Interest in HDHomeRun Prime Network Encoder

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by jvl711

That is exactly the reason I wrote this. SageDCT was giving me random pixelation and sound pops. I would guess your problem is either network related, or SageDCT.

Out of curiosity, were you getting the pixelation problems when using the SageDCT Dump mode or FFMPEG mode?

I ask because I am running one of the older (non-donator) versions of SageDCT, using the equivalent of "dump" mode. So SageDCT shouldn't be doing any transcoding, just streaming to a file. I occasionally get pixelation and/or audio pops. I assumed it was either due to bad signal from Comcast, network issues, or issues writing to hard disk (some bottleneck in my PC). But, if the network encoder could be at fault, this would be interesting.

[nyplayer]

OTA Findings. The older tuners are erratiic and do not work all the time. The HDHomeRun CONNECT (formerly known as HDHomeRun DUALs) work great and transcode on the fly works too.

cable
The Primes work great.

My Setup right now is using the Networkencoder for The prime and HDHomeRun CONNECT (formerly known as HDHomeRun DUAL) (OTA)

So i am very pleased the only things missing are resizing and hardware transcoding.

Great Job jvl711 thank you.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Out of curiosity, were you getting the pixelation problems when using the SageDCT Dump mode or FFMPEG mode?

I ask because I am running one of the older (non-donator) versions of SageDCT, using the equivalent of "dump" mode. So SageDCT shouldn't be doing any transcoding, just streaming to a file. I occasionally get pixelation and/or audio pops. I assumed it was either due to bad signal from Comcast, network issues, or issues writing to hard disk (some bottleneck in my PC). But, if the network encoder could be at fault, this would be interesting.

I can chime in my case there was Pixelation in some channels using outdated FFMPEG in SAGEDCT ... Dump did not work on all my channels as sometimes Sage could not playback the recordings unless I remuxed them. With this encoder everything works including transcoding on the fly.

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Out of curiosity, were you getting the pixelation problems when using the SageDCT Dump mode or FFMPEG mode?

I ask because I am running one of the older (non-donator) versions of SageDCT, using the equivalent of "dump" mode. So SageDCT shouldn't be doing any transcoding, just streaming to a file. I occasionally get pixelation and/or audio pops. I assumed it was either due to bad signal from Comcast, network issues, or issues writing to hard disk (some bottleneck in my PC). But, if the network encoder could be at fault, this would be interesting.

I was using the donator version with ffmpeg. I could not get dump to work reliably with all channels. I initially also thought my issue was network related, because I had to run SageDCT on another computer since my Sage Server was Windows 2003. I would have had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get SageDCT working locally since it does not support upnp officially.

When the news that Sage was going OSS for some reason it sparked something inside of me to stop being lazy and try and make HDHomeRunPrime work on Windows 2003. I was a little surprised when I was testing and I found that no matter how many streams I was viewing/recording, or which machine I was running my code from I could not get pixelation or sound pops. I think there are a few of the beta testers that might back up this assertion.

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

OTA Findings. The older tuners are erratiic and do not work all the time. The HDHomeRun CONNECT (formerly known as HDHomeRun DUALs) work great and transcode on the fly works too.

cable
The Primes work great.

My Setup right now is using the Networkencoder for The prime and HDHomeRun CONNECT (formerly known as HDHomeRun DUAL) (OTA)

So i am very pleased the only things missing are resizing and hardware transcoding.

Great Job jvl711 thank you.

Thank you nyplayer!

Since you had the thought to test this network encoder with other tuners and discovered that it works with more than the PRIME. I think it might make sense to rename the encoder before I release it.

Do you have an idea for an appropriate name? Somehthing that would let users know it is for HDHomeRun devices, and it has the ability to transcode in realtime?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

OTA Findings. The older tuners are erratiic and do not work all the time. The HDHomeRun CONNECT (formerly known as HDHomeRun DUALs) work great and transcode on the fly works too.

Out of curiosity, do you know pretty much immediately if it's going to work or not?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Out of curiosity, do you know pretty much immediately if it's going to work or not?

Yes for OTA you have to remap the physical channel to the channel in the Guide column of the HD Homerun setup software... No need to do a scan just set the tuner the way you would any other tuner... enable only channels in HD homerun setup and remap.

Attached is a screenshot of my OTA tuner encoding on the fly.

[stanger89]

I mean, I thought you said the older tuners were erratic, I was wondering if you can tell right away, or if it only showed up "eventually".

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I mean, I thought you said the older tuners were erratic, I was wondering if you can tell right away, or if it only showed up "eventually".

It was just not worth the headache for me sometimes the channel would change other times you got no signal. Unless the mappings are different but I get no signal it does not tune.

[hufnagel]

i'm interested in this once you have something ready for "prime time." I've had issues with DCT giving me a "bad" file sometimes (blank screen/no signal error) that 9/10 times corrects itself when I tell Sage to run a convert on the file; so the transcoder app can handle it to convert it, but not to play it back in realtime.

[rlvogel322]

I've had a few interesting things happening lately. I don't think it's related to the new encoder but am hoping I can't get some ideas on how to test from this group.

Overall, it has been working great. I'm using the latest version and I turned transcoding back off. Last night watching NCAA basketball time shifted I ran into some problems. We were almost caught up to real time and the video started freezing. Stopped then restarted viewing from the guide. Could not get it to go. Cancelled recording and tried to watch live. Still no go. Went to the recording directory on the server and there were multiple recorded files. Looked for the game in Sage to delete but it was not there. Deleted the files through windows explorer, went back to the guide and started watching the game and everything worked great from there.

