STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[aperry]

Okay, this is great, I can use the channel.exe program to change my channel on my DCT-6412 via firewire.

Now, is it possible to configure Sage to run that executable with the channel number as a parameter?

[aperry]

Originally Posted by spaceghost

I tried the channel.exe command sending a "channel -v 1 610" and it BSOD/rebooted the HTPC. Using the modified .inf by DFA.

I think the only way it'll work is to use the inf that is included in the firewire.zip file in the GreenButton post. And make sure to create the mstapeo.sys file that he references in the readme file. You'll need this file for both the Tuner and Panel device installs.

I just killed the three items from my device manager, and installed according to his instructions, and it worked great.

Capturing HD using CapDVHS worked fine as well.

[Naylia]

why don't you have sgraphrecorder call the channel.exe directly?

how's the speed? faster or slower than the usb-uirt?

[aperry]

When I ran channel.exe directly, it punched in the three numbers in around 1.5 to 2 seconds.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by foolio

using it with girder to issue the "channel.exe command"

How do you do this? Do you just setup Girder somehow to intercept USB-UIRT stuff or what? More specifically, what do you tell Sage to do to change channels on the external tuner, and how do you get Girder to react to that event?

[spaceghost]

must be doing something wrong with the files. Can't get the panel driver installed. tried to follow their instructions....

[timmmoore]

Hi, I the guy who did the avc panel hack, good to see you can use it with Sage as well
Spaceghost, what problem are you seeing? You must use the meitape.inf and mstapeo.sys files that is described in the thegreenbutton thread. If you dont want to change the other drivers, you can just go into the device manager, enable the avc panel and update the drivers on that device, then do have disk and point it to the modified meitape.inf file. This should only update the driver for that device.
If you have installed the driver but are getting a code 23 then the you didn't edit mstape.sys correctly. If you are not running WinXP sp2 then the patch instructions will not work. I generated some patch instructions for sp1a on teh avsforum that I can post here if you need.

Foolio, I posted some questions for you on thegreenbutton, if you can take a look.

aperry, the orginal meitape.sys drivers will not work, they will definitely bluescreen your machine.

[aperry]

Thanks for coming by Tim, glad to see you here to offer some assistance... I have mine working (able to capture a TS file using CapDVHS), I had already used the new meitape.inf to load both the tuner and panel stuff. And I'm changing channels with no problems so far (even set up a couple of auto-tuners running using "scheduled tasks" in XP, since the stupid Motorola DCT-6412 STB does not support it).

Right now, working on configuring things so that Sage can actually record and play the stuff.

[timmmoore]

Aperry, So you are not seeing the problem Foolio is having with every 15-20 changes having the wrong channel?
DFA, I downloaded your meistb.inf, it looks pretty straight forward to add my modifications for the AV/C Panel device to it, so there is one inf with every thing in it. I will do the changes and then send you the file, if thats ok?

[spaceghost]

running sp2, windows is saying it can't find the necessary software when I point it to the directory with the modified mstapeo.sys and meitape.inf from your firewire.zip. I'll keep trying...

Would it matter that my AV/C Tuner Device is listed as Motorola (DFA's .inf)? I see your .inf has entries for JVC, Panasonic,Toshiba, & Hitachi.

[timmmoore]

There shouldn't be any problem with using DFA's stuff.
It will need meitape.sys amd meistrm.sys in the the directory with mstapeo.sys as well. If you used DFA's inf file those files with get copied but not used. You can copy meistb.sys and meistrm.sys from dfa's package to the directory and rename meistb.sys to meitape.sys.

[eobiont]

regarding using channel.exe directly.

Why can't you just use the exetunerpath in SGraph.

Of course you can't just call the exe because SGraph only sends a channel number.

You could make a .cmd file called Channel.cmd with the single line....

@start /wait Channel.exe 2 %1

(where the "2" above is replaced by your device number discovered by channel.exe)

and place the Channel.cmd into the SGraph ini file as in
ExeTunerPath=C:\Firewire\Channel.cmd

Just make sure channel is in the same path as the channel.cmd

I haven't tried this, but it should work fine.

[timmmoore]

I updated the meistb.inf from DFAs package since using that inf is so much easier to install the drivers. The updated inf understands and installs the device for the AV/C panel for the 6200, 6208 and 6412.
I dont have access to 3250 is there a typ_9 device for that stb?
The updated inf only is in the attached zip file.

[spaceghost]

timmmoore-
that did it. That's crazy. another thanks from me. Is it possible to wrap up the entire driver set into a zip file and post here? restrictions on that??

Anders-
may we bug you for another change to your wonderful sgraphrecorder to use this directly without the .cmd trick posted by eobiont?

