STB Firewire (IEEE-1394) Support

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by kmp14

The bad recordings would not play anywhere. Hd200, PC, etc. Further investigation revealed that the files were simply not valid MPEG files. Not sure what they were.

Usually when I see that it means the channel tuning failed and it was trying to record an encrypted channel.

[jbuszkie]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Usually when I see that it means the channel tuning failed and it was trying to record an encrypted channel.

I get this randomly all the time.. I was never able to figure out how to get around it. So I just live with it. Luckily it's less often than more. When I do have a bad recording.. It really wreaks havoc with sage as sage tries to generate a thumbnail. When I finally delete the file all become well...

Most of the time tuning to a different channel and then back fixes it. I really wish I could detect that when it happens so I could do something as to not record the whole thing incorrectly!

Jim

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Reggie,

Would you be able to post a screen shot of your graph?

I've attached a screen shot of the graph to this post. It's a pretty small change to the graph. Now my firewire recordings come out as program streams and playback works much better on my software client.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I've attached a screen shot of the graph to this post. It's a pretty small change to the graph. Now my firewire recordings come out as program streams and playback works much better on my software client.

Reggie,

Thanks that works pefectly I made one change to my ini and that made channel changing seamlessly. I unload the graph after channel change and stop.

TuningDelay=5000
UnloadGraphOnStop=1
UnloadGraphOnSwitch=1

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Reggie,

Thanks that works pefectly I made one change to my ini and that made channel changing seamlessly. I unload the graph after channel change and stop.

TuningDelay=5000
UnloadGraphOnStop=1
UnloadGraphOnSwitch=1

It looked like it was working well, but for some reason I started getting a lot of halts in my recording that I didn't used to get, resulting in the video being broken up in to lots of little files.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

It looked like it was working well, but for some reason I started getting a lot of halts in my recording that I didn't used to get, resulting in the video being broken up in to lots of little files.

Pengiun,

Make sure you register the dump filter that came with SGraphRecorder and use the SBDARecorderDump directshow filter not the MPEG2DUMP as output.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Pengiun,

Make sure you register the dump filter that came with SGraphRecorder and use the SBDARecorderDump directshow filter not the MPEG2DUMP as output.

Bah, good call! I forgot to do that after I moved to my new PC. I'm just using MPEG2DUMP.

[pingmustard]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I get this randomly all the time.. I was never able to figure out how to get around it. So I just live with it. Luckily it's less often than more. When I do have a bad recording.. It really wreaks havoc with sage as sage tries to generate a thumbnail. When I finally delete the file all become well...

Most of the time, tuning to a different channel and then back fixes it. I really wish I could detect that when it happens so I could do something as to not record the whole thing incorrectly!

Jim

I think I have similar problems as you. It seems like certain channels (possibly premium channels like HBO) work if I use the direct STB to tv, but FireSTB with VLC shows nothing (inside Sage, nothing as well). Other channels work fine. Is this a driver issue that could/has been fixed? This is a pretty recent setup (within 3 weeks ago) so the files I used are pretty new. I'm using a Motorola 3416.

Also, I tried double checking if the box has 5C encryption enabled.. as far as I can observe, the 5C is FREE COPY when I look at it on my STB... so I can only hope someday someone will solve all our FireSTB quirks :T

Here's link to check if 5C is enabled, in case anyone interested:

http://stream-recorder.com/forum/rec...ws-t2669.html?

Anyone else have comments/solutions to this?

Side note:
It would be really nice if Sage didn't make the UI unresponsive when failing to generate thumbnails for bad recordings.

[evilpenguin]

I sent them a bug about that a year ago, might be a good idea to send one in also. SageTVTranscoder should be smart enough to error out in a situation like that without grinding you're server to a halt.

[easperhe]

All,

FYI - I see the same issue that SageTV becomes unresponsive for ~15sec when trying to create a thumbnail for corrupted firewire recording. I submitted a bug. I hope they can get to this.

[easperhe]

All,

If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it. I've been using a Vista-32bit (home version I think) HTPC that has been using 2 comcast DCH-3200 firewire ports for both channel changing and recording. I live in Placerville, CA comcast area. This has worked pretty well for several years. Aside from well documented quirks, things worked.

On a completetly new disk, I installed Win7-32bit Ultimate (UAC disabled) from scratch and started to go through the setup for firewire channel change and recording. After successfully installing the same drivers (timmmoore firestb.msi and exdeus DCH-3200 drivers) in Win7 that I had in Vista, I wasn't getting any video out of the firewire ports (VLC didn't find anything) although the channel changing worked fine.

