STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[eobiont]

I tested out the new SGR and it works great. I tried to PM you, DFA, but your full up on your mail space.

[DFA]

eobiont:

If your up for a bit of testing, I would be curious if the GML file I posted also works. If it does not, the problem would be with how I've handled the ShellExecute. The rest of it works OK. It's always nice to have options as well.

DFA

[eobiont]

I would be happy to try it out. Girder looks pretty cool, but the examples they have are a little overwhelming. I have a programming background, and can understand the code fine, but how it interacts with the program is a little unclear. In some areas they talk about pld1 (payload variables) and in other areas registries [reg1] but then in the examples they just have regular variable names like A = 10.

I am so excited to finally be able to record HDTV. I wanted it so badly that I almost gave up my main computer (a Macintosh) to be my HTPC, because the mac was able to record from the STB and send up channel change commands - big surprise that Apple has better support for (Apple invented) Firewire than Microsoft

Not contect to be only satisfied with HDTV, I decided to install Cayers STV. With this STV running, I am unable to view any of the channels mapped to the SGR. Switching back to Original2 immediately fixes the problem.
***This is a known problem with Cayers' STV and there is a fix listed over in the thread for this STV.

The other problem I have noticed is that on HDTV broadcasts, there is a thin light grey line at the bottom of the screen - maybe 5 or 6 pixels. This line doesn't show on ESPN HD, but on most other HDTV broadcasts. Anyone else with this phenomena? - I got this line while recording with DCTRecord too, so it is not specific to the UNE and might be caused by my Moto STB.

[travisbell]

Originally Posted by eobiont

The other problem I have noticed is that on HDTV broadcasts, there is a thin light grey line at the bottom of the screen - maybe 5 or 6 pixels. This line doesn't show on ESPN HD, but on most other HDTV broadcasts. Anyone else with this phenomena? - I got this line while recording with DCTRecord too, so it is not specific to the UNE and might be caused by my Moto STB.

This is normal for broadcasted HD. You don't see the line on your STB because it auto crops or "overscans" the image slightly. The easiest thing to do is overscan your desktop just slightly. I have maybe 15px on all sides cut off so I don't ever see it. Most of the lines I got were this real bright green... ewww!

[eobiont]

My TVs are all 4x3 though so cropping won't help. Putting a crop function in the graph might though. I wonder if that is possible.

[spaceghost]

eobiont,
the resolution coming from the STB is 1920x1088 (multiple of 16)...8 grey lines is what you should be seeing. Not sure what happens when you set the output of the STB to 720...
Thought there was a command line .exe floating around somewhere that can set the resolution of an existing 1920x1088 .mpg to 1920x1080...in hopes that media players will not grab the last 8 lines.

[eobiont]

Arggg!
Trouble in paradise.

That external tuner thing I've been using looks like it has a bug in it. Once I use the EXE to tune the STB via the Hauppauge Blaster, Sage is no longer able to tune the STB via the blaster. Dang! I need to find a different option for tuning. Maybe someone else has made an external exe for that blaster.

[turak]

Doesn't sage have support for external tuning programs? Like the motorola serial .exe. Maybe you could have both sage and UNE use the external tuning program.

You could check out this motorola thread for reference. I'm not sure how EXETunerPlugin works. You may have to wrapper the program you are using to translate the commands.

[eobiont]

Great minds think alike.

I just got done loading up the external tuning plugin and everthing in now working great! I came back here to update my post and you had already replied. This forum is great. You guys are so helpful!

[Naylia]

spaceghost,

nice job on the writeup...i finally actually installed sage last night with the uirt hopefully arriving tonight. Following your summary steps it worked on the first try and I've never used sage before so nice job!

I just have to change channels in sage then on the cable box right after, but anders has done such a good job with the graphrecorder that it doesn't seem to have any issues. I haven't tried service mode yet. Do I need to use the service mode if I want my htpc to be able to wake up from sleeping? I suppose I could look in the manual to answer that.

