Possible to use STB Firewire for channel changing only?

[abasu2003]

Originally Posted by abasu2003

Well, that helps. I am recording over firewire. But whats odd is that channel misses happen when I'm not actually recording anything over firewire, like my encoder is not in use. I've played with the delay times and nothing seems to be working. Specifically, channel numbers are getting sent too many times.

So, I've spent some time on thegreenbutton forum trying to figure out the problem and apparently it has to do with when my computer comes out of standby, the firewire port doesn't get activated correctly. Timmoore put in some fixes in his Mytray application but I was wondering if people found problems like this using sage and what the work around was. Is no one letting their computers go into standby and/or using a Motorola 6200?

[thomaszoo]

I was wondering why some folks were having problems using firewire to change channels. I have not been putting my HTPC into standby for awile due to different issue. Once I get it resolved I am planning to use standby again. I will run some tests this weekend to see if I am affected by the same problem (too many recordings scheduled prior to then to take any chances).

Wayne

[thomaszoo]

I got a chance to test this out tonight before my recordings started. I put my HTPC into standby several times without any problems. I have used it for firewire recording (w/channel changing) for quite some time. Only in the last couple of weeks started using firewire for channel changing for the channels that I can't record over firewire (5c'd, etc). Not once has it missed even one digit. Is it possible that there is something specific to your hardware (specifically your firewire ports) that may be causing the problem?

Wayne

[abasu2003]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I got a chance to test this out tonight before my recordings started. I put my HTPC into standby several times without any problems. I have used it for firewire recording (w/channel changing) for quite some time. Only in the last couple of weeks started using firewire for channel changing for the channels that I can't record over firewire (5c'd, etc). Not once has it missed even one digit. Is it possible that there is something specific to your hardware (specifically your firewire ports) that may be causing the problem?

Wayne

possible. After some more tinkering, I've found some stability. Could be any number of things I changed:

-using the right firewire port on the motorola 6200 (contrary to what other people said)

-set in BIOS to use S3 standby

- turned on wake on USB for S3 in BIOS

I actually think the last one did the trick but I can't be sure. When I first set this up about a month ago I didn't see any problems so maybe I'll wait and see the problems coming back. Whats strange to me is that enough people using MCE had this problem that timmoore put out a fix for it but that doesn't seem to be the case here at Sage. weird.

[rjszanto]

Thanks I am using this setup now as well (channel changing only through firewire). I was trying to setup firewire streaming, but there were various graphs when I setup my whole system would just power off (new MB, video card too). I gave up after just a couple evenings debug because the only benefit I would get would be to get Discovery and TNT in HD, everything else I have is QAM HD through my HDHomeRun.

Anyway, here is my question. Does anyone know if there is a way to use firewire channel changing with TWO settop boxes? My setup is I have a server with:
HDHomeRun tuning 2 HD QAM lines
PVR500#1 tuning 2 SD lines
PVR500#2 tuning 1 Settop box and 1SD line.

I have a 2nd settop box I am not using and would like to control it with a 2nd firewire line, but the ExeTunerPlugin setting in the registry already specifies the settop box. Would there be a way to specify a 2nd? I.e. could the ExeTunerPlugin source be rebuilt to name it ExeTunerPlugin2 or something, with its own registry in Sage with a different command line? And would this show up in Sage under the tuner setup?

I'd like to get this setup so when my cable provider offers more HD content that is not QAM, I am ready for it when I get streaming working.

Thanks!

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by rjszanto

Thanks I am using this setup now as well (channel changing only through firewire). I was trying to setup firewire streaming, but there were various graphs when I setup my whole system would just power off (new MB, video card too). I gave up after just a couple evenings debug because the only benefit I would get would be to get Discovery and TNT in HD, everything else I have is QAM HD through my HDHomeRun.

Anyway, here is my question. Does anyone know if there is a way to use firewire channel changing with TWO settop boxes? My setup is I have a server with:
HDHomeRun tuning 2 HD QAM lines
PVR500#1 tuning 2 SD lines
PVR500#2 tuning 1 Settop box and 1SD line.

I have a 2nd settop box I am not using and would like to control it with a 2nd firewire line, but the ExeTunerPlugin setting in the registry already specifies the settop box. Would there be a way to specify a 2nd? I.e. could the ExeTunerPlugin source be rebuilt to name it ExeTunerPlugin2 or something, with its own registry in Sage with a different command line? And would this show up in Sage under the tuner setup?

I'd like to get this setup so when my cable provider offers more HD content that is not QAM, I am ready for it when I get streaming working.

Thanks!

I wrote a guide for this. It is in the downloads section here. Hopefully that will get you going.

Aloha,
Mike

[othy]

Is there any way to force channelw.exe to send three digits for every channel (ie, 003 instead of 3) to speed up the channel changes?

Or perhaps a way to have it send enter after the channel?

I've tinkered with the -d parameter but can't get what I want.

Other than the little delay when I change channels, this is working great with my SA3250

Thanks,
Tim

[maxcanis]

So far I've gotten everything working great with the DCT6200 and Firewire, one minor problem is that after resume, it won't change the channel. I found that I have to exit SageTV and open it up again and then at that point channel changing works well again. This doesn't happen at any other time except for suspend.

I'm using S3 suspend on an ASUS M2A-VM motherboard running Windows XP Professional SP3.
Running Firewire Channel Change + ExeMultiTuner (rev 1.02)

Any thoughts?

[belleboyd]

I had a QIP 6200 die on me over the weekend. Verizon has given me a model 7100 and told me that I can't get a 6200 anymore.

Is there an update to the Timmoore drivers somewhere to get this model to work ? I *really* don't want to go back to UIRT


Thanks!

[reggie14]

There is a newer driver package than the Timmmoore set. It's by exdeus and can be found here. But, that doesn't have QIP-7100 support either.

I guess your only option is to post in the AVSForum thread and ask for QIP 7100 support. But, you're not the first person to ask for it. It's been a pretty long time since exdeus updated the drivers. He may have moved on to other projects.

[belleboyd]

Reggie:
Thanks for the pointer to the AVS forums. After some searching about, I found a hack to enable the 7100 using the driver package from ExDeus.

If anyone else needs the info - look here: AVSforum

Originally Posted by reggie14

There is a newer driver package than the Timmmoore set. It's by exdeus and can be found here. But, that doesn't have QIP-7100 support either.

I guess your only option is to post in the AVSForum thread and ask for QIP 7100 support. But, you're not the first person to ask for it. It's been a pretty long time since exdeus updated the drivers. He may have moved on to other projects.