Advice/Help: Comcast

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Is this reliable enough to forego a HD-PVR setup? I want something extremely reliable (or else my family will be unhappy with me).

I've never been completely satisfied with the reliability of firewire recording. When I initially started using it, I used to get hard system lockups every few days. When I completely turned off Data Execution Prevention those lock-ups became less frequent- about every month or so. Now I do automatic reboots as a preventative measure, and it seems to help quite a bit (it also seems to help my HD-PVR).

But the firewire recording software is a little glitchy. Every few weeks or so the firewire recording STB will get stuck on a channel, requiring a system reboot. I think I know the cause of most of these occurrences- the firewire recording software doesn't seem to like changing the channel if you're already recording and watching something. So, if you're watching live TV over firewire, and then a favorite comes on, it won't always change the channel and it can lock-up the box. The developers of the firewire drivers and recording software have disappeared, so that's not likely to get fixed.

On the other hand, my HD-PVR isn't any more reliable (so long as I avoid the bug described above), so I continue using firewire as my main recording method for non-locals.

Does anyone know which are considered 'premium' channels and subject to 5c encryption over firewire?

I have Comcast in the Washington DC area. Before the transition to all digital cable, most of my expanded basic HD lineup (basically, everything except for HBO, STARZ, etc.) was available over firewire. So yes, things like MTVHD, SCIFYHD, TNTHD, etc., were available. A few channels didn't work, like the History Channel and maybe a one or two others. However, after the digital cable transition, all the expanded basic HD lineup is available (but still no HBO).

However, what might be a problem for you is that I can't get any standard definition digital channels over firewire for some unknown reason. My HDHR can still get some of those in clear QAM, but the rest get recorded using my HD-PVR.

I want to just get the digital starter with digital starter HD... channels like NickHD, MTVHD, SCIFYHD etc... are these 5c encrypted or not?[/QUOTE]

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by PiX64

I know from experience when i had COMCAST HD STB i was NOT able to get certain channels like TNT, TBS, MTVHD, etc via firewire. I could hear them but the actual content would not show up through FIREWIRE...

I was under the impression most people with Comcast have been pretty successful at getting firewire recording to work. How much effort did you put into trying to get it working?

I had a similar problem to what you described, but the problem went away from I changed the firewire recording graph so that it fed the recording through TSSplitter at the end to turn the recording file into a program stream instead of a transport stream.

[sflamm]

Can FireWire be used to tune more than 1 cablebox?
If so how do you configure?

Is FireWire tuning faster than IR?

If the channels were not 5c protected then why could they not be recorded via FireWire?

Thanks in advance.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Can FireWire be used to tune more than 1 cablebox?
If so how do you configure?

Well, first you have to install drivers that support whatever firewire-enabled cable box you get. The big firewire thread has information about this. But, I think both the DCT6200 and the DCH3200 are supported, which I think are popular HD boxes for Comcast.

Then, in my opinion, the easiest thing to do is to use a tool babgvant wrote called FWChannelProxy. I just use it with one cable box, but it should work perfectly fine with 2 boxes. You might have to do a forum search to find that, otherwise babgvant's page for it is here.

Originally Posted by sflamm

Is FireWire tuning faster than IR?

Generally yes, and its generally more reliable.

Originally Posted by sflamm

If the channels were not 5c protected then why could they not be recorded via FireWire?

Well, sometimes firewire recording just doesn't seem to work on cable boxes. It's not completely clear why. You're not going to get any help from cable companies getting firewire recording working.

[sflamm]

I think both the DCT6200 and the DCH3200 are supported

The box that comcast gave me is Model RNG110. Is this supported?

Can you point me to the firewire thread you are referring to please?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by sflamm

The box that comcast gave me is Model RNG110. Is this supported?

Can you point me to the firewire thread you are referring to please?

At least one person has gotten that to work with the ExDeus drivers. But, it sounds like he has to do a little tweak to get it to work.

I guess I'd recommend trying to get your hands on a DCT6200 or a DCH3200 if you're going to do this though. I had to go to my local Comcast office and have them keep bringing out different HD STB's until they found a DCT6200. They were pretty nice about it.

Here is the main STB Firewire thread. It's pretty long. Don't feel bad if you just end up having to ask some questions rather than endlessly digging for information in that thread.

[sflamm]

Thanks for the input!
Ran back to comcast and they gave me 2 dct6200s.

They did not have any dch3200s.

The dct6200s should work well for FireWire and IR control?

Will try to get through the FireWire thread but really appreciate your willingness to help!

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by sflamm

The dct6200s should work well for FireWire and IR control?

They've worked great with IR control for me. I haven't tried IR control, but I don't see why they'd have a problem. You'd want to cover up the IR recivers and emitters if you go that route though.

I use firewire with both of my DCT6200s, and I don't even bother covering up their IR receivers. None of my other components end up confusing the DCT6200s.

[sflamm]

Do you use the Firewire to only change channels or to record as well?

Would you mind giving me a quick rundown of the installation process? (I can look up the details for the steps - but there appear to be multiple approaches and I want to know what has been successful so I dont end up chasing my tail.

[sflamm]

Btw, Fry's is selling the Rev E1 HD-PVR for $193 (in store).

