Thursday, July 21, 2011

Ceton InifiniTV 4 in MythTV 0.24 - Part 2

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed my decision to get a Ceton InfiniTV 4 card instead of a HD Homerun Prime, how it didn't initially go as planned, and how I eventually went through the process to write my own code to utilize the card in MythTV 0.24. Now I'd like to share the fruits of my labor...the necessary code which you can compile into MythTV 0.24-fixes to get Ceton support for yourself. In the upcomming Part 3 (hopefully posted tomorrow), I'll post a patch and instructions for Mythbuntu 11.04 users


Standard disclaimers

I'd be absolutely thrilled if you wanted to use my code to get your Ceton card working in MythTV. However, before I unleash all of this on you, I need to be clear about a number of things. I wouldn't want you to not realize what you are getting into and get mad at me if something goes terribly wrong (like you miss a bunch of recordings). So here are a few things you'll need to know before getting started

1) This isn't just a distribution you can download and install, or run apt-get on. We are talking about custom compiled code. You will be downloading the mythtv source code from the git tree, applying some patches, and custom compiling it on your own. If you've never done this before, then I'd prefer that you get comfortable with that process before trying to add in my code. So I'd suggest downloading 0.24-fixes from git (see the instructions at code.mythtv.org), compiling it, installing it, and making sure everything works. If that all works fine, only then should you think about proceeding

2) This isn't official code by any means. This is something I put together by myself, as a stopgap measure until 0.25 is eventually released with real Ceton support. So far, the only person to test this code is me. If you run into problems, the folks on the MythTV forums aren't gonna help you with this one. You'll be depending on me for help.

3) If you have problems with the code, I'll try to help. I take pride in what I do, and I'll be willing to work with you as much as I can to figure out your problems. That said, I've got a full time job and a 1 year old daughter, so don't expect 24 hour support and quick turnaround time. It may take me a while to figure out and get to the bottom of it, but I'll try my best.

4) If you do need help from me, then I'm gonna need help from you. I'm gonna ask you for logs, I'll probably send you some custom code, ask you to run it, and send me back the results. I may do this a number of times.

5) Realizing that this isn't the official software for running the Ceton card in MythTV (nor will it be the official code in 0.25 or ever), you are going to have to expect things to break when you eventually upgrade to 0.25. You're going to have to delete your tuners and repeat the setup process in 0.25 using the officially supported mechanism.

6) When 0.25 comes out, if by some chance it does NOT contain the official support for this card as expected, then this code won't work on 0.25. I may be a bit delayed in upgrading my systems to 0.25, so it may be a little while before I can update the code. That said, I should be able to do it relatively easily, as I already did some preliminary work at getting this working in 0.25 (and had it working in a limited capacity), so I've got a decent part of the code written. And some of the biggest parts (that deal with tuning and getting status info) are actually not tied to myth directly, so I should be able to port them with no problems.


Other important information

If the disclaimers didn't scare you off, then here are few of the little quirks you need to know about:

Importing QAM channels - I haven't written a channel scanner for this card, so if you want to run it in QAM mode without a cablecard installed, you are going to have to do some work to get your channel data setup properly. I can work with you to get this setup if necessary, and I can probably write some perl scripts to help you with the process. However, hopefully nobody is buying this card just for it's QAM support, so hopefully this won't be such an issue. But if you maybe want to test it in QAM mode before upgrading your cable service and ordering a cable card, then we'll have to setup some channels for you

Importing cable card channels - For cable card support, we just use myth's download option and let mythfilldatabase download the data from schedules direct and create the channels. This sets up the channels for the most part, but they are not yet usable by this code. You'll need to run an SQL query to update one of the fields in the database. I'll provide you with instructions below. Also, in the future, if new channels get added to your lineup automatically, they are going to need to be tweaked before they are usable, so you'll need to rerun that query whenever your lineup changes. In the future, I'll try to figure out the most appropriate way to automate this so you don't have to worry about it, but for now it's something you'll need to be aware of

Live TV channel changing - Typically this works very well...about 3 to 4 seconds per channel change. However, occasionally a tuning request may fail and the Ceton doesn't properly tune the channel. The good news is that I've got code to detect this condition (as least for every way I've experienced this or I anticipate it could happen) and re-initiate the channel change request automatically. However, when it does happen, it will take 5 seconds for the code to kick in, and then another few seconds for the channel change to occur. When this happens, you'll be staring at a black screen for several seconds. Back on the good news side, I've only had this happen to me once in my testing, so I don't expect it will be very common).

