HDHomeRun (HDHR) Prime + SageDCT

[sflamm]

There have been reports that the windows firewall needs to be enabled and have exceptions for the appropriate ports... perhaps that is the issue.

I have win2003 as well and went through a similar procedure to get ssdp and upnp services installed... once they were installed the setup/install went just like it should

I tried both enabling the Firewall/ICS and checking the exception for upnp and disabling the firewall. The discovery only seemed to happen with the firewall off.

what firewall exceptions would you put in place? should i have added an exception for the sagedct process itself? Once it is configured I understand if you keep the firewall up you would need to place holes for each of the tuners on the static ip : port of the tuners but not sure what else I would need?

I also noticed that the HDHR3 configuration program seems to warn me that it is not receiving responses to SSDP discovery packets (not particular to this machine - tried it on another with same result). Not clear on why that isnt happening as my router/switch (Juniper) has IGMP snoop enabled and I do not believe I need anything special to pass IGMP traffic. Any one have thoughts/ideas on that?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by FMAX

Sparhawk6, babgvant.... Just checking, does using vlc for video rendering live tv work only on client, not on extender?

VLC is used to remux the TS, so it should fix demuxer issues universally.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Does the syntax substitute everything before the recorded file name?

Yes. The file name is extracted and appended to whatever you enter.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by sflamm

what firewall exceptions would you put in place? should i have added an exception for the sagedct process itself? Once it is configured I understand if you keep the firewall up you would need to place holes for each of the tuners on the static ip : port of the tuners but not sure what else I would need?

I added exceptions for the upnp framework, the sagedct.exe process and the udp port for each tuner (and i guess i should change the scope so its only the hdhr that the ports are open for)

[Sparhawk6]

Originally Posted by FMAX

Sparhawk6, babgvant.... Just checking, does using vlc for video rendering live tv work only on client, not on extender? Or, my hope is that this is the fix for all my No Signal woes and it works on all extenders as well? I'm assuming Sage DCT uses VLC to render to SageTV in which it can be seen thru the server on all extenders...
Thus the extra step is the delay. Am I correct?

The fix works on both the server and the extender (my HD200).

[FMAX]

One more Question....dumb one...
VLC remux the TS so what I record will also playback, right.

I upgraded to VLC 2.0.3 smoother channel changing, etc.
Changes alot faster than my UIRT does!!!

Wohoo Now i don't remember all the channels I had problems with...

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by FMAX

VLC remux the TS so what I record will also playback, right.

Yep. It can also remux the MPEG-TS -> MPEG-PS for those who prefer .mpg files.

[sflamm]

Thought this might help someone.

Was experiencing the following issue:

Installed my HDHR3. It works just fine. However, it continues to give me this warning about UPnP:

http://www.silicondust.com/support/h..._unicast_recv/

Turns out the problem has nothing to do with the firewall settings or upnp settings.

The issue was the IGMP snoop functionality on the router has some sort of bug (tried two different brand routers - both had the issue). Once I turned off the IGMP snoop everything worked perfectly. On a small or home network there really is not much need for snoop since there should not be a tremendous amount of traffic. Turn of your IGMP snoop if you have similar issues.

[sflamm]

I am now formulating a hypothesis that it isnt an IGMP bug, but rather that the smart switches only support IGMPv2 and the HDHR Prime is using IGMPv3. When the switches see the IGMPv3 they drop the packets because it has no appropriate implementation.

Question is, why wouldnt the HDHR Prime OS use IGMPv2 for maximum backward compatibility with existing devices?

[sflamm]

Yep. It can also remux the MPEG-TS -> MPEG-PS for those who prefer .mpg files.

Confused - I thought the whole reason to use VLC was that the splitter inside SageTV was having difficulty with the .ts (transport stream which is mpeg-ts) and that the solutions was to remux to a program stream (.mpg).
This is a lossless conversion since both use MPEG2)

Is that not correct?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Confused - I thought the whole reason to use VLC was that the splitter inside SageTV was having difficulty with the .ts (transport stream which is mpeg-ts) and that the solutions was to remux to a program stream (.mpeg).

Is that not correct?

The SageTV demuxer is having trouble identifying the stream PIDs in the unmodified TS stream from the MSO. VLC receives that stream and remuxes it into MPEG-TS (if the requested file extension is .ts) or MPEG-PS (if the requested file extension is .mpg). In either case the streams are remuxed with new PIDs.

[sflamm]

Or is VLC just remuxing the .ts into a new .ts that the SageTV splitter/demuxer can understand?

[sflamm]

The SageTV demuxer is having trouble identifying the stream PIDs in the unmodified TS stream from the MSO. VLC receives that stream and remuxes it into MPEG-TS (if the requested file extension is .ts) or MPEG-PS (if the requested file extension is .mpg). In either case the streams are remuxed with new PIDs.

Got it - thanks.

Out of curiosity, are you doing that by streaming the unmodified TS to a separate running VLC process invoked with the right command line parameters? Or is it a tighter integration?

I assume the remuxing is extremely fast since it is simply rewriting the transport layer - is the speed overhead just the cost of bringing up the new process?

[sflamm]

I have clients so to eliminate UNC I would have to go to mapped drives in all my clients to use comskip etc...

If I do not use mapped drives then the server would have to stream HD to all my clients and that just adds to the load... on the server.

How does a mapped drive help? The clients still need to read the stream from the server which create the same bandwidth consumption on the NIC.

The 'replace option' made sense because there is no need to put data on the virtual 'localhost' stack instead of writing it directly to disk. But that does not require any changes to UNC paths.