[reggie14]

I have two STB boxes. At first I only had one, which I used for firewire recording. I later bought an HD-PVR, and got a second DCT6200, and I do firewire channel changing on that one.

To get firewire recording set up, I basically followed the guide here. Most of the time I didn't quite know what I was doing.

Basically, you'll install the firewire STB drivers (you should probably use the newer ExDeus drivers instead of Timmmoore's FireSTB drivers). You'll see some warnings about uncertified drivers, and you'll see some warnings about not finding drivers for certain things. Some of that is normal, so don't worry about it. Then you should be able to use VLC to see what channels you can even get over firewire. Just manually change the channels on the STB, and capture video using VLC. It's relatively straight forward, and I think the above guide talks about doing it too.

If you're able to get some channels, the guide will talk you through installing Sgraphrecorder and using GraphEdit to set up how recording will work. Basically, you'll set up sgraphrecord to dump what comes from your STB to a file in a particular folder on your hard drive. This means if you have multiple recording drives, you'll have to pick one, and only one, that will be the destination for firewire recordings. At some point in the set up process you'll have to make sure you sell SageTV to only record from your firewire tuner to that particular location. The guide talks about doing that.

I made one more change to the graphedit configuration beyond what is in the guide. I added the TSSplitter filter, and basically just stuck it in the middle of the graph. I'd have to look at my graph and look at graphedit to remember exactly what I did. But, I did that because I found that recording to an mpeg2 program stream, instead of the original mpeg2 transport stream, is more reliable. There's practically zero overhead to doing this conversion, as its not really changing the contents of the video, just the file format a little bit (so there's no transcoding going on to worry about).

The guide also talks about how you set up firewire channel changing. For my firewire recording STB, I followed the instructions in the guide for channel changing. For my other STB I use a different method for setting up firewire channel changing (see below).

You probably run SageTV as a service right now. At least initially you'll have to turn off running it as a service. That's because you're going to need to start the sgraphrecorder program before Sage starts. Later on you can use tools to turn sgraphrecorder into a service, and then set it up so the SageTVservice starts after sgraphrecorder service. The guide I linked to instead suggests using a batch file, but I recommend the service route. It's not hard to set up, at least compared to setting up everything else!

Firewire channel changing, on the other hand, is much easier. You still need to install the ExDeus drivers, but then all you really need to do is set up FWChannelProxy. I don't remember exactly what I did, but I remember it being really easy. I think there are instructions with the utility that I followed.

[davephan]

I used to have a DCT-6200 and the USB-UIRT worked with that box.

Dave

[sflamm]

Reggie14:

Thanks for the helpful guidance.

I would really appreciate if you could take a look at your graphedit and let me know what you did and how you did it [pictures are always very nice ]
I've used graphedit before but I'm not an expert.

Also - could you elaborate on how your turn sgraphrecorder into a service and how you guarantee that the service starts before the SageTV service (I do run SageTV as a service)

Thanks!

[sflamm]

For anyone interested, here are the articles from microsoft on how to make any .exe into a service and how to specify a dependency on another service so it loads first:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137890
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193888

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by sflamm

I would really appreciate if you could take a look at your graphedit and let me know what you did and how you did it [pictures are always very nice ]
I've used graphedit before but I'm not an expert.

Sure. I posted a screenshot in the other thread in this post.

I was basically following the instructions given in this other post.

Basically, to add that extra filter in graphedit, click on "Graph" in the menu, then expand the directshow filters. You should find one that says SageTV TS Splitter 1.0. Add it to the graph, then connect the dots like in the diagram.

Also - could you elaborate on how your turn sgraphrecorder into a service and how you guarantee that the service starts before the SageTV service (I do run SageTV as a service)

I see you already figured this out. As a warning, I've had to redo that each time I upgrade Sage to a new version. (well, just the setting the service dependency part).

[sflamm]

Thanks for all the input/support so far!

Finally got around to installing the firewire drivers for the dt6200 from the ExDeus pack, tuning in the video with VLC and using "Channel.exe" to change the channel from the command line.

The good news is that all but 2 channels (ComedyHD, BiographyHD) seem to be non 5C - can see/tune them successfully.

I would appreciate it if someone could answer some of the question I now have:

1. I noticed that on some channels the video/sound is flawless and on others it can be a bit choppy and occasionally glitch (drop out) for a second or so.

Not sure if this is the stream, the dt6200 or my box (though CPU usage seems moderate on my E6300 dual-core).

Is there a way of telling the box to output 720p over firewire instead of 1080i? (It appears that the ones that are flawless visually are in 720p, i.e. DisneyHD)

Are there any other ways of improving the video/audio quality?

Do others find the same issues? Would it be better to use and HD-PVR?


2. I noticed that the box itself tunes the channels with a 1-2 second delay.

Is there any way of improving that performance?

3. I discovered (help for everyone) that you can call Comcast and specifically request that they ship or delivery specific models of boxes to you!
So they are now bringing me two DCH-3200s in addition to the two DCT-6200s I already have.

Does anyone know if the DCH-3200 is better for tuning over firewire than the DCT-6200? (I believe it is a newer model?)

Are there any difference/advantages anyone can tell me about?

Thanks in advance.