STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[timmmoore]

Originally Posted by ChuckvB

Tim, When I look in the file you linked there are only four items. Two are pictures one is a text file and the other is a zipped file. In the zipped file I only found one program file inside. are the two other zipped files hidden within this? What's strange is the frist time I ran the file (the one I pulled down a couple of days ago.) it asked for a location of mstapoe.sys and Meistrm.sys. This made me think it's not in the package. After I browsed around my system I found two copies from the DVHs zip package and used them. After that first install even if I removed the SA tuner device and reran Firestb.msi I didn't get asked for the location of the two SYS files again. So either it used the old ones or had the new ones hidden in the install program.

Either way I MCE using the Tray device no tuner are listed.

If you install the program, the drivers are installed on the machine but you have to point to the directory containing them during the device driver install. I dont remember where they are installed but its in a directory under where the other files are put.
In terms of MCE integration, you might want to join the thread on www.thegreenbutton.com rather than use the SageTV forum to talk about MCE problems or you can send me a PM containg the output from channel -v and the files %temp%\tuner.log and %temp%\tuner.txt, I would zip up all three and PM the file to me.

[timmmoore]

I have updated channel.exe, channelw.exe and meistb.inf at http://www.thegreenbutton.com/commun...52&TopicPage=1

It now includes support for SA8000 and SA8300. SA8300 has been tested and works, SA8000 has not been tested. Its probably similar to the SA3250 where it works on some STBs but not others, it seems to be software version dependent.

[Morgan111]

So now that 3.0.3 beta is out and has TS file support, is there anything there that improves the UNE for firewire or makes it more stable?

[dvsing]

Yea... actually I was gonna ask this question to. Can we just take the TS stream in our graph and route it directly to the dump filter now? Hopefully there is a way to simplify this.

-Dan

[aperry]

I tried just that last night, and it seemed to work, kind of. The video that recorded kept stuttering and jumping (with pauses of 2-3 seconds), not watchable at all. That being said, it was just one channel, and under the older version of Sage, there were channels that I could record but not watch. The channels I had the problems with were the digital channels, and only the ones that are more heavily compressed. Channels with less compression worked fine.

The graph I set up had two items, the Motorola Cable Tuner Device, and the dump filter (don't have the actual names).

Do I maybe just need to put something in between these things, like the NVidia TS Info Parser or something?

[wordgasm]

Hi

( I asked this in the beta thread, but they couldnt anser the firewire part, so here goes!)
Using MCE right now (for HD), have Sage, but have never used it.

Want to switch to Sage if I can do the following (if yes, I'll do my homeork and figure it out).

Bottomline: my OTA doesnt get ABC, MCE FW doesnt do LIVE TV, I'd like to get the STB's out of the vieing area and my HTPC is PCI-E and I'm out of slots for additional tuners. AND use one TV source for viewing (not HTPC for recording and STB for live)

So .......

With Sage 3.0.5 and 3rd party's, can I:

Put my ATI HD Wonder, WinTV 250 MCE and 2 ea Moto 6200 HD STB's (via FW) in my closet with my server (all pci slots and FW onboard)

AND

Watch LIVE TV (SD/HD/OTA/STB), control recording/viewing of SD and HD from my main HTPC (client and maybe one other client)?

Software & Hardware I have to do this:

MCE (disable TV part/MCE), Sage, and Meedio/TT for movies/music (or something else). nvidia and Elecard decoders.

HDWonder, WinTV 250 MCE, 2 ea Moto 6200 HD STB's, USB-UIRT w/ir emitters(56k), IR receiver in my case and Harmony remote. Gigabyte onboard both machines, but a 10/100 switch.

So .......

Will this work? And what additional hardware/softare would I need?

Thanks for any input.

Jeff

[timmmoore]

Originally Posted by timmmoore

I have updated channel.exe, channelw.exe and meistb.inf at http://www.thegreenbutton.com/commun...52&TopicPage=1

It now includes support for SA8000 and SA8300. SA8300 has been tested and works, SA8000 has not been tested. Its probably similar to the SA3250 where it works on some STBs but not others, it seems to be software version dependent.