Oh, do you mind if I steal your guide and credit you over at htpcnews so that I can complete that tutorial? Thanks.

[spaceghost]

Naylia,
No problems here! Glad to hear it helped someone.

Not sure you want to go the service mode route just yet with the UNE. Sage seems to give people a large amount of "GET_FILE_SIZE" messages...impeding with the performance greatly. Having the service disabled removes this problem. Or at least having the UNE loaded first, then starting the service helps to minimize the effect (sometimes).

To check to see whether you are getting a ton of these messages...right click on the UNE and choose DEBUG. Then check the box to allow the debugging messages. This is also a great way to set your delays when you get your UIRT hooked up. I had Sage running in a small window, had the debug from UNE open, and had girder open...while I was setting/testing the UIRT. You should see the channel change messages in the debug/UNE..then see in the bottom right of girder the messages coming in.

[spaceghost]

Originally Posted by DFA

.... I will edit my first post to link to these summaries and instructions. I will get around to that Monday or so.

Dane,
Was wondering if you could put these links into your first post? Seeing as we have a working product here, is there any chance to get this sticky'd?

[DFA]

OK!

First post is edited and reference links to Olyar15's overview summary and Spaceghost's detailed instruction package.

Sorry for the delay.

Regards,
DFA

[ChuckvB]

Well I got my STB connected to my HTPC and do some recordings with CAPDVD. I'm not an expert in the video arena but I can get around so I hope all goes well.

[eobiont]

I tried to switch my mpeg thinger to ffdshow, because I wanted to crop off those 8 pixels and it worked great, but now, every time I try to change the channel from 1 hi-def to another, sdage freezes. I can switch from SD to HD and back, but from HD to HD freezes sage. This all happened when I was messing with ffdshow. Can I just uninstall ffdshow and the will make everything work again?


UPDATE: Never Mind. I just realized that 5C was enabled on my cable feed on April 1st. They even block the SD digital channels. The only thing sent over firewire is basic cable and NBC-HD. What's the point of the FCC forcing the cable companies to provide a firewire port again?

[spaceghost]

eobiont-
for those high-def VCR's that are 5c capable...

I think it's silly too...

[DFA]

eobiont:

Bad CableCo. An April fools joke that's no joke.

Firewire has such great potential if the MPAA were not such mindless paranoids and our legislators were not a bunch of enablers.

In the long run, our only hope is for a reasonably priced HD component input encoder. It won't be as clean or as pristene as a direct digital FW link but at least it can't be taken away (encrypted).

Sorry for what's happened to you. We all await the same fate I fear. For me, better to have HD'd and lost than to not have HD'd at all. This whole crazy situation does make a person frustrated.

DFA

[eobiont]

Hey though. That idea to do cropping worked. I introduced ffdshow (or whatever) into the playback graph, and set it to crop 8 pixels from the bottom, and now I don't have that 8-pixel white line anymore. Bummer the only HD I can record anymore is The West Wing. I started watching the Office, which is also in HD and on NBC, so I guess that's 1.5 Hours of HD per week.

[jadkar]

Wondering if any of you guys have this problem.

I can watch SD and HD channels through FireWire with no no problem. When I try to record SD it's perfect, but HD channels record roughly 15 seconds worth before the CPU gets pegged at 100% and I have to manually kill all the "hung" processes. I can't believe that it's the PC performance because as it's recording it's only at about 5-10% holding steady, then all of a sudden it spikes. Once it spikes it's done.

My PC is 2.2 P4 with 512 RDRAM

I had to bite the bullet last night and go get a Tivo, that way the wife can record without complaining until I can get this all sorted out completely.

Any help would be much appreciated.

-John

[DFA]

Not heard of that one but be sure you're not using VMR and DXVA is enabled although you would of course have high CPU immediately once attempting to view any HD material with VMR and no DXVA.

For starters if not already checked, check the OS event log for any clues and see if Sage is logging and error files. Which app is grabbing the 100% CPU in task manager?

DFA