[mythtv-users] SA4200HD via 1394, mixed SD and HD

fuzzie1300 fuzzie1300 at optonline.net
Sat Mar 8 14:24:59 UTC 2008


>
> I got the STB shortly before SA4200 support was added to MythTV SVN, and
> by the time I got my cables all sorted out it was working.  Initially I
> had some stability problems:  every week or so, a firewire recording would
> fail, and I would have to power-cycle the STB as well as re-start the
> backend to get things working again.


I have the SA4250 and have similar problems.

>
>
> This was all taken care of after enabling BusReset in
> "libs/libmythtv/linuxfirewiredevice.cpp" (back when this was not enabled
> by default), and in subsequent SVNs this has been very reliable without
> changes.  Thanks to whomever fixed that!


as I am on mythdora 4, does the firewire_tester  reset command do same?  I
haven't had any luck with firewire tester testing or resetting (I do have
firewire tester svn from around December ).

>
>
> I have two remaining problems.  The first, I don't know how to debug:
> I've only run into it twice.  The backend claims to have recorded a show,
> yet the file simply does not exist.  There were no unusual messages in the
> mythbackend log, just notations that the recording was started & stopped
> at the expected times.  I've recently upgraded to SVN r16382, and will
> post again if I ever see this specific behavior.


I have a file, but it's 0 bytes (I think  this is a symptom of it just not
working as above? )

>
>
> On the SA4200HD, no matter how fast you enter the channel numbers, channel
> changes are slow.  This is due to the box itself, not MythtTV.  What can
> be a problem is the fact that MythtTV begins streaming before the channel
> change finishes.
>
> What I wind up with then is a file that has a brief section of HD
> material, followed by the SD stream that I'm trying to record.  Since I
> cannot display HD material, I get a "Failed to Reinit Video" message and
> cannot watch that program.
>
> Occasionally I get "lucky" and will be able to sneak a "fast forward"
> command in before MythTV finishes the screen init, and I can then watch
> the SD programming, but without sound.  I'm apparently skipping past
> something in the stream that is required to detect or set up the audio
> tracks.


With HD recordings in order view to them on my SD tv, I have to view the
recording on vnc and cut out the first few seconds before the channel change
and then let the transcoder do it's thing to SD size.  If I don't cut out
the first few seconds from the SD channel, transcoding fails.  Lastly, with
the transcoded file, sometimes I get audio, sometimes I don't.

>
>
> What I've settled on is this change to
> "libs/libmythtv/firewiredevice.cpp":
>
> in function FirewireDevice::SetChannel, ~line 222, I added a 3 second
> sleep after the channel change, just before the function returns.
>
> It may be that a shorter sleep duration would work.
>

Again, not being on svn, I can't do this.  Hopefully this could be in the
next release or some other method to improve it.
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