HDHomeRun (HDHR) Prime + SageDCT

[ranger]

Originally Posted by danOO00

I can install SageDCT, but when I try to run the configureSageDCT.exe, I get an error with an Empty dialog box, and just an '!' in a triangle. Not very helpful

Does anyone know how to get around this? I really dont want to nuke the box if it can be avoided. I did reinstall sage/HDHR, but no joy.

I'll ask a really basic question, but I always start simple and move to the more complex. This application needs to run as administrator. Try right clicking and select "run as administrator".

Other than that it sounds like you may not have some required environment installed. If this doesn't work, post a graphic of the dialog. Maybe someone has seen it in reference to another app.

[danOO00]

Thanks for the reply- I did install/execute as administrator with no luck.

here is a screenshot of the dialog box at the center with other windows to demo that it is working in HDHR setup.

[ranger]

You might want to investigate updating / repairing your .NET installation.

[danOO00]

Thanks, I tried the .net route as well with no luck, but I bit the bullet and rebuilt the box. All is well again in my Sage world for now.

Once I got it working I upgraded my Comcast service from Basic to 'digital economy' package for about $15 additional per month- Now my Internet + TV is ~$100.. I guess my cheap ass can live with that . I have a few more channels now, so hopefully I can keep this configuration for the long haul.

[waynedunham]

My attempts to get Cable Card working with my 2 HDHR Primes has been a tour in HELL!!!

I stopped by the local Comcash Office and picked up 2 cable cards. Neither worked out of the box calling the "Activation" line. One would pair and get an OOB lock, but was awaiting activation. The 2nd CC in HDHR Prime #2 would get nothing. The HDHR Setup log file would acknowledge that a card was installed, but nothing else, no pairing, nothing on the Status screen about the CC Serial #, ID #,s etc.

The Level 2 Comcash tek support # got me someone who actually knew what they were doing, plus knew other people who knew even more. This got the first CC FINALLY activated. I could scan for the lineup in HDHR Setup as well as view all the copy freely channels in HDHR Setup/QuickView.
I tried using the "instructions" linked to a few messages back and tried both the loopback and non-loopback settings. Neither worked in SageTV. Both would yield a spinning circle for about 45 seconds (with a few seconds of video/audio showing) to a minute and then failure. The DCT logs showed the file never starting.
I then tried adding the actual path into the replace path (or whatever it was called) in SageDCT. This made no difference, still the file was never started. (path/filename was there, but never got past a 0 byte file)

Having messed with it over several hours now with countless reboots, I decided to try and get the HDHR Prime that was activated working with Windows Media Center on my main computer. After installing the cable card helper app in the Extras Gallery it started working fine.
I let that work in WMC for several days setting up enough of my Sage Favorites as a "record series" in WMC to keep it busy.
The recordings went flawlessly over several days, but I must say that using WMC after SageTV (and mine is relatively stock without a lot of add ons) would be like going from a top of the line smartphone (SageTV) to a first generation Palm Pilot (WMC). How can people use this piece of crap? Where is my pre-padding in series recording? Pretty useless to miss the first 20-30 seconds of every show. It is the same right now on my SageTV Server, on certain networks all their shows start around -0:25 seconds. Without my default pre-padding I would miss the beginnings on SageTV too, but at least I have that option.
Just so many things missing from WMC in comparison to SageTV.

Anyway, Friday I decided to give it another go with SageDCT and SageTV since I now knew that the HDHR Prime and CC were working fine.
Once again I followed those directions trying both loopback and non loopback configurations. One netted me the same spinning circle/45 second failure as before and the other was WORSE, with a spinning circle for 10-15 seconds no just about any menu change. Again with SageTV service shutdowns and reboots with each attempt.
I was just about to give up when miraculously the single tuner I was trying to set up started working. I tried a recording and IT WORKED!!!
So I added the other 2 tuners and those also worked. So I shut down SageTv service and rebooted the computer. They still worked!!
So I've had it running with the 3 HDHR Prime tuners in addition to my 2 HDPVR/STB's over the last couple days and it seems to be working fine. Shows are recording and viewable in real time, Comskip is working fine (not waiting to file to be finished). HUZZAHH!!!!!

