[mythtv-users] Firewire Issues

[Daniel Arfsten]

I confess, I am suffering from a lack of understanding of how to
proceed
on my firewire issues. Positively, all of the analog
channels...the
basic cable stuff...seems to come through on my SA3250HD. The HD
channels seem to come through. The digital versions of the
analog feed
aren't tuning...but I figure if I can get rid of the PVR-150
hooked into
the box output, it will allow me to free up a PCI slot for
another QAM
tuner.

That said, my firewire recording, like many peoples, is
inconsistent.
When it records, it records. When it doesn't, it doesn't, and I
have to
stop MythTV, reset the firewire bus, and that seems to clear the
problem.

I have high hopes a future bugfix will stabilize the
connection...it
certainly works better than it used to for me. But until
then...what
should I do? I've been reading other people's issues...What are
the
advantages of using an external channel changer script to reset
the
firewire bus before each recording as a precaution? I've already
given
it the lowest priority compared to the digital tuners, which
work
flawlessly(except for LiveTV, which I try to avoid anyway)

I have searched through the archives and seem no closer to a
best
solution, so I decided to seek commentary.

RE: below

I would say that your only real solution is to use an external channel 
change script that resets the firewire prior to changing channel. Have you 
associated a source that ONLY contains channels that can be recorded via 
firewire to your firewire input within mythtv-setup? If not, than this is 
the problem, mythtv is trying to change to a channel that you don't get in 
the clear, then when it trys to record it buggers the firewire bus and will 
not work again until you reset the firewire bus. You shouldn't have to quit 
mythtv to reset the bus though. You just have to run the firewire_tester 
program with the -R switch and that will reset it. Then ensure that mythtv 
will only try to record channels that are in the clear and that you have 
tested outside of mythtv with test-mpeg2. Here's a script for the SA 3250HD 
that will reset the bus if it fails prior to channel changing.
http://bentonroberts.com/personal/media-server/code/mySA3250change.sh/view

RE: above