STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[Bohica]

My cox guys (my cox -- lol) really know their stuff. The guys at the customer service desk knew about the firewire ports -- knew they should be active, and knew they do not 5c any local HD channels... got to give them credit... good luck -- I think in the document when it got to VLC testing -- it either works or doesn't work. As I said - I get nothing on channels that are 5c's - no vlc window. On open channels the window pops up...

[bbkim]

I am new to SageTV and this forum, but you guys are GREAT!!!

Last weekend I got my SageTV working with Mot DCT-6412. Everything seems working. I still need to check the simultaneous live TV and recording issue.

One question. My DCT-6412 has dual tuner built-in. Is there anyway to use both tuners? When I installed the driver, I only saw one tuner under the Device Manager.

I have few glitches I haven't figured out yet (i.e. unless I close the file, my live TV shows whatever I was watching, my remapping channel of analog channels to HD channel does not show HD - it tunes into SD, 5C encrypted channels freezes SageTV, Program Guide does not show the proper channel in the preview box, etc.). I may have to go back and read the manual.

Thanks everyone for great information.

[travisbell]

Originally Posted by bbkim

One question. My DCT-6412 has dual tuner built-in. Is there anyway to use both tuners? When I installed the driver, I only saw one tuner under the Device Manager.

Unfortunately no. The Firewire port is only attached to 1 of the tuners. I too wished that I could have access to both but alas it is not so.

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by bbkim

I have few glitches I haven't figured out yet (i.e. unless I close the file, my live TV shows whatever I was watching, my remapping channel of analog channels to HD channel does not show HD - it tunes into SD, 5C encrypted channels freezes SageTV, Program Guide does not show the proper channel in the preview box, etc.). I may have to go back and read the manual.

Thanks everyone for great information.

Remapping doesn't really work like you want it to. Sounds like most of your problems are because of remapping. Just dont -- leave both your original SD locals and your new HD locals on their normal channels -- and then select in your favorite which channel to record. That -- in my experience is the most reliable...

[bhyman1]

Originally Posted by Bohica

Sounds like either 5c, or they have your ports turned off, or your system has issues with the firewire... assume everyone is running SP2 for windows correct? Have you tested the firewire ports with other things to make sure your system can use them correctly? Tried another system with the cable boxes -- like a laptop or something? Just throwing out some troubleshooting tips...

I'm sure my laptop is sqaure with it's Firewire ports. I've used them to capture video from my DV camera with no issues.

Yeah, it's running XP SP2, etc.

I'll try the cable box on another PC just to confirm Time Warner hate's its consumers.

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by bhyman1

I'm sure my laptop is sqaure with it's Firewire ports. I've used them to capture video from my DV camera with no issues.

Yeah, it's running XP SP2, etc.

I'll try the cable box on another PC just to confirm Time Warner hate's its consumers.

There is a law that requires them to make the ports active upon request. I saw a reference to it here -- perhaps even very early on in this thread???

[bbkim]

I tried something different. I don't know if anyone else tried this before.

Instead of using the SageTV Client on a remote computer to view recorded shows, I access the hard drive via network and play the show directly over the network (100BT). And it works well (not perfect, but workable for even the HD shows).

Why do I do this? I am kinda minimalist when it comes to computer software. I cannot control SageTV, but I can watch all the shows from any computers (including Macintosh) on the network without the license fees.

Here is my config.

I have my SageTV installed on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 PC connected Motorola DCT-6412 via firewire. It outputs video to HD TV via component outputs and audio to 5.1 receiver via an optical cable. The PC is connected to 100BT netowork via D-Link switch. On the other side of the network, I have PowerMacintosh G4 (1.0GHz, Digital Audio) connected to SageTV PC via SMB protocal.

When my Mac accesses the PC over the network, all files listed with show titles and their subtitles as MPEG files. You can easily identify the show you like to watch. Double click normally launches Quicktime and it does not play the SageTV files without 3rd party CODEC. Even with a proper CODEC, the Quicktime is not the best player, probably, because Quicktime decodes files using software instead of using the hardware (i.e. video card).