Startup error condition - I've started and stopped the mythtv-backend service hundreds of times almost entirely without issue. Once it's running, the code works great. However, one time I rebooted my computer and when it came up, it didn't initialize properly. As a result, the card wasn't usable for recording until I stopped and restarted mythtv-backend. When it happened, it was logging very obvious info to the log file, so this will be easy for you to detect. Sometime next week (after my daughter's 1st birthday party) I intend to take a better look at this, rebooting my system several times to see if I can recreate it. I'm pretty sure it was just a matter of mythtv-backend starting up before the Ceton card was ready. I've modified my card to get its IP through DHCP instead of using the static 192.168.200.1 that it has by default, so this may have been the cause of the problem.


One final disclaimer

It's important to know that cablecard support is going to depend on your cable provider. Unfortunately, cable labs has only certified Windows Media Center to support certain modes of DRM. This means in MythTV, you can only watch channels that are marked as Copy Freely, and it's up to your cable provider to decide this. If they mark a channel as Copy Once or Copy Never, you are out of luck and the only thing you can possibly do is complain to them (for all the good it will probably do). You can probably check with others on the MythTV forum to try and figure out what channels are marked Copy Freely for you (either someone that lives in your area may know, or someone may be able to show you how to retrieve that info from your cable box).

In general, WOW (wide open west) has said that they mark everything except premium channels (HBO, showtime, etc) and PPV as Copy Freely. This should hold true in all WOW markets. Comcast has the exact same arrangement in most of their markets, but I believe there are some places here and there that are configured differently. With other cable providers, results may vary.


Are you still here? OK, let's get this going

If I haven't scared you off with the disclaimers and quirks, then I guess you are serious about this and it's time to get to work. So here's what you need to do

1) Download myth 0.24-fixes and make sure you can compile it all fine.

2) Download my ceton patch for 0.24-fixes.

3) cd to the mythtv/mythtv folder of the source code. This is the folder that contains the ./configure script

4) Clean up any previously compiled code by running:
make dist-clean

5) Test the patch first by running the following command:
patch --dry-run -p2 < /path/to/ceton_verXXX.patch

6) If the above test was successful and no failures occurred, then apply the patches by running:
patch -p2 < /path/to/ceton_verXXX.patch

7) Run ./configure, compile everything, and install it

8) Start mythtv-setup and add a Ceton tuner. The default IP address (if you haven't changed it) is 192.168.200.1, and the tuners are numbered 1 to 4. Repeat this process for all 4 tuners (or as many as you want to setup).

9) Create a brand new data source exclusively for the Ceton tuners (and don't let any other non-ceton tuners use it).

10) Click the button to fetch channel info (I don't recall the exact wording, but it's the next to the scan button in the Input Connections page

11) If you have a cablecard installed in your Ceton InfiniTV, perform step 11-A and then go to step 12. If you DO NOT have a cablecard installed (ie: you want to operate the card in QAM mode) perform step 11-B and then go to step 12.

11-A) Note: this step is no longer needed as of patch ver 008 (1/7/2012) Do this step ONLY if you are running the Ceton in CableCard mode (ie: you have a cablecard installed):
Download the channel mapping utility. Unzip/untar it and edit the perl script to adjust the config settings at the top of the file. You'll want to verify (and change when necessary) the path to wget, the ip address of your Ceton InfiniTV 4 card, and the mysql info (host/db/user/password). Then simply run the perl script to have it update the channel config.


