Charter HD questions

[ke6guj]

Yes, definitely a mess

But the nice thing about cable is... no contracts. Get the STB, and if you can't get it to work the way you want, return it. No contract penalties. I'd definitely recommend doing that, you may get lucky and find a lack of 5C encryption on many channels.

ANd 5C encryption is in no way equal to unscrambled QAM. Unscrambled QAM is channels that can be picked up by any QAM tuner. YOu'll see your HD locals, and maybe some other SD/HD non-premium channels. You'll probably never see an HBO or Showtime unscrambled. Here is a post talking about the channels that people are getting over QAM. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&highlight=qam

5C is after it goes through the STB and your paid channels are unscrambled. 5C encryption can be added to only allow "authorized" devices to record/view the content. Our Sage boxes are not autorized to record/view 5C content.

As for me, my QAM list is only for HD and SD local channels. No "cable" channels at all, maybe 15 channels in all. BUt I have no 5C encryption at all right now. I can record every channel I pay for, even the premiums. And with a motorola box, I get to record my analog channels through the firewire as well. It's just a toss up on what you'll get.

[dvd_maniac]

OK, here is what I'm going to try.
I'll get the HD-STB and hook it up via firewire (How does Sage change the channel? Through Firwire or through USB-Uirt like now?) And I'm going to split a coax and buy a HDHR and try that. It would be nice to have 2 HDTV tuners anyways.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

OK, here is what I'm going to try.
I'll get the HD-STB and hook it up via firewire (How does Sage change the channel? Through Firwire or through USB-Uirt like now?) And I'm going to split a coax and buy a HDHR and try that. It would be nice to have 2 HDTV tuners anyways.

if you are just trying to check the firewire output on each channel, just find a copy of CapDVHS, and use that. Change the channel on the STB, then in CapDVHS initiate a capture from the firewire port. If you get channel stats (resolution, bitrate, etc) then you are good to go on that channel, otherwise its 5C'd. Definitely a much quicker way to test than setting up the entire Firewire STB stuff for sage.

[blade]

Thanks for all the info guys. I was all set to pickup a HDHomeRun, but now I think I may look into firewire from a stb first. If everything is already locked down with 5c I'll probably still go with the HDHomeRun, but if not it might be worth setting up a firewire connection at least until they do lock it up. I live in a small town so maybe they haven't gotten around to it yet.

[dvd_maniac]

Definitely a much quicker way to test than setting up the entire Firewire STB stuff for sage.

How hard is it to setup a firewire STB into SageTV?

[Kirby]

its not that hard, but you wont be able to identify whats wrong with the firewire stream, which is why I said to use CapDVHS to test your channels. At least this way, you will know if you are getting a signal into the PC, rather than sitting in Sage and wondering why you have a black screen (i.e. did I setup something wrong, or is it 5C, or some other issue).

Or you can do the power cycle on every channel, and go into service menus to check 5C status. IMO, CapDVHS will be the quickest method.

[dvd_maniac]

Cool. I'll try that when I get the box on the 27th.

I just looked at the thread HERE to see what is involved with the setup...
Not TOO bad but I'm sure I'll be here asking questions along the way.

Thanx everybody for helping me decide what to do.

[ke6guj]

actually, I think I would go with the post here, http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...513#post125513 , post 831

[blade]

Well I went to my sister's house and am not certain what everything I found means. I looked through the menu and wrote down anything that looked like it might be something I needed to know.

It's a Motorola DCT6412III (has the DVR garbage) and both firewire ports are disabled.

The local HD channels under Current Channel Status:
Type: Digital Unk 0x43
DRM: 0x00
5c: 0x00

TNT-HD and all of the digital channels are:
Type: Digital Enc 0x12 or Enc 0x14 the number on the end varies for some channels
DRM: 0x01
5c: 0x00

Can anyone tell if the digital channels are scrambled? I'm thinking yes. Also does 0x00 mean none of the channels are 5c'd or does firewire being disabled give me incorrect results?

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by blade

Well I went to my sister's house and am not certain what everything I found means. I looked through the menu and wrote down anything that looked like it might be something I needed to know.