I am not sure which roll of the dice that the random Gods were pleased by, nor if it was just letting the configuration wander around inside my computer long enough to find its way, or what caused it all to start working. I swear that the configuration I'm using now is one of the EXACT same ones that failed before.

So tomorrow morning I'll head back to the Comcash office and exchange YET ANOTHER cable card in hopes of getting a good one. This will be failed card #3 going back. This one was the worst of them all. It won't even pass its own internal self test and throws a "fatal" error on the Status screen.
Their "tech support" is virtually useless. The only phrase they know is "I'll send an activation signal, wait 45 minutes and try it". Other than that all they do is verify the serial#, data id, etc.
Level 2 tech support is marginally better. One great guy helped me out and got the first one working. He even took the extra time to re-pair it with the 2nd HDHR Prime just to prove that it wasn't an HDHR Prime problem causing that one to never activate.
That plus their phone system is horrible. Almost all of their support people are on horrible audio equipment. Barely audible with my phones volume all the way up as well as being quite garbled. Made for EXTREMELY frustrating calls. If there were another option for TV service I already would have gone there. <sigh>

[phelme]

Is anyone getting a clean recording of Breaking Bad on their PRIME/SageDCT/VLC setup? AMC's copy flags (for me through Comcast) give issues with playback under both the client and HD300. The client eventually can play it, but it takes about 45 seconds to open the file (I imagine it's seeking for the PID). the HD300 chokes or maybe I'm not waiting long enough for it to open .

[jlmdxtv]

Originally Posted by phelme

Is anyone getting a clean recording of Breaking Bad on their PRIME/SageDCT/VLC setup? AMC's copy flags (for me through Comcast) give issues with playback under both the client and HD300. The client eventually can play it, but it takes about 45 seconds to open the file (I imagine it's seeking for the PID). the HD300 chokes or maybe I'm not waiting long enough for it to open .

Every once and while the Prime captures videos that are slightly "off" - kind of like a very light MacroVision was applied (image gets ~20% darker and back to normal again). When that happens I play them in VLC and they play perfectly clean. I using a client PC / Comcast. Breaking Bad was messed up like this, but it's not too common - maybe 1 in 30 recordings.

Unlike you, I don't have to wait before the playback begins.

john

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by phelme

Is anyone getting a clean recording of Breaking Bad on their PRIME/SageDCT/VLC setup? AMC's copy flags (for me through Comcast) give issues with playback under both the client and HD300. The client eventually can play it, but it takes about 45 seconds to open the file (I imagine it's seeking for the PID). the HD300 chokes or maybe I'm not waiting long enough for it to open .

My episode recorded by HDHR Prime/SageDCT on Comcast was fine. Recorded the first airing (HD channel) of the season premier.

[waynedunham]

Postscript to my Comcast Cable Card woes. After 1 activated card and 5 "failed" cards I finally bit the bullet and relented to Comcast's insistence that I needed a tech call to my home to find the problem.

The tech showed up about 11am, about 10 minutes AFTER Comcast called me to say the tech was delayed and wouldn't be able to make his 9-11am window and would be able to get to my home by 11:30a-12p.

He was a very good person to work with, pleasant and reasonably knowledgeable. He had never seen, nor heard of the HDHR Prime, so I had to fill him in on some of the workings of the device.

