OpenDCT: An open source digital cable tuner.

[mayamaniac]

I installed OpenDCT, Win7 32bit.

Opened Sage.Properties, changed the network tuner discover to true.

Started SageTV.

When I start the OpenDCT service, it says OpenDCT service was launched, but failed to start.

What am I missing?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

I installed OpenDCT, Win7 32bit.

Opened Sage.Properties, changed the network tuner discover to true.

Started SageTV.

When I start the OpenDCT service, it says OpenDCT service was launched, but failed to start.

What am I missing?

The most common cause so far is having a Java version older than 1.7 installed. The second most common is more than one version of Java installed. If you have the 64-bit version of Java installed, you might save yourself some hassle by just installing the 64-bit version of OpenDCT. Otherwise you would need to tell JSW exactly what Java binary to use. If these suggestions don't help, please post your wrapper.log file so we can take a look at what's failing.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

The most common cause so far is having a Java version older than 1.7 installed.

That was it. I updated to 1.8 and it starts no problem. Everything working so far. No artifacts like I was getting with PrimeNetEncoder and no CPU pegging like with SageDCT. Hopefully, this is the software solution for cable card network encoders.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

That was it. I updated to 1.8 and it starts no problem. Everything working so far. No artifacts like I was getting with PrimeNetEncoder and no CPU pegging like with SageDCT. Hopefully, this is the software solution for cable card network encoders.

Just be advised that JAVA 1.8 doesn't play well with some plugins for Sage (mostly stuff that uses Jetty). JAVA 1.7 seems to be the safest / most-compatible version for use with Sage right now.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Just be advised that JAVA 1.8 doesn't play well with some plugins for Sage (mostly stuff that uses Jetty). JAVA 1.7 seems to be the safest / most-compatible version for use with Sage right now.

Thanks, will downgrade.

[EnterNoEscape]

That's actually the reason why we are using 1.7 as the minimum right now instead of 1.8. That will be changing in the not too distant future when the web interface is completed since the latest Jetty requires 1.8.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Thanks, will downgrade.

I wouldn't downgrade if it's working for you (you may not be using any of the plugins that are affected). Just keep it in mind in case you run into problems.

[mgpaulus]

Any words of wisdom on changing over from PNE to OpenDCT? I would like to keep my current line up with PNE, and so, was just wondering if others have made the conversion, what they did, and how it's going. I have one channel (PSCP) that is constantly causing me recording faults at the beginning, and I wanted to check if this would fix the issue.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by mgpaulus

Any words of wisdom on changing over from PNE to OpenDCT? I would like to keep my current line up with PNE, and so, was just wondering if others have made the conversion, what they did, and how it's going. I have one channel (PSCP) that is constantly causing me recording faults at the beginning, and I wanted to check if this would fix the issue.

Just back up your wiz.bin and sage.properties files and you should be able to test it out and revert back to PNE if needed. Like others have said, OpenDCT is much simpler to set uo. Make sure you have Java 1.7 and you are good to go.

[UgaData]

Setup OpenDCT today and it seems to be working OK.

I did have an issue with an older (1.6) version of Java.
Installing Java 7.80 resolved that issue.

I am running SageTV under Win7 Pro in a (2012 Hyper-V core) VM.

I am sharing a Ceton InfiniTV ETH6 between Sage and WMC. Sage gets 4 (1-4) tuners and WMC gets 2 (5-6) tuners.

I have read the readme, but I still don't grasp what I need to do to exclude tuners 5 & 6 from OpenDCT & Sage. The more I re-read the readme, I get a bit closer but I am still not quite there yet. For now, similar to NYPlayer, I just didn't configure tuners 5 & 6 in SageTV (although Sage does see them).

I am also curious if it is possible to rename the tuners (at least in Sage). The long tuner names over run the "parallel recordings schedule" screen and make it difficult to know which tuner is actually going to be used for a recording.

And thanks to all involved in the development and testing of OpenDCT.

[uberpixel]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Just back up your wiz.bin and sage.properties files and you should be able to test it out and revert back to PNE if needed. Like others have said, OpenDCT is much simpler to set uo. Make sure you have Java 1.7 and you are good to go.

Just wanted to add that I found that I didn't need to remove the PrimeNetEncoder tuners until after I setup OpenDCT (in fact I haven't deleted them yet). The benefit is that you can just copy an existing lineup when you add the OpenDCT tuners.

