Improved HD PVR Stability with v7?

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by wayner

64 bit is only an issue for firewire channel changes because the drivers that allow you to do this, called firestb, were written several years ago and seem to have been abandoned. There is only a 32 bit version of the drivers available. In order to use firewire for channel change you need a firewire port on your PC and a firewire (aka 1394) port on your cable/satellite box. I have Scientific Atlanta/Cisco boxes that have these ports and I believe most Motorola HD cable STBs also have these. I am not so sure if they are available on DirecTV boxes.

Firewire is, at least IMHO, the best way to change channels since it doesn't depend on IR which can be somewhat flakey and you can control many boxes with one firewire card (my boxes have two firewire ports so you can connect PC->Box1, Box1->Box2, etc). You also don't have to beware that one IR emitter is changing channels on the wrong box which can happen with the default zone of a USB-UIRT which blasts the IR signal out to the whole room.

wayner is absolutely correct. There are no 64-bit firewire drivers for cable company set top boxes. Searching Google shows many people hoping for a solution. In addition I'd go so far as to say firewire is absolutely the best way to change channels through SageTV or any other PVR that supports it. I've never, in four years, had an inaccurate channel change. To me, it's worth sticking with Comcast for a firewire capable STB and a 32-bit OS for this level of accuracy. It basically eliminates one of the problem areas when working with the HD-PVR.

The motherboard on my HTPC server has one 1394 (firewire) connector. However, the the STBs each have two ports allowing for chaining. The first STB is connected to the computer, the next to the first STB and so on. You can chain as many together as desired. Per my signature... it's awesome. :-)

[wayner]

All this being said - the bulk of my recordings are kids shows from an SD cable box which does not have firewire so I use a USB-UIRT to change channels using an IR emitter plugged into the jack on the USB-UIRT. I don't think I have had more than one or two channel change issues in a couple of years over hundreds of recordings.