Thinking maybe something was wrong with Win7 setup, I replaced Win7 disk with Vista disk and rebooted. Unfortunately, the DCH-3200s did not output video on firewire here either though the channel changing still works. So, same issue now on both vista and win7 builds.

Seems to me there are 2 possibilities
* I somehow screwed something up. I don't know how as the drivers seems to install just fine. But a similar somewhat similar post/problem was found here. My issue is a bit different as I never had Win7 working.
http://www.missingremote.com/index.p...e;topic=2480.0

* Some comcast update to box occured while I was powering on/off the box. I checked the boxes diagnostic page and see conflicting info. On the first page, I see that 1394: enabled "yes" active "no". But on the 3rd page, it I get this

1394
Active ports: 2
Data xmission: Active
5C Implementation: No
Copy Control: Copy Free
Cycle Master Node: No
IRM Node: Yes
Root Node: No
Loop Detected: No
EUI-64: 0x002180FFFEE03820

It's possible that comcast did something and that woudl explain my issue. But it seems extremely unlucky for this to happen while I'm migrating to Win7. So, I suspect it's me but I have no idea what to do anymore.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

[nyplayer]

easperhe,

I would remove the box from device manager..... recycle the power on the box... For windows 7 you have to install the legacy drivers for your IEEE 1394 controller. Aslos use the graph in this post.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/atta...1&d=1258681595

[easperhe]

YEA!!!! nyplayer - thanks! That did the trick. I'm kicking myself since I already read that you should use legacy driver for you 1394 card. But I don't have a 1394 add in card (is that what was meant?) I have built in 1394 ports on MB and my sleep deprived brain didn't make the connection.

[bonoman]

Trying to take the leap from xp to win7 on my sage box, but getting an error when trying to install the driver for my DCH-3200:

"Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.

Motorola AV/C Panel Device (DCH-3200)

The system cannot find the file specified."

I browse right to the driver directory and still get it. I've tried the timmore drivers and the exdeus ones. Anyone else get this and figure it out?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by bonoman

Trying to take the leap from xp to win7 on my sage box, but getting an error when trying to install the driver for my DCH-3200:

"Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.

Motorola AV/C Panel Device (DCH-3200)

The system cannot find the file specified."

I browse right to the driver directory and still get it. I've tried the timmore drivers and the exdeus ones. Anyone else get this and figure it out?

Are you using 64bit W7? If so it won't work.

[bonoman]

Originally Posted by Brent

Are you using 64bit W7? If so it won't work.

I wish, but nope, using 32-bit. I have 64-bit HW and really wanted to use xp64 as well, but its well documented that the driver only works on the x86-32 install.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Brent

Are you using 64bit W7? If so it won't work.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the FireSTB drivers will work in Windows 7 x64 if you override the check for signed drivers? I'm not going to go to the trouble of trying it (my server is WinXP x32), but it might be worthwhile to try if you have 64-bit Windows and you're looking for firewire support.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the FireSTB drivers will work in Windows 7 x64 if you override the check for signed drivers? I'm not going to go to the trouble of trying it (my server is WinXP x32), but it might be worthwhile to try if you have 64-bit Windows and you're looking for firewire support.

The problem is that there are no 64-bit drivers. You can't use 32-bit drivers on a 64-bit system. Doesn't work.

[davey_fl]

Has anyone successfully setup an HD network encoder? I've got 2 DCt6200s playing flawlessly for 3 years now into my primary sage box. But I want to start moving things into a network rack, and farming out the HD encoding. I moved one of my DCT6200s today to a server machine, set it all up in sage and it channel changes and records just fine. However, it doesn't allow live playback. I'm getting No Signal and constant requests to SGraph for the file size. If I let the recording finish and then watch it, no problems. I just can't watch it live. I've messed with my timings trying many possible combinations, still no luck. I tried searching but I couldn't find anything in this thread to help...

[basset]

Hi

I have 2 SA 8300HDC boxes and have been using them for ever with s-video out and channel change over the firewire. I tries last night to use the firewire recording. I followed the instructions in the various documents and got to the point where I can use VLC to view the video from both STBs.

I installed SgraphRecorder and registered the dump.ax. I then used the latest graphedit (latest version). I configure the graph, but when I hit play I get most of the time an empty file. Some HD channels do produce output, but even SD channels give no output and sometimes after a couple of seconds or when I press stop on graphedit, the machine BSOD and reboots.

I know the firewire drivers work since VLC works without a problem and I can't recall that it ever crashed.

I've set everything up in SageTV too and configured the recorder. No need to say that I get nothing when the channel changes and is soon followed by a BSOD and reboot if I leave it too long.

Any ideas why VLC works but Sgraphrecorder / graphedit doesn't ???

I'm SOOOOO close to using my HDTV for what it was meant

Basset