However, the VLC Media Player works well even with the HD files. SD shows almost play perfectly. For HD shows occational jerky plays, but very very viewable. Some HD shows play better than others. I can be totally wrong, but my guess is that because they are broadcasted 720p instead of 1080i.

I thought this was nice to share with everyone.

[bhyman1]

Originally Posted by Bohica

There is a law that requires them to make the ports active upon request. I saw a reference to it here -- perhaps even very early on in this thread???

There is indeed a regulation requiring cable companies to provide STB's with active firewire ports.

However I've contacted TW twice and got the same response. "We dont have those".

After this incident I will probably write the local franchise authority.

[Beefcake550]

Hi All,

I sorta have this working, but have some questions....

I got video to work in Graph edit and VLC with my SA 3250 (Charter Comm). Now, when I got it working in Sage, there is a HUGE delay (seconds) before any video shows, and then it's VERY choppy.

I have the following:
Athlon 3000XP
512MB RAM (dual channel)
7200rpm drive
Radeon x700 AGP 256MB
Anything else relavent?

I have more testing to do and changes to the graph edit to try different things, but that should be enough compute power for HD, right? I even had trouble on non-HDTV stuff.

Another one....so some HD channels are in 1080i and others are in 720p. My cable company offers:

PBS-HD
CBS-HD
NBC-HD
ABC-HD
FOX-HD

for locals. I can only get video on PBS and CBS. My TV only supports 1080i, so I was wondering if that had anything to do with it. Did charter just put 5C protection on the channels? How can I check that?

-Brian

[davey_fl]

upgraded my sage from 3.014 to 4.18 yesterday. in 3.014 my firewire was working fantastic, not under 4.1.8 it doesn't work at all. I have my graph dumping a ts and the file writes out fine, I can open it and play it in Media Player. I added the tuenr to sage and it shows up, does the channel changing, but whenever I select an HD channel it locks up sage, CPU is only at 2%, but the spinning sage icon sits there forever, and black screen on the preview window. the only way to get out of this is to use CTRL-ALT-DEL and kill sage. Anyone have this problem with the latest version of sage?

thx

[Beefcake550]

Well, I never tried anything but the latest Sage. I can't get it to work well either. I was able to get al lthe steps working, but I also found out that Charter is encrypting all the HD channels. What a pain in the butt!!!

I guess I'll just have to wait for DirecTV to come out with their PC tuner cards (looks like Q4 - when Vista ships).

-Brian

[cohnhead]

Well, I did have firewire recording working great, until i screwed it up this weekend. Please help me get back to where i was.

I Finally built a real server, and moved Sage and two PVR-150's to the server, and installed the client on my HTPC, where I previously just had SageTV installed. The Firewire cable box is still at the HTPC, so that will is the netwok encoder, but I have not been able to get it to work.

Graph works when run from graph edit. Dumped file is beautiful.

SGR runs, channel changes, and a new file is created in the appropriate directory on the server, but it stays at 0 size.

SGR debug shows:

START SGraphRecorder 1394|707|2283080891302|C:\SERVER\SAGE\Conviction-Pilot-254492-0.mpg|DVD Standard Play 10:34:05 PM
Sending Girder command: Channel7
Sending Girder command: Channel0
Sending Girder command: Channel7
Sending Girder command: Channel
The system cannot find the path specified
NOOP 10:34:06 PM
NOOP 10:34:06 PM
GET_FILE_SIZE C:\SERVER\SAGE\Conviction-Pilot-254492-0.mpg 10:34:06 PM
NOOP 10:34:51 PM
NOOP 10:34:51 PM
STOP 10:34:51 PM

I tried a number of different delay timings with no difference.

Has anyone had any luck running the network encoder in a similar manner? Does anyone have any advice on how to make my setup work?

