[mythtv-users] FireWire: Comcast removing 5C, channel changing now 100%

Donald Webster fryfrog at gmail.com
Tue Apr 3 12:49:04 UTC 2007


I have comcast in Atlanta, GA along with a pair of DCT6412s (yeah, the
stupid DVR).  None of the channels have ever been 5C'd, but I am not
sure if that is due to the device (I have had 3 different DCT6412
boxes) or the area itself.  I *tried* to swap my original single
DCT6412 for a pair of DCT6200s (the plain old tuners), but when the
tech came and took my DVR... he walked right back in with a pair of
newer ones.

I have ... a fair amount of trouble with them.  Usually they will
simply fail to send anything out and so nothing works.  In fact, I
wrote http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Firewire_Priming#Fryfrog.27s_Multi_Tuner_Version
because I was having so much trouble.  This script seems to make it
work pretty well, but it will go for stretches where it can't tune a
channel to save its life.  Some channels it seems like it will get
easily and consistently, but others it will barf on for 3 or 4
(manual) attempts in a row... then, spontaneously work for many
repeats of the script.

Sometimes I get glitching, sometimes I lose a few seconds at a time
and a lot of the time it works perfectly.

Aside from writing a complicated script, I have also separated each
box onto its own firewire controller.  I have one built in, and one
pci card.  This is because while they were on the same port, they
would randomly pick nodes, then... spontaneously pick *new* nodes.
Now, they both tend to *boot* up onto node 1, then after a few
firewire port resets and firewire_tester broadcast attempts, they will
move to node 0 and stay there.

I would *like* to use the new firewire features like node tracking,
but I'm not sure if everything will work okay w/o actually having my
script which tries like hell to make sure firewire is working before
turning it all over to myth.

The only thing I can think of is to some how get comcast to swap my
6412s for 6200s

I used to be using gentoo, but after like 4 years I decided I would
see if not compiling new stuff every few days would make for a better
server.  I switched to Ubuntu and was happy for a while, but now I am
wishing for gentoo back.  I just know how to do everything :)

In your FC6, can you show the versions of some of the relevant
libraries and utils?  I don't think there are more than 2 or 3 and
they should have "1394" or "ieee" in their name I think?
-- 
AIM: fryfrog
ICQ: 304825
WWW: http://www.fryfrog.com


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