This happened right about the top of the hour. I need to check but there may have been another recording starting at that time. This is a VM and I'm sure there are things that are impacting the recording. Any ideas on what I might be able to check? I did eventually get a halt was detected message but only one.

[nyplayer]

I did a quick writeup on setting up OTA Dlna tuners. Expect Typos. I hope the pictures showup

This is assuming you followed the procedure to install the NetworkEncoder.

Attached you will also find my 7 tuner setup.

[mechling-burgh]

Okay have been running it on the main server for about five days now works very well no bad recordings so far. The one thing that I have gotten several times was a halt in the recording. It's always with in the first minute and is about 10 to 15 seconds lost, then it records the rest of the show great. Is anyone else having this problem? I may try a clean install of sage and see if it clears it up. Just wanted to see if anyone else has encountered this problem.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by mechling-burgh

Okay have been running it on the main server for about five days now works very well no bad recordings so far. The one thing that I have gotten several times was a halt in the recording. It's always with in the first minute and is about 10 to 15 seconds lost, then it records the rest of the show great. Is anyone else having this problem? I may try a clean install of sage and see if it clears it up. Just wanted to see if anyone else has encountered this problem.

Out of curiosity are you running the firewall.. I had those when I had the firewall of but since I upgraded to version 3 and have the firewall on I do not get that anymore. I did not open the ports I just setup the programs to have full access. for example FFMPEG I gave it full access. I believe the firewall keeps other programs from trying to use the encoder ports unless you allow them.

PS Also Version 3 stops the tuners properly.

[mechling-burgh]

No the firewall is turned off right now I will upgrade to version 3 from version 2, but I thought the only real change in three was the on fly conversion to mp4 ts files?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by mechling-burgh

No the firewall is turned off right now I will upgrade to version 3 from version 2, but I thought the only real change in three was the on fly conversion to mp4 ts files?

PS you are right I have Beta tested so many scenarios I got them mixed up.

If you have version 2 maybe you should turn the firewall back on.

[fresnoboy]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Thank you nyplayer!

Since you had the thought to test this network encoder with other tuners and discovered that it works with more than the PRIME. I think it might make sense to rename the encoder before I release it.

Do you have an idea for an appropriate name? Somehthing that would let users know it is for HDHomeRun devices, and it has the ability to transcode in realtime?

I'd love to try it too, as my current SageDCT setup is anything but reliable.

thx
Mike

[nyplayer]

jvl711,

Is it possible to lock the tuners so no other application can take use away. See this post.
https://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6710

Also.

Tuner selection:
Start: use hdhomerun_device_selector_choose_and_lock() to find and lock an available tuner.
Stop: use hdhomerun_device_tuner_lockkey_release() to release the lock when the tuner is no
longer required.
Channel change: there are two options for handling the resource lock when changing channel:
1) Release the resource lock by calling hdhomerun_device_tuner_lockkey_release(), then call
hdhomerun_device_selector_choose_and_lock() to find and lock an available tuner.
2) Refresh the existing lock by calling hdhomerun_device_tuner_lockkey_request(). If the
application still holds the resource lock the request function will return success (1). If the lock has
been lost at some point but the tuner is available the request function will reacquire the lock and
return success (1). If the lock as been lost at some point and the tuner is now locked by another
host the request function will return busy (0). In this situation the application should call
hdhomerun_device_tuner_lockkey_release() to release the local lock state and call
hdhomerun_device_selector_choose_and_lock() to find another tuner.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

jvl711,

Is it possible to lock the tuners so no other application can take use away. See this post.
https://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6710

Also.

Tuner selection:
Start: use hdhomerun_device_selector_choose_and_lock() to find and lock an available tuner.
Stop: use hdhomerun_device_tuner_lockkey_release() to release the lock when the tuner is no
longer required.
Channel change: there are two options for handling the resource lock when changing channel:
1) Release the resource lock by calling hdhomerun_device_tuner_lockkey_release(), then call
hdhomerun_device_selector_choose_and_lock() to find and lock an available tuner.
2) Refresh the existing lock by calling hdhomerun_device_tuner_lockkey_request(). If the
application still holds the resource lock the request function will return success (1). If the lock has
been lost at some point but the tuner is available the request function will reacquire the lock and
return success (1). If the lock as been lost at some point and the tuner is now locked by another
host the request function will return busy (0). In this situation the application should call
hdhomerun_device_tuner_lockkey_release() to release the local lock state and call
hdhomerun_device_selector_choose_and_lock() to find another tuner.

The resource lock clears after the tuner has been left inactive for a while, so it's not a method of restricting some other device on the network from grabbing an available tuner while sage ISN'T recording. Only way around this would be for the network encoder to periodically unlock and relock the tuner ever xxx seconds.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

The resource lock clears after the tuner has been left inactive for a while, so it's not a method of restricting some other device on the network from grabbing an available tuner while sage ISN'T recording. Only way around this would be for the network encoder to periodically unlock and relock the tuner ever xxx seconds.

I only want to lock it while it is recording ... not when it is not in use. I did some testing and was able to grab the tuner while it was recording and it Interrupted the recording... Under no circumstances do I want a lock on it if not in use.

If a tuner is not locked while recording any person on the network using DLNA can steal that tuner and lock it.