STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by stewart710

Thanks for the link. I tried it last night and for channel 804 I had to check d06. It said CCI=0x02 and RC=0x01, the rest were 0x00. for other channels they seemed to be 0x00 for everything. For premium channels it said CCI=0x02 and DRM=0x01. Is there anything I can do?

Nothing you can do, except not watch CCI=0x02 channel via firewire. DRM setting is meaningless for our purposes here. I should clarify the 'nothing you can do' to add the word "legally" behind it. You could always break into the headend building, find the equipment where the CCI setting is kept, and change it for the channels in question!

[stewart710]

I was thinking more along the lines of contacting Comcast and finding out why they are violating FCC policy by encrypting local channels. Isn't that a no no?

[kricker]

I think yes indeed, but others may say differently regarding their interpretation of the rulings. I actually just emailed the FCC about this issue with Comcast in my local area.

Can someone explain to me how it is that with all the various FCC mandates it is still a battle to receive unencrypted basic service from the various providers in my area. Comcast seems to be the worst offender. They are encrypting the local HD feeds so they are not delivered over Clear QAM. And then there are issues with their cable boxes. From what I understand, they are required to provide a customer with a STB that has a functional firewire port, but when one calls their local Comcast office the response is "We do not support the firewire interface." How is that in compliance? If lucky enough, you might get a STB with the firewire port active, but then the box applies 5c encryption to the local feeds coming thru the firewire port. So once again it is useless. Is there any way to get some help in making our local cable companies to comply properly to the FCC rulings?

Thank You for your time.

Of course as of yet I have heard nothing back. Maybe if enough people complain about their cable provider something might get done. But that's a subject for another thread.

To answer your earlier question, there might be something you can do. The 5c encryption is done via the cable box reading the broadcast flag (which is also supposed to be a no no) from the local affiliate not the cable company, and then apply the 5c encryption on the firewire port. This is all done via the boxes firmware which is updated automatically from the cable company. You could try to swap out for a newer box which might have different firmware which does not apply the 5c and ignores the broadcast flag (which from what I have read it is supposed to be doing), but it's a crap shoot. As the brother of a cable supervisor, I have been told numerous times, the cable techs don't even know what box does what. Only a few engineers on staff may. Or you could call the local affiliate and tell them to quit using the broadcast flag.

[stewart710]

The link I was directed to mentioned DRM and CCI, but not RC. Could anyone define what these really mean? What do the 0x02 and 0x01 flags mean? I'd like to sound somewhat informed when I call comcast. I know google is my friend, but my searches haven't shed any light on the subject. Thanks.

[zetronboy]

Originally Posted by rebelBodhi

SGraphRecorder sporadically "encounters an error" and quits.
...for no apparent reason. It happens at an acceptable rate, but the problem is getting it started again. If I just run it again and restart Sage, it doesn't work--I need to do a full machine Reset to get things up and running again. Does anyone have an idea of what I need to do to get SGR and Sage going again without a full reset? Like are there processes that need to be killed that I'm missing?

This has been happening to me since I got HD recording working. Every few days SGraph locks up/freezes and does not respond to right-clicks. Sage will no longer record. Restarting SGraph does no good, I must unplug the Firewire cable from the PC and reconnect, then restart all apps (or just reboot). I think its related to a memory leak in Sage I see, it keeps building and building beyond 650Mb in Swap (physical ram stays about 200Mb). Channel change seems to trigger the heap drop. Using 3500 as a delay in Sgraph, unloading graph on stop but not channel change. Using NVIDIA and AC3 filters. Using latest beta Sage. Running on Athlon64 w/2G ram. After SGraph locks up I cannot even view my graphs in Graphedit, its like the cable box driver has crashed. I have not found anyone else with this issue.

[frontlinegeek]

Originally Posted by zetronboy

I have not found anyone else with this issue.

Well, I have been up and running with two STBs and sessions of SGR for a solid 4 days and I have not seen any issues.

That is indeed a screwy problem.