11-B) Do this step ONLY if you are running the Ceton in QAM mode (ie: you do NOT have a cablecard installed):
Download the QAM channel mapping utility. Unzip/untar it and edit the perl script to adjust the config settings at the top of the file. You'll want to verify (and change when necessary) the path to wget, the ip address of your Ceton InfiniTV 4 card, and the mysql info (host/db/user/password). Then run the perl script to have it update the channel config.

Note: One limitation of this script is that it cannot determine which channels are available in unencrypted QAM. It will simply look at every channel in the videosource that you've assigned to the card in mythtv-setup, and then update the configuration of that channel accordingly. Therefore, in order to eliminate the encrypted channels so that myth doesn't have to tune them, you will need to delete those extra channels or mark them as not visible (either in mythtv-setup or using mythweb).

12) Startup the backend and the front end, and you should be good to go if I haven't forgot anything.




32 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got this working in gentoo, although all I have tested so far is Live TV. The procedure is a little different, if one is using the gentoo ebuild overlay in github, as described in the Gentoo wiki for mythtv. To patch it, I copied the existing ebuild, mythtv-0.24.1_p20110709.ebuild into mythtv-0.24.1_p20110721.ebuild, and copied the patch into the files directory where the ebuild was. To update the Manifest, I ran "ebuild mythtv-0.24.1_p20110721.ebuild digest", then "emerge =mythtv-0.24.1_p20110721". Otherwise, I followed your existing patches.

The only problem I have had is that when the X process is using 98% of one CPU, the display tears, but I can't see how that is something caused by your code. On playback of previously recorded things, X goes to 100% usage for a short period of time, then settles down to 10-15%.

I must give you thanks for all the hard work which went into this.

Tom said...

I did not expect part 2 to be release so early, nor did I expect you to go through the time and effort to not only write up this great information but also release the patches to apply to the git tree... you sir are my hero! Now I have no choice but to buy the infinitv 4 so I am off to newegg.

MikeK said...

Hello Ron,

Thanks so much for sharing patch and a step by step for Mythbuntu users like myself.

I think I followed everything correctly, but when I try to record a show, I see this is my log. Any ideas? I'm on Fios with CC. I also checked the Ceton and confirmed it changed to the right channel.

Thanks,
Mike

2011-07-26 20:01:58.276 TVRec(1): Changing from None to RecordingOnly
2011-07-26 20:01:58.284 TVRec(1): HW Tuner: 1->1
2011-07-26 20:01:58.292 AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space: 3.0 GB w/freq: 14 min
2011-07-26 20:01:58.294 Started recording: "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan": channel 1895 on cardid 1, sourceid 1
2011-07-26 20:01:58.297 scheduler: Started recording: "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan": channel 1895 on cardid 1, sourceid 1
2011-07-26 20:01:59.014 Program #895 not found in PAT!
Program Association Table
PSIP tableID(0x0) length(41) extension(0x701)
version(4) current(1) section(0) last_section(0)
tsid: 1793
programCount: 8
program number 155 has PID 0x 60e data 0x 0 0x9b 0xe6 0x e
program number 274 has PID 0x ab4 data 0x 1 0x12 0xea 0xb4
program number 496 has PID 0x1360 data 0x 1 0xf0 0xf3 0x60
program number 278 has PID 0x adc data 0x 1 0x16 0xea 0xdc
program number 495 has PID 0x1356 data 0x 1 0xef 0xf3 0x56
program number 342 has PID 0x d5c data 0x 1 0x56 0xed 0x5c
program number 502 has PID 0x139c data 0x 1 0xf6 0xf3 0x9c
program number 503 has PID 0x13a6 data 0x 1 0xf7 0xf3 0xa6

2011-07-26 20:01:59.106 Program #895 not found in PAT!
Program Association Table
PSIP tableID(0x0) length(17) extension(0x27d7)
version(18) current(1) section(0) last_section(0)
tsid: 10199
programCount: 2
program number 725 has PID 0x1c52 data 0x 2 0xd5 0xfc 0x52
program number 633 has PID 0x18ba data 0x 2 0x79 0xf8 0xba

2011-07-26 20:01:59.461 ProcessPAT: Program not found in PAT.
Rescan your transports.
2011-07-26 20:01:59.464 Desired program #895 not found in PAT.
Cannot create single program PAT.
2011-07-26 20:02:03.452 UPnpMedia: BuildMediaMap VIDEO scan starting in :/var/lib/mythtv/videos:
2011-07-26 20:02:03.463 UPnpMedia: BuildMediaMap Done. Found 0 objects
2011-07-26 20:02:03.640 CetonHTTP Error: Verification FAILED. It's been 5 seconds and we've not verified the tuning. We'll start over and try again

Ron Frazier said...

