WHOA!  The quote:  "incidentally - your program works great with SageTV for capturing firewire HDTV straight off of stream from the box. "

Are you saying that we're this close (holding fingers real close to one another) to getting this in MCE?  Additionally, how "Wife friendly" is SageTV?  The only reason I'm still paying my cable company for the HD-DVR is because I can't do anything with the digital HDTV cable channels through MCE.  If there's another way to accomplish this, I'm all ears!

 

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Ghostlobster
Very happy convert to SageTV! Finally, watching ESPN-HD in real HD on my HTPC without having to deal with the CableCARD fiasco!

foolio, good to hear that it works on another machine. I haven't seen the missing digit problem, the firewire command sends  the complete channel as a single command, i.e. you send over firewire a command that says change to channe "920", so there isn't a way to delay between digits. I hadn't tried sending 1 digit at a time, I am a bit surprised it works given the firewire command. I will play a bit over the weekend trying combinations to see if I can get the same problem.

foolio, can you check, the channel command prints out the device and channel it will change to as the first line of output. Is it reporting the correct channel? i.e. is it firewire or the problem with a problem?

RP560, this work only changes channels, however, there is some other work that records whatever the stb is tuned to but it couldn't change channels. Search on www.avsforum.com for "firewire windows". This captures into a different format that MCE. SageTV also can capture from firewire but again couldn't change channel, looks like foolio managed to use the channel command with SageTV.

foolio, I just tried 920 and 922 and changed back and forth about 20 times without problem. Did you move the IR blasters that normally change channel out of the way. This doesn't stop that system from working so you need to hide the IR transmitters.

Thanks for clearing that up for me. One day I will be able to record in-the-clear digital channels directly directly with MCE and then I will be a happy man.

 

It's working better now - I seem to only miss 1 channel change every 20.. not sure what the secret is.

but yea - if you are interested in capturing streaming HD - try out sageTV. In sacramento, we get INHD, INHD2, CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, DISCOVERY with just basic-basic cable ($12) + $5 rental fee. Don't get ESPN tho. and you cant capture HBO/SHOW off of the box over firewire because it is protected contents.

If you manually use channel to change channels i.e. not part of SageTV is it reliable then? It yes then its probably still IR leakage.

Can you from Sagetv log the output from it running channel, configure it to do channel -v D C.  At the start of each command you should see

Device 2 Channel 99

and at the end of each command, you should see something like

Response (0x09 (ACCEPTED)) received 12 bytes
09 48 7c 67 04 00 63 ff ff 00 00 00

The 12 bytes is the response from the STB, bytes 6 and 7 is the channel number, so in this case it is channel 99. i.e. they are the same and is the same as the STB displays. If the first byte is ever not 09 there is a problem. I dont check for this and try again, this could be a possiblity, nor do I check that the channel number in the response was the same as I sent.

Also what STB do you have? Can you post the output of "channel -v". This will report some info about the STB, it could be different from mine and act slightly differently.

 

hey tim:

here's my log

1 "FireBus MPEG2TS Tuner Subunit Device"
'Motorola AV/C Tuner Device'
"@device:pnp:\\?\avc#motorola&dct-6200&typ_5&id_0#d20538feffc91200#{65e8773d-8f
6-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\global" 0
2 "Motorola AVC Panel Device"
'Motorola AVC Panel Device'

UniqueID 'd20538feffc91200'
VendorID '12c9'
ModelID '620a'
VendorText 'MOTOROLA'
ModelText 'DCT-6200'
"@device:pnp:\\?\avc#motorola&dct-6200&typ_9&id_0#d20538feffc91200#{65e8773d-8f
6-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\global" 1
Device Id ""
Device Version "2.1.0"
Response (0x09 (ACCEPTED)) received 12 bytes
09 48 7c 67 04 03 9a ff ff 00 00 00

==============

incidentally, I don't have the ir blaster hooked up anymore so it shouldn't be IR leak. Also, sage doesn't actually do tuning - it's done via a plugin which then communicates with girder. In girder, I issue the channel.exe command so it should be the same as running it under the command prompt.

if you could put some logic in the util to make sure byte 6&7 matches the issued channel and if not, repeat the command that would be great. however, I need to do some more testing to make sure that when the receiver messes up, byte 6&7 are wrong. I'll get back to you.

Thanks tim

Thanks, that looks all ok, interesting the venderID is different from either of my STBs even though both of mine are 6200, looks like several venders are making the 6200.

I have completed the changes to check the response for the response code and channel in the response and to retry up to 10 times before failing. I will it a test in the morning and post it if its ok

 

I have updated the firewire.zip in the initial post.

1. There is a much easier way to install the drivers. I include a pointer to DFAs inf and driver package in the readme. The original modified meitape.inf will still work with the old mei driver package but the modified meistb.inf with DFAs package is much cleaner.

2. I have modified channel.exe and MyTray.exe to check for firewire response errors and incorrect channel and to retry. I also found that there are 2 commands to the STB to change channels. I have implemented both.

channel -a -v 3 99

will use the other command to change channels. If you see a problem with one version or the other will particular STB, can you post this information along with the output of channel.

Currently I believe there are 3 vendor IDs for the 6200: e5c, f9f, 12c9

vendorid e5c and f9f work with the orginal change channel command, I believe 12c9 has a problem with the original command and channel automatically using the alternative command on this stb.

Hey Tim:

the "alternative" changing doesn't work well for my STB - it's even less acurate than the original way.

I noticed that even when the channel misfires (ie, 919 becomes 91 or just 9), the resultant log string is correct - it thinks it did receive 919.

Is there a way to query via firewire what the current channel is? if so, you can do it like:

channel -v 2 920
-check channel, if 920, then no command
-if not 920, then issue firewire change command
-check channel, if 920, then done
-if not 920, then reissue change command
-do this 5 times to insure correct channel change.

Of course, I seem to be the only one with this problem so it seems rather selfish of me to ask you to make these changes! =) it is very likely something to do with my stb.

thanks though.

tom

thought I had it Do you have use firewire hub? I had a lot of trouble with firewire hubs (in particular the belkin hub) and the 6200 stb. Though if you are streaming HD over firewire I wouldn't have thought that was the problem.

Can you post the log when it fails?

I found the firewire commands for the 6200 by trial and error and some hints from MythTVs work as to which commands may work. I dont know the command to read the channel over firewire. If anyone knows the command or has the command list for the 6200 I can have a look.

I am working on recording from firewire to dvr-ms at the moment, its looking possible at least for scheduled recording.

I am getting the event for start of recording, the channel, and media name. Then creating a SourceBufferSink from the firewire tuner in the same directory as MCE is recording into.

When the stop recording event happens. I stop the recording from firewire, complete the writing into a dvr-ms format. I then look for the original MCE dvr-ms file, copy the metadata from MCEs file to mine and then rename the files to replace the MCE version. I dont know yet whether I need to copy all the metadata, some of it or modify it.

hey tim:

can you post the new update you mentioned on the sagetv forum? i do stream via firewire and I think you found the root of my problem. streaming and changing the channel caused it to not always register the channel changes.

thanks!

I will post an updated channel.exe tonight. I want to add a way to configure the timeout so you can try different timeouts and see what works.

I will also post an updated meistb.inf, I use the avcstrm.sys rather than meistrm.sys, it makes the HD stream more "reliable". Though I am still getting a lot of problems streaming from firewire to a dvr-ms format file.

Man, this is awesome work you're doing!  I'm probably going to call my cable company this week and arrange to pick up a box with firewire enabled so that I can jump in here and start tinkering. 

Can you please answer these questions:

1 - The IR Blaster will not be needed with this method...I got that part.
2 - Wil the video/audio streams be viewable from within MCE via the firewire?  In otherwords, will anything special need to be done outside of MCE for my wife to sit down, grab the remote and flip over to a digital cable station, including HD, and not have to do anything other than sip a glass of wine?
3 - Recording anything via this method is not yet possible as per the quoted posting here...got that as well.  Would I still be able to use the existing analog tuner in my MCE box for recordings off of those channels?  I guess I'm just asking if the STB will be seen as a secondary tuner within MCE here.
4 - What's your Paypal account address?  If you come up with a way to capture digital cable within MCE using Firewire, I'm certain you'll be getting quite a few donations, starting with one from me!!!

 

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Ghostlobster
Very happy convert to SageTV! Finally, watching ESPN-HD in real HD on my HTPC without having to deal with the CableCARD fiasco!

foolio, there is an additional zip in the first post: channel.zip containing an updated channel.exe. This uses a different command to change channels which works even if you are using firewire to stream video/audio as well. I changed the timings and it works fine with my stbs. If you still have problems then try

channel -v -tN D C

where N is a number between 10 and 1000. The default is 10. If you have to change the timeout let me know what you changed it to. Let me know how you get on and I will update the media center system to use the same mechanism.

Ghostlobter

1. I leave the IR blaster in but hidden behind the scenes.

2. Currently it doesn't send video/audio over firewire. It just uses firewire to change channels, I dont think my wife has realized the IR blasters have disappeared from the front of the STBs yet. Everything in MCE works as normal.

3. MCE seems to ignore the firewire tuners. Having them doesn't interfere with media center. Neither recording nor livetv stream video over firewire. The MCE is using firewire to change channels for both recording and livetv.

4. Wait till I get it going , So far I can stream video/audio over firewire in a test app into dvr-ms format. I can pause, rewind, fast forward, etc. Unfortuntely after about 7mins it crashs the test app and hoses the tuner driver and I can't restart streaming until I unplug the firewire and plug it back in. During those 7mins the video looks great, even SD looks better than what I get via my NVIDIA tuners. Audio is 5.1! I found all the HD channels I get are unencrypted as well as being able to stream all my SD channels. Theres very little documentation on using the StreamBufferSink that media center uses so this could take some time.