Nathang, I am using a much older AC3, 0.70b. I will try the latest ac3 on one of my machines and see if I have the same problem.

edit: I just looked at http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net and 0.70b is the latest, where are you getting your ac3 fitler from? Sound like we are using different ac3 filters.

Timmmoore,

I downloaded mine from

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/ac3filter.cfm

I uninstalled it and installed .70b and it now works!!! Thanks for all your hard work. I will now wait quietly and patiently for you next update. Hopefully it will have an extender fix and 2nd tuner fix. Have you every thought about paypal donations? Thanks again.

I haven't really been following this thread.  I'm a little lost where you are and what you have running right now and what your trying to do with extenders.  Do you need any assistance making it show up as an atsc tuner only with mapings to the analog guide channels? 

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

What I have so far can change channel for both livetv and recording and record video and audio via firewire. It doesn't handle livetv video and audio. It piggy backs on the MCE changing channels and recording from standard analogue tuners so uses the standard guide. When MCE uses IR to change channel, I send the command via firewire. When MCE records from an analogue tuner, I record the same thing via firewire. If the show is SD you get a SD recording via firewire, if the show is HD I get a HD recording. Currently I dont touch the MCE recording so you get 2 recordings for every MCE recording. It doesn't mean you can remove the analogue tuners, you still need them for MCE to attempt to do the recording and change channels.

There is a minor bug that affects recording on the 2nd tuner, doesn't always work in the release version. I believe I have fixed it.

The bigger issue is that the program doesn't pick up change channel requests from extenders. I believe I have done all the changes to fix this (just completed) but I haven't even tried it yet.

The final limitation is that you can't rewind or fast forward with firewire recording. This seems to be a problem with the directshow graph I use for recording. I haven't got to the bottom of why this happens.

Longer term, I think it might be possible to make livetv work as well but until I try it I will not be sure

Practically for me this means I have a dual NVIDIA analogue tuner and 2 DCT6200 STBs. The STBs are connected to the tuners via s-video and to the MCE via firewire. The IR blasters are hidden away and are not used. Change channel for livetv is via firewire. Change channel for recording is via firewire and for every recording I request from the analogue channels I get 2 recordings, one from the NVIDIA tuners and one via firewire. Firewire recordings of HD programs are in HD.

timmmoore,

Do you find that the firewire recordings are higher quality than the analog tuners? Can you see a difference at all?

If I understand correctly, you are changing channels using the MCE remote and not the STB remote?

Are you making the source code available to others?

 

For HD channels they are much better quality, it looks the same as the STB direct via component to a HD TV, i.e. HD recordings are HD quality but you pay in increased file size about 3-4 times the size. For SD its not as obvious but on my system they are better but not by much, though I do notice the recorded files for SD are smaller than the MCEs files for slightly better quality.

Correct, I use MCE just as normal, livetv and recording, MCE changes channel on the STBs as normal but I have hidden the IR blasters and I catch the change channel events and send the right messages via firewire.

Probably at some point, the code could do with a big tidy up. I learnt a lot doing it and it needs a lot of re-structuring. There is also stuff I haven't solved yet such as close captioning and rewind/fast forward

Nathang, TimmyDOTcom, I still haven't solved the extender problem but there is a simple work round, if you change to the channel you want on the extender, please record it will change to that channel. You need to stop the recording and tidy up the recording.

I have used the new code after doing all the changes necessary to support extender to know I haven't broken existing functionality and also the 2nd tuner works on the MCE. So I will post it tonight so you can record on the 2nd tuner but extenders will not work.

I can't seem to get events from ehmsas for the extenders, my dll is being loaded and initialized but never called after that.

Timmmoore,

I don't know if you've seen this article, but it has some interesting info towards the end of the article regarding extenders use of ehmsas in a remote session.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnxpmce/html/positionchangeraddin.asp

-t

Thanks TimmyDOTcom, I had found the article which is the only one I have found that hints that ehmsas works for extender sessions. Unfortuntely he doesn't supply the example code for his msas plugin with the rest of the poschange code. The msas sdk samples fail in the same way as my ehmsas plugin does (not surprising since mine is based on one of the sdk samples). I have left Stephen Toub a post in the developer forum, hopefully he will respond. In the meantime I have a few more things to try.

I hope so too!

So, is there any hope on getting the Firewire to work with Live TV in place of the analog cards or is it completely out of the question?

-t

LiveTV isn't out of the question. MCE uses a temporary file buffer between a process which talks to the tuners (ehrecver.exe) and ehshell.exe which displays on the screen. Stephen Toub showed how to get to the filter graph within ehshell. The question is can I modify the graph or only query it? If I can modify the graph, I can in my process create a recording graph in the same way I do to record but into a temporary file rather than a permanent dvr-ms file. Then go into ehshell and modify its graph to play from my temp file rather than ehrecver.exe's temp file.

To really make it work I need to fix the rewind and fast forward problem. From research it looks like StreamBuffersink looks up the recording graph and checks for something to decide if it is seekable. I am currently not returning whatever it is looking for. If I can find and solve that then seeking should/may work.

ok first off....I have a home built MCE, and it has no TV Tuner Card in it.  I wanted a digital connection and I have successfully hooked up my comcast DVR to the pc via firewire.  Using your channel changer I am able to change channels and can record high def.

What I am trying to figure out now is how to fool MCE into believing I have a Tuner so I can watch the streaming MPEG over firewire as if it were TV and use MCE as a PVR using the firewire connection.

Can someone point me in a general direction as to how to get MCE to recognise the firewire capture as a tuner?

 

I will be watching this very carefully. I am currently running XP Pro with Snapstreams BeyondTV. If this works with HDTV smoothly I will be swtiching my setup around. Goodluck!

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I've gotta say guys, it feels cool to be so up-to-the-day, pioneering this awesome HTPC workaround, not because we're bored, but because we work faster than the big companies out there.

Lots of us out there prefer just using XP Pro versus Media Center - especially since MS is starting to cut back on the business back-end framework to make the software cheaper.  This is the case for me, so I've written an ASP.NET Web administrator tool that accesses the channel.exe and will change the channel from a convenient on-screen remote.

What this means is that if you use VLC/VideoLan to broadcast through mms protocol to a static IP address or a dynamic dns alias, you would thereby be able to watch the stream in either a Web page or in Media Player 10, and change the channel of your STB from anywhere with a broadband connection.

I know it's possible, and in fact I've made it work.  Big thanks to timmmoore, all I did was make a Web frontend, basically.

If this is something you guys would be interested in, let me know here.  I've made it work, sure, but it took a grandios time to figure out why I wasn't able to play the firewire stream in VLC without recording it first.  And the Web app is not tested.  But I don't get those BSODs anymore.  So I've got a few speedbumbs to share if anyone's interested.

 

Tim,

Just an FYI...I'm going to be jumping on board here and pounding away on this as well...as soon as Time Warner decides to give me the right cable box!  I called them on Wednesday of last week, and after about 1/2 hour of explaining what Firewire was, and the FCC mandate regarding it, I finally got someone to look into it.  Well, they said that the only box they offer with Firewire is the SA 8300HD (a DVR!??)  OK, fine...whatever.  So, the friendly, but clueless guy shows up on Saturday with the 8300HD with, of course, no firewire interface on it!  Doh!

Soooo...I'll be talking with them today to ensure that they get me some kind of firewire enabled box.  I'll let you know the results of this fiasco and how your app performs with an SA box.

 

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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!