OK, I see a few issues here. Am I correct in understanding that you are trying to tune channel 1895? Is this the actual channel number you are trying to tune? Because the 2 problems I see are
1) Myth's MPEG libraries are trying to locate channel 895, so there may be a limitation in either the database structure, my code, or myths code that doesn't properly handle channels over 1000 (I'm not positive, but just making a guess).
2) The other problem is that the tuned frequency only contains programs for 155, 274, 496, 278, 495, 342, 502, and 503. There no 895 nor 1895 listed there.

So what channel are you trying to tune? In other words, if this were through your cable box and not myth, what channel would it be on?

Do you by any chance have your myth channels remapped in any way (like you changed the number of the channels that myth sees...so channel X show up in myth as channel Y). I'm not even sure if that's a valid thing to do in myth, but if it is then that may be something I'd have to deal with, as my code pretty much assumes when you select channel X, it should tune your cablecard to channel X.

When you say the Ceton shows it is tuned correctly, what values are you seeing in the ceton's web page? What channel, program, and frequency does it say it's tuned to? On the Tuner page, there is a listbox next to the Program: label which lists all programs on your tuned multiplex. After the ceton has successfully tuned, what values are you seeing there?

Another thing which may help me is if you can increase the verbosity of mythbackend to include channel, record, and important output in the logfile. In other words, something like:

mythbackend -v record,channel,important -l /tmp/mythbackend.log

Then after you've attempted to tune the channel and let it sit for about 15 seconds without success, stop the backend and send me the log files. My email address can be found on the website where you downloaded my patch from.

Additionally, if you have a gmail account, we can have a chat session..that might be a little quicker than emailing back and forth.

Ron Frazier said...

Oops. Brain fart on that last post (that's what happens when you try to debug a problem while watching a 1 year old). 1895 was the chanid in the database, not the channel you were trying to tune. However, everything else I said in that post is still valid.

PatrickO said...

Ron,

I am having the same problem as MikeK. I have the Ceton card installed in my master backend as encoders 9 through 12. LiveTV tries the last tuner first, so I attempt to start LiveTV on channel 336. The mythbackend.log file can be viewed at http://pastebin.com/pYDU6ReS

The Ceton web page shows that channel 336 is tuned and I can play it with MPlayer via /dev/ceton/ctn91xx_mpeg0_3

No channel numbers are remapped on the ceton input source.

For reference, I am running Slackware64-current with the kernel upgraded to 3.0. Your patch applies cleanly against the latest 0.24-fixes (v0.24.1-58-g760c8db)

Let me know if I can provide any more information.

- Patrick

Ron Frazier said...

OK, I think I've found the problem. Now that the baby is in bed, I've had a chance to look at things. The problem is that I made a bad assumption which seems to work for my cable provider almost all the time, but apparently doesn't hold true for everyone.

Remember the step in my instructions when I had you run that mysql UPDATE command? The assumption I was making there was that the channel number will always match the program number. In almost all cases, that's true for my system. However, I just took a careful look and I noticed I have one channel which has a program number different than the channel number.

If you go to
http://192.168.200.1/view_channel_map.cgi?page=0
(substitute your ceton's IP address if you ended up changing it) you should see the full listing of channel numbers and what program numbers they map to. I'm betting you will find that (for at least the channels you tried) they don't match. And that's what's causing it to fail.

The quickest way for me to solve this is going to be to write a little perl script you can run manually to update it. Later this week/weekend my plan was to start looking into how to to automate these sorts of updates in my code, but I don't want to leave you hanging that long so the perl script will be quickest. I'm gonna start on it right now.

