STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by Kirby

So which demux are you using then, or arent you sure? I assume nvtrpdemux.ax is part of PureVideo? If thats the case, it is installed on all my machines, and would have been the highest merit on my HTPC I bet, because thats just a clean install of XP MCE, PureVideo and Sage, unless Sage installs its own demux at a higher merit. I'll have to check it tonight and see what I have as the highest merit demux.

Yes, it's the Nvidia filter.

I think it was the highest merit on my machine.

My impression is that the problem with the combination of SageTV+nvtrpdemux.ax was revealed by something in my TS files(*), and that not everyone who has nvtrpdemux in their Sage graphs will have problems.

I'm also under the impression that it is the intent for SageTV to purposefully use its own demux, regardless of merit, but I may be mistaken on that.

I pretty sure that I'm now using the Sage demux, though it's possible that it's Intervideo (if it has one that supports transport streams -- Intervideo and Nvidia are the two decoder packs I have installed).

(*) The only relevance to this thread, as it turns out, is that my transport streams (captured via Firewire) caused a problem w/Nvidia Demux in Sage, but *not* w/Nvidia Demux in WMP/GraphEdit. This is what made it difficult to track down the problem. My transport streams are coming from a Motorola 3412 supplied by Comcast DC.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by gtd885a

Note, you will need to specify a dump.mpg - or whatever you want to call it - and put it in a directory that you will record to

So, I went through the guides with my new 6200 and got the channels changing over fw and viewable stream in VLC and a readable dump file but I can't get it to work in Sage. When installing the tuner it sits there on preview 1394, before you choose your lineup, and then eventually errors to something about not being able to access the disk. If I skip the preview and try to view a channel in the channel line up screen I get a playback error that says can not access null file or something like that. I have 4 different recording directories, does it matter which one I have it put the dump file in? Should I just not try to prieview anything and trust that it will work in a non live scenario?

Im going to play with the delays when I get home and try turning off the sage service but otherwise I am at a loss, it seems so close to working and none of my channels appear to be 5c'd so I am really anxious.

[Humanzee]

I can't figure this out, sgraphrecorder says the following when trying to set it up as a new 1394 tuner in SageTV:

VERSION 10:38:25 PM
BUFFER HDSTB 1394|8|16777216|W:\TVMedia\HDSTBon12700169691394-0.mpgbuf|Great 10:38:25 PM
BUFFER HDSTB 1394|8|16777216|W:\TVMedia\HDSTBon12700169691394-0.mpgbuf|Great 10:38:41 PM
STOP 10:38:56 PM
NOOP 10:39:18 PM

shouldn't it say that it is creating the dump file? not some mpgbuf file?
This file does get created but it stays at 0kb. Its as if sage or sgraphrecorder is just ignoring the graphedit file I told it to use.

It doesn't want to change channels in sage either, the set top box just sits there. Like I said above, all else checks out. I can even play the dump file in sage as an imported video.

Any suggestions?
Notes:
HDSTB is the name I gave the decoder in the sage.properties file.
I renamed my graph so that sgraphrecorder theoretically could not find it, the behavior did not change, it did not error, it just made the mpgbuf file again. hmm.

[Humanzee]

I ended up restarting the whole process from restoring a backup of my sage directory, rebuilding the graph, re-editing the sage.properties file etc.

It works now, but im not sure why, everything is the same as I had it before. At least now I can sleep.

One last question, is the consensus that you can't watch live programing over 1394 without stuttering? or is that only in service mode?

Thanks.

[wado1971]

This is my second attempt at HD via firewire. My first attempt (Jan 2006) ended with limited success - some channels great and others with various stuttering problems. I've started with a complete OS reinstall - wow lots of work.

Anyhow.... I've been fustrated for a couple nights with the basics of getting Graphedit to record properly into a SageTV recording directory. The basic problem was that SageTV was removing my dump.ts file during startup??? Come to find out I needed to name the file dump.TS (capital TS) and it works great. Now I remember going thru this same problem in Jan2006 - should have writen it down

Hope this help someone.