He ran some line level checks at the Cable Modem and found the internet side was almost out of bounds high on the signal level. No effect on my cable TV, and my internet was also working fine. He had to have a repair crew come out to adjust an amp on my node.
Like all the Comcast people who've seen my infeed area he was shaking his head at the 8 way cable Tv amp wired to outlets in every room, the 24 port switch and patch panel running network to all my rooms.(2 behind the TV in the living room, one by the couch, 3 in the bedroom, and 4 in the computer room), and the no longer used phone junction running phone lines to all my rooms as well. I use an Ooma VOIP and cordless phone system for my phone now.
Unlike previous 'techs' he didn't immediately say "This all has to go before I can work on your problem". He did a couple tests to show that the equipment was working fine and not causing any communication problem. (I knew this already)

Now to getting the CC's working properly. I moved the HDHR Primes to the living room for easier access and also had my laptop set up with the HDHR software.
I showed him the status screens and that the activated (more on this in a bit) card could view all my channels, but nothing on the other card/HDHR Prime.

He called someone in "advanced" tech support and he parroted the Serial #, and data/device id's that I had told to tech support over the phone well over a dozen times.
The person he was talking to on the phone looked at the info for the serial #'s, pairing etc on my cards and quickly noticed that their info had the card that wouldn't activate pointing to the wrong "server" on their end.
This is the same problem that many people had troubles with from my research, and also something I had talked to the phone techs about.

Now the "working" card worked fine in Sage/SageDCT as well as the HDHR Prime utilities, but was showing "Activation: None". This was due to the fact that with one of the phone techs I had taken the working/activated card out of the first unit to verify that my repeated troubles weren't with the 2nd HDHR Prime and not their cards. Somewhere in that process either some pairing info didn't get changed, or like the other one was pointing to the wrong server.
So the tech was here about 45 minutes, but it only took about 10 minutes of that time to work on and get both cards passing all the tests in the HDHR Prime/Cable Card setup and showing all my channels.

As I suspected there really wasn't any *need* for a tech to come out. If I had just been given the opportunity to work with "Advanced" tech support we probably could have achieved the same results in a similar amount of time.
I didn't ask, but got the impression that the advanced tech he called was above the level 2 tech support that I could get access to.

Now I'd like to go back to the Plainville CT Comcast office and have a few words with the one guy who insisted that it was something that *I* was doing wrong, causing the cards to not activate. I probably won't, but sure would like to give him a few words about his smug, bad attitude to a customer. Nahhh, my blood pressure will probably be better if I don't try that. BTW, all the other folks I talked to at that Comcast office were very easy to work with, just that one a-hole.

[MattHelm]

Wayne,
You should post this at the DSLReports for Comcast. There are real Comcast techs there, and they sometimes even admit that things are their fault, and sometimes even give feedback to the stupid things the phone people do, and get them corrected.

I had and issue with two different cable boxes (different makes) that the phone guy INSISTED were messed up. I had a damaged wire to the house! Not sure how much the phone guys cost them, as I had inside coverage at the time.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Wayne,
You should post this at the DSLReports for Comcast. There are real Comcast techs there, and they sometimes even admit that things are their fault, and sometimes even give feedback to the stupid things the phone people do, and get them corrected.

I had and issue with two different cable boxes (different makes) that the phone guy INSISTED were messed up. I had a damaged wire to the house! Not sure how much the phone guys cost them, as I had inside coverage at the time.

I hear you. I've had issues in the past with Comcast phone support. I own my cable modem and a couple years ago I suddenly had no internet while Cable Tv was fine. I was pretty sure it wasn't my Modem, but the phone guy INSISTED my modem was bad. So I went to an electronics store and bought a new Cable Modem AFTER making sure that I could return it for a full refund.
Took it home and hooked it up. EXACT same symptoms. So they send a tech out and sure enough the internet side of the signal was hosed. A fix somewhere in hardware on the poles and internet was back.
So I returned the cable modem and put my old one back on the line.

Fast forward about 6 months and I noticed on my bill that they were suddenly charging me for a rental modem. So I called them up and the person on the line was actually helpful and traced it back to when it got switched. Sure enough some ham-fisted idiot had checked the rental modem box during the double switch to the new modem and setting it back to my old modem after they fixed the line problem. They refunded the $$.