I disabled my PrimeNetEncoder startup batch file and restarted my server to make sure it wasn't running when I installed OpenDCT. Not sure if that was necessary - but it worked.

OpenDCT has been running great for 2 weeks now. I had one halt in the first couple of days, but none since after 100's of recordings. Fewer artifacts too.

-uberpixel

[mgpaulus]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Just back up your wiz.bin and sage.properties files and you should be able to test it out and revert back to PNE if needed. Like others have said, OpenDCT is much simpler to set uo. Make sure you have Java 1.7 and you are good to go.

You were absolutely correct, OpenDCT was easier to set up. Now, time will tell if I still get those same issues on the FCS channels.

You know one thing that would be slicker than snot??

It would be the greatest if OpenDCT could query the Prime device and determine which channels are clear, or even, which channels are available, and automatically disable any channels in the current lineup that are not handled by the device. My comcast listing for my HDPVR and my Prime are slightly different, and it's kind of odd, in that, not all Premium/Subscription channels are blocked, and not all normal cable channels are unblocked, so if the device could at least get me started on what it knows about, that would be most fantabulous.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by UgaData

I have read the readme, but I still don't grasp what I need to do to exclude tuners 5 & 6 from OpenDCT & Sage. The more I re-read the readme, I get a bit closer but I am still not quite there yet. For now, similar to NYPlayer, I just didn't configure tuners 5 & 6 in SageTV (although Sage does see them).

I am also curious if it is possible to rename the tuners (at least in Sage). The long tuner names over run the "parallel recordings schedule" screen and make it difficult to know which tuner is actually going to be used for a recording.

Excluding tuners involves basically just copying what you see in sagetv.device.<unique_id>.device_name in a comma separated list under sagetv.device.global.ignore_devices_csv. For example:
sagetv.device.global.ignore_devices_csv=DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-92-e6) Tuner 5,DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-92-e6) Tuner 6

Renaming them is as easy as changing the value of sagetv.device.<unique_id>.device_name. Bill asked for this one early on. We know it works well. The names cannot be the same for any tuner. If you change this value, you will need to have the tuner re-detected by SageTV since it doesn't know they changed and will think they are new network encoders.

Originally Posted by mgpaulus

You know one thing that would be slicker than snot??

It would be the greatest if OpenDCT could query the Prime device and determine which channels are clear, or even, which channels are available, and automatically disable any channels in the current lineup that are not handled by the device. My comcast listing for my HDPVR and my Prime are slightly different, and it's kind of odd, in that, not all Premium/Subscription channels are blocked, and not all normal cable channels are unblocked, so if the device could at least get me started on what it knows about, that would be most fantabulous.

OpenDCT actually does query the prime for channels from the last channel scan done by the prime. The only thing it doesn't do in the current version, but already does in the next minor version optionally is mark those channels as enabled by default (because from what I understand, all channels on that list are not protected and are tunable). There is a problem on the SageTV side of things however. It will only ask for no more than 159 channels if you perform a channel scan.

Visibility of these features is the reason I am working on a web interface. There is a lot of functionality you wouldn't even know about just because it's not easy to see just from looking at the properties. For example, channel scanning already exists and it will use all available tuners with the same lineup to perform the scan. It's an offline scan in that if the tuner is needed, it will just stop using it for the scan until SageTV stops using it again. This feature is experimental and the results can be returned by doing a channel scan in SageTV. The scan interval is one week, but can be changed. Enabling this feature if you want to see it run involves changing the value of sagetv.device.parent.<unique_id>.offline_scan to true. Some settings are lumped into "parent" groupings for convenience since otherwise you would need to change up to 6 places to enable/change the property for the entire capture device. The scan should start after about 1 minute and take less than 20 minutes. Maybe someday we'll add an option to link the results directly with SageTV (probably via sagex) without actually needing to do a channel scan, but it will be a while before we get there since I'm currently putting all of my resources into critical fixes and the web interface.

[UgaData]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Excluding tuners involves basically just copying what you see in sagetv.device.<unique_id>.device_name in a comma separated list under sagetv.device.global.ignore_devices_csv. For example:
sagetv.device.global.ignore_devices_csv=DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-92-e6) Tuner 5,DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-92-e6) Tuner 6

Renaming them is as easy as changing the value of sagetv.device.<unique_id>.device_name. Bill asked for this one early on. We know it works well. The names cannot be the same for any tuner. If you change this value, you will need to have the tuner re-detected by SageTV since it doesn't know they changed and will think they are new network encoders.

