Cable Card?

[drewg]

So, I'm relocating to the bay area and will be living in a rental for a year. Since its just a rental, I don't want to go through the trouble of setting up a roof or an attic antenna, and the indoor situation looks rather bleak according to antennaweb. To top it off, Comcast is rumoured to start encrypting locals any time now.

So, in order to keep Sage going, I was wondering what my options are to record from Cable Card. Has anybody gotten MythTV working as a network recorder?

Failing that, I do have a windows sage license, and I guess my best bet is to run a Sage server + Sage DCT in a windows VM. I'm assuming that if I record into an import directory for my Linux server, it will be able to read the metadata written by the windows Sage server, and recordings will show up with all the usual metadata. I suppose I could switch to the Windows server in a VM as the primary server my extenders connect to, but it seems like it could be really inefficient..

Thanks,

Drew

[sic0048]

You need to look at the cable card tuners as well as the SageDCT program which is required for Sage to be able to recognize the cable card tuners.

Once the stream is recorded, you can play back the files just as any other recording. I play back HD quality recordings from a cable card tuner using HD-100 extenders without any issues or drop in quality.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by sic0048

You need to look at the cable card tuners as well as the SageDCT program which is required for Sage to be able to recognize the cable card tuners.

Once the stream is recorded, you can play back the files just as any other recording. I play back HD quality recordings from a cable card tuner using HD-100 extenders without any issues or drop in quality.

Yes, of course, I know all that. What I was specifically asking was whether anybody had success running cable card on linux, under a linux SageTV server, without having to run a windows SageTV server in a VM.

Thanks,

Drew

[gplasky]

I haven't. But you should only have to run SageDCT on a Windows VM. I would think the Sage server can remain Linux.

Gerry

[firenice]

Might want to keep in mind that encrypted channels are not the problem with a cacble card tuners it is the copy-once protected channels that are. Some cable markets flag all thier channels copy-once except locals. If this is the case then you will be limited.

Not saying I have an answer but copy-once recordings can only be played back from the source that copied them to begin with.

Good luck though and let us know how it turns out.

[MrD]

Originally Posted by gplasky

I haven't. But you should only have to run SageDCT on a Windows VM. I would think the Sage server can remain Linux.

Gerry

thats exactly how i run my setup now. i run the cable card on an atom server. could not get passthrough working on esxi.

[checkbin]

Can Mr D, or someone, else, you tell me more about a Linux SageTV setup with SageDCT on a Windows VM? I too have set up a Linux (CentOS 5) SageTV server and have it up and running with an HD Homerun (not Prime). Tuning/recording my local non encrypted channels through it is working. I'm now trying to set up an HDHomerun prime using DCT on a Windows 7 64 bit VM. Not sure how to proceed next though to get the Linux server so see the Prime. Is SageDCT the only thing I should need on the Windows VM? How do I configure the recording directories so the SageTV servers sees the SageDCT/Prime output? I'd appreciate any feedback on how this is done. Thank you.

[MrD]

I use Window 7 64 Ultimate because I use NFS (and only Ultimate has NFS support grrrrrr)

Using OmniOS / Nappit I created a 750GB nfs share for a recording filesystem.

On the SageTV linux server I mount the recording filesystem using nfs on /export/pvr/sagetv and tell Sage to use that as a recording directory.

On the Windows server I use "mklink /d" to create a directory link to the same nfs filesystem at c:\export\pvr\sagetv. c:\export\pvr is a regular path "sagetv" is the nfs link.

Both servers see the same filesystem using the same directory path!

When SageTV tells SageDCT to record it gives the filepath /export/pvr/sagetv/someshow.ext which gets recorded at c:\export\pvr\sagetv\someshow.ext

I do *NOT* use "replacepath" in the SageDCT config

[checkbin]

Thanks for the quick reply MrD. So if I understand correctly, the path on both systems needs to be exactly the same for SageDCT to work. Is there not a way to do the same thing through Samba rather than having to use NFS, which as you say is only available with Windows 7 Ultimate?

[MrD]

samba might work i did not try it, but i would use a link instead of unc path. as soon as you go unc path between linux and windows it gets ugly.

i think the key is keeping the differences as little as possible between systems.

at one point i was going to implement a proxy around sagedct to translate the pathing but by using nfs, mklink, and same directory paths it just worked so i did not need to go down that path.

[MrD]

also replace path likely lets you alter the path. i seem to remember it is used to strip off the unc part but i do not believe i got it to work or i was using it the wrong way. i'm used to reading the code to figure these things out but no code is available

[bcjenkins]

Perhaps this applies: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...78&postcount=5