STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[rtengvad]

Originally Posted by eaug

I've tried to use firewire to view my channels on VLC media player and the signal which is perfect from the STB to the tv is basically unwatchable via firewire.

I had my cable company replace my Samsung box, thinking that could be the problem, but my new box (a SA4250 HD) has the same pixalization/artifact problem when I view it via firewire.

It's as if the signal is poor, but it looks fine from the STB to the tv. I even showed it to the cable guy and he checked my signal which is fine to the box so it comes out fine to the tv, but poor on firewire.

So is this a problem others have seen and fixed? I wanted to have Sage record in HD, the only other solution I could think of to be able to get the Hauppague HD PVR, but I should not need to spend the $$$ since so many people don't seem to have the poor signal issue via firewire.

Thanks for helping me out!

Brent

I found out that my firewire cable (or the electronics on the tuner card - don't know) is very sensitive to the antenna signal. It gave me very strong pixilation. But after moving a bit the antenna cable that feeds the tuner and change the direction of the plug (L-type) I got rid of the problems 100%

Rasmus

[reggie14]

I have an update on my quest to getting firewire capture working. In fact, I have it mostly working. I unregistered the dump.ax file that came with graphedit, to make sure I was using the one from sgraphrecorder. I added a 2000 millisecond tuning delay. And, and this is probably the big one, I used the HD100 to try to watch the channels instead of my Sage server.

The problem is, I still can't play stuff on my server. Do I need to do anything special to get Sage to play back the mpeg-ts files that gets created through firewire capture? I noticed I can play things back on my client, which is a Vista box using PowerDVD decoders. My server box is a XP Pro box using nvidia Purevideo decoders. Does anyone have any ideas?

Also, and I feel a little embarrassed about this one, I don't have a problem pulling EPG data for channels like USAHD, etc., after all. I just didn't give Sage enough time to download the data. I forced Sage to update the EPG, waited 15 minutes, and then I saw it.

For those of you using firewire capture, how are you starting Sage? Are you doing it with a batch file or did you create a service? Is it hard to undo the service hack, in case I decide to switch to an HD-PVR?

It seems like I've had a few problems with stability. So, I think I'm going to be tempted to switch to something like the HD-PVR once I'm convinced its a more stable solution than firewire capture.

But, in the meantime, it looks like I can get almost all my HD channels over firewire. At least, I'm getting the ones I'm concerned about. So far I've made sure I get USA, TNT, SciFi, Discovery, ESPN and CNN. The only channel I know I don't get is the History Channel. I do watch the history channel, but not enough for me to care all that much. I'm very excited at the prospect of high-def Battlestar Galactica though.

[frontlinegeek]

When I was using firewire (Ditched my cable co as they were ripping me off and would not return the money and they generally keep boosting rates and giving nothing new at all), I used a batch file with the SGR sessions loading first and then the call to the SageTV.EXE. SGR loads so fast that there is no real need for a delay between each and then Sage. Once you get the batch file tested, you make a shortcut to it in your startup.

As for adding the service and removing it, it should be painless. The little tinkering I have done, I have not had an issue.

[MickMcGeough]

First, big thanks to all the contributors here; thanks to all the great info in this thread I've finally got an HDPVR solution.

I've got a Motorola 6200 and I'm having troubles getting reliable channel changing. I've got the delays set as:

TuningDelay: 4500
network_encoding_to_playback_delay: 6000

But still, one out of every 10 or 15 channel changes I get the spinning circle and after another 20 seconds or so an error stating that the video portion could not be rendered. Re-tuning the channel usually works fine.

As I understand it the playback delay should be set about 1500ms greater than the tuning delay. I'll increase it further but the WAF is in serious jeopardy here.

Any suggestions are welcome! Is there any way to have Sage automatically retune the channel if it can't pick up the stream the first time?

ETA: Am I using the correct "delay" setting in Sage.properties? I see in this post that there is (was?) an experimental delay property different from the one I'm using?

[baudfather]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

First, big thanks to all the contributors here; thanks to all the great info in this thread I've finally got an HDPVR solution.

I've got a Motorola 6200 and I'm having troubles getting reliable channel changing. I've got the delays set as:

TuningDelay: 4500
network_encoding_to_playback_delay: 6000

I had the exact same troubles you seem to be having - try setting the tuning delay in sgraphrecorder.ini to 8000 - I tried almost every timing from 1500, and only when I hit 8000 did the tuning work 100% of the time. I haven't tried the Sage network_encoding delay property at all. The 8 second channel changes kinda suck, but I don't watch a lot of live TV anyway .

[HokiePerogi]

Originally Posted by baudfather

The 8 second channel changes kinda suck, but I don't watch a lot of live TV anyway .