[guho]

As pointed out by some, the dump.TS file needs to be in the video recording directory. I have three 200GB drives for SageTV, with directories:

e:\SageTV
f:\SageTV
g:\SageTV

My dump file is e:\SageTV\dump.TS. If I record HD over firewire and Sage chooses f or g I get stuttery non-working video. If I force to e: by removing the other 2 recording directories it is fine. But now I've only got 200GB for SageTV instead of 600GB. I'd still like to be able to use my other drives. Is there any way to say: source SGraphRecorder only record to e:, analog Hauppauge TV sources can use e:,f: or g:? Or is there a way to make HD firewire work regardless of the drive? Thanks for any pointers.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by guho

Is there any way to say: source SGraphRecorder only record to e:, analog Hauppauge TV sources can use e:,f: or g:? Or is there a way to make HD firewire work regardless of the drive? Thanks for any pointers.

I don't really know how firewire is set up in SageTV, but the normal way to limit where a source's recordings can be stored is use this property in the server's sage.properties:

mmc/encoders/<some ####>/forced_video_storage_path_prefix

For the prefix, check the seeker/video_storage property & use the first several characters of the dir you want a source to use. If the prefix matches the start of multiple recording dirs, it will use all matches.

- Andy

[guho]

I've got a Scientific Atlanta 4200HD. On all non-5C channels I get lots of glitches in my recordings. Tried two cable boxes with similar results so that rules out the box I think. The PC can play back w/o glitches recordings I made using the FusionHDTV so it is not the playback capability. Something is wrong with recording itself both in Sage and when watching via GraphEdit or VLC. I tried two different firewire cables. No difference. Am running on Opteron 165 Dual Core. Any suggestions for troubleshooting this. I am very close to giving up and just getting the Cablevision DVR but would prefer to be able to use SageTV for HDTV via firewire. Thanks a lot.

[lobosrul]

If you have OTA hd working ok, it sounds like a problem with the box.

See if you can use a 3250HD maybe? Thats what I have and (non-5C) recording works fine (except the sound level is lower than I'd like).

[guho]

Great to hear your SA3250HD is working out so well. I use the SA4200HD with the tuner-to-dump graph. When I examine the resulting files with mpeg2repair (enable log file) I get zillions of errors. Would you be able to examine the files from your sa3250hd with mpeg2repair? Or for that matter if anyone succeeded in getting flawless captures with the sa4200hd (as per mpeg2repair) please let me know how. As a comparison, an hour-long PBS HD show recorded off the same cable feed with the FusionHDTV pci tuner card had all of one video error and zero audio errors. I would like my firewire captures to mimic that quality as it is presently unwatchable.

mpeg2repair: http://users.adelphia.net/~mwilczyn/mpeg2repair/

Thanks for checking out your transport streams!

[Tim M]

Hi guys,
I'm having all kinds of trouble getting my 3250 going, so I'm not sure where to start asking questions, but lets try this.

Does this process require MCE as the OS? When I tried it with vanilla XP, the tuner driver installation from thegreenbutton refused to run, saying it requires MCE.

Aside from that, every time I think I have things going, I get horrible stutter, so I'm trying to work through that, but I'll start with the OS question

Thanks
(btw, running Athlon64 3200+, 1gb ram)

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by Tim M

Hi guys,
I'm having all kinds of trouble getting my 3250 going, so I'm not sure where to start asking questions, but lets try this.

Does this process require MCE as the OS? When I tried it with vanilla XP, the tuner driver installation from thegreenbutton refused to run, saying it requires MCE.

Aside from that, every time I think I have things going, I get horrible stutter, so I'm trying to work through that, but I'll start with the OS question

Thanks
(btw, running Athlon64 3200+, 1gb ram)

I'm about to try to set this up myself. I picked up a pair of SA3250HD STBs this week. I've been reading up so I think I just saw the answer to your question a few pages back. You can install the drivers in WinXP. Here is the post that explains how. Good luck to us both.

Aloha,
Mike

[Tim M]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I'm about to try to set this up myself. I picked up a pair of SA3250HD STBs this week. I've been reading up so I think I just saw the answer to your question a few pages back. You can install the drivers in WinXP. Here is the post that explains how. Good luck to us both.

