HDTV Firewire Support on The Mac

[gilbreen]

oopsydaisy,

I just purchased a Mac mini to use as a SageTV server and planned on using a SA4200 cable box with it. I was hoping to use it as a tuner for SageTV. Are you saying that a cable box connected via FireWire cannot be used as a tuner to watch live TV? I was thinking/hoping that using the instructions to set it up as a network encoder would allow one to watch live TV.

If not, I guess my next attempt would be to use it with an HD-PVR but I don't believe that channel changing is supported on the Mac side with an HD-PVR.

[oopsydaisy]

I was not able to view live TV under Snow Leopard. I'm almost finished rebuilding the mini with Leopard to see if this is still the case. I'll post results shortly

[oopsydaisy]

Arrghhh. Went back to Leopard and not only can I not watch live tv via firewire, but I'm back where I started with no recording as well. Apparently, recording wasn't working in Snow Leopard either. You see, it actually recorded shows, but those shows were not playable, even in VLC. Not sure where to go from here and The Office and Fringe start tonight

[oopsydaisy]

I've rebuilt my 2009 mini about 3 times since my last post. Now, I get white text on a black background and the recordings are coming up as zeroKB. Here are my specs for clarification

Mac Mini 2009 2ghz C2D 4GB ram
10.5.8 with all updates to Java applied from software update
Sagetv v.6.6.1
guho's firewire network encoder
SA4250HD

[guho]

Originally Posted by oopsydaisy

I've rebuilt my 2009 mini about 3 times since my last post. Now, I get white text on a black background and the recordings are coming up as zeroKB. Here are my specs for clarification

Mac Mini 2009 2ghz C2D 4GB ram
10.5.8 with all updates to Java applied from software update
Sagetv v.6.6.1
guho's firewire network encoder
SA4250HD

First of all I would recommend using PCs to run SageTV clients. The video quality is much better. Even on my new mac mini 2009 with the 9400 the playback is flawed and on the same mini under bootcamp/vista it is flawless. Not sure if it is the mac's fault or sagetv's but that's how it is even on kick-ass hardware like the nvidia 9400.

To address your issue with my firewire network encoder, I would suggest fixing the file system permissions again (see earlier in this thread). Then the recordings will no longer be 0-length. Also, please ensure the AVCVideoCap still works. Should say 'Copy Freely', don't rule out cableco started 5C on your premium channels. Hope this helps.

[Ghampton]

Got this working on a G4 Mac Mini that was just gathering dust. The main Sage server is Ubuntu. The only hickup was getting the permissions ironed out on the CIFS shares that are on the Ubuntu box.

Video looks great on a Linux Placeshifter and an HD200 extender. The CPU on the mini is only 3% when recording HD (lower than I would have expected).

Thank you for creating this..

Greg