[waynedunham]

And now the HDHR Primes are dead in SageDCT/SageTV again.

I'm not sure what happened, there was a recording from 2-3am on one of the HDHR Prime tuners that was fine, but when it tried to record around 8am it wouldn't work any more.

So now when I try to do a test from the SageDCT config I get this......

2013/08/16 18:53:12.75 : Error ProcessPackets: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted
2013/08/16 18:53:15.39 : Error ProcessPackets: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted
2013/08/16 18:53:18.25 : Error ProcessPackets: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted
2013/08/16 18:53:20.68 : Error ProcessPackets: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted
2013/08/16 18:53:23.48 : Error ProcessPackets: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted
2013/08/16 18:53:25.92 : Error ProcessPackets: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted
2013/08/16 18:53:28.60 : Error ProcessPackets: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted


Any ideas? I checked and all the tuners work fine in Windows Media Center on another machine, as well as working in the HDHR Prime utilities/quickTv.

[gplasky]

Check your .properties file and make sure you don't have your Prime tuner encoders in there twice.

Gerry

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Check your .properties file and make sure you don't have your Prime tuner encoders in there twice.

Gerry

No dupes in the mmc/encoders section. A single entry for each HDHR Prime tuner, and I've checked and verified that the ports are set in the Windows Firewall exceptions.

In looking through the file I do see in the seeker/last channel section dupes for all my tuners, past and present.

One thing that is kind of a PITA is that every time you run SageDCT config and generate an assignments file it has the tuners using different ports, so you have to go into Windows Firewall and edit the entries for each tuner.

[gplasky]

You should only need to config SageDCT once. No reason to do it again. Because as you see they change each time.

Gerry

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by gplasky

You should only need to config SageDCT once. No reason to do it again. Because as you see they change each time.

Gerry

yeah, but when you can't get it working and have to keep going back in trying different options (local, or not, etc) adding in the 2nd HDHR Prime once that got activated, you don't really have a choice.

I have no idea what is wrong, but it still will not work. I started with a fresh sage.properites by renaming that and the autobackup. No difference.
I uninstalled SageDCT and stripped every reference to it out of the registry, deleted all its directories, removed all the firewall exceptions for SageDCT and the tuners, and then re-installed SageDCT to start over. Same thing.

All tuners work fine in WMC as well as the HDHR utilities. However in the SageDCT logs it never starts a file (keep getting 0 bytes on the filesize requests) and it also shows those packet conflict errors from my previous message.

All was working fine for about a week up until Friday somewhere between 3am (end of last good recording on an HDHR Prime tuner) and 8am when the next one tried to start.

I haven't seen it listed anywhere but does it make a difference what you have set as the application in HDHR Setup? I've tried both SageTV and WMC but neither made any difference. Sure wish there were a *complete* step by step for setting this all up in SageTv telling what each option is for and why you do or don't want it. <sigh>

I'm stumped. For now I guess I'll have to give at least one of the HDHR Primes to WMC (where is the vomit emoticon?) so I don't miss any recordings.

[phelme]

Quick poll, what versions of the PRIME firmware are people running?

Yesterday one recording was a runaway and kept going after it should have stopped, getting close to filling up the hard drive. So I thought maybe it's time to look into an upgrade.

I've been steering clear of upgrading I guess because SiliconDust has abandoned XP users on the software side. I'm running some beta from last November that has been mostly stable.

[jlmdxtv]

Originally Posted by phelme

Quick poll, what versions of the PRIME firmware are people running?

20130708 Beta 1 - OS Windows 8 Pro - works like a champ.

[flavius]

Whatever the version was when the Prime first came out - on Windows 7. Every once in a blue moon I have to reboot it.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jlmdxtv

20130708 Beta 1 - OS Windows 8 Pro - works like a champ.

Same Here