I did try that for excluding the tuners and no Tuners showed up in Sage. After removing the tuner names ( IIRC- I removed the "Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-92-e6)" portion) from sagetv.device.global.ignore_devices_csv= the tuners showed up in Sage. I will try it again.
It could be that the exclusion is working but I was expecting something different.

I re-read the forum post and saw the entry about renaming the tuners. I have been able to successfully rename tuners. I was able to rename the tuners in OpenDCT.properties and then I made sure the tuner had the same name in the Sage.properties file.

======================================================================
I renamed tuners 5 & 6 and added the new names to the sagetv.device.global.ignore_devices_csv= line (DCT5,DCT6).
I also removed the MMC/Encoder lines for tuners 5 & 6 from the Sage.properties files (network discovery is still set to true).
After restarting services and starting Sage, tuners 5 & 6 no longer show up as tuners that can be configured. I also checked the Sage.properties and there are no entries for tuners 5 & 6 (but you already knew that )

I am seeing the tuners show up in sage as <tuner> on 127.0.0.1 but things are working. I just don't know which NIC is being used to record with ( I am using 10.0.3.51 & .52) The override line is set to 10.0.3.51 (using the OpenDCT config). I have been having my clients use .51 and recordings done on .52. But things are working and I can always swap how the NICs are used.
(yes, I have tried changing the override line to 10.0.3.52 but the Sage would get No Signal until I changed it back to .51)

[EnterNoEscape]

The reason you see 127.0.0.1 in SageTV is because OpenDCT detects that SageTV reached out to it on the same computer and it automatically uses the loopback interface for communication if that happens. That doesn't influence how OpenDCT talks to the capture devices when tuning.

Once SageTV has seen any network encoder once, you need to remove it manually from Sage.properties. As far as I know they will not go away on their own, but I can tell you that OpenDCT isn't sending them anymore when SageTV asked it what capture devices it has available.

[uberpixel]

Originally Posted by uberpixel

OpenDCT has been running great for 2 weeks now. I had one halt in the first couple of days, but none since after 100's of recordings. Fewer artifacts too.

Well, looks like I jinxed myself. Had another halt last night...

Any thoughts on how I can troubleshoot my setup to determine where the halt is coming from? I was getting lots of them with PNE and only have 2 so far with OpenDCT over the last couple of weeks. A big improvement, but I'd like to eliminate them entirely if possible.

-uberpixel

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by uberpixel

Well, looks like I jinxed myself. Had another halt last night...

Any thoughts on how I can troubleshoot my setup to determine where the halt is coming from? I was getting lots of them with PNE and only have 2 so far with OpenDCT over the last couple of weeks. A big improvement, but I'd like to eliminate them entirely if possible.

-uberpixel

Are you using forced tuner locking? That way if something is using the tuner SageTV will take it by brute force.

hdhr.always_force_lockkey=true

[uberpixel]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Are you using forced tuner locking? That way if something is using the tuner SageTV will take it by brute force.

hdhr.always_force_lockkey=true

SageTV is the only thing accessing my HDHR Prime tuners - wouldn't it be safe to assume that I don't need to lock the tuners in this case? With no other applications requesting access to them is there any benefit to locking the tuners?

-uberpixel

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by uberpixel

SageTV is the only thing accessing my HDHR Prime tuners - wouldn't it be safe to assume that I don't need to lock the tuners in this case? With no other applications requesting access to them is there any benefit to locking the tuners?

-uberpixel

Never say Never anyone that has Network access can use the tuners any DLNA capable device can access the tuners. Opendct locks the tuners when recording by default... what I am talking about is if anything somehow is using a tuner and SageTV needs it .. SageTV will force unlock it and take control. Other wise you would get a halt detected.

[uberpixel]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Never say Never anyone that has Network access can use the tuners any DLNA capable device can access the tuners. Opendct locks the tuners when recording by default... what I am talking about is if anything somehow is using a tuner and SageTV needs it .. SageTV will force unlock it and take control. Other wise you would get a halt detected.

Okay. I'll give it a try. I do have several devices that interact in the DLNA realm. I'll eliminate that variable and see if it improves.

Thanks,
-uberpixel