HD PVR "No Signal" possible fix

[azakinthinos]

I wanted to share a possible solution to the "no signal" problem. I'm still experimenting with things but this is what worked for me.

Setup:

SA3250 cable box controlled via firewire for channel change
HD PVR E1 running 1.54 beta (1.53 release caused WAY too many problems) using digital audio + component video

Symptom:

Things work for a while then you get into a "no signal" state and up until yesterday I needed to reboot the machine to get it to work again.

I was experimenting with the script in this thread http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34047 to check to see if the HD PVR was actually dead when this happened. To my surprise it wasn't. After some more troubleshooting I realized that the the cable box was not changing channel when instructed to do so by sage. I then used the "devcon" command (see the other thread for the MSFT link to get it) to restart the firewire driver. I then used Sage to tune a channel and it worked! My theory is that when Sage fails to tune it doesn't send the "start" signal to the device and all you get is "no signal" rather than a "can't tune error". The firewire device restart happens so fast that I'm thinking of wrapping the channel change code to restart the device every time. I'm not sure if this is the best approach so other suggestions are welcome. I hope that this helps somebody else.

Now if I can just get audio to stay in sync all the time I would be happy ...