- September 1, 2008
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New Zealand
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- #21
Hello again everyone
First, thanks ijourneaux for your log files.
A progress update...
I found some information on Friday morning that I thought would be really helpful. Spent the whole day at work "champing at the bit" just planning how I was going to implement and test what I had learned over the weekend.
Finally got home, cranked up the computer and got to work; worked into the small hours.
Saturday was a bit of a later start due to the late night, but I spent at least 10 hours over Saturday and Sunday alternating between coding, testing and researching. Mixed in with that was at least an hour of talking to the guys from Silicondust.
The on-demand access to bc0508's PC was incredibly helpful - thank you again
Unfortunately despite my best attempts, I don't feel like I actually make a lot of progress.
Basically everything I tried was a failure.
On 32 bit W7 we're able to detect and initialise the tuners.
The problem comes when I try and do anything useful with them.
I can't seem to tune with them, or even query them for basic information about the cable subscription.
Maybe the Ceton tuners would be different - not sure at this point.
The SD engineers seem to think I'm taking the wrong approach.
They may be right, but I'm not entirely convinced.
If any of you have used SageDCT v2.x you'll know that there are two ways to control the tuners.
I originally chose to try the PBDA route because it is a great fit for the existing TV Server code. PBDA is based on BDA, which is TV Server's bread and butter so to speak. If this approach works, it could make it quite quick to get something working. The problem with this route is that the information from MS is really *really* patchy. To the point where it feels like trial and error. I thought the information that I found on Friday would help a lot but it didn't help as much as I expected. At this point I'm almost at the point where I need to put this approach aside and try the other option.
The other option is much more problematic because TV Server and MP 1 don't have any concept of support for either UPnP or RTP. It would not be feasible for me to add UPnP and RTP support from scratch - could be a year or more of work. There is always the possibility of libraries though (using other peoples' code), and that is where things get interesting. From the research I did over the weekend, MP 2 has a great UPnP library that would be suitable for what we need. There is also an RTP library in the reworked DVB-IP filter that I think I would be able to use. The problem is pulling all that code together into something cohesive... for MP 1... and that I have no experience with UPnP or RTP - it is a huge learning curve.
I did some experiments to try and gauge whether it would be even remotely possible.
After a bit of fiddling, I was able to pull MP 2's UPnP library into MP 1's TV Server. I was also able to detect the Prime using this method. That is a huge step... I think. I definitely have some reservations - like that it took TV Server 5 minutes to detect the Prime on the network - but this may be the approach that I have to take. I would certainly get more support from Silicondust if I took this approach, and we'd be almost guaranteed to be able to support all 3 CableCARD tuners.
So I'm at a bit of a decision point, not really sure which way to go.
Anybody got any thoughts?
Comments about your experiences with DRI (UPnP/RTP) vs. PBDA stability, speed, features... etc. from SageDCT would be ***really*** helpful right about now.
mm
First, thanks ijourneaux for your log files.
A progress update...
I found some information on Friday morning that I thought would be really helpful. Spent the whole day at work "champing at the bit" just planning how I was going to implement and test what I had learned over the weekend.
Finally got home, cranked up the computer and got to work; worked into the small hours.
Saturday was a bit of a later start due to the late night, but I spent at least 10 hours over Saturday and Sunday alternating between coding, testing and researching. Mixed in with that was at least an hour of talking to the guys from Silicondust.
The on-demand access to bc0508's PC was incredibly helpful - thank you again
Unfortunately despite my best attempts, I don't feel like I actually make a lot of progress.
Basically everything I tried was a failure.
On 32 bit W7 we're able to detect and initialise the tuners.
The problem comes when I try and do anything useful with them.
I can't seem to tune with them, or even query them for basic information about the cable subscription.
Maybe the Ceton tuners would be different - not sure at this point.
The SD engineers seem to think I'm taking the wrong approach.
They may be right, but I'm not entirely convinced.
If any of you have used SageDCT v2.x you'll know that there are two ways to control the tuners.
- Native DRI interface with UPnP and RTP (default method in SageDCT).
- PBDA.
I originally chose to try the PBDA route because it is a great fit for the existing TV Server code. PBDA is based on BDA, which is TV Server's bread and butter so to speak. If this approach works, it could make it quite quick to get something working. The problem with this route is that the information from MS is really *really* patchy. To the point where it feels like trial and error. I thought the information that I found on Friday would help a lot but it didn't help as much as I expected. At this point I'm almost at the point where I need to put this approach aside and try the other option.
The other option is much more problematic because TV Server and MP 1 don't have any concept of support for either UPnP or RTP. It would not be feasible for me to add UPnP and RTP support from scratch - could be a year or more of work. There is always the possibility of libraries though (using other peoples' code), and that is where things get interesting. From the research I did over the weekend, MP 2 has a great UPnP library that would be suitable for what we need. There is also an RTP library in the reworked DVB-IP filter that I think I would be able to use. The problem is pulling all that code together into something cohesive... for MP 1... and that I have no experience with UPnP or RTP - it is a huge learning curve.
I did some experiments to try and gauge whether it would be even remotely possible.
After a bit of fiddling, I was able to pull MP 2's UPnP library into MP 1's TV Server. I was also able to detect the Prime using this method. That is a huge step... I think. I definitely have some reservations - like that it took TV Server 5 minutes to detect the Prime on the network - but this may be the approach that I have to take. I would certainly get more support from Silicondust if I took this approach, and we'd be almost guaranteed to be able to support all 3 CableCARD tuners.
So I'm at a bit of a decision point, not really sure which way to go.
Anybody got any thoughts?
Comments about your experiences with DRI (UPnP/RTP) vs. PBDA stability, speed, features... etc. from SageDCT would be ***really*** helpful right about now.
mm
