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.