So here a quick question for you. Sorry if this was covered already. But with the 8 second delay for channel changes, does that mean you will be missing the first 8 seconds of the recording slot?

For example, your Firewire-STB is recording DiscoveryHD from 8-9pm for show A. Show B is scheduled to record on HistoryHD from 9pm-10pm. What does the ShowB recording actually contain?

Is the recording of Show B 60 minutes long, or 59 minutes and 52 seconds long?
If it's 60 minutes long, what is the content of the first 8 seconds?

Sorry if this is a silly question.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by HokiePerogi

So here a quick question for you. Sorry if this was covered already. But with the 8 second delay for channel changes, does that mean you will be missing the first 8 seconds of the recording slot?

For example, your Firewire-STB is recording DiscoveryHD from 8-9pm for show A. Show B is scheduled to record on HistoryHD from 9pm-10pm. What does the ShowB recording actually contain?

Is the recording of Show B 60 minutes long, or 59 minutes and 52 seconds long?
If it's 60 minutes long, what is the content of the first 8 seconds?

Sorry if this is a silly question.

As I understand it; Sage regards SGraphRecorder as the tuner and does not begin recording until the channel has been tuned, which means your recording would be 59 minutes and 52 seconds long.

At least, that's the way I assume it's working since my recordings do not have any blank space or video from the previous channel at the beginning, and it wouldn't be possible for Sage to start recording video from the new channel before the channel tune was complete. I don't believe the stream from SGraphRecorder would be available to Sage until after the delay + the tuning.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by baudfather

I had the exact same troubles you seem to be having - try setting the tuning delay in sgraphrecorder.ini to 8000 - I tried almost every timing from 1500, and only when I hit 8000 did the tuning work 100% of the time. I haven't tried the Sage network_encoding delay property at all. The 8 second channel changes kinda suck, but I don't watch a lot of live TV anyway .

I hardly watch live either, but the girlfriend does and therefore stable channel changing is important

I removed the network encoding playback delay entirely and increased the TuningDelay in sgraphrecorder.ini to 6000. So far it's been more reliable than any other configuration, but from what I've seen it seems that most people with similar setups need a 7 or 8 second delay in there for rock-solid channel changing.

It's a bit annoying to have that much of a delay but considering how excellent the software is, it's a small price to pay.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

Since I'm catching up on all my threads.. I might as well post about something I've been wondering about for a long time..

sometimes my firewire recordings don't quite record right. I'm not sure what the probelm is, but the file doesn't play. But what's worse is when it tries to generate a thumbnail for the show.. I get the spinning circle of death for about a minute or so. It's realy annoying. I guess it's trying to time out?? Is there a way to reduce the timeout? or have it remember that there is no thumbnail and not try to regerate the thumbnail every time I highlight the show or traverse the menu?

Jim

Ditto. 9 out of 10 firewire recordings are no problem, then one comes along that fouls up the system in ways similar to what you describe. I'm using the Nvidia video decoder, and I think its audio decoder as well, but have similar problems on two HD100s. Sometimes an HD100 will works when the PC-based client doesn't, and vice-versa.

I'm ok with shows being unplayable (obviously, not happy, but ok), but when SageTVTranscoder.exe starts chewing up my CPU and memory, and I need to restart client and/or server, I get pretty annoyed. I wish SageTV could at least detect that there is a problem and recover gracefully.

Can anyone recommend the most stable and reliable decoders when using firewire recordings? There have been times when I've disabled the transcoder, and I may go back to that solution, but if the recordings are unplayable anyway, it's only a partial solution...

[reggie14]

This thread is getting really quiet, but hopefully it's getting enough attention to help me with this problem.

I set up firewire recording a couple weeks ago and when it works, it works great. I'm having some playback issues on software clients, but it's been working pretty well on my HD100. But, every few days I have a major problem that takes down Sage. Sage itself doesn't crash, but it does stop recordings, and it prevents playback of anything- including files that have already been recorded- on the server itself (in Sage) and on clients.

When I go into my system event log, I find the following error message:

Faulting application , version 0.0.0.0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00000000.

Shutting down Sage and sgraphrecorder doesn't help. I have to restart. Then, and this has happened every time so far, when I reboot I get a Data Execution Protection error for a Generic Host Process for Win32, I see an error message saying Windows just shut down svchost.exe, and I get the following message in my event log:

Faulting application svchost.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00000000.

Then, when I reboot again, windows boots up fine, Sage and sgraphrecorder work fine, and the server works fine for a couple more days.

I saw one message online suggesting installing an update for the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package. I did that, but it didn't seem to help. Does anyone have any ideas?

