WMC Live TV Tuner

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

That's correct. In fact based on a suggestion by nyplayer, I do not accept the licence agreement for EPG data and it simply doesn't download any EPG data. Doing this allows me to tune any channel from 1-5000+. Otherwise I could only tune channels that WMC's guide data knew about.

Excellent.

[KryptoNyte]

I don't believe I've had a single tuning failure since the update, so whatever you did, ENE, it seems to be working.

I'm currently running this with (2) Linksys DMA2100's and (2) HDPVR 1212's. I have the Ceton Infinitv4 Pcie, with (2) tuners dedicated to Sage (via OpenDCT for cable provided local channels only that are still available with copy freely from time warner), and now (2) tuners being used by WMC (no tuner sharing of course).

Two unexpected things have come up;

1) I was wondering why I was hearing frequent hard drive noise from the Sage Server as Sage records to the SSD. After a little investigation, I see two continual streams of data traffic going to one hard drive, and as it turns out, it's the recording folder (on the spindle hard drive) for WMC, the temp directory. I assume that because both DMA2100's are tuned to a station 100% of the time, that WMC is constantly recording two programs in its buffer.

2) When I set this up initially with one DMA2100, I found that after a 24 to 48 hour period without a tuning change sent to the unit, that it seemed to freeze (or at least there was a frozen image showing on the HDPVR). Re-tuning didn't seem to get the DMA running again, and this is with all sleep items disabled in the DMA settings. I'm still testing this as I'm not sure if my Sage/WMC system just needed a reboot, or if the DMA does enter some kind of power down mode when uninterrupted for a long period of time, or if the used Ebay DMA is having a heat problem.

One recommendation I would make for anyone setting up to try this with an HDPVR 1212, because you probably want 5.1 channel audio, and you will be using the Component HD output from DMA to HDPVR Component HD input, you may want to consider a DMA2200 as it has a Toslink output (which the 2100 does not). This should eliminate the need for any form of adapter. I have a 2200 on order and will report back after playing with that.

[EnterNoEscape]

Maybe we need a plugin to stop playback on the device if it is not being used for a recording and has been in that state for more than a defined amount of time.

[KryptoNyte]

Well, at the end of the day, I'm not sure that I care if WMC continues writing to the buffer. I am a little concerned that there is an type of sleep that the DMA units go into regardless of their settings (maybe), so I initially thought that the continual playback could be a good thing.

The one thing that I definitely can't do anymore, is let the SageTV server go to sleep, because when it does, the DMA units fall off the system and wait for user intervention to reconnect.

Regardless, right at the moment, the system is working, and it's a good system you came up with here ENE. I like it!

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

... I am a little concerned that there is an type of sleep that the DMA units go into regardless of their settings (maybe)...

Just a follow up on the strange sleep/lockup activity on the Linksys DMA2100's;

With Sage/OpenDCT using (2) of the (4) Ceton Pcie tuners for copy-freely local channels (via cablecard), and WMC using the other (2) tuners, ENE reinforced the potential need to have OpenDCT completely ignore the (2) tuners dedicated to WMC.

sagetv.device.global.ignore_devices_csv=

After setting that property in OpenDCT, it's been running for 5 days without a DMA lockup or missed tuning. Good stuff. Thanks.

[boukmandutty]

Quick question guys. I came home and all the stuff to set this up had been delivered.

What would cause a situation in which I can see video in sagetv from the hdpvr and the extender (dma2200) but I cant change channels? I can certainly open up a browser while sagetv is running and send commands to change the channel successfully but it doesnt work when I attempt to do so using the program guide in sagetv.

Any ideas on what I might have done wrong?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by boukmandutty

Quick question guys. I came home and all the stuff to set this up had been delivered.

What would cause a situation in which I can see video in sagetv from the hdpvr and the extender (dma2200) but I cant change channels? I can certainly open up a browser while sagetv is running and send commands to change the channel successfully but it doesnt work when I attempt to do so using the program guide in sagetv.

Any ideas on what I might have done wrong?

Did you follow the section in the first post titled Tuning a Channel (ExeMultiTuner Tuning Plugin)? If you did and it's still not working, sometimes it's because the account the SageTV service is running under will not allow PowerShell to establish a network connection. To fix this, you could try changing the account used for the SageTV service to whatever account you normally log into your're SageTV service as.

Also make sure localhost in the tuning command is the hostname/IP address of the computer that you're actually streaming to the extender from if that doesn't happen to also be your SageTV box.

[boukmandutty]

Could my problem lie anywhere here?

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin]
"command"="PowerShell.exe -Command Invoke-WebRequest -Uri http://localhost:%40511%/tune%20%CHANNEL%"

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by boukmandutty

Could my problem lie anywhere here?

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin]
"command"="PowerShell.exe -Command Invoke-WebRequest -Uri http://localhost:%40511%/tune%20%CHANNEL%"

Change %40511% back to %DEVICE%. The number you assigned to the .ir file and used when you selected ExeMultiTuner for tuning should be 40511. The tuning plugin will populate that number for you in place of %DEVICE%. This is how you can have more than one tuner.