PS. If either of you are really comfortable tweaking database entries manually, you can probably figure out how to do it based on that link I posted and the SQL query in my instructions. I'll say no more than that...if you can't figure it out with that info, then you probably shouldn't be poking around in there by hand anyway.

PatrickO said...

Interesting...

It's time for bed for now, but I'll try messing with this tomorrow.

Here's a bit of my channel mapping

Channel Name Modulation Frequency (kHz) Program EIA
325 CARTOON QAM256 135000 2 16.2
335 NICK JR QAM256 267000 705 31.705
336 SPROUT QAM256 675000 4 104.4
338 HUB (DISC KIDS) QAM256 405000 1003 54.1003

Ron Frazier said...

Thanks Patrick. That confirms exactly what I was thinking. When you tuned channel 336, I had myth looking for MPEG program 336, but it should have been looking for program 4. Should be easy enough for me to fix.

Ron Frazier said...

OK, I've got a script ready that appears to work on my system (it fixes the 1 channel that wasn't configured properly). You can download it from here:

http://www.ronfrazier.net/mythtv/0.24/downloads/ceton_channelmap.tar.gz

Before running it, you'll need to edit it to adjust the configuration. Change the wget path (if necessary), the Ceton's IP address (if you changed it from the default), and the mysql login information.

Please post back with your results.

PatrickO said...

Ron,

I tried your new script, but I think I know what is going wrong now.

Your new script works just fine in setting the program numbers for each channel, but your code uses that program number as the virtual channel number (which works for you) on line 294 of your v002 patch.

By passing channum or atsc_major to TuneCableCard instead of mpeg_prog_num, my card now apparently works. I'll set up some recordings for the day and we'll see how it goes.

Thanks for all of the great work in getting this card to work on v0.24-fixes.

- Patrick

Ron Frazier said...

Patrick,
Yeah I guess I overlooked that part of it. Makes sense. However, then I was wondering...why the heck did the change work for me and fix that one problem channel I had? Well, I went and looked at the channel map in the Ceton web interface and I found my answer. The channel that wasn't working for me was 55, which used mpeg program 190. Well, that exact same station also exists in a duplicate locations...on channel 190, program 190. So although I was getting the correct station, I didn't even notice that it had tuned it on the other vchannel.

So you suggested to pass channum or atsc_major_chan to TuneCableCard. Off the top of my head, I'm going to say atsc_major_chan, for 2 reasons. 1) It's already an integer, so no string-to-int conversion necessary, and 2) I'm still not positive if myth supports remapping your channels to your own arbitrary numbers (for example, it's channel 100, mpeg program 105, but for some reason you want to reference it as channel 30...maybe to maintain consistency with your old cable provider so you don't need to relearn new numbers or something). If it does allow that, then we'd want 3 separate fields (so channum would be 30, atsc_major_chan would be 100, and serviceid would be 105).

Also, the patch is going to need to involve a slight bit more of a change. Although the change you made is enough to get myth to find the correct program in the PAT, and to get the CetonHttpManager class to request the proper channel from the card, I think there may be a subtle issue where CetonHttpManager thinks the channel didn't tune properly and perpetually attempts to retune it every 5 seconds. This may be a non-issue from the aspect that I think the ceton will ignore the duplicate tuning request without interrupting the recording, but it will make a little bit of a mess in the logs with all of the failed tuning error messages and retuning attempts.


Thanks for your help with this. I'll put together some updated patches for everyone soon.

MikeK said...

PatrickO, thanks for helping Ron with the info. Ron, I'm here to help test when your patch is ready.

Thanks,
Mike

Ron Frazier said...

The updated patches and instruction have been posted, so you should hopefully be able to tune everything successfully after applying this patch.

Ron Frazier said...

I've updated step 11 with information for how to setup the channel configuration for QAM mode.

PatrickO said...

Ron,

I have had everything working for a few days now. Recordings seem to work just fine with regards to tuning. Live TV will sometimes bail out of the frontend when changing channels. I believe the tuner is changing channels, as the web interface shows the updated channel, but the frontend either isn't picking it up correctly, or is timing out before receiving the video stream. I will try to find some time to collect logs. Note that Live TV does work sometimes, but not always for me.

ken said...