I have updated the firewire package at http://www.thegreenbutton.com/commun...ssageID=104152
The SA4200HD support is now tested. I also include a DLL version of channel (channel.dll). This supports the IRTuner API that sagetv supports. I haven't tested it with SageTV but it has been tested on BTV.

[Naylia]

Originally Posted by wordgasm

Hi

( I asked this in the beta thread, but they couldnt anser the firewire part, so here goes!)
Using MCE right now (for HD), have Sage, but have never used it.

Want to switch to Sage if I can do the following (if yes, I'll do my homeork and figure it out).

Bottomline: my OTA doesnt get ABC, MCE FW doesnt do LIVE TV, I'd like to get the STB's out of the vieing area and my HTPC is PCI-E and I'm out of slots for additional tuners. AND use one TV source for viewing (not HTPC for recording and STB for live)

So .......

With Sage 3.0.5 and 3rd party's, can I:

Put my ATI HD Wonder, WinTV 250 MCE and 2 ea Moto 6200 HD STB's (via FW) in my closet with my server (all pci slots and FW onboard)

AND

Watch LIVE TV (SD/HD/OTA/STB), control recording/viewing of SD and HD from my main HTPC (client and maybe one other client)?

Software & Hardware I have to do this:

MCE (disable TV part/MCE), Sage, and Meedio/TT for movies/music (or something else). nvidia and Elecard decoders.

HDWonder, WinTV 250 MCE, 2 ea Moto 6200 HD STB's, USB-UIRT w/ir emitters(56k), IR receiver in my case and Harmony remote. Gigabyte onboard both machines, but a 10/100 switch.

So .......

Will this work? And what additional hardware/softare would I need?

Thanks for any input.

Jeff

I think this would work, but you'll probably want to wait for a finalized Sage V3 before tackling it with so many different variables.

Sage is fine with different tuners having access to different channels and the added HD card support should make all that you desire possible.

[Naylia]

Originally Posted by timmmoore

I have updated the firewire package at http://www.thegreenbutton.com/commun...ssageID=104152
The SA4200HD support is now tested. I also include a DLL version of channel (channel.dll). This supports the IRTuner API that sagetv supports. I haven't tested it with SageTV but it has been tested on BTV.

Amazing timmmoore, it'd be nice to see someone make good use of that dll, i know it's beyond me

[trevorst]

OK.. I have been able to make several excellent HD recordings using only the Tuner and the dump file. The files play back in Windows Media, Elecard and on a disc playing in my i-oData standalone machine. However Sage can not play either the recordings or live TV with either the direct dump graph or the full graph. It just hangs. Have tried several decoders same result with any of the. Those that are having success on playing back thru Sage, what video & audio decoders are you using ?? Great news that we can use the output straight from a Motorola box without any convertion...

[Naylia]

we've always been able to dump it straight to a file, the problem was that Sage didn't support those transport streams so we converted from TS to PS using the graph...unfortunately it sounds like they may have broken it. It would be great if Sage could tweak a little so that our graphs could just be cable box to sage dump filter


PLEASE SAGE....MAKE IT EASY FOR US!!!!


pretty please.....w/ sugar on top

[turak]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

So now that 3.0.3 beta is out and has TS file support, is there anything there that improves the UNE for firewire or makes it more stable?

I'm still doing TS to PS, but I no longer seem to get the audio renderer error that I used to get.

[dvsing]

I just wanted to touch base here and ask everyone what MPEG codec they've settled on. I have been using the sonic decoders but I'm not sure this is the best solution-- now that Sage has it's own MPEG codec packaged with it and Sage is claiming to support HD, should we just use the Sage MPEG decoders??

[eobiont]

Switched to 3.0.5 and here is what I've found.
The recording straight to TS is intriguing. Anyone care to write up a quick blurb on how-to? Do I just drop the stuff out of the graph? I still need to use SGraphEdit though and put in the extra encoder lines into Sage.prefernces right? I have it working TS to PS in 3.0.5 so I don't know if it is a good idea to make any changes.

I had to pick different combos of audio and video decoders to get HDTV to playback smoothly. I'm only mentioning this because with the wrong combo, you could end up with stuttering and might blame the wrong component.

