[mythtv-users] Help selecting firewire cable?

[Tom Greer]

On Feb 7, 2008 3:10 AM, William Munson <w.munson at comcast.net> wrote:

> I recently got a DCT6416 III cable box and want to connect it to my myth
> box which has a built in firewire port however I am confused by the
> various pin options. The DCT has a pair of plugs labeled IEEE 1394 which
> I understand are 6 pin and on the back of my pc there is a plug that
> looks like a stretched letter D. Is this a 4 pin plug?
>
> Also I know the DCT6416 III is a dvr box, my local comcast store is out
> of the basic HD settop boxes at the moment. I am hoping that I will
> still be able to control the box with the firewire code in SVN. Has
> anyone had any luck with this box?
>
> TIA,
> Bill


Bill,

I have successfully recorded off a DCT-6416 via firewire.  It works exactly
the same as a DCT-6200 box.  I'n not sure about the type of firewire cable
(it's been a long time); but I know the ones I'm using have the same
connector on both ends.  I think they are 4 pin - but I'm not sure.

Initially I started by renting two DVRs  from my cable company.  I was
frustrated at the lack of features (especially the inability to view
recordings made on a different box - which resulting in physically swapping
boxes between rooms in order to watch recordings).

That led me to search and find MythTV.  My wife loved the cable DVR.  My
first attempt to covert her was going well, until I took a business trip and
the firewire connection stopped working on day 1.  That set the migration
back six months.  I had to keep a DCT-6416 in the bedroom as a fallback for
a number of months.

Now she loves Myth and boasts about it to all of her friends.

I WAF (wife acceptance factor) is important to you, then I would recommend
that you implement a couple of key features.

   1. Program one of your buttons to kill and restart mythfrontend.  This
   allows a quick "reboot" of the frontend application if anything goes wrong.
   I modified Jared Wilson's mythpowerbutton.sh
script<http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/tips.php>(which turns mythfrontend
on and off) for this purpose.
   2. Use monit to monitor mythbackend and, if it dies, to automatically
   restart the backend process. See the wiki
   <http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Status_Monitoring_How_To>for
   details.
   3. For whatever reason, the DCT-6xxx boxes stop responding to firewire
   commands.  They seem to work best when you keep them "primed".  So I have a
   cron script that runs every 30 minutes that checks to see whether the box is
   busy, and if not, then primes the box using firewire_tester.  See this
   thread<http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/engine?do=post_view_flat;post=277073;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;list=mythtv>for
details.
   4. Be sure to install openssh server and to open a hole in your
   firewall to permit you to ssh in when you are away from home  - just in case
   you need to.
   5. Last but not least, make sure that everything is rock solid stable
   before "moving it to production".  And only upgrade when there is a good
   reason to do so (that includes upgrading the OS or other applications).

I'm sure others may have tips to improve the WAF.

Good luck.

Tom
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20080207/db448701/attachment-0001.htm