[timmmoore]

I dont have a problem with someone updating DFA's package and posting it. For private reasons I am not comfortable with posting the patched driver myself.

I have updated the zip file on thegreenbutton with a new channel.exe. I am hoping the fix to channel.exe will fix foolio's probelm with his stb.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by eobiont

Why can't you just use the exetunerpath in SGraph.

Of course you can't just call the exe because SGraph only sends a channel number.

You could make a .cmd file called Channel.cmd with the single line....

@start /wait Channel.exe 2 %1

(where the "2" above is replaced by your device number discovered by channel.exe)

and place the Channel.cmd into the SGraph ini file as in
ExeTunerPath=C:\Firewire\Channel.cmd

Just make sure channel is in the same path as the channel.cmd

I was already trying to use the exetuner thingy, but as it turned out, I had the wrong path in there. The solution that actually worked was a bit simpler.

Set ExeTunerPath like this:

ExeTunerPath=C:\Firewire\Channel.exe 2

Apparently, SGraph takes whatever you have on the line and appends the channel number, so you can actually embed the decoder number as I've shown.

[aperry]

Okay, I've got a bit of a problem now...

I ran through spaceghost's awesome instructions in the PDF, following it step by step. Everything seems to configure okay, but when I try to watch a recording or live TV via firewire, I get freezing, sound with no picture, etc. I can occasionally get a picture, but only when I use the NVidia Post Processor decoder. These errors also show in Nero Showtime, Media Player, and ATI Multimedia Center.

I specifically have it set up exactly like the guide suggests.

The initial graph works fine for both HD and SD channels. And the second one is creating and writing to an MPEG file, but I cannot play it back reliably. Based on this, it appears that my problem is probably in the Cyberlink MPEG Muxer (since everything before that is the same as the test graph).

Any ideas?

[timmmoore]

foolio, Are you streaming via firewire when you are using channel.exe?
I found that the command I am normally using doesn't work if you are streaming when you send the command, its accepted but nothing happens. The other command works but the timing wasn't quite correct and it would miss digits sometimes. I have switched to the other command and changed the timing and I haven't had any problem.
I know SGR shuts the filtergraph down and re-creates it but if the timings not right this may be your problem.
Also I found that changing channel with meistb.sys and meistrm.sys can cause problems including bluescreens. I also got a lot of bluescreens stopping the filtergraph (I was using StreamBufferSink to make it work with Media Center).
I replaced meistrm.sys with avcstrm.sys (from SP2) and it is much more reliable.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by aperry

Okay, I've got a bit of a problem now...

I ran through spaceghost's awesome instructions in the PDF, following it step by step. Everything seems to configure okay, but when I try to watch a recording or live TV via firewire, I get freezing, sound with no picture, etc. I can occasionally get a picture, but only when I use the NVidia Post Processor decoder. These errors also show in Nero Showtime, Media Player, and ATI Multimedia Center.

I specifically have it set up exactly like the guide suggests.

The initial graph works fine for both HD and SD channels. And the second one is creating and writing to an MPEG file, but I cannot play it back reliably. Based on this, it appears that my problem is probably in the Cyberlink MPEG Muxer (since everything before that is the same as the test graph).

Any ideas?

Anyone have suggestions as to something else to use other than Cyberlink MPEG Muxer and the MPEG file saver? Or, did I do this all for naught?

[spaceghost]

aperry,
just a few questions...
What kind of processor do you have (and RAM qty)?
You can play a capture with CapDVHS ok in windows media player? (I see the inital graph plays fine directly to the overlay.)
You are sure your channels are not 5c encrypted? (silly ?, but maybe some channels are encrypted)

There seems to be a few fellas such as yourself that just can't get these captures to play in Sage. The only advise I can think of is to play around with your default filters. Have graphedit play a captured file to see what filters are defaulting to. This is a start. I am a firm believer that Sage should use the default filters if you set all options to default within Sage...but I do not think it does. I have had problems in the past trying to get some captures to work within Sage (played fine in graphedit and wmp). Installing AC3filter helped on some, demoting the sage splitter/demuxer (to below microsoft's demuxer) helped on others. I do not have Nero installed on my htpc, but I have heard that Nero likes to take over control and set it's filters to the highest priority (thus setting them as default for all media players).

I heard using NPP is a no no somewhere...not sure if it applies to this type of playback.

You also might have luck NOT converting the ts to a ps in graphedit if you have a recent version of Sage running (2.2.7 or higher). They've supposedly added more support for .ts file playback (haven't tried it myself). If you're willing, you could try to change your graph...there was talk of putting the mpg dump right after the ts info parser. Not sure if Sage likes that kind of setup to watch live...

here's a link to that discussion.