Sage 64bit having USB UIRT issues

[graywolf]

Going from 32bit Sage 9.1.2.662 & Java 1.7.0_79 to 64bit Sage 9.2.6 & 64bit Java 1.8.0_361

As a fallback (glad i did) I disabled/stopped the 32bit Sage Service and did the 64bit Sage 9.2.6 like a clean install in a different folder and having it do the LAV Filters & USB UIRT.

All seemed to go well but when I went test having it change channels on the DirecTV box nothing happened.

I did the Copy uuirtdrv.dll from "SageTV\redist\usbuirt\amd64" folder into your Windows\System32 directory and rebooted but still having issues.

Looking for some help.

Ended up yesterday doing a system checkpoint restore, then disable/stop the 64bit service and enabled/running the old 32bit 9.1.2 service and the USB UIRT worked fine and changed the channels without issue

[Malfunction]

Originally Posted by graywolf

Going from 32bit Sage 9.1.2.662 & Java 1.7.0_79 to 64bit Sage 9.2.6 & 64bit Java 1.8.0_361

As a fallback (glad i did) I disabled/stopped the 32bit Sage Service and did the 64bit Sage 9.2.6 like a clean install in a different folder and having it do the LAV Filters & USB UIRT.

All seemed to go well but when I went test having it change channels on the DirecTV box nothing happened.

I did the Copy uuirtdrv.dll from "SageTV\redist\usbuirt\amd64" folder into your Windows\System32 directory and rebooted but still having issues.

Looking for some help.

Ended up yesterday doing a system checkpoint restore, then disable/stop the 64bit service and enabled/running the old 32bit 9.1.2 service and the USB UIRT worked fine and changed the channels without issue

How old is it? I had to replace mine once. They don't last forever. Basically it appeared to work, but didn't do anything.

[Tiki]

The 64-bit driver for USBUIRT does not work the same as the 32-bit driver.
From what I’ve seen with 64 bit you cannot use the USBUIRT to act as both a transmitter (blaster) and receiver for your remote at the same time if you are running Sage as a service.

You can use one or the other, but not both when Sage is run as a service.

If you run Sage in stand-alone mode (not as a service), then you can transmit and receive at the same time.

I’ve seen one Sage user who claimed he got it working, but several like me who could not make it work. I just went back to 32-bit Sage and gave up on 64-bit because this was a dealbreaker for me.

In fairness, I never reached out to the USBUIRT creator to see if he could fix it, but I think others may have asked already.

[wnjj]

Anything in the log files?

[graywolf]

Thanks all. Ended up going with the 32bit 9.2.6 and the USB UIRT is working. Since running out of time to work on it.
Main thing Wife wanted was to get Gemstone setup in her small office room like we have at our main TV/SageTV (64bit) server. The 64bit was more for me to have the 2 servers be similar.

[JustFred]

After trading several emails with the creator of USBUIRT, and a lot of research and trial-and-error, I'll share my experience and success. As has been stated, the 32 and 64-bit versions of USBUIRT do behave a bit differently.

I'm currently running Sage-x64 (as a service) and USBUIRT-x64. Didn't have to jump thru any hoops to make it work. No problems with Sage both sending and receiving IR. Sage is even able to learn new IR cmds and update the relevant .ir file.

The difficulty with USBUIRT-x64 occurs when more than one program tries to use the blaster. It's not possible to have one service and one non-service both connect to USBUIRT-x64. In order to work, Sage and the other program(s) must either all run as a service, or all must NOT run as services.

But there's a workaround to this limitation. In my specific setup, I run Sage-x64 as a service, and also have a 2nd program (uutx_64.exe, not running as a service) that also needs to use the blaster. To make this work, a free Microsoft utility "PsExec" acts a middle-man to solve the problem.

I've got a simple batch file that wraps uutx_64.exe to make it work:

REM Invoke the desired prog as the System, in Session0
psexec64.exe -accepteula -nobanner -s  c:\bin\uutx_64.exe (more params follow)

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by JustFred

After trading several emails with the creator of USBUIRT, and a lot of research and trial-and-error, I'll share my experience and success. As has been stated, the 32 and 64-bit versions of USBUIRT do behave a bit differently.

I'm currently running Sage-x64 (as a service) and USBUIRT-x64. Didn't have to jump thru any hoops to make it work. No problems with Sage both sending and receiving IR. Sage is even able to learn new IR cmds and update the relevant .ir file.

The difficulty with USBUIRT-x64 occurs when more than one program tries to use the blaster. It's not possible to have one service and one non-service both connect to USBUIRT-x64. In order to work, Sage and the other program(s) must either all run as a service, or all must NOT run as services.

But there's a workaround to this limitation. In my specific setup, I run Sage-x64 as a service, and also have a 2nd program (uutx_64.exe, not running as a service) that also needs to use the blaster. To make this work, a free Microsoft utility "PsExec" acts a middle-man to solve the problem.

I've got a simple batch file that wraps uutx_64.exe to make it work:

REM Invoke the desired prog as the System, in Session0
psexec64.exe -accepteula -nobanner -s  c:\bin\uutx_64.exe (more params follow)

What would be two programs trying to use the USBIRT device at the same time be, aka which programs...

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by JustFred

The difficulty with USBUIRT-x64 occurs when more than one program tries to use the blaster. It's not possible to have one service and one non-service both connect to USBUIRT-x64. In order to work, Sage and the other program(s) must either all run as a service, or all must NOT run as services.

OK let me be more clear. The Sage service only applies to the recording engine. The Sage UI never runs as a service. So if you have Sage configured to run as a service and you also run the Sage UI on the same computer to watch stuff, this is where you run into problems. This is also probably the only time you need to use the USBUIRT as both a transmitter and receiver. The Sage recording engine (service) needs to use the USBUIRT as a transmitter to change the channel on your cable box so it can record something. The Sage UI (which is not a service and runs as a separate process) needs to use the USBUIRT as a receiver so that you can use your remote control to navigate the Sage menus.

Since the Sage UI and the Sage recording engine are running as separate processes, the USBUIRT won’t allow them both to access it at the same time. At one time the 32-bit driver had this same limitation, but it was fixed many years ago. When the 64-bit driver was released, this limitation returned.

The biggest benefit of running Sage as a service is that the UI and recording engine are kept in separate processes in Windows. The recording engine is extremely stable and almost never crashes. But the UI is much more prone to failure, whether due to a bad plug-in or a problem rendering a recording, or a conflict with a video driver, etc. By keeping them separate, there is a very good chance that even if the UI locks up or crashes, Sage will still continue to make its recordings in the background unaffected. Also, if something causes your entire computer to reboot, the Sage service will restart itself automatically, even if no one is around to log into Windows.

[JustFred]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

What would be two programs trying to use the USBIRT device at the same time be, aka which programs...

Tiki's explanation is excellent.

In my particular case, the two programs are:
1. SageTv.exe (the recording engine, which runs as a service), and
2. uutx_64.exe (a utility from the creator of USBUIRT), that periodically gets invoked from one of my batch files to send "wakeup" IR commands to keep my set-top box alive.

Using psexec64.exe in the batch file allows both of the above to access the IR blaster.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Also, if something causes your entire computer to reboot, the Sage service will restart itself automatically, even if no one is around to log into Windows.

I've run SageTV as an application since 2009. It rarely has crashed and when the computer reboots, it starts up automatically before I "login", which it this case is an empty password anyway.

I realize this is a simple setup on a single-user PC but it has worked great for many years. I will qualify that with the fact that I use few to no plugins so likely why it is even more stable than other systems.