them. Or something along those lines.

Try uninstalling the drivers and reinstall them while logged in as Administrator. Alternatively, configure the SageTV Service to log in with your normal login credentials, i.e. the ones that allow tuning to work. (Generally speaking, you want the service to run under some real user credentials anyway so it can access network resources.)

Either way, the idea is make sure that everything gets set up and configured using the same credentials the service will run under.

[71_Cuda]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I'm not a Win7 expert, but it sounds like a permissions issue to me. I'm guessing you installed the drivers and/or the DirecTV Control app while logged in as your normal user login, so only that user has permission to use them. Or something along those lines.

Try uninstalling the drivers and reinstall them while logged in as Administrator. Alternatively, configure the SageTV Service to log in with your normal login credentials, i.e. the ones that allow tuning to work. (Generally speaking, you want the service to run under some real user credentials anyway so it can access network resources.)

Either way, the idea is make sure that everything gets set up and configured using the same credentials the service will run under.

Thanks Greg. I think you might be onto something there. That gives me a whole host of things to try this evening. I'll report back what I find.

[71_Cuda]

Well that wasn't successful, either. I tried lots of things with installing and running as administrator, with no positive impact.

I'm migrating from XP, so I'm still not all that familiar with the nuances of the Vista and 7 user accounts and administrator set-up. It turns out there was only one user account active on the machine - my account - which was designated as administrator. So as far as I can tell, I was logged in as administrator during all phases of installation and running tests. So it doesn't make sense to me that (with service off) channel changing doesn't work if I start Sage with "Run as Administrator" but works otherwise. Anyway, I tried uninstalling the USB-serial drivers and reinstalled using "Run as Administrator". I tried setting up login credentials including password (which I didn't have) and configured the Sage service to use the credentials. No matter what I tried, I still get the same behavior - running normal with no service the channels change, running as administrator or running with the service on the channels don't change.

Out of spit, I decided to try the EXEMultiTunerPlugin solution laid out here. I used to use this solution when I needed my DirecTV boxes to tune my local channels (with dashes). But after tuning got flaky for a while and I added an additional dual tuner DTV PCI card to tune locals, I switched back to the native Sage DirecTV Serial control solution. Anyway, the EXEMultiTunerPlugin solution seems to be working - changing channels in service mode - at least with my very limited testing so far. It's a bit slower and more complex than the native solution. So I still would like to get that working, if anyone else has ideas of what I could try.

[Jesse]

Hi,

First off, please keep us updated. I am a D* user myself, and I appreciate your sharing what you learn.

My own recent experience with a 64 bit OS was nothing but hardware/driver brain damage. I have moved back to a 32 bit OS, and the sailing has been much smoother.

One suggestion: disable UAC

Jesse