[reggie14]

Any ideas on the crashing problem? This weekend I'm going to try changing my firewire card. I have one with a via chipset right now, and I'm going to try one with an NEC chipset. I'll also update to SageTV v6.5, but I can't imagine that's my problem.

[frontlinegeek]

No joke, I have used firewire cards with just about every chipset out there and have seen no difference in stability. I have used Agere, VIA, Adaptec, Ti, etc...

It was very expensive buying all of these cards...

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by que3jxp

No joke, I have used firewire cards with just about every chipset out there and have seen no difference in stability. I have used Agere, VIA, Adaptec, Ti, etc...

That's not great to hear... Were you getting the same errors as the ones I reported? It's probably bugs in FireSTB, which doesn't leave much hope. Oh well, in a few months or so maybe I'll feel comfortable trying the HD-PVRs. Right now I'm not entirely convinced it would be more stable than firewire recording.

[stewart710]

I feel your pain man. My firewire recording works pretty well, but I am using the onboard fire wire of my MSI motherboard. I do have issues from time to time, such as sometimes certain channels don't tune in and other times they will, like TNTHD and NESNHD. Somebody has written a plugin that allows you to use a Mac as a Network encoder for Firewire capture even though your SageTV server is a PC. Mac's have proper drivers for firewire capture and connecting to the STB, unlike the hacked Timmoore drivers we are forced to use. Since I have an old G4 Mac (but I beleive an older G3 would suffice) lying around, I'm going to try this setup (when I have some free time) and see if it improves my Firewire recording. Search the forum for the plugin if you are interested. Right now I am using SageTV 6.5.9 with the latest beta Mpegdemux.ax file on XP pro sp3.

[reggie14]

Well, I'll keep my eye out for a cheap Mac Cube. That would probably make a good network encoder. If you try it out, report back on how it goes.

On a side note, I think I solved my playback problems on my software clients by reinstalling Haali.

[davidk21770]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

As I understand it; Sage regards SGraphRecorder as the tuner and does not begin recording until the channel has been tuned, which means your recording would be 59 minutes and 52 seconds long.

At least, that's the way I assume it's working since my recordings do not have any blank space or video from the previous channel at the beginning, and it wouldn't be possible for Sage to start recording video from the new channel before the channel tune was complete. I don't believe the stream from SGraphRecorder would be available to Sage until after the delay + the tuning.

You can set the recording to start early. I do that anyway because of games that some stations play with prime-time programs to make it a challenge for reprogramming (and probably commercial cutting ) (I also add time to the end for the same reason -- got tired of missing the closing words or sometimes half the closing scene).

If you do that, you probably also want to set the advanced property to "Remove padding on back to back Favorites" or you may miss some or all of a program program that's back-back (I don't know if Sage truncates or skips when there's a partial conflict).

[reggie14]

As it turns out, most of my firewire recordings are unplayable on my software clients. Looking at previous posts in this thread it looks like I'm not alone with these difficulties. Does anyone have a firewire recording setup that works with SageTV Client?

[direwolf08]

First off, let me say I am stoked to finally be messing around with firewire capture on my Moto dch-3416! The box's FW port is active, everything installed great, the box responds to channel commands (with -f enabled) and I can even capture all of my HD channels in CapDVHS! The resultant files play fine in VLC, MPCHC, even in WMP, which was really surprising!

However, when I try to watch live from VLC, it seems like nothing happens. Could this be a filter/codec issue, or is something futzed with either the box or with VLC?

Any thoughts? I briefly tried MPCHC (without installing any extra filters) and MPCHC crashed and blue-screened. I hope I can get this to work so I can ditch Comcast's terrbile DVR interface and move over to Sage or something like it.

[hemicuda]

I went through the channels on ours, and only the local HD channels are recordable with CapDVHS. I haven't tinkered with firewire tuning because of that. I'll be stuck with HD-PVR/IR unless I can find a device what will convert firewire to ethernet like this does for usb: Grid Connect.

I hope EPB kicks Comcast's butt when their fiber to the home service finally rolls out. I'm drooling over the possibility of 20MB synchronous.

[davidk21770]

Originally Posted by hemicuda

I went through the channels on ours, and only the local HD channels are recordable with CapDVHS. I haven't tinkered with firewire tuning because of that. I'll be stuck with HD-PVR/IR unless I can find a device what will convert firewire to ethernet like this does for usb: Grid Connect.

I hope EPB kicks Comcast's butt when their fiber to the home service finally rolls out. I'm drooling over the possibility of 20MB synchronous.

With capdvhs, you're grabbing the raw signal from the cable. With SGraphRecorder, you're getting the decoded feed from the cable box and thus shouldn't have problems with encryption.