USB-UIRT to control a STB (not working)

[verdin77]

I'm working through switching from BTV and attempting to get my system up and running under SageTV.

setup is as follows;
SAGETV 6.6.2.218
USB IR reciever with an MCE remote
USB-UIRT IR for controlling STB
HD-PVR
HVR-1800
Windos Vista

The problem is that when setting up my HD-PVR I do not see a way to use the UIRT. Installation went as follows... (BTV is shutdown throughout this)

1. Installed current version of SageTV (Configured to use an MCE remote)
2. Configured source for my HVR-1800 card (SD tuner) ..works
3. Configured source for my HVR-1800 card (QAM) ...works
4. Configured source for HD-PVR... When it gets to the part where you are asked if you want to configure an external tuner, I select configure at which point I'm presented with the option to choose the DirecTV plugin. No other choice. I would assume this is where I would get the chance to choose the USB-UIRT

Notes:
1) The USB-UIRT worked under BTV and the The USB-UIRT is readable by the lrnhelper. (so i don't believe there is a conflict)
2) I have removed all USB devices except the HD-PVR and USB-UIRT, still no joy.
3) Have put the HD-PVR and USB-UIRT on different USB headers. no joy.

Good news is the HD-PVR is much more stable (so far) than in BTV.

Ideas on how to get the USB-UIRT working to control the STB

[mr_lore]

Might be a bit remedial, but my first step would be to make sure btv doesnt start with windows, maybe uninstall it if your done, then reboot. I remember when I first setup my usb uirt I had to reboot my box for sage to 'see' it.

[Tiki]

Are you running Sage in Service mode?

From what I have recently experienced and what some others have posted, it appears that with Win7 (and probably also with Vista), if you run Sage as a service, you cannot use the USBUIRT as both a blaster and a receiver at the same time. The reason (As I understand it) is that the Sage UI uses the receiver portion and the Sage Service uses the blaster portion. So it is two different programs accessing the same USBUIRT. I was told it was because the two programs were not running in the "same security context."

I tried disabling UAC and also running the Sage Service logged in with an administrative account, but it did not help.

It is possible that you might be able to get it to work by playing more with security settings in Windows (maybe running the Sage UI as an administrator and setting the service to also log in with an admistrator account). I didn't try that.

I ended up just using the Hauppauge IR Receiver for the remote and only using the USBUIRT (multi-zone) for controlling by cable boxes.

Another possibility is to use an alternate program to interface with USBUIRT, such as LM Remote Keymap.

[verdin77]

mr_lore: Yes, BTV is off and no longer starts when the machine is booted.

Tiki: I'm actually trying to use the Hauppauge IR Receiver for the remote and the USBUIRT for controlling a single cable box (so far). However I'm not running SageTV as a service. From what you were saying maybe I should. I'll give that a go after work today.

[Tiki]

You may also want to check your Sage installation. Inside the install folder should be a folder called "Common". Inside there should be a folder called "RemoteCodes". Inside there will be a file called "StubDevice.ir" plus at least one folder called "USB-UIRT Transceiver" and possibly other folders.

Inside the USB-UIRT Transceiver folder should be a file called MotorolaDCT2000.ir. This is a text file that contains the remote codes for a typical cable box (in this case the DCT2000, which is a box commonly used by Comcast). This folder is where any new cable box remotes you create will get stored. If you don't see this stuff, there might be something wrong with your SageTV install - you could try re-installing.

If UAC is enabled in Win7 or Win Vista, Sage will probably have to write any updates to this stuff to the virtual store. I have UAC turned off on my install right now and installed Sage to a folder outside of the default "c:\program files" folder, so I haven't had to worry about the virtual store. But, if you are still struggling, you may want to try disabling UAC and see what happens.

PS - before changing UAC settings, you may want to read this post in the FAQ section.

And since you are coming from BTV and may not know what some of this stuff is:

wiz.bin is the main SageTV database that keeps track of what you have watched, what you have scheduled, your favorites, the program guide data, and any metadata for recordings or imports (metadata = stuff like title, episode, description, air date, duration, actors, director,...).

wiz.bak is an autimatically created backup file for wiz.bin.

sage.properties keeps track of most of the settings for a SageTV installation including which tuners you have configured, anything you set through the detailed setup menu, and a bunch of other stuff.

if you are running Sage in service mode, only the service-related properties are stored in sage.properties. The UI properties are stored in sageclient.properties. Sage does not automatically transfer properties from one file to the other if you switch between program mode and service mode. So, if you spent a lot of time getting things set up just right in Program mode, you may notice you need to re-set everything if you switch over to service mode.

If you use extenders (like the HD200) or placeshifter clients, they will each have properties stored in clients\xxx.properties where the xxx is the MAC ID of the device.

If you use Sage Client, it will be on a separate PC and it will have its own sageclient.properties stored on its own hard drive - not the server.

If you are curious, the properties files are just text files that you can view in Notepad. But, wiz.bin is a proprietary binary format that you can't really look at. There's a lot more info on the properies files in the Sage manual too.

Good luck

[verdin77]

Thanks everyone for the info... I'm going to try some things over the course of the week and will post the results.