It's a Motorola DCT6412III (has the DVR garbage) and both firewire ports are disabled.

The local HD channels under Current Channel Status:
Type: Digital Unk 0x43
DRM: 0x00
5c: 0x00

TNT-HD and all of the digital channels are:
Type: Digital Enc 0x12 or Enc 0x14 the number on the end varies for some channels
DRM: 0x01
5c: 0x00

Can anyone tell if the digital channels are scrambled? I'm thinking yes. Also does 0x00 mean none of the channels are 5c'd or does firewire being disabled give me incorrect results?

Well, if the firewire ports are disabled, then there is no need for 5C to be on. I dont think the firewire status matters, since the 5C flag would come from the headend, not from the STB. The STB doesnt know if a channel should or shouldnt be 5C'd, it just adhere's to the channels flag.

Now if you can get a STB with active firewire ports (which they must supply to you by law) then things could be very good for you and firewire! At least thats what it appears. I am assuming the DRM setting is the digicipher encryption, which would fall in line with only the HD locals being ITC. But those channels should transmit over active firewire ports without issue, so long as the 5C flag doesnt change.

It is possible though that the STB is confused about the 5C flag if the ports are inactive.

[blade]

Cool, I may look into firewire. Honestly though after looking at the digital packages there are very few digital channels that I'd be interested in other than the locals.

If all the analog channels such as Sci-Fi, TBS, FX, Spike, etc... were available in digital I'd try firewire in a second. The only real advantage I would personally get from firewire would be TNT and Discovery in HD, 4-6 other digital channels, and if I could capture the analog as well that would nice. I'm just not that interested in any of the other digital channels.

[Kirby]

I hear ya there. Charter here runs about 70 analog channels. What a HUGE waste of bandwidth. Each channel could be carrying 2 full HD and 2 sub channels if converted to a QAM256 channel. And the number of SD digitals that they cram into the same space is huge too. Oh well. Analog dies someday I guess. Of course Charter has other issues more pressing, like surviving at this point.

[dvd_maniac]

I was looking at the Charter channel lineup for my area and see something called "New Digital View". If they do not have 5C then I would recieve them through firewire as well?

[Kirby]

Seems likely, but have no idea what those channels are.

[dvd_maniac]

I'm getting a little anxious here waiting for the HD STB to show up on the 27th and wanted to get things ready so I called up Charter to find out the model # of the box and they couldn't tell me. I also found that my semi-new motherboard has no firewire port. Wouldn't be a big deal to buy and install an add-on card except for two things.
1. I do not know which speed firewire the stb will be, 400 or 800. What are they usually?
2. My A8N-E Deluxe has no firewire and 3 pci slots, I have pvr-500, Scsi card for LTO drive and 3ware 9500s raid-5 card.

So it looks like I have to get a pci express card which no local store carries. Should I buy a 400 or 800 or do the STBs vary and I have to wait to find out?

[dvd_maniac]

OK,
I just recieved my HD STB and it is the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DRV
Pretty nice box but I can't tell if it's Firewire 400 or 800.
I will look at the manual tonight and find out then order the approriate add-on card.
I think I might have a problem with channel lineup conflicts though and was wondering if there is a way to use the DVR portion of theSTB and transfer the videos via firewire? That is as long as the video is unencrypted.

[ke6guj]

I think it is probably standard firewire 400. Look here for more info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire . See how the 800 has a different plug.

I don't know how much of the DVR content you'll be able to access. I think that if you want to use Sage with the STB, you'll probably be best served to not use the DVR portion at all. Otherwise you may run into conflicts between Sage and the DVR trying to use the same tuner at the same time.

[Kirby]

Channel lineup conflicts?

[dvd_maniac]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Channel lineup conflicts?

If I set it up to use the same lineup as my 3 other STBs how will Sage know to use only the HD stb to record HD material?

[Kirby]

Ahh, that problem... Find a neighboring city with the same cable company, same channels, and use that lineup for that receiver. Might have to remap some channels on it, but it works quite well. I had my DCT6200 setup with a lineup from 30 miles away.