Ron, I've tried running the ceton_qam_channelmap.pl script twice now and each time it takes 14.5 hours to run. That can't be right. And of course, the SQL connection has long since timed out by that point, so it fails with "MySQL server has gone away". My next step is to start modifying the script to see if I can add some debug info but if you have a suggestion on where I went wrong or what else to check, I'm all ears. Thanks.

ken said...

answered my own question: The Ceton networking was gone. I have no idea why. I tested that I could play a stream on it right before I started the install of Ron's stuff. But there's nothing in Ron's procedure that should whack the ctn0 network interface. Anyway, the solution was to redo the "make install" and redo the "modprobe". Then the ctn0 interface came back and the perl script is flying through now. It'll take about 2 minutes to complete.

Chuck said...

I don't see an option in mythtv-setup for "Ceton tuner" in the "Card type:" drop down list. Does this mean I did not compile your patch in correctly?

Edward said...

Thanks Ron! Building and configuring Myth with Ceton tuner was a breeze. Unfortunately, getting Comcast to correctly configure the CableCard took about nine calls and two days wait time. On the upside, all non-premium channels are CCI 0x00 on Comcast Seattle.

Again, awesome job getting the tuner working with Myth. I've had no record failures so far.

Gary said...

Testing this on Fedora 14 with Brighthouse networks, using mcard and tuning adapter, I get into some a situation that appears to be a loop with lots of unexpected messages from the ceton card. Is there some debugging setting that I can set that will shouw a little more detail so I can figure out what is going on. Bighthouse here in Orlando is using switched video for alarge number of stations so I have to use the tuning adapter.

Ron Frazier said...

Run the backend with the
-v important,channel,record
parameter and you'll get all of the info I output. Did you be sure to run the channelmapping utility? When you start a channel recording, you should be able to look in the logs and see what parameters myth is trying to tune. It will be a line like this:

CetonHTTP: Processing tune request{host=192.168.200.1,tuner=1,freq=0,mod=,prog=205,vchan=205}

make sure vchan is the channel you are trying to tune, and also look in the ceton's web interface and see what program number is has selected and make sure it matches the value for prog= in the log (and if you've got prog=0, then you probably didn't run the channel mapper).

Also check in the web interface and make sure this is not a restricted channel...make sure the Copy Protection is either None or Copy Free, and make sure the Descrambling Status is Unknown. IF you see any other values, than likely your channel is restricted (and thus only available under Windows Media Center) or you are not subscribed to it (which may also just be a case of your cable provider misconfiguring your cable card). And also make sure the channel you are using is not an on-demand channel (those don't work with cablecards)

Gary said...

OK, it was working for channels but it gets man messages with "unexpected response" one after another so I am attempting to see if the message matches the standard to try to get some idea what is going on. I was trying to watch a channel live. I will check those setting and get back to you.

Kumar said...

Thanks for the patch. This is great. I am new to linux but the install was easy and I can see Ceton cards in the set up. But after the install, I lost the ceton network connection and am not able to get it back again. As "ktbos" suggested, I did a redo of "make install" and redo the "modprobe" and still no luck. any other suggestions. Probably this is why the scan for channels had nothing. Please suggest.

Ron Frazier said...

Kumar,
what do you mean you lost the network conneciton? You mean you can't even access the Ceton's web server interface? If so then that's a problem with your system configuration and has nothing to do with my patch. What distribution of linux are you running? If it's something like ubuntu where the networking is managed by tools, I'm not sure how you'd do it. If it's a system where you can edit /etc/network/interfaces yourself, then make sure that file has the following lines (adjusted for your setup if necessary):

allow-hotplug ctn0
iface ctn0 inet static
address 192.168.200.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.200.0

This is for a default Ceton setup where the card is set to 192.168.200.1

This is for a basic setup. If you want to enable bridging (so that you can access the ceton from computers other than the linux machine it's installed in), I can help you with that later, but you're best off getting it working with a basic install.

Kumar said...