[frontlinegeek]

Originally Posted by stewart710

The link I was directed to mentioned DRM and CCI, but not RC. Could anyone define what these really mean? What do the 0x02 and 0x01 flags mean? I'd like to sound somewhat informed when I call comcast. I know google is my friend, but my searches haven't shed any light on the subject. Thanks.

The issue is the 5C setting. Check the diags screen for that. You need to do it manually for each channel. As for what to hope for, hope for 5C=0.

And legally, you can't stop the 5C. Only the possibility of stopping the clear QAM local channels from being encrypted.

[eobiont]

My locals started not recording too (Mediacom). Long ago, 5C implementation used to say Yes, but now it doesn't. It says "NO" however the CCI values are set on certain local channels and usually for only certain programs. Especially Fox and CBS. For instance on Fox, the national feed is unrecordable and the local portion of the programming is recordable.

I too would like to know if this is legal.

Also, I would like to know if the nextcom device in a Motorola STB would work in this situation.

[stewart710]

That's where I'm at. My 5C = NO, but CBSHD has the CCI and RC flags turned on. I tried calling Comcast to find out the deal, but they are a broken record that says "We don't support Firewire Ports", I tried to explain how they are violating FCC regulations, but the record just drones on. I filed online complaints with the FCC and the BBB yesterday, I'm fully expecting my cable box to self destruct now.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by eobiont

Also, I would like to know if the nextcom device in a Motorola STB would work in this situation.

The R5000 mod will ignore all the bad things in life Keep in mind though, it can only be installed into non-5C capable STB's. That means, if it has firewire, it cant be modded (legally).

[Kirby]

Previously you stated:

Originally Posted by stewart710

IAs of a few days ago 804 (CBS HD) will not come through the firewire connection. I can watch it using the cable box or through the the ATSC tuner, so it is NOT being encrypted via QAM, but since it isn't coming out over the firewire port, does that mean it is 5C encrypted? Is anyone else having this problem?

When you say "through the ATSC tuner" are you saying you can view the clear QAM CBS channel through a QAM tuner or are you able to view the OTA HD feed through the tuner?

[stewart710]

I run the cable to a splitter with one line going to the cable box and the other to my HDTVs ATSC tuner, which picks up all the Clear Qam stations, including CBSHD. I finally achieved stutter-free playback of HD through Sagetv by installing a Nvidia 8600gt (I bought a 6600gt, then a 7600gs, then a 7600gt and none of them stopped the stuttering) video card this weekend and now Comcast throws the switch on the channel that airs most of the Patriots games in HD. So now I still have to spend a minimum of $100 to buy a clear qam capable HVR-1600 to get this one channel. The nonsense just doesn't end. I've been unsuccessfully trying get stutter-free HD recordings of Patriots games for 1.5 years and counting.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by stewart710

I run the cable to a splitter with one line going to the cable box and the other to my HDTVs ATSC tuner, which picks up all the Clear Qam stations, including CBSHD.

Then your cable company is not breaking any FCC regulations (unless they are somehow inserting the CCI setting, which they shouldnt be). They are providing you an in-the-clear CBS HD feed. The fact that the channel is set for CCI <> 0x00 is (should be) coming from your local CBS affiliate. That, according to they way I understand the FCC reg's, is a big "no-no" to have anything other than 0x00 set for broadcast channels. So I think you need to file the complaint against your CBS affiliate. But I know many have complained about sports on FOX being set to 0x02, so maybe there are some exceptions.

[kricker]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Then your cable company is not breaking any FCC regulations (unless they are somehow inserting the CCI setting, which they shouldnt be). They are providing you an in-the-clear CBS HD feed. The fact that the channel is set for CCI <> 0x00 is (should be) coming from your local CBS affiliate. That, according to they way I understand the FCC reg's, is a big "no-no" to have anything other than 0x00 set for broadcast channels. So I think you need to file the complaint against your CBS affiliate. But I know many have complained about sports on FOX being set to 0x02, so maybe there are some exceptions.

Well the cable company is providing the cable box which is encrypting the channel out the firewire when it shouldn't be. If someone does not have another way to tune the cable signal, then they are out of luck. This is hardly complying with a functional firewire port in my opinion. But that's neither here nor there.

