STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[cohnhead]

Like many of you, 3.0.11 has helped a lot.

I still have the channel change issue from one HD Channel to another. Video freezes always, and sometimes Sage locks up.

Once the channel is tuned and playing everything is great.

Video is smooth with nVidia video decoder.
Audio gets routed to via SPDIF to my reciever by the nVidea audio decoder.

My Graph is direct from the tuner to the SGR Dump Filter.

Channel changes are by USB-UIRT and girder directed by SGR and have been 100% reliable so far.

Football this Sunday was great!

Is anyone able to switch between HD Channels without issue? If yes, what is your set up?

I hope we can solve this.

[Naylia]

I can change between some HD channels, depends on the channel for some reason.I talked to the Sage beta folks and they are doing their best to broadly support Transport Streams, so hopefully we'll see improvement as the betas progress. We may have it as good as it can get for this release, at least for straight TS files.

Do you have any issues if you go back and play a recorded show? For some reason my shows work great while recording, but they don't always work well later.

[cohnhead]

Haven't tried recording a show yet as most of my HD watching has been live sports events. I will try tonight.

[smccauslin]

Thanks for the info on changing channels via firewire. I'm able to get the channel to change from a command line by issuing "channel.exe 2 241" etc. It works great but only drom a command prompt.

I know I'm missing something quite simple but I can't get it to work with the Exetuner. I've installed Exetuner in Sage and modified the registry file to reflect channel.exe instead of dct.exe. (I'm guessing that is what I should do??) When I try to change the channel, I get a DOS box pop-up briefly but the channel does not change. I've switched to channelx.exe for silent changing, and now there isn't a DOS box, but still no channel change. I guess I'm not able to piece everything together enough to get it to work. Could someome shed some light on this for me? Thanks

[timmmoore]

Originally Posted by smccauslin

Thanks for the info on changing channels via firewire. I'm able to get the channel to change from a command line by issuing "channel.exe 2 241" etc. It works great but only drom a command prompt.

I know I'm missing something quite simple but I can't get it to work with the Exetuner. I've installed Exetuner in Sage and modified the registry file to reflect channel.exe instead of dct.exe. (I'm guessing that is what I should do??) When I try to change the channel, I get a DOS box pop-up briefly but the channel does not change. I've switched to channelx.exe for silent changing, and now there isn't a DOS box, but still no channel change. I guess I'm not able to piece everything together enough to get it to work. Could someome shed some light on this for me? Thanks

Have you put the 2 in the exetuner config? Exetuner only adds the channel number

[Naylia]

ooo...there's a silent mode...sweet...i really should read the readmes

yeah you'll want your registry file to reflect "channelx.exe 2" when before it said "dct.exe"

[timdorr]

Does anyone have the firewire.zip or firestb.msi file? TheGreenButton has been down for me since yesterday and I really want to get started with this stuff

[Naylia]

Ok...so a little convoluted to get this uploaded...

unzip firestb1.zip
unzip firestb2.zip


firestb.zip plus the two new files firestb.z01 and firestb.z02 make up a spanne/split zip file, so now you should be able to open firestb.zip and extract the msi file

[Naylia]

Hey guys!

Got a tasty treat for you...try this MpegDemux if you have playback problems of TS files. It doesn't help channel change issues for me but it made all my TS files playback smooth like butter. You can also get a copy by emailing support@sagetv.com...

[dvsing]

Does this demux also fix the problem of playing back HDTV *PS* files? (the problem where the audio is missing).

-Dan

[Naylia]

Sorry dv, I don't know. It might if you're lucky. You just place it in "c:\program files\sage tv\common\"...it's possible it has other improvements since 3.0.11

[gtd885a]

Thanks for the file Naylia! Seems to have helped so far. Still have that channel-changing issue when it's on the same channel and the shows change (even though mmc_always_tune... is false). I know this wasn't supposed to affect that, just mentioning it randomly.

Also..

cohnhead, you said:

"Audio gets routed to via SPDIF to my reciever by the nVidea audio decoder."

Do you get 5.1 DD when you play back your recordings or are they just 2 channel stereo? I've never been able to get more than 2 channel (out of Sage) no matter how I have things hooked up. I had tried nForce2 integrated sound (digital out), but upgraded to A64 board and had to add sound card to get digital out (although it apparently doesn't change anything).

[cohnhead]

gtd885a,

Yes I get 5.1 when that is what is broadcast. There appear to be some HD shows on some HD channels that only broadcast in 2 channel stereo, and of course non HD shows, even on the HD channels, only broadcast in 2 channel.

Make sure you go to the nVidia audio properties dialog box and select SPDIF out to external decoder. Does your reciever/decoder show 5.1DD when you play a DVD on your computer using the nVidia decoders? If not, there may be somthing funky with your cable or sound card driver.

Marc

[gtd885a]

Yeah, I get 5.1 passed through when I play a DVD, but not in Sage. I have SPDIF selected in nVidia (and everywhere else for that matter). I know a program is broadcast in 5.1 because I can switch to live and my receiver picks it up.

I probably need to reload this thing again, had so many things installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, it's amazing anything works at this point. But I'm afraid to, because it's sort-of kind-of working fairly consistent now (i.e. not crashing). PQ is much better with the new version and the new demux since I can actually use Cyberlink. I would like to try nVidia, but can't get it to work with Sage.

[cohnhead]

Hmm,

nVidia video and audio decoders worked fine for me first time. As a mater of fact they were the only decoders that gave me smooth playback. Might not be a bad idea to do the rebuild.

What happens when you play the files recorded by sage in WMP 10?

Good Luck!

[jblust]

Originally Posted by Naylia

Hey guys!

Got a tasty treat for you...try this MpegDemux if you have playback problems of TS files. It doesn't help channel change issues for me but it made all my TS files playback smooth like butter. You can also get a copy by emailing support@sagetv.com...

That new MpegDemux is awesome! I used to have lots of seeking problems with my firewire-recorded TS files. Any long recordings (e.g. movies) would never be able to seek at all. With this MpegDeMux, seeking works great! I get a strange pause when starting to playback a recording that's in progress, but it seems to eventually figure it out.

[davey_fl]

ok I've finally got my 6200 hooked up (not to the pc yet) and I'm wondering if there is some concise setup instructions for firewire stb with channel change? Anyone ??

[gplasky]

You mean like this from the first post?

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&postcount=355

Gerry

[davey_fl]

Originally Posted by gplasky

You mean like this from the first post?

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&postcount=355

Gerry

well yes and no, I did follow those instructions and read the word doc on it. but it's still a bit convoluted. For example, the word doc references follow this link to download/read how to get channel changing through fw to work, but then there is no link in the doc (it has been deleted)...

[davey_fl]

OK I think I've figured it out. I need meistb.zip from DFA, firewire.zip from timmmore, run these, install the STB, test video capture with vlc and channel changing with channel.exe. Use Graphedit to create graph, SGraph by Anders, edit my sage.properties file to include HD encoder, try and add it to sage. Does this sound right?

thx