Marc

[DFA]

Quick observation about live playback and channel changing:

It seems that with earlier versions of Sage (i.e., 2.2.8), a "Tuning Delay" of at most 3000 msec was needed.

I am currently running 4.1.8 and need a "Tuning Delay" in SGR of 5500 msec. Someone else a page or two back also reported the need of 6000 to 7000 msec to get around frozen playback frames although recording still proceeding.

So, if having that particular issue, try really cranking up the Tuning Delay and back it down from some high value if successful (don't forget to kill and restart SGR for any change made to SGraphRecorcer.ini).

EDIT: See IceStorm's post #909 for his findings.

DFA

[davey_fl]

DFA thanks that did it for me. Increased dramatically the timings in SGR and sage and I have HD and channel changing working flawlessly again, only with a 7 second delay before picture shows up, but that's due to the ms delay in the properties file and we mostly timeshift our HD.

thx again now I'm off to try two HD boxes, one local and one remote.

[lobosrul]

Hello, so i got firewire working the other day with a Scientific Atlanta HD box (Comcast), and i get nearly every digital chan except the HBO's .

I have a problem though, I use firewire to change channels, and it works great for chans 101+, but is very slow for channels under 100. The reason is quite obvious, the exe program only puts in a 1 or 2 digit #, and the box sits there and waits a few seconds for a 3rd digit. Sage actualy changes channels before the box does!

So im wondering, does anyone have a patch or workaround for this??

BTW I am NOT talking about the delay in the sgraph properties, i have that set at 2500.

One other thing, sound coming in from firewire is at a lower volume than everything else, anyone know how to boost it?

[cohnhead]

I solved my problem with SGR by changing the recordings directory in sage from C:\SageRecordingDirectory to the network path \\Server\SageRecordingDirectory.

Interesting phenomenon! A 0kb file must be created by Sage in the recording directory before sending the command to the SGR to start recording, but then SGR was trying to write its file to a directory on the client machine's local drive that didn't exist.

All works well now, and as a bonus, I can now change HD channels without stoping playback first. Timings are quite a bit shorter then others are reporting, (2000 SGR and 4000 sage.properties)

Now the bad news. Stutter in HD playback over the network. It comes and goes, and I think most times occurs when the server drive is being written to by other encoders. (Haven't confirmed this to be the case). My first try to solve is to reformat with 64k clusters.

More to come if that does not solve the problem.

Marc

[DFA]

Another observation to put forward:

Way back in the beginning of this whole thing even before Anders even released the UNE, I had been doing some investigating (quite a bit of investigating actually).

I went to each of my non-encrypted HD channels and recorded short 1 or 2 minute clips from each of them. I then used TSReader Lite to analyze those clips. I found some channels to be flawless while others had some to quite a few stray packets which resulted as missing packets from the video stream.

As expected, this will be visual and won't be pretty. It seems to be some sort of problem with the STB in my case. I have two STB's and trading their positions did not change anything. I discussed this with some technical people that work for the CableCo but basicly just got a "shrug" out of them. Seems the best they could suggest was to wait for software updates to the STB's as they came around.

So before laying any stuttering problems, etc. at Sage's door step, it would be a good idea to first verify the integrity of the TS from the STB for the various channels of interest. They may not all be clean even if not 5c'd. You should be suspicious if one channel performs well while another does not.

DFA

[DFA]

lobosrul:

As far as 1-digit and 2-digit channel change is concerned, you would need to contact the author (timmmore) of "channelw.exe" to see if an "auto-enter" can be given to follow channel changes that are less than 100.

DFA

[DFA]

Post #999:

Next post, and this thread breaks 1000 posts! Did you know the secret that you win a free Mercedes who ever makes the one thousandth post? Sorry, just kidding.

Maybe the thread explodes at 1000 so be careful.... wear goggles or cover your eyes.

DFA

[davey_fl]

sweet, now I have post # 1000