Ceton CableCard TV tuner with Mediaportal (4 Viewers)

[equazcion]

I really hope we can get this card working...I am running 7 x64 but i really hope that doesn't end up being a future issue, I'm roting for you guys!!!!

I just got through reading this thread and am extremely interested in how this progresses. I just got Verizon FiOS installed (TV/internet) and have been all over the internet today trying to find a way to get its TV content into a PC. This Ceton card seems like the best, if not the only option, at the moment. So I too am rooting for you all and appreciate the work you're putting in.

As far as the 64-bit OS issue: I may have missed it but did the OP state whether he was running a 32- or 64-bit OS? That seems like crucial information.

i just don't see the external multiple STBs from our cable companies and a practical option.

Out of curiosity, if someone wanted to run STBs into a computer, does MP have any functionality for that? If so, what input hardware (in the PC) would be best? Could MP somehow control the STB tuners? It doesn't seem likely to me but I thought I would ask anyway, just in case.

 

[mm1352000]

Out of curiosity, if someone wanted to run STBs into a computer, does MP have any functionality for that? If so, what input hardware (in the PC) would be best? Could MP somehow control the STB tuners? It doesn't seem likely to me but I thought I would ask anyway, just in case.

Absolutely! The Hauppauge HDPVR (and Colussus) are probably the most commonly used for that scenario. People set them up with IRSS used to make the STB switch channels...

 

[equazcion]

Out of curiosity, if someone wanted to run STBs into a computer, does MP have any functionality for that? If so, what input hardware (in the PC) would be best? Could MP somehow control the STB tuners? It doesn't seem likely to me but I thought I would ask anyway, just in case.

Absolutely! The Hauppauge HDPVR (and Colussus) are probably the most commonly used for that scenario. People set them up with IRSS used to make the STB switch channels...

Thanks for the quick response! Just want to clarify this though -- most of the documentation on this site seems to say a TV tuner card is required to use MP. Will MP pick up those Hauppauge devices as well, even though they're not tuners and aren't in the supported hardware list?

 

[mm1352000]

Hi DiskHead

I only just saw your earlier comments. For some reason my subscription to this thread doesn't seem to send me emails...

MediaPortal is definitely quite strongly tied to 32 bit. As I understand it, the reason is mostly codec and filter related. I remember reading a wise comment from someone in our internal forums about this topic within the last week. I wanted to post it here because I don't understand enough about this stuff and the answer I read would have been far better than any answer I could write, but I can't seem to find it now.

I'm interested to know what happened if/when you tried the Ceton on a 32 bit machine. Were you able to view unencrypted content?

 

[mm1352000]

Thanks for the quick response! Just want to clarify this though -- most of the documentation on this site seems to say a TV tuner card is required to use MP. Will MP pick up those Hauppauge devices as well, even though they're not tuners and aren't in the supported hardware list?

No problem. In answer to your question: yes, MediaPortal will definitely pick them up. Just search the forum for "HDPVR" or "Colussus" and you'll find that we've been working on adding support for the Colossus (and fixing support for the HDPVR) over the past week or two. Right now the support is not as good as I would like because you basically have to add [analog] channels manually, but aside from that my understanding is that it just works. The best person to ask about this stuff is WileECoyote...

 

[DiskHead]

Hi DiskHead

I only just saw your earlier comments. For some reason my subscription to this thread doesn't seem to send me emails...

MediaPortal is definitely quite strongly tied to 32 bit. As I understand it, the reason is mostly codec and filter related. I remember reading a wise comment from someone in our internal forums about this topic within the last week. I wanted to post it here because I don't understand enough about this stuff and the answer I read would have been far better than any answer I could write, but I can't seem to find it now.

I'm interested to know what happened if/when you tried the Ceton on a 32 bit machine. Were you able to view unencrypted content?

I have yet to try the card in a 32bit system but I did try something with some success.

Take a look at this post about getting a PVR-150 tuner working on windows Server 2008.

BDA (Tv tuner support) on Server 2008/R2 - MSFN Forum - Page 6

What they are doing is copying the the CLSID entries specific to the device from (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\) in the registry into (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\). I tried this and got the code to execute much further in that the service code detects the BDA devices but it failed further down when it tries to setup the Microsoft Network Provider. I think my problem is I am missing an entry or two. I have a Code Camp presentation coming up and just don't have the time to dedicate to this.

Perhaps someone else has the time to figure out exactly what entries are needed and create a registry file that others can import?

Also, for some reason the thread hasn't been sending me emails either.

 

[DiskHead]

I finally got a chance to try the Ceton card in a 32bit Windows 7 machine. All 4 tuners listed in MediaPortal TV Configuration but scanning channels for a tuner couldn't find a single channel. I tried the default ATSC and then I tried every QAM option... nothing. I then tried using Media Center on that machine and they worked perfectly.

 

[mm1352000]

Got some logs? The graph building part is the most important part that I want to see.