Aloha,
Mike

Thanks for pointing that out. My brain went numb trying to digest this thread and I missed it.

I'm reformatting my OS partition and surrendering for a few days. My wife is sick of me messing with it, so I'll regroup and try again this week.

Keep us posted with yours.

Tim

[MeInMaui]

Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit !!!!!!!!!!

They 5C'd every stinking channel! Grrrrr!!!!!!!

Oceanic Time Warner

Well, I guess I have to use the analog output. Hopefully I'll at least be able to change channels over firewire.

Mike

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit Dangit !!!!!!!!!!

They 5C'd every stinking channel! Grrrrr!!!!!!!

Oceanic Time Warner

Well, I guess I have to use the analog output. Hopefully I'll at least be able to change channels over firewire.

Mike

I feel your pain - mine always have been. Changing channels with Firewire works great even if they are 5C'd for me. Better then with my cable box remote in fact.

[polen]

get the firewire driver from the source. I had stutter problems with an older driver.

http://home.comcast.net/~timmmoore/w...0Firewire.html

-Polen

[MeInMaui]

Ok, I've had a chance to calm down. Now that I'm thinking clearly, I guess I should try to verify that this is actually 5C encryption I'm dealing with and not something else. Here is what I have done so far.

I began to set up firewire recording on my sage server using Bohica's instructions in post #831 (great instructions by the way ). I successfully installed graphedit + proppage.dll and the firewire drivers. I then connected my SA3250 via firewire and successfully configured the tuner and panel drivers. I also disabled the 2 unknown devices that showed up. After a reboot everything showed up properly in Device Manager. I installed VLC and opened the SA tuner capture device. I cycled through every channel and no video window appeared. Just to check, I selected my PVR150 capture device and the video window opened right up.

Is there anything other than 5C that could be causing this? Thanks.

Mike

[Kirby]

Mike,

I dont know the SA boxes at all, but have you verified the 5C status in the service menus on your receiver? And in fact, is it possible the 1394 ports are not active? Not sure how an inactive port would appear to the PC, maybe it could install drivers but just not have data sent to it?

You could also try to grab a copy of CapDVHS and run that, and see if its able to capture any data from the channels. I assume you dont have a DVHS tape deck to try recording to a 5C compliant recorder from the SA3250?

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Mike,

I dont know the SA boxes at all, but have you verified the 5C status in the service menus on your receiver? And in fact, is it possible the 1394 ports are not active? Not sure how an inactive port would appear to the PC, maybe it could install drivers but just not have data sent to it?

You could also try to grab a copy of CapDVHS and run that, and see if its able to capture any data from the channels. I assume you dont have a DVHS tape deck to try recording to a 5C compliant recorder from the SA3250?

Thanks Kirby. No DVHS deck, but I'll try to check out the other suggestions.

Mike

Edit: I have verified that the firewire port is working on the STB. I was able to change channels via firewire. There was no obvious way to look up the 5C status. I haven't had a chance to look at CapDVHS, but it isn't looking good. Thanks for the suggestions.

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Thanks Kirby. No DVHS deck, but I'll try to check out the other suggestions.

Mike

Edit: I have verified that the firewire port is working on the STB. I was able to change channels via firewire. There was no obvious way to look up the 5C status. I haven't had a chance to look at CapDVHS, but it isn't looking good. Thanks for the suggestions.

Mike,

I can tell you that from my own experience, I get video windows on non 5c channels and nothing on things like HBO HD -- which is encrypted. There is no reason for them to encrypt local channels like NBC, etc - but some people have reported on here that they are encrypted by their providers.

Call the cable company and ask. I have been very pleasantly shocked at how cooperative and knowledgeable COX people have been in northern virginia. Only once was the person not able to answer my question -- at which point I asked him how long he had been in support. He answered a couple of months, so I asked to be transfered and waited for the guy who had the most experience - and he was able to answer me immediately. Once at the actual help desk, they told me the 1394 ports were inactive -- and I told them that there was a law passed that required them to activate them. He did a quick lookup in whatever database he used and said "You are right - and here are my instructions to activate them..." anyway - give them a shout (maybe a couple of times till you get your answer) and let us know what they say...