MyHD Encoder for SageTV

[ajuhawk]

Originally Posted by salsbst

Yeah, that's fairly off topic. The place for general MyHD questions is here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=493691 . Please don't take offense, but I have a feeling this thread could get a little lengthy and I don't want it to get any more lengthy than it has to with side stories. That said, if you have no problems during recording, then under SageTV you may not have any problems.

My appologies - thanks for the link and here's hoping the problem becomes irrelevant.

Originally Posted by thatdude90210

Try reducing everything from non-fullscreen mode, like no overlay picture, etc. I saw something like this on INHD & DiscHD before (which Comcast just recently encripted, along with espnHD so I no longer get these). A work around is to have timeshift always on.

And to you, good sir, goes many thanks for saving me the reading of 183 pages of posts, though there's definately some interesting tidbits to pick up. You were dead on - wierd that OTA works fine.

Anyway, sorry for the distraction and thanks for the pointers.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by salsbst

True, but I think that's going to take some serious help from Macro Image Technology to make it possible. AFAIK, such an API on the MyHD does not exist (or at least is totally undocumented).

It exists, I think you just need to pay $2000 for the SDK.

[salsbst]

I wish them much luck with that revenue opportunity. Can somebody say "backwards"? Here I was thinking that they were trying to sell their hardware/software bundle!

[thatdude90210]

It's supposedly not for revenue but for the amount of tech support that third party developers require. It's the same reason Dvico charge something like $1000 for their SDK. You would think it's mutually beneficial, especially for Dvico since their software is craptastic, but somehow MIT and Dvico think differently.

[salsbst]

I've heard that excuse. I remain convinced that they all need an Econ 101 course.

[stanger89]

I can see charging for support, and I can see charging another company for the SDK, eg I can see them charging SageTV LLC for the SDK. What I don't get is why they don't release it in some form (no support, NDA, etc) to private users.

Of course I think the late Cliff Watson's explanation was right on, and that's that they simply don't care about the US market, and the Korean market is happy with what they've got.

[salsbst]

Well, the encoder seems to work.

However, I've discovered, perhaps belatedly, that the files I'm recording with MyHD aren't playable by my SageTV 4.0 instance on my workstation.

Does anyone out there have the ability to play MyHD-recorded files in SageTV 4? Is there a trick to it?

The files play in WMP (Nvidia video, WinDVD audio).

TIA.

[stanger89]

I emailed you, but you'll have to use a different (Non-SageTV) audio decoder.

[salsbst]

Thanks.

I think I'm making progress after switching the audio decoder to Intervideo. SageTV no longer hangs.

Now I get:

There was a Playback Error in playback. Details: sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-4,0x80040217): There was a problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback.

Happens whether I choose overlay or DX9 accelerated VMR9.

Anyone recognize that error code?

[Deadbolt]

Originally Posted by salsbst

Thanks.

I think I'm making progress after switching the audio decoder to Intervideo. SageTV no longer hangs.

Now I get:

There was a Playback Error in playback. Details: sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-4,0x80040217): There was a problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback.

Happens whether I choose overlay or DX9 accelerated VMR9.

Anyone recognize that error code?

I've seen that before and had to switch audio decoder for it to stop.

[salsbst]

Which combination of audio and video decoders works? No combination seems to work for me.

[stanger89]

I use nVidia for both.

[salsbst]

Ok, got it working with Intervideo 6 for both audio and video under VMR9. Any other decoders, any time I try overlay, I get that error.

If I'm not able to get my server and one of my clients to use the overlay, then I may not be able to use this thing due to lack of horsepower.

Don't worry, I'll still release it regardless of whether I can use it.

So, what's left to do?

a) add logging code so I can get decent info for troublshooting

b) put together the app and service that harness everything

c) set up ability to map the channels SageTV sends to the ones that MyHD needs to see

d) write some documentation

[salsbst]

So, my development workstation is now officially a POS. Our laptop (doubles as bedroom HTCP client) has no trouble with the files MyHD is recording (though SageTV 3 chokes a bit, the NVIDIA decoders work fine under VMR9).

I'll go back to developing the network encoder for MyHD and spend less time worrying about how to display it for a week or so, now that I know that at least two out of three of our client nodes will be ok.

I need to do some upgrading. Apparently a Matrox G400 is not sufficient for HDTV via VGA. It was a pretty good card in its day, and it seems to have a cult following in the TV-out crowd. Oh, well, time marches on.

Here ends salsbst's personal diary about decoding and rendering MyHD-recorded HDTV transport streams. Back to the MyHD network encoder for SageTV.

[ajuhawk]

Hope it's not getting too frustrating, I know I await with eager anticipation the fruit of your work. As good as HDTV is (after the few days I've had it , I'd really like to go back to watching it recorded so I can fast forward through commercials again.

[salsbst]

I think I'm about ready to release something. Should happen sometime this weekend. Just need to polish a few things.

However, this release will likely only support the "application" mode of running -- i.e. it won't support running as a service... unless someone can help me out.

I need to launch a terminal services connection. I need to do this from my service. I need it to work when the machine boots up.

So, I configured my service to Depend On the Terminal Services service (TermService). Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be enough. My little COM app that launches the TS client connection is bombing. Does anyone know of additional services that need to be running in order to make a TS connection?

In the meantime, I'm going to try launching the TS client on a lengthy delay/seperate thread, to make sure that it is indeed a timing issue with other services, rather than some requirement that a user be logged on.

[EJDeHaemer]

I have the original MyHD care (MDP-100?). I currently have HD cable and use the firewire port to grap HD content, so I dont use the MyHD to record off the air. However, I do use the MyHD card to playback the FW recorded content.
Will this pluging allow me to launch the MyHD card to use as a playback device instead of Sage? Ideally, anything tagged as HD would automatically playback on the MyHD card. I dont care about the OSD.

[briands]

Originally Posted by salsbst

I think I'm about ready to release something. Should happen sometime this weekend. Just need to polish a few things.

However, this release will likely only support the "application" mode of running -- i.e. it won't support running as a service... unless someone can help me out.

I think I understand that you are saying that your encoder will have to run as an application until you can get it working as a service and I'm pretty sure that will be OK for me. If you mean that it will not work when Sage is running as a service... then I'll have a problem.

Sorry I can't be of any help with the coding, but I'm looking forward to giving this a go.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by EJDeHaemer

Will this pluging allow me to launch the MyHD card to use as a playback device instead of Sage?

No, sorry.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by briands

I think I understand that you are saying that your encoder will have to run as an application until you can get it working as a service and I'm pretty sure that will be OK for me. If you mean that it will not work when Sage is running as a service... then I'll have a problem.

Sorry I can't be of any help with the coding, but I'm looking forward to giving this a go.

It will work when Sage is running as a service, but if Sage is running as a service, and this encoder is running as an app, then you will still need to log a user into the box before Sage can begin to record via the MyHD. This defeats one of the benefits of running Sage as a service.