Digital Cable with networked encoder serial control challenged

[mdmint]

I've been fighting this for a couple days. Posts #163 & 164 DCT2000 plugin thread summarize what's going on. If anyone has their Digital cable box connected to a networked encoder and controlling channel changes via serial I'd appreciate some help.

(edit) BTW, right now I don't know if I'm needlessly or if I should harder! Even a reply simply stating yes I'm using serial channel control of digital cable box connected to networked encoder or no it can't be done would be helpful!

[mdmint]

Nobody have a digital cable box connected to networked encoder controlling channel change via serial port? Dang, I didn't think I was trying that exotic a setup.

FWIW I made my first email support request to Frey yesterday evening, maybe they'll atleast know if Recorder in network mode should be able to control cable box channel changing via serial using the DCT2000 plugin.

[heffe2001]

I'm doing it with Sage Recorder in network encoder mode (well, I was doing it, I moved my digital boxes to my main server). It works like it does on regular sage. I'll have to configure Sagerecorder on another box to remember how I did it though .

Have you tested whether your box can be controlled with serial or not yet?

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

Have you tested whether your box can be controlled with serial or not yet?

Yes, DCT.exe (v1 GUI) itself changes cable box channels fine.

[heffe2001]

Since you're using recorder, I'd make sure I left the .ini files for the dct plugin at their defaults, except for port if you need to change that. If I remember correctly I even used the older 1.0 or 1.1 version, never tried it with the 1.2 version on recorder.

[mdmint]

Got a reply back from George at Frey support. Turns out I NEVER would have gotten SageRecorder to serial control channel changes without manually adding info to SageRecorder properties file. Information not in the DCT2000 Pluggin thread or SageRecorder manual or any other of a dozen or more places and threads I searched. Totally undocumented how to.

Originally Posted by Sage Support

Besides all the other stuff you have done, SageTV Recorder running as a
stand alone app is not changing channels on the box, correct? That should be
the first thing done before setting up network encoding and everything else.
From my understanding the issue is just changing channels on the box using
SageTV Recorder, but it worked in SageTV before. Correct? I'm guessing you
are setting it up using a coax input since you refer to having Recorder on
channel 3. If so follow the below directions to correctly add this type of
input into Recorder.

I'm pasting the directions and it has two ways to do this. That second way
is the easier way.

This is all going to happen from the machine that is running SageTV Recorder
currently. To get that to show up in recorder requires a few steps. First
close recorder. Now install SageTV on that machine and set it up to change
channels on the receiver. Here's how you are going to set it up. First
select your capture card -> select TV Tuner -> Use external Cable or Sat.
rec. to tune channel -> pick channel 3 -> select USB-UIRT(or your tuning
plugin) -> and you should understand the rest from this point on since you
set it up before. Now close down SageTV.

You will now need to open up your Sage.properties file in that same machine.
In there under the mmc/encoders lines will be two specific lines you need.
These two lines will be copied over to the SageRecorder.properties file. In
the Sage.properties file look for your encoder that you set up in Sage.
Since you only setup one capture device you will only see one set of
encoders. Basically the line mmc/encoders/XXXXXXX correlates to one capture
device. If you had two capture devices there would be a different set of
numbers correlating to that capture device. These unique numbers will more
than likely be the same on both the Sage.properties file and
SageRecorder.properties file.

Here is an example from mine. When you setup SageTV like I described above
you will have this section created in your Sage.properties file:

mmc/encoders/133509170/1/3/video_crossbar_index=3
mmc/encoders/133509170/1/3/video_crossbar_type=1

The mmc/encoders/XXXXXXX/1/3 is the important line you are looking for.
There will be other lines like this created, but the two lines above are
the important ones, the rest can be ignored.

Now open up your SageRecorder.properties file and add those two lines to it.
Just make sure that those unique numbers match up to yours.

Here is the easier way to do all this and that is to add two new lines to
your SageRecorder.properties file. There is no need to install SageTV. Go
to the mmc/encoders line and add these two lines like above. I gave you the
long directions first so you understand what we are doing here. If you do it
the easy way just make sure to change the "X's" to your number that
correlates to the capture card in that system.

mmc/encoders/XXXXXXXX/1/3/video_crossbar_index=3
mmc/encoders/XXXXXXXX/1/3/video_crossbar_type=1

After you have verified that this works then you can proceed and setup the
network encoder you were trying to setup.

Since I'd already previously had the PVR250 in network mode working analog cable I simple added the two lines in both SageRecorder prop and SageTV prop on Server.

Adding the lines in Recorder created a new tuner option in SageRecorder setup. Namely tuner fixed on channel 3. Assigned the DCT exe dll plugin to it and bingo. (Same thing that is user configurable in SageTV but not normally available in SageRecorder by default)