[boukmandutty]

Still no luck getting the channel to change via Sagetv. I folowed the sequence in the instructions again three different times after updating to the latest version of sagetv 9. My properties file has the following. There is really only one extender. The 40511 repeats itself because I attempted to uninstall and reinstall all sources and lineups to see if that would work,

mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/device_name=40511
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/hue=127
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/last_channel=730
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/provider_id=-1853522797632618496
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/saturation=64
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/sharpness=128
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/tuning_mode=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/tuning_plugin=C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\SageTV\\Common\\EXEMultiTunerPlugin.dll
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/tuning_plugin_port=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/video_crossbar_index=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/5/0/video_crossbar_type=5
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/brightness=128
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/broadcast_standard=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/contrast=64
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/device_name=40511
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/hue=127
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/last_channel=781
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/provider_id=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/saturation=64
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/sharpness=128
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/tuning_mode=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/tuning_plugin=C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\SageTV\\Common\\EXEMultiTunerPlugin.dll
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/tuning_plugin_port=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/video_crossbar_index=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/video_crossbar_type=90
mmc/encoders/-431556906/audio_capture_device_index=-1
mmc/encoders/-431556906/audio_capture_device_name=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/audio_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/audio_processor=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/capture_config=1050624
mmc/encoders/-431556906/default_device_quality=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/delay_to_wait_after_tuning=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/device_class=DirectShow
mmc/encoders/-431556906/dshow_tv_type=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/encoder_merit=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/encoding_host=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/forced_video_storage_path_prefix=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/last_cross_index=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/last_cross_type=5
mmc/encoders/-431556906/live_audio_input=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/minimum_bitrate_error_threshold_bps=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/never_stop_encoding=false
mmc/encoders/-431556906/video_capture_device_name=Hauppauge HD PVR Capture Device
mmc/encoders/-431556906/video_capture_device_num=0
mmc/encoders/-431556906/video_encoding_params=
mmc/encoders/-431556906/video_processor=
mmc/encoders/-472293749/100/0/brightness=-1
mmc/encoders/-472293749/100/0/broadcast_standard=
mmc/encoders/-472293749/100/0/contrast=-1
mmc/encoders/-472293749/100/0/device_name=
mmc/encoders/-472293749/100/0/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=false

[KryptoNyte]

Did you create the create the 40511.ir file, and modify it accordingly in the directory;

Program Files (x86)\SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\EXEMultiTunerPlugin

Did you verify that the EXEMultiTunerPlugin.dll does in fact reside in the "Common" directory from the above path?

... basically the directions from this post;
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...9&postcount=23

[KryptoNyte]

If you've created the *.ir file correctly, one other thing that you could try, is to go into SageTV UI video source setup for that HDPVR tuner, and attempt to select "Tuner Control" the old fashioned way and "Change Tuning Device," and then select the 40511 in the list of available tuning devices (in your case there would just be the one in the list).

[boukmandutty]

I followed your instructions to the letter ( I think, I hope...).

The EXEMultiTunerPlugin.dll is in Program Files (x86)\SageTV\Common
And the renamed file 40511.ir is in Program Files (x86)\SageTV\Common\RemoteCodes\EXEMultiTunerPlugin

Maybe my problem is in that file's content. I have the following in it:
40511 38000 400 3

And my command line for the registry is as follows:

PowerShell.exe -Command Invoke-WebRequest -Uri http://192.168.0.20:%DEVICE%/tune%20%CHANNEL%

[boukmandutty]

Figured it out. The problems seems to be with powershell on my server (Windows 7). I am trying to figure out how to fix it without having to reinstall windows.

I did the setup using a windows 10 machine and it worked. I could see the blue powershell flashing while the channels changed. Nothing of the sort happens on the windows 7 server.

[KryptoNyte]

This is a copy/paste of the syntax;

PowerShell.exe -Command Invoke-WebRequest -Uri http://localhost:%DEVICE%/tune%20%CHANNEL%

I use localhost, because everything is running on the one machine.

Did you try my last suggestion about selecting the tuner control and IR file right in the SageTV UI?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by boukmandutty

Figured it out. The problems seems to be with powershell on my server (Windows 7). I am trying to figure out how to fix it without having to reinstall windows.

I did the setup using a windows 10 machine and it worked. I could see the blue powershell flashing while the channels changed. Nothing of the sort happens on the windows 7 server.

On Windows 7 I believe for many people, PowerShell doesn't not like running under the Local System account. If you have not changed the account that the SageTV service is running under, you should try that.

1. Go to Start > All Programs > SageTV > SageTV 9 Service Control
2. Click Change User
3. Enter the username and password of the account you are currently logged into the computer as. (you can always dedicate an account to this if needed later)
4. Stop the service if it is running.
5. Start the service again.

[boukmandutty]

I set the user as directed. I just cant seem to get powershell to work in windows 7. It is flawless on windows 10 however.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by boukmandutty

I set the user as directed. I just cant seem to get powershell to work in windows 7. It is flawless on windows 10 however.

That's annoying. The only other thing I can think of is to make sure you're using PowerShell 3.0.

Edit: Actually the latest is 5.0.

[boukmandutty]

It was the version of powershell.

I had disabled updates long ago right after installing because I was annoyed by the constant pop up offering windows 10 update. Anyway I updated powershell and it works. I just have some video quality things to work out now and some power saving settings.

What is the ideal setting for the hdpvr and the linksys extender?

[KryptoNyte]

Here is a thread that talks about HDPVR maximum bitrate settings in SageTV;

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33407

There are also video output settings for the DMA itself. I have it set to output 1080i with Digital Audio.