[stewart710]

That's my opinion as well. If it is coming out of the box encrypted it is Comcast's fault, period. It should not be up to me, the end-user to write a letter to CBS asking why their station is coming through encrypted. Comcast is the service provider, it's their job to ensure that the service they are selling complies with all FCC regulations. That being said, I know Comcast won't do anything about it, so I emailed my local CBS affiliate about this.

[naughtyusmaximu]

I'm having a little trouble getting my DCT6416 to work. I'm able to get video (both HD and SD) through firewire with VLC, and I can change the channels with channelw.exe. Sound however doesn't work. It will loop the first 1/4s of sound for the entire time I play any given video (sounding like a broken record).

If I try to get the video to play through Sage, it doesn't even seem to receive the video.

Any suggestions?

[codemonkeydave]

Originally Posted by naughtyusmaximu

I'm having a little trouble getting my DCT6416 to work. I'm able to get video (both HD and SD) through firewire with VLC, and I can change the channels with channelw.exe. Sound however doesn't work. It will loop the first 1/4s of sound for the entire time I play any given video (sounding like a broken record).

If I try to get the video to play through Sage, it doesn't even seem to receive the video.

Any suggestions?

I'm getting the exact same thing with my setup. I have an SA8300HD and I'd just like to be able to view the live TV and change channels through Sage or some other app.

All of the tutorials, apps, and drivers out there that claim to work are at least a year old if not older. Can anyone provide a more up to date guide for us newbies?

Thanks.

[deria]

I'm having a problem that I hope someone can help with. My firewire recordings have been working well for a number of months; all of a sudden, though, tonight several recordings were missed.

Dancing w/ The Stars recorded from 6:00 - 7:30 just fine. All shows after that failed to record. When I noticed the problem, I went to my server box and took a look and everything LOOKED right; the machine was running, the STB was on, the sggraphrecorder program was running and responsive, and SageTV was doing its thing just fine. I went into device manager and everything looked correct (ie: the tuner was present and did not have an exclamation point beside it). I double-clicked my gethd.grf file, though, and when GraphEdit opened the STB wasn't connected to the null-writer. If I tried to join the output of the tuner to the input of the nullwriter, it said that the two couldn't agree on a connection.

So, I decided to unplug and replug the firewire cable (stupid idea; the system immediately bluescreened). When I rebooted, though, all was well. If I opened the same gethd.grf file, the two components of the graph were connected as I expected them to be in the first place.

Can someone tell me what might have happened? I need to have this reliable. HD is nice, but if it isn't reliable then its worthless and it negatively affects my WAF.

At this point, I don't even know if there is a way I could pre-emptively monitor for this problem since I don't have the faintest idea what caused it to happen in the first place. Any thoughts?

[Diginerd]

Originally Posted by guho

For those of you who, like me, faced the situation that a cable box (such as SA4200HD) would produce bad recordings when using it with Windows and Nolberger's SGraphRecorder, while firewire captures work perfectly using a Macintosh, I've developed a SageTV network encoder for the MAC. It takes requests from SageTV and passes them on to an attached firewire device to tune, start and stop recording. It handles mappings of file names from PC land to MAC. Just posting it here to gauge interest. If there is any I will put it up on the web somewhere. It's working perfectly for me.

WHOA, I think there would be MANY folks who would be in agreement with me and say : "Hell Yeah, Please up this ASAP!!!!!"

I think if you posted this note over in the Mac Forum you'd have a huge response..

So what's it going to take to get you to put this up? Where do I send the beer?

[guho]

Sorry for the delay in getting this up as I had to write up some docs etc. and do lots of testing. Here it is: http://www.hugolyppens.com/SageTVFir...rkEncoder.html

This is a way to use a Macintosh on your home network as a SageTV Firewire Network Encoder. As many have noticed, firewire captures from Mac are often clean whereas from PC they are pixelated. I've only tested it on MacOS 10.4.8 (10.4.x required) and an SA4200HD. Works great. It'll even turn on the box before the recording and turn it off when done.

Let the beer flow!!