What am I missing?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by sflamm

How does a mapped drive help? The clients still need to read the stream from the server which create the same bandwidth consumption on the NIC.

The 'replace option' made sense because there is no need to put data on the virtual 'localhost' stack instead of writing it directly to disk. But that does not require any changes to UNC paths.

What am I missing?

I am not sure who you are directing that question at ... but I went from UNC to NONUNC and had to map the drives to my client to use COMSKIP and avoid the load of the SAGETVSERVICE having to stream the file. Now my usage went from over 20% to 2 % recording 3 streams. If you do not map the drives in your client you will see higher CPU usage in SAGETVSERVICE when playing a file in the client.

[sflamm]

I went from UNC to NONUNC and had to map the drives to my client to use COMSKIP and avoid the load of the SAGETVSERVICE having to stream the file. Now my usage went from over 20% to 2 % recording 3 streams.

Maybe I am missing something. Why would you need a mapped drive at all for comskip? Run comskip/showanalyzer on the same machine that your storage is on and it is all local disk I/O. The output is the .xml file or .edl file and that is all the client needs to skip commercials. Are you running commercial skipping in a different location to avoid CPU cycles on the server? If so that is trading off local CPU for local network bandwidth usage... dont see a big value gain there.

In either case, SageTVService does not stream anything for commercial skipping. And all the SageTV clients play video recorded or live by directly reading the video file from the network location independently of the server whether it is mapped or UNC. There is no SageTV Server involvement at all.

SageTVService barely uses any CPU for recording. All it is doing is writing the stream - it doesnt transcode or anything CPU intensive. Even at 20% that is almost no load on your server... why would you be avoiding that?
And in the case of SageDCT all the SageTVService does is request SageDCT to record the show to a specific path mapped or UNC -- the writing is done directly by SageDCT with no SageTVService involvment at all.

Let me know what I am missing.

On a separate note, I used to previously run comskip (contributor version) - but it was way way slower at analyzing. Any thoughts on how fast it is lately in comparision? And accuracy?

[nyplayer]

The mapped drives are in my clients not on the local server. If you are using local storage and not UNC paths to record on. ..You have to map the drives on the clients.

This also made it easier to move to my new server. I simply had to move the drives over and go into computer management give the drives the appropriate drive letters... no need to worry about sharing folders etc..

For example.

I record to
M:\SAGEM
N:\SAGEN
O:\SAGEO
P:\SAGEP

On my clients i mapped the drives like this.

net use M: \\SAGESERVER\M$ /PERSISTENT:YES
net use N: \\SAGESERVER\N$ /PERSISTENT:YES
net use O: \\SAGESERVER\O$ /PERSISTENT:YES
net use P: \\SAGESERVER\P$ /PERSISTENT:YES


I find comskip fast and pretty accurate. I run it on the Server while the recordings are going on. That is 1 more advantage to using local drives instead of UNC Comskip runs faster.

I guess you are thinking just about SAGEDCT but I also have other tuners 4 HDHOMERUNS on the same switch... and I also run handbrake on some recordings so in the event I was using UNC all these would put and extra load on the NIC.

[sflamm]

The mapped drives are in my clients not on the local server. If you are using local storage and not UNC paths to record on. ..You have to map the drives on the clients.

This also made it easier to move to my new server. I simply had to move the drives over and go into computer management give the drives the appropriate drive letters... no need to worry about sharing folders etc..

Understood. But that is actually a much bigger maintenance nightmare as each client has to have the mapping put in... a UNC path is universal and requires no setup other than enabling the sharing of a folder on the server (a couple easy clicks). Install SageTVClient anywhere or use an extender and you are done.

If you're writing to a UNC, either use the replace paths feature in SageDCT or use local drive targets in SageTV.

Btw, I went back and check what Babgvant wrote (above). His advice is the same as mine. You need either the re-write OR the local mappings but obviously not both. The reason is that the path that is sent by SageTV server to SageDCT is a local path (mapped or rewritten). That avoids the loopback traffic. Otherwise there is absolutely no difference to the CPU cycles of the SageTVService.

I find comskip fast and pretty accurate. I run it on the Server while the recordings are going on. That is 1 more advantage to using local drives instead of UNC Comskip runs faster.

Good to know on the speed/accuracy. The local drive mappings however do not help Comskip at all. You can specify the directory Comskip uses to look for shows in the configuration file. That is 100% independent from what SageTV is using. I have always used that technique. (the key being to have a directory watcher run the Comskip process) I run UNC paths for what SageTV considers source media (video, music, etc) and ShowAnalyzer/Comskip has always operated locally and look at the directory locally regardless

I guess you are thinking just about SAGEDCT but I also have other tuners 4 HDHOMERUNS on the same switch... and I also run handbrake on some recordings so in the event I was using UNC all these would put and extra load on the NIC.

I run Prime, Ceton (dedicated box w/ SageDCT -- essentially an expensive Prime built before Prime existed), 2 HDHR for clearQAM (not much use any more), 2 x HD-PVR (to get those shows that are not copy freely). In all cases the UNC paths work great and do not put any additional load at all. Mapping a drive still requires the same network bandwidth on your NIC as a UNC (the data has to move regardless).

[sflamm]

Btw, when you write to \\server\directory and the \\server is the local machine Windows is smart enough to do direct I/O. It doesnt use the network stack at all.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Btw, when you write to \\server\directory and the \\server is the local machine Windows is smart enough to do direct I/O. It doesnt use the network stack at all.

Not quite true We did some testing a while back. Without using the loopback adapter and when we powered of our routers The Sage Server said it had no available space to write to. Even though the share where on the local server.

See This Thread.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18923

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...5&postcount=16