Thanks for the quick turn around Ron. I am on Ubuntu 11.10 fresh install and your patch. I Ceton network started working. looks like there is some issue which I need to figure out as to what is happening. I keep loosing connection once in a while and so far it looks like reboot is the only answer for me. I have one more question. I ran your QAM channelmap perl script. The log shows that it mapped around 135 channels but where am I supposed to see these mapped info? In MythTV backend setup >> Channel editor or some other place. Currently, I don't see anything in MythTV backend. should they appear in Frontend? I did not see anything here either. please advice.

Aaron said...

Have a question about step 9) Create a brand new data source exclusively for the Ceton tuners (and don't let any other non-ceton tuners use it).

I just built a htpc with both a ceton card and a Silicondust HDHome Prime.

In my channel list, I know have duplicate everything since I have them both on separate data sources. It appears this is going to mess up the recordings since it looks like I'm going to get duplicates.

My question is a) do I have to have two data sources or can I use a common one b) if I still need two, why? Just curious what issue it is preventing.

Thanks for all the great work.

-Aaron

Ron Frazier said...

Aaron
The reason for having 2 listings is because my current version of the patch needs to adjust some settings on the channels to store some extra information (when you run the channel mapping utility). The reason I say to use it's own source is because I don't want you to mess up the channels for your other tuners in case the changes I make conflict with what that other tuner needs. It may not be an issue with the Prime, but I don't know so I'm being cautious with my suggestions.

I will soon be releasing an updated patch that changes the behavior so that this will no longer be an issue, and sharing the listings should be fine then.

You said it messes up your recordings and gives you duplicates. The solution to this is to make sure all channels use the same callsign in both sources. If myth sees 2 channels with the same callsign, it knows to only record off of one of them at a time. I know changing all the callsigns to match your other source isn't the easiest thing, but it's the best solution for now.

Aaron said...

Ron,

Thanks for the quick reply. Got side tracked with other things so just now getting back to finishing this.

I was about to fix the duplicate issue and everything is working perfectly now.

Can't wait for the next patch update (or .25 to release).

Thanks for all the help and great write up.

MikeW said...

Ron--

Thanks a million for an excellent write-up, patch for myth, etc!

I downloaded and ran the channel scanner and strangely, I have only received responses on 2 of my 620 available channels, and the rest just say "unknown/none" for the response. And, when I attempt to tune channels, the Ceton log says "Channel is scrambled, waiting for CCI" and then lines later, it says "timed out waiting for CCI." I'm thinking that this is an RCN cable issue and certainly not an issue with the Ceton or the patch. Would you agree, and can you shed any light on the subject before RCN sends someone out here on Tuesday to see if they can figure out what's happening?

Again, I thank you for all of your excellent contributions!

Mike W

Ron Frazier said...

Mike W.

Most likely the cable company didn't properly provision/activate the cablecard. Lots of users seem to have lots of issues with this sort of thing. It's also possible the cablecard (not the ceton, but the card provided by RCN)is defective.

Have you looked in the Ceton's web interface at the CableCARD tab? Does it say a cablecard is "Inserted", and is the authorization showing as "Validated, validation message is received, authenticated, and the IDs match those in the current binding". If you don't see those values, then there's probably a configuration issue on the cable company's end. A lot of the cable companies have been having trouble getting this all done right on their end. The major companies seem to be getting better with experience, but you are the first RCN customer I've heard from.

Also, if you want you can get my email address from the bottom of my website and contact me directly if you have any more question: http://www.ronfrazier.net/mythtv/0.24/index.html#ContactInfo

MikeW said...

Ron--

Thanks for the response!

Everything was authenticated properly. The RCN tech today verified that as well, but decided to swap out the CableCARD. After he did that, all is well.

Prior to swapping out the card, occasionally I would have an issue where Myth would say "You should have obtained a lock by now. You can either wait, change to a different source..." or something along those lines when changing channels, at which point I have to escape out of live TV and restart it, and then the channel change works. I'm not sure if it is still like that, but I will keep an open eye for that one and let you know what I find.

Thanks again!

Mike W.