R5000-HD capture via USB2 & SageTV

[stanger89]

Kirby, I forgot/missed, are the MPEG-4 recordings stored in a TS, TP, or MPG file/container?

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Kirby, I forgot/missed, are the MPEG-4 recordings stored in a TS, TP, or MPG file/container?

While I cant get any true MPEG4 channels right now, I do believe that they are written as a .TS. I cant imagine that David would choose another container for them, as then it would get more involved on the program side of things. The DVR app would have to analyze the stream and decide if its MPEG4 or not, and then choose the appropriate container.

While this info should be easy to grab out of the header, I'm not really sure there is an advantage to it. I do know the MPEG4 samples that Nextcom has on their site are .TS files.

[dbfresh23]

The MPEG4 SD sample that he has on their website is a .TS file.

[techtom]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

The MPEG4 SD sample that he has on their website is a .TS file.

I haven't installed sagetv yet, but I have a good deal of experence with h.264 playback I'm using the ATI radeon X1600 with the elcard mpeg2 demuxer. I find I can manually create a filter graph that will playback a H.264 HD TS file. But if i rename the same file to .mpg I can use "Open With..." and select graph edit and it will build the graph automatically. Additionally, it will play in windows media when it's a .mpg but not when it is a .ts file. It could be my setup so YMMV.

I'll try to install sagetv this weekend. So I should be able to try live viewing HD h.264 using sagetv soon...

-Techtom

[phenixdragon]

Originally Posted by bhyman1

If you could get this to work it would be fantastic. I'm on the edge of dumping Time Warner because they refuse to give out boxes with working firewire ports!

You know, it is a federal law that if they are asked for it they have to provide. Might want to refresh them with the law. I had that issue with someone at Comcast when I went there a few months ago to add another box to my lineup.

[dbfresh23]

I've been having the same issue with Time Warner around here trying to get a box with Enabled firewire ports. I was just at a Friends house last night and amazingly he had one. So after seeing what I saw on his, oh I'll be calling them and I WILL get one! EVERYTHING was marked as "Copy Freely"!

[Kirby]

Enjoy it while you can! 5C hit me on about Sept. 30 last year.

Also keep in mind, a cable box without firewire should be able to be modded by Nextcom (and thus you dont need to worry about 5C at that point).

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Enjoy it while you can! 5C hit me on about Sept. 30 last year.

Also keep in mind, a cable box without firewire should be able to be modded by Nextcom (and thus you dont need to worry about 5C at that point).

Ahhh, if only that were possible for me. I was told that Motorola boxes can be modded but Scientific Atlanta boxes cannot. Can you guess which brand I have access too?

They also said that modded cable boxes haven't been popular sellers so they aren't really looking into expanding it, rather waiting to get some cablecard STBs and trying to mod them.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

Ahhh, if only that were possible for me. I was told that Motorola boxes can be modded but Scientific Atlanta boxes cannot. Can you guess which brand I have access too?

Let me think.......SA?

They also said that modded cable boxes haven't been popular sellers so they aren't really looking into expanding it, rather waiting to get some cablecard STBs and trying to mod them.

Yeah thats true. Most people that are into the whole R5000 thing (and 169time for that matter) are satellite guys (or gals). Cable is hit or miss, as some systems are great like mine, and some suck! I've got a decent HD lineup in cable (ABC1, ABC2, CBS, NBC, Fox, TNT, HDnet, Hdnet movies, ESPN, DiscoveryHD, UHD, Showtime, HBO, Cinemax, along with an assortment of sub channels on the networks) and for the most part, nothing is being throttled or bandwidth starved. No HD Lite. But I will say that Dish Hdnet and HDnet movies are even better than cable for me.

Many cable providers are now starting to rate-shape their HD channels, depriving them of bandwidth. Its a shame, because a modern cable system really doesnt need to do this, they have so much damn bandwidth its not funny (especially if they dropped all their analog channels!)

[msmith8228]

Kirby:

Is it possible with the R5000 + SageTV combination to record PS program stream files or is it limited to TS transport stream files only. I understand that the TS files have the null packets removed but I would prefer PS files for later ease of archiving to DVD +R media.

MJS

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by msmith8228

Kirby:

Is it possible with the R5000 + SageTV combination to record PS program stream files or is it limited to TS transport stream files only. I understand that the TS files have the null packets removed but I would prefer PS files for later ease of archiving to DVD +R media.

MJS

The R5000 app doesnt do PS files. Only TS. Whats the goal for putting a PS onto a DVD rather than just burning the TS? I store all my "must have" transport streams on DVD. I never deal with program streams, so I cant really help, but I do recall there being apps that can convert TS to PS.

[dbfresh23]

OK, I now have basically every H.264 file I've thrown at SageTV playing perfectly fine EXCEPT for the R5000-HD sample. I even have Nero H.264 HD and SD AVC & ASP files playing fine (The sample/trailers I downloaded from their website). This is after emailing SageTV support and getting some extra info for DeMuxing.

Anyone know how to tell if the MPEG4 stream in the R5000 sample contains null packets or not? I'm starting to think that may have something to do with it, though it is just a wild guess.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

Anyone know how to tell if the MPEG4 stream in the R5000 sample contains null packets or not? I'm starting to think that may have something to do with it, though it is just a wild guess.

yes it does.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

Anyone know how to tell if the MPEG4 stream in the R5000 sample contains null packets or not? I'm starting to think that may have something to do with it, though it is just a wild guess.

You could try running it through TSReader.

[dbfresh23]

Yeah, tried that. It actually makes TSReader crash.

[Kirby]

i havent tried the sample in sage yet, but just in various media players on my pc the nextcom sample plays fine.

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by Kirby

i havent tried the sample in sage yet, but just in various media players on my pc the nextcom sample plays fine.

Yeah, I can play it just fine in WMP. I did get an app to remove the null packets and still no luck in SageTV. I've tried with the regular Sage MPEGDeMux and also configured sage to use Sage Splitter and Elecard Demux instead of the regular demux (thanks to some help from Sage support)- no luck with any inside Sage... I'm far from done trying though.

[Kirby]

slightly off topic question here, but I thought with the sage experts that are involved in this thread, I can probably get a quick answer here. I typically archive my r5000 captures to DVD media if its something I want long term.

So lets say I take a sage-named capture and throw it (un-modified) onto a DVD, and then delete the file from the hard drive. What will happen if I throw that disc into my dvd drive with just that file on it? Will sage recognize it in any way, and display the associated meta-data from the EPG for that show?

If it cant recognize it in any way, then I might as well renamed the file to just its title before burning it.

[dbfresh23]

No, once deleted the meta goes away too. The GermSage STV has the ability to write XML files for all shows, you may want to look into that.

[Kirby]

ok thanks. So there is no compelling reason at all then to keep the long file name, correct?

also, tonight I am hoping to get a H264 HD stream working in sage with any luck.