 

[DiskHead]

I have attached tv.log and error.log.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again

There is a graph building error there that happens for every frequency that you try to scan (meaning your scan results should be ignored):

[COLLAPSE]2011-05-01 03:13:56.636718 [ATSC scan thread(12)]: ATSC tune: QAM checkbox selected... using Modulation 256Qam

2011-05-01 03:13:56.644531 [ATSC scan thread(12)]: ATSC tune: PhysicalChannel: 2 Frequency: 73250 Modulation: Mod256Qam

2011-05-01 03:13:56.666992 [(12)]: atsc:Tune:ATSC:tv: Freq:73250 ONID:-1 TSID:-1 SID:-1 PMT:0xFFFFFFFF FTA:False LCN:10000 phys:2 maj:-1 min:-1 mod:Mod256Qam

2011-05-01 03:13:56.674804 [(12)]: atsc:BuildGraph

2011-05-01 03:13:56.687500 [(12)]: dvb:AddNetworkProviderFilter

2011-05-01 03:13:56.703125 [(12)]: dvb:Add Generic Network Provider

2011-05-01 03:13:56.713867 [(12)]: atsc:CreateTuningSpace()

2011-05-01 03:13:56.738281 [(12)]: atsc:found correct tuningspace MediaPortal ATSC TuningSpace

2011-05-01 03:13:56.747070 [(12)]: dvb:Add MPEG2 Demultiplexer filter

2011-05-01 03:13:56.755859 [(12)]: dvb:add Inf Tee filter

2011-05-01 03:13:56.762695 [(12)]: dvb:AddAndConnectBDABoardFilters

2011-05-01 03:13:56.771484 [(12)]: dvb: find bda tuner

2011-05-01 03:13:59.672851 [(12)]: dvb: using [Tuner]: Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 1 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:13:59.685546 [(12)]: dvb: Render [Network provider]->[Tuner] OK

2011-05-01 03:13:59.702148 [(12)]: dvb: Find BDA receiver

2011-05-01 03:13:59.714843 [(12)]: dvb: match Capture by Tuner device path

2011-05-01 03:13:59.730468 [(12)]: dvb: -Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 1 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:00.198242 [(12)]: dvb: -Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 2 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:02.567382 [(12)]: dvb: Looking for another bda receiver...

2011-05-01 03:14:02.588867 [(12)]: dvb: -Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 3 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:04.601562 [(12)]: dvb: Looking for another bda receiver...

2011-05-01 03:14:04.622070 [(12)]: dvb: -Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 4 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:06.956054 [(12)]: dvb: Looking for another bda receiver...

2011-05-01 03:14:06.975585 [(12)]: dvb: Match by device path failed - trying alternative method

2011-05-01 03:14:06.993164 [(12)]: dvb: match Capture filter by Tuner device connection

2011-05-01 03:14:07.009765 [(12)]: dvb: -Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 1 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:09.680664 [(12)]: dvb: -Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 2 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:11.952148 [(12)]: dvb: Looking for another bda receiver...

2011-05-01 03:14:11.971679 [(12)]: dvb: -Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 3 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:14.601562 [(12)]: dvb: Looking for another bda receiver...

2011-05-01 03:14:14.623046 [(12)]: dvb: -Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 4 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:18.488281 [(12)]: dvb: Looking for another bda receiver...

2011-05-01 03:14:18.506835 [(12)]: dvb: Single BDA filter implementation...

2011-05-01 03:14:18.524414 [(12)]: dvb: WinTv CI module not detected.

2011-05-01 03:14:18.540039 [(12)]: dvb: Render [tuner]->[inftee]

2011-05-01 03:14:18.554687 [(12)]: dvb: OK

2011-05-01 03:14:18.569335 [(12)]: dvb: using only tv tuner filter...

2011-05-01 03:14:18.589843 [(12)]: dvb: Render [inftee]->[demux]

2011-05-01 03:14:18.631835 [(12)]: dvbecompose

2011-05-01 03:14:18.652343 [(12)]: tvcard:FreeAllSubChannels

2011-05-01 03:14:18.665039 [(12)]: stop

2011-05-01 03:14:18.779296 [(12)]: free...

2011-05-01 03:14:18.792968 [(12)]: free pins...

2011-05-01 03:14:18.806640 [(12)]: !!! Error releasing TSWriter filter (_filterTsWriter as IBaseFilter was null!)

2011-05-01 03:14:18.820312 [(12)]: free graph...

2011-05-01 03:14:18.833984 [(12)]: Remove filter from graph: Inf Tee

2011-05-01 03:14:18.847656 [(12)]: Remove filter from graph: MPEG2-Demultiplexer

2011-05-01 03:14:18.863281 [(12)]: Remove filter from graph: Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-1a-7e) Tuner 1 (00-00-22-00-00-80-1a-7e)

2011-05-01 03:14:18.890625 [(12)]: Remove filter from graph: Generic Network Provider

2011-05-01 03:14:18.904296 [(12)]: free devices...

2011-05-01 03:14:18.916992 [(12)]: decompose done...[/COLLAPSE]

The exception being thrown when we try to render from the infinite tee ("inf tee") to the MPEG 2 demultiplexor ("demux") is:

[COLLAPSE]2011-05-01 02:42:19.630859 [(13)]: Exception :TvLibrary.TvExceptionGraphBuildingFailed: Graph building failed ---> TvLibrary.TvException: Unable to add mainInfTee

at TvLibrary.Implementations.DVB.TvCardDvbBase.ConnectMpeg2DemuxToInfTee()

at TvLibrary.Implementations.DVB.TvCardDvbBase.AddAndConnectBDABoardFilters(DsDevice device)

at TvLibrary.Implementations.DVB.TvCardATSC.BuildGraph()

--- End of inner exception stack trace ---

at TvLibrary.Implementations.DVB.TvCardATSC.BuildGraph()

at TvLibrary.Implementations.DVB.TvCardATSC.Tune(Int32 subChannelId, IChannel channel)[/COLLAPSE]

I'm not anywhere near the code right now, but I'll definitely take a closer look at that code this evening.

You're not using the tuners in any other program when you're trying your scans in TV Server are you?