Channel Changing help via firewire on remote box / recording locally

[perfessor101]

Hello

I'm trying not to reinstall SageTV as I don't have a weekend to spare currently and one of my old cable boxes are dying. I know being lazy ...

On my SageTV box I'm running Windows 7 64bit

I have Windows XP 32bit running on a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 via ESXi 5.0 update 1 using PCIe Passthrough for the onboard firewire port.

Channel changing works perfectly ... but half the channels in my cable lineup won't record via firewire. (codec undefined, Media Info, mplayer, vlc and VideoRedo can't identify the file contents)

so currently "I need" to use firewire on a remote virtual machine to change channels

this command works : (kinda slow ... but works for now)
c:\testing\psexec.exe \\firewiretuner "c:\Program Files\Timmmoore\MCE 2005 STB Controller\channel.exe" -v -n fa14fafeef1e070 210

I can pass the name and channel to a batch file and it still works.

I was curious how I could get this into SageTV ?

or conversely is there a way to get SageGraphRecorder to change the channels on a remote computer and record locally on an HD-PVR2 ?

Thanks for your time,
Bobby

[perfessor101]

I put in the following registry keys in various iterations
What would be the right one for Windows 7-64bit?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sage\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SageTV\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sage\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SageTV\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin

How would I find the correct location of the key?

I used these values for the registry key ... and a few others ... does anyone know where the quotes go? or not go?

"command"="c:\testing\fwchanger.bat %DEVICE% %CHANNEL%"
command="c:\testing\fwchanger.bat %DEVICE% %CHANNEL%"
"command"="c:\testing\fwchanger.bat" %DEVICE% %CHANNEL%
command="c:\testing\fwchanger.bat" %DEVICE% %CHANNEL%

it doesn't look like EXEMultiTuner is doing anything


fwchanger.bat consists of

echo %1 %2 >>c:\testing\fwchanger.txt
c:\testing\psexec.exe \\firewire1 "c:\testing\sagechanger.exe" -p -n %1 -c %2

both of these commands work from the command line

c:\testing\psexec.exe \\firewire1 "c:\Program Files\Timmmoore\MCE 2005 STB Controller\channel.exe" -n af41afeffee1700 %1
c:\testing\psexec.exe \\firewire1 "c:\testing\sagechanger.exe" -p -n af41afeffee1700 -c %2

in the C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\EXEMultiTunerPlugin directory I have the following ir file
af41afeffee1700.ir

containing the line "af41afeffee1700 38000 400 3"

as Opus4 suggested I created the ir stubfiles before trying to add the HDPVR2 as a tuner.

the listed tuning device is :EXEMultiTunerPlugin af41afeffee1700

When I attempt to tune a channel I get no reaction from the cable box and I can't find a log file specific to the EXEMultiTuner plugin or channel changes ...

How would I troubleshoot this further?

Firewire is set up, and both tuning and recording work from within the virtual machine, but I am missing too many channels to record directly from the virtual machine so currently I would just like to use it for channel changes.

Thanks for your time,
Bobby

[perfessor101]

Windows 7-64bit Registry Key

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

EXEMultiTunerPlugin.reg contains

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin]
"command"="\"c:\\testing\\fwchanger.bat\" %DEVICE% %CHANNEL%"

fwchanger.bat consists of

c:\testing\psexec.exe \\firewire1 "c:\testing\sagechanger.exe" -p -n %1 -c %2

in the C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\EXEMultiTunerPlugin directory I have the following ir file
af41afeffee1700.ir

containing the lines (with a carriage return after making the file two lines long)

af41afeffee1700 38000 400 3

the listed tuning device is :EXEMultiTunerPlugin af41afeffee1700

So now I am changing channels on two DCT-6200's via firewire through a Windows XP-32bit Virtual Machine (on ESXi 5.0 update 1) and recording on two HD-PVR2-Gaming Edition Capture thingys


I had fun finding where the registry key went, what the format of the command key was, and then that the ir file needed multiple lines ... but eventually ...

Thanks to all who went before me,

Bobby

[sflamm]

Would be better to setup the whole configuration as a SageTV Network Tuner. See the thread on that...

[perfessor101]

I had SageTV running in a VM, with network firewire recorders in another VM and if I didn't loose most of the channels on the cablebox (they recently moved 40 channels to encrypted digital) I would have spent more time on that route. Most of the channels I watch were within those forty.
Before trying virtualization, those tuners ran in a computer as network encoders which used about $15 a month in electricity
I don't want two home theater computers and an unRaid system running ... I'd like to eliminate computers not multiply them.

I virtualized my desktop (vga passthrough) with 3/4 of the resources of the ESXi system and am using 1/4 of that system as a VM to do the channel changes (I could probably bring that down to 1/8 of the resources)

When lifes demands lessen then I will have the time to devote to rebuilding and testing a new SageTV server.

At that time I will probably still have to set up most of the cable boxes recording through a HD-PVR as all forty of those converted channels come up as codec undefined under mplayer, VLC and MediaInfo as well as Gspot.

Channel Changing for me only it looks like unless my Cable Provider opens those channels up for recording,
Bobby

[sflamm]

just virtualize the machine running as a sagetv network encoder - still run on esx with fewer resources and much better setup functionally.

[perfessor101]

but I loose 40 of the best channels that way ... because of undefined codec

[sflamm]

but I loose 40 of the best channels that way ... because of undefined codec

huh? (am I missing something?)

The capture is done by the hdpvr which is a usb device. Attach to a usb card and pass through the usb card to the VM. the capture is h264 - load an appropriate codec.

the codec has nothing to do with running sagetv as a network encoder...

[perfessor101]

Sorry ... I must have misunderstood too ...

if I record via firewire from the DCT-6200boxes (as network tuners) I loose channels 29-58, 68 and 90 (ok 32 channels but shaw said I would loose 40) ... which is where the cable company had most of the channels with the highest viewership.
It looks like they encrypted those channels with "no copy"?

Currently I am using sagechanger with the timm moore drivers to change the channels on these cable boxes via a virtual machine with a firewire port passed into a Windows XP 32bit virtual machine ... and I am recording from these boxes with USB HD-PVR2 Gaming Editions connected directly to my SageTV Server.

When I have a free weekend I'll reinstall the Windows 7 32/64bit package I preordered as 32 bit. Then I can channel change from the HTPC directly.

Bobby

[sflamm]

if I record via firewire from the DCT-6200boxes (as network tuners) I loose channels 29-58, 68 and 90 (ok 32 channels but shaw said I would loose 40) ... which is where the cable company had most of the channels with the highest viewership.
It looks like they encrypted those channels with "no copy"?

This is not an issue with "no copy". The problem is the channels are 5C encrypted and therefore simply cannot be recorded via firewire

Currently I am using sagechanger with the timm moore drivers to change the channels on these cable boxes via a virtual machine with a firewire port passed into a Windows XP 32bit virtual machine ... and I am recording from these boxes with USB HD-PVR2 Gaming Editions connected directly to my SageTV Server.

What I am saying is rather than have a convoluted approach where the VM is doing the channel changing and the separate server is doing the recording with the HDPVRs simply put the HDPVRs into the same VM and configure the VM as SageTV network encoder so it can provide what will look like a local tuner to your SageTV server (without anything being local)