MVP Boot Lessons Learned - SageTV Menus - Helius, 86001, 86019

[tv4me]

Since I tried finding information on the web and did find much help, I thought that I would post my lessons learned.
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I have been running SageTV 4.x - 6.x for a few years. For the bulk of the last six months, I have been running a MVP (86019 Rev H2 Lot 1506) and two client PCs with a single SageTV Server. During the last month, I decided to replace the PCs with MVPs.

The first Ebay purchase was for a Helius branded MediaStream (86001 Rev E1M Lot 4703). After spending several hours trying to get it to boot, I manage to have it boot to the Hauppauge GoMVP, but I could not get it to boot with Sage. I uninstalled the Hauppauge Media Server and powered off the MVP.

I bought another MVP from Ebay. This unit booted from Sage without any problems. (86001 Rev D1 Lot 3503)

I bought yet another MVP from Ebay. This unit (86001 Rev D3A Lot 4303) failed to boot.

In the cases above, "failed to boot" refers to a failure during the attempt to load the firmware from the boot server.

Two weeks ago, when I tried to boot the Helius MVP, I installed the Hauppauge MediaMVP Server on my SageTV Server. I was able to boot the Helius MVP to the GoMedia menus, but I could not access the SageTV menus. To my family, this scenario is unacceptable. The SageTV menus are required since all of our shows are watched from recordings. In addition, the menus are used to filter who has watched which shows.

Below are the things that I did today to get a working system up and running within 45 minutes (previous lessons learned utilized) with SageTV menus.

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1) Connect the MVP to the network and confirmed a failure to boot
2) Since I did want to disturb my SageTV Server, I installed the Hauppauge Media Server on my desktop. The Rev D1 system booted stage 1, but "Failed to locate GUI Server".
I looked in the log file "hcwsmslog" in the directory
C:\Program Files\Hauppauge MediaMVP\Hardware\
The log file (and references in other forum posts) told me that "dongle.bin" contained the boot image for the MVP.

After I replaced dongle.bin with mvp.bin from the SageTV directory, the SageTV menus were available.
3) copy C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\mvp.bin
C:\Program Files\Hauppauge MediaMVP\Hardware\dongle.bin

4) I cycled power on the MVP
5) The MVP rebooted and started the SageTV menus.
Wah lah!


I now can boot any of the 4 MVPs that I have and get SageTV menus.

I thought the Helius unit was a lost cause, but it is now working as well. I have justed finished watching a one hour show on it.

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List of working MVP units
(86019 Rev H2 Lot 1506) MediaMVP from Sage Store
(86001 Rev E1M Lot 4703) Helius from Ebay
(86001 Rev D1 Lot 3503) MediaMVP from Ebay
(86001 Rev D3A Lot 4303) MediaMVP from Ebay

Being used with a SageTV Server running on a
Intel 2.8 GHz Dual Core with 2GB RAM
500 GB Hard Drive
1 PVR-350, 2 PVR-250 (Closed Captioning on all)
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Good luck. Hope this helps.

[ehinkle27]

Thanks for the notes, I just bought two of the Helus units off ebay and followed your step and they worked. The only problem I have now is the color, it is a lot of red in the pictures can this be adjusted?

[tv4me]

I had a red display as well. I solved mine by replacing my NTSC->VGA converter. The LCD did not have enough adjustment on it. I assumed that it was my converter.

My current configuration has the Helius connected to a "Premium TV Box" via the coax cable. The previous configuration used the composite video connections.

I am unaware of any other settings within Sage or Hauppauge MVP. Maybe someone can help.

[TheSuper]

Thanks for the tip on swapping the mvp.bin in place of the dongle.bin to get the Helius MVP to boot. It worked perfectly.

I also used this fix to get the Helius MVP working with Sage.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27994

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by tv4me

I had a red display as well. I solved mine by replacing my NTSC->VGA converter. The LCD did not have enough adjustment on it. I assumed that it was my converter.

My current configuration has the Helius connected to a "Premium TV Box" via the coax cable. The previous configuration used the composite video connections.

I am unaware of any other settings within Sage or Hauppauge MVP. Maybe someone can help.

I too have the reddish tint w/ the Helius extenders. Its strange; sometimes its very noticeable and other times I think I'm watching my non-Helius extender. I did find a post on another forum that discussed how to take the Helius extender apart and use a soldering iron to remove a capacitor or something (I don't anything about circuit boards) and allow for the color to be fixed. If you want it, I can find it and post the link to it here.

[jjstok]

I think I got screwed buying a Helius on Ebay. It won't boot past the orange Helius splash screen. It fails to get an IP address as well. Anyone have any advice???

[gilded07]

Have you updated your sage props file for the Helius extender's MAC and IP? I assigned an IP to the extender in my router. The sage props file is finicky and I typed the line in a number of times before I got it to work. I suspect your extender is working fine - its just loading the embedded orange Helius screen because it can't connect to your server to load the Sage UI.

There's another method mentioned on this thread regarding the .bin files but my two Helius extenders were working fine before that solution was posted.

[jjstok]

That did it! I never really thought I'd ever have to create IP reservations anymore. I had to replace the bin data as well but it works like a charm!

Thanks!