For video I am using the Intervideo for Hauppauge. For audio, I'm using Intervideo (not the one "for hauppauge"). My audio renderer is passed through FFDSHOW for audio so that it will render the AC3 video correctly. The AC3 codec I use is the one with the icon of sun like sphere with AC3 in the center, sorry for the vague description. I have tried passing the video through FFDSHOW too, to remove the grey bars, but that causes stuttering. I have a 2.8GHz intel chip and a 9800Pro video card. I have noticed that there is no longer any interlacing problems in 3.0.5 with the HDTV video.

[CPA]

I am having what seems like it might be a deinterlacing problem. I am not sure. I am using Sagetv 3.05 with the TStoPS graph and nvidia decoders (most recent) set to smart (also tried automatic), Leadtek 6600gt video card to an Hitach 4:3, fixed 60hz tv. When Sage records movies off HBO-HD or Showtime-HD, playback seems to freeze every 2 seconds or so and then catch up. Just the video, not the audio. This happens when I play the file with Zoom and WMP as well. When I record the same movie in CAPDVHS it plays back fine in all players. I thought maybe the movies were being broadcast at 24fps and 3:2 pulldown was not working properly, but when I check the fps in CapDVHS it says 29.97 fps which should work fine with my 60hz tv. Is it a problem in the graph? Any ideas?

[DFA]

If wanting to try if Sage will handle the TS files directly, just make another graph with graphedit and put the output from the STB Firewire capture device straight to the dump filter; in other words, eliminate the demux and mux filters along with the nVidia parser (should not need the parser either but might try it with and w/o).

Save the graph with a new name in the same location as the TS-to-PS graph. Edit SGraphRecorder.ini to use the new graph by inserting its name. Restart SGR for changes to the .ini to take effect (in fact, advise to close SGR before making a new graph or editing the the TS-to-PS and using the "Save As" since the graph and filters would otherwise be in use by SGR).

If it does not work, change the .ini back to the TS-to-PS graph.

I am not yet up to trying 3.0.x for WAF reasons (PW'd) so can not advise if direct recording of STB TS files will now work or not. Apparently some have tried this but have not had complete success and go back to the old tried-and-true.

EDIT: As 5:30 PM PST this day, Sage 3.0.7 is released and among things mentioned in the change log is improved TS parsing and HDTV stability. So, might want to give a try to direct dumping of STB TS streams with 3.0.7.

DFA

[Naylia]

Originally Posted by DFA

EDIT: As 5:30 PM PST this day, Sage 3.0.7 is released and among things mentioned in the change log is improved TS parsing and HDTV stability. So, might want to give a try to direct dumping of STB TS streams with 3.0.7.

DFA

well that's good news, i hope to see improvements to the stability but as I also now have the system working and integrated smoothly with xlobby, not only will i have to upgrade to sage 3.x but also reskin xlobby to match, so i think i've decided to wait for somewhat stable versions of everything to cut down on the amount of redo / problems i'll run into

[Milkman]

OK, I'm playing catch-up on this thread...I'm on page 8 right now. I've done a search, but can't seem to find anything that looks like my problem. I have everything hooked up between my Motorola 6412 and my HTPC. I have an AMD 3000+ with a Nvidia 6600GT board. 1Gig RAM. The Graph works in capturing live TV from the STB. I can change channels using Girder fine...next is to do it using the firewire port, but I have one other problem to solve. I don't have sound in Sage when view live TV. When I save the dump file from the Graph I can hear it when I open the file up in Media Player. However I don't get any sound in Sage at all. I've tried different audio renderers and decoders with nothing. Many of them crash.

Any thoughts?

[DFA]

In various places in this thread others have encountered this as well. It seems that there are two possibilities:

The audio decoder(s) you have are not DD 5.1 capable OR
You need to install the free AC3 filter.

Do a search of this thread for "AC3" and see what posts turn up for reference.

Perhaps someone that has gone through the excercise will respond.

DFA

[EJDeHaemer]

I have followed spaceghost's guide and have installed graphedit and SGR.
I created a graph and can record a show to the dump.mpg file.
I can also change channels on my STB using the channel.exe progam created by timmmoore.

I installed SGR, edited the .ini file to use my TStoPS.GRF and edited the sage.properties file to include the mmc/encoders/12345/* lines indicated in the spaceghost .pdf file.

My problem is when i run the Setup Wizard in sage it only shows my Hauppauge card. I can not see the SGR tuner.

Can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks