MovieBuff:

bxs122: Was any work done to fix the problem of unexpected channel changes while viewing DVDs? I'd really like to get rid of that pesky IR bud!

No time on my part - the little I looked at indicated the messages from MCE are lumped so I didn't see anything to discern between a channel change and a chapter change.
For now what I do is just not watch DVD while recording something from the D11.
I suppose one thing to try would be to determine if a DVD is playing before deciding to change the channel. If the MCE Object model I am using exposes a Play State flag then this should be a relatively easy check.

basically you just need to comment out these lines (unless of course you are in the mood to figure you why it causes sat box to crash, personally i dont mind the info box so it wasnt a big issue for me):

// disable display

// turn off display before changing the channel

byte[] arrOSDOff = new byte[] { COMMAND_PREFIX, COMMAND_OSD_OFF };

pSerial.Write(arrOSDOff, 0, 2);

overon:

basically you just need to comment out these lines (unless of course you are in the mood to figure you why it causes sat box to crash, personally i dont mind the info box so it wasnt a big issue for me):

// disable display

// turn off display before changing the channel

byte[] arrOSDOff = new byte[] { COMMAND_PREFIX, COMMAND_OSD_OFF };

pSerial.Write(arrOSDOff, 0, 2);

Easy enough explanation - I have the D11 specification that is where I learned the values for COMMAND_OSD_OFF and thus how the above was developed. I didn't like the On Screen Display if I was changing channels using my Media Center remote.
My guess is that the value defined for COMMAND_OSD_OFF means something completley different on the box you are driving. Do you have the specs for the box you are driving??

Overon, any chance you could make the re-compiled DLL available?

Thanks

Ben

I just looked at the source code. I havent had a chance to try this plugin out yet since the dvd issue is a dealbreaker for me. Can someone try doing a check for MSPROPTAG_DVD in MediaStatusChange procedure as the first line of the procedure If we receive a MSPROPTAG_DVD, we could set bExecuting=true. This way we know we are in a dvd watching state and don't want to change the channel. I suspect we should be doing this for music as well...

Please post results in this thread, thanks.

csgeek:

I just looked at the source code. I havent had a chance to try this plugin out yet since the dvd issue is a dealbreaker for me. Can someone try doing a check for MSPROPTAG_DVD in MediaStatusChange procedure as the first line of the procedure If we receive a MSPROPTAG_DVD, we could set bExecuting=true. This way we know we are in a dvd watching state and don't want to change the channel. I suspect we should be doing this for music as well...

Please post results in this thread, thanks.

Some time ago I was working on this bug on another plug-in (I don't have the code right now to look at whose plugin it was). The solution I was trying was to monitor the current mode check that mode when the channel change event was raised. In other words, only change the channel when the user is watching TV or we are starting a recording event.  I may get some time to get back to this. I have gone back to using the IR blaster because I did not have time to finish the fix, but the IR blaster really does suck.

Gonna take a look at this this weekend if I can source the hardware locally. My understanding is that a seperate instance of this DirectvMediaStatusSession is created for each session type, ie. one for dvd, one for cd, etc. If this is true, then we should be able to watch for non-tv sessions and have the plugin basically do nothing in response to any events generated by that session. Will report my results.

You can do it without the sat box and cables.... when I work on this I do it on a development pc and I just write out events to the log. This should allow you to go through the motions on the dev PC (with mce installed) and echo out when you would change the channel.

It appears I have a working solution. Simply ignoring CD and DVD sessions did not work, and at first glance it wasn't apparent why. The problem (for my setup anyway) lies within the CreateSession function. It returns a singleton MediaStatusSession object meaning every session gets a reference to the same object in memory. Returning a new MediaStatusSession for every session type allows you to use a boolean member variable that indicates whether the MediaStatusSession should attempt channel changes. I set this boolean by checking for MSPROPTAG_DVD, MSPROPTAG_CD, and MSPROPTAG_FS_EXTENSIBILITY in MediaStatusChange. The boolean value is independent for each session, since each session now has its own object. At the beginning of MediaStatusChange, I check for this boolean and return immediately if it was set because the session is one of the aforementioned types. Can anyone who was experiencing problems give this a try? I have been using a version with these changes for a few weeks with sucess...

On a side note, I have the D11-500, and the OSD still appears on channel change. I checked the documentation for USB communications with this model reciever, and there is no mention of an "osd off" function. Did I get a receiver update that broke this, or is this functionality not available on this device? Can anyone confirm "osd off" on their D11-500?

cjblazek:

Can anyone who was experiencing problems give this a try? I have been using a version with these changes for a few weeks with sucess...

Sure! I'd be happy to give your new driver a try.

Where can I download a copy of your work?

I dont have anywhere to host the file. If someone wants to host it or have me email it, pm me your email.

cjblazek:

I dont have anywhere to host the file. If someone wants to host it or have me email it, pm me your email.

Nice work and thanx for picking up on this, I just haven't had the time.
If you want to send the source changes I'll merge it with my tree, do a one-off and repost source and binaries off the original site.

Ok. Here it is.

In DirecTvMediaStatusSink.cs.....

public class DirectTvMediaStatusSink : MediaStatusSink
    {
        //MediaStatusSession session = null;
        public MediaStatusSession CreateSession()
        {
            Logging.LogLine("DirectTvMediaStatusSink.CreateSession()");
            //return session;
            return new DirectTvMediaStatusSession();
        }
        public void Initialize()
        {
            Logging.LogLine("DirectTvMediaStatusSink.Initialize()");

            //session = new DirectTvMediaStatusSession();
        }

in DirecTvMediaStatusSession.cs......
        private bool bExecuting = false;
        private bool DVDorCD = false;

        public void MediaStatusChange(Array Tags, Array Properties)
        {
            // stop MCE from breaking it when it has multiple handles to the app.
            if (bExecuting || DVDorCD)
            {
                Logging.LogLine("ignoring status change from this session");
                return;
            }

            bExecuting = true;

            try
            {
                // array is alway one long...
                int loop = Tags.Length;

                for ( int i = 0; i < loop; i++ )
                {
                    object tag = Tags.GetValue(i);
                    string name = tag.ToString().Trim();

                    //disable this watcher for dvd and cd sessions
                    if ((name.ToLower() == "MSPROPTAG_DVD".ToLower()) || (name.ToLower() == "MSPROPTAG_CD".ToLower()) || (name.ToLower() == "MSPROPTAG_FS_EXTENSIBILITY".ToLower()))
                    {
                        DVDorCD = true;
                    }

Is anyone working to make this compatible with two tuners?  I went back to MCE 2005 so that I could use firestb to control my two boxes with serial, because Tim's software wouldn't load for me in vista.  I'd love to go back to VMC if I could have both my tuners controlled by serial.  Thanks

I will try to incorporate, test and post the changes tis weekend.