Replacing cable STB when using Firewire tuning

[wayner]

I have a cable STB (Rogers SA3250HD) which is giving lots of errors on HD channels which is totally crapping out the recording on my HD-PVR hooked up to this box.

So I am going to swap out this box with another SA3250HD. When I connect the "new" cable box to my PC via firewire will I have to install the drivers again?

I realize that I am going to have to make changes in the sage.properties file with the new uniqueID for the cable box but I am wondering about having to reinstall these drivers as well.

Is there anything else I need to look out for? I have done this before but not for a few years so I can't remember if there are any tricks that I may have to deal with, other than making sure that I have the right cable box doing the tuning since I have two HD-PVRs connected to two STBs with firewire tuning.

[dstanley]

When you connect your replacement cable box to the firewire then the current driver on your system should load for that box. You will get a prompt for a non-signed driver probably but just OK your way through that.

You are right about the firewire Box ID though - you will need to figure it out and change your *.ir file in your EXEMultiTunerPlugin folder.

An example is as follows - my one box id is bc22cc6b1e00 so my file is called:
bc22cc6b1e00.ir
and it contains this line in it:
bc22cc6b1e00 38000 400 3 600 800

Then under the tuner setup you need to setup the channe changing to use the correct ir file to change the channels.

I have four Rogers boxes of various series all running with firewire channel changing - the newest box only has one firewire port so it is on the end of my 'chain' but it still functions correctly.

I can't remember any other 'gotcha's' but if you run into anything maybe I can help.

Dwight

[wayner]

Thanks Dwight, I will give it a go when I get a chance.

Have you ever seen a box degrade so that you have trouble receiving channels? I have two cable boxes beside each other - a 3250HD and 4250HD. The 3250HD is starting to have lots of errors and blocking on HD channels. When I loook at the diag screen the level seems OK but the S/N ratio is too low at about 31. I swapped the RF cables at the RF in between the two boxes and the problem remains with the 3250HD which makes me think that it is a box issue rather than a signal issue. I will try moving this box to another my kitchen where I currently have another 3250HD to see if the problem remains. But before I do this I wanted to understand what I have to do to commission the new box.

By the way, this old box was used with Sage years ago but it died for some reason. I got it repaired at a shop in Toronto that repairs cable STBs. I wish Rogers would resell old 3250HDs - not many people would want them since they don't have HDMI outputs but that is fine with HD-PVRs.

[martin]

One of my three Motorola DCT6200 boxes started acting weird last year before it failed completely. A friend replaced capacitors on the circuit board that went bad and it's been solid since then.

[wayner]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if it is another case of capacitor plague, just like the power supplies for the HD-PVR and others.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by dstanley

You are right about the firewire Box ID though - you will need to figure it out and change your *.ir file in your EXEMultiTunerPlugin folder.

An example is as follows - my one box id is bc22cc6b1e00 so my file is called:
bc22cc6b1e00.ir
and it contains this line in it:
bc22cc6b1e00 38000 400 3 600 800

My .ir files are slightly shorter as they look like this:
bc92a6c31a00 2 38000 400 3

Originally Posted by dstanley

Then under the tuner setup you need to setup the channe changing to use the correct ir file to change the channels.

And I believe the other change is that there are two lines in sage.properties that look like this:
mmc/encoders/-1674637831/5/0/device_name=bc92a6c31a00
mmc/encoders/-1674637831/90/0/device_name=bc92a6c31a00

Are those the only changes I need? Those are the only places in the sage.properties file that I could find the uniqueID hex number.

[reggie14]

It sounds like you've been using firewire channel changing for a while. It might not have been out when you originally set it up, but I found babgvant's FWChannelProxy much easier to set up than the original methods. You might want to think about switching to that.

[wayner]

Thanks Reggie, that does look useful but it uses the device number rather than the UniqueID. The problem with that is that I am always worried that the devices may reorder for some reason and then you will be changing the channels on the wrong box when you have a multi-box system like I do. The other thing is that this still uses the same drivers as the other tuning dlls so the issues around finding and installing drivers are still the same.

[dstanley]

I have had two Rogers boxes 'fail' on me by giving poor video/sound output. The HD-PVR's are not very forgiving on poor or troubled output.
The one box had problems with audio - I think it would fail in the dolby digital and revert to analogue throughout a program and the HD-PVR would go nuts - stop the recording and then try to restart it - causing a missing gap in the show.
Another box would go 'pixelated' at times and that too would drive the HD-PVR to miss sections out of the show - very frustrating.
Replacing the cable boxes without doing anything to the HD-PVR fixed both issues. (I thought is was the HD-PVR's causing the problems - I have replace three or more HD-PVR power supply's too!)
I am not too sure what I will do when the older boxes fail again - the newer boxes only have one firewire connector so it will not daisy-chain like I am currently doing.
I think those last numbers in the IR file were something to do with the timing of the signals but i can't remember at the moment - I will look through my notes to see if I can find something about it.
I never changed the properties file directly - that was done by altering the channel change settings in the Video Sources setup. Much more reliable if you ask me - less chance of a typing error!?

[wayner]

I replaced one of my HD-PVRs about six months ago, and after what you said I am wondering if it is the cable box.

You can buy firewire cards that have multiple outputs or firewire hubs, although firewire does appear to be dying out. The other problem is not having 64 bit drivers for the cable boxes.

I wonder what happened to all of the old 3250HDs and 4250HDs that Rogers used to rent? It would be nice if they would sell them to people like us at a low cost.

By the way, and this is pure speculation on my part, Hauppauge's financial results look horrible and I am wondering how long they will survive, especially if the bulk of the HD-PVRs are sold to record gaming and the next gen gaming consoles will have this built in. It might be time to start buying a few spare HD-PVRs.

[wayner]

I actually didn't need to install any drivers. I removed the old box, plugged in the new and everything seemed to show up fine. I did need to change settings in Sage.properties and make sure that I had an IR file.

Now the "new" cable box was used in my Sage server previously but I am not sure if it was with this server or my previous server. SO that may make a difference.