DirectTV SHEF IP Control Plugin for TVServer (6 Viewers)

[Timothy Cobb]

ok, that makes sense. wasn't thinking of it that way. i am using the component and rca audio at the moment on both cards, since i have not ordered anything yet. i tested both inputs before configuring mediaportal to figure out which box was plugged to which card. and both had there own audio working fine.

 

[Timothy Cobb]

a new development...i have mpextended set up, and viewing channels on the second box via the web works fine, audio and all, so its only in house clients that are not getting the audio. seems to me that limits it to the client, but i dont have another one at the moment to test. tonight i will install the client on my laptop and see if the audio works there. this is really strange though, cuz before i did all this i had a digital tuner on the tvserver pulling in over the air channels and audio was being passed along just fine.

 

[mm1352000]

Hi Tim

My advice is:
1. Check the channels have been created with the right inputs. According to what you said and the info -->here<-- you need YRYBY #1 (for component video) and Line In #1 (for RCA audio).

2. Check the TV codec configuration on the client.
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...nfiguration/9_Codecs_and_Renderer/1_TV_Codecs

3. Try using UNC instead of RTSP.
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...iaPortal_Configuration/22_TV/Advanced_Options

If all else fails, please post all log files from both the server and client. You can use the watchdog tool with option 1 on the client:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_MEDIAPORTAL_1/16_Support/3_Forums/2_Log_Files

On the server:

1. Open TV Server configuration.
2. Click "open log directory" in the top left corner.
3. Zip up all the files in that folder.
4. Post/attach the zip file.

Regards,
mm

 

[Timothy Cobb]

for reasons i am unable to narrow down, it just "started working" i have a bad habit of changing too many things before trying it again, all while not doing important things....like restarting the tv service after changing things in the schedules direct plugin. at any rate, all is well for now. bout to order the coax to optical converters, i think i am going to stick with the component to avoid the channel changing issues. too many changes in a short time get the wife all upset...lol. one other thing, the schedules direct plugin seems to work well but is there an easy way to get channel logos? i've found some but am not really looking forward to renaming a couple hundred files.

 

[mm1352000]

the schedules direct plugin seems to work well but is there an easy way to get channel logos? i've found some but am not really looking forward to renaming a couple hundred files.

You could try LogoManager:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/logomanager-0-0-0-4-23-12-2013.119376/

 

[sjevtic]

for reasons i am unable to narrow down, it just "started working" i have a bad habit of changing too many things before trying it again, all while not doing important things....like restarting the tv service after changing things in the schedules direct plugin. at any rate, all is well for now. bout to order the coax to optical converters, i think i am going to stick with the component to avoid the channel changing issues. too many changes in a short time get the wife all upset...lol. one other thing, the schedules direct plugin seems to work well but is there an easy way to get channel logos? i've found some but am not really looking forward to renaming a couple hundred files.

I have never had any odd issues with my S/PDIF to optical audio converters. All I had to do was a simple query to change the audio source for all my channels and I was immediately in business. HDMI was a different story, and I'm still looking forward to your report on this.

I haven't tried LogoManager, but I do have a fairly complete collection of logos for my DirecTV channels, limited by my programming package and complete lack of desire to have the many all-infomercial channels in my lineup. If you would like me to zip this up and send it to you, I can. It probably won't be everything you need, but it will be the majority, and they will all be named appropriately for your setup.

Sasha

 

[Timothy Cobb]

thanks for offering...but after discovering that the logo manager is 1. not useful for US users, and 2. would not even work in my 1.8 install, i just went to the tv listings on directv website and right clicked and saved as and named them all the way they needed to be. took some time but worked just fine.

can you share the specifics of this "query" you speak of? the optical adapters are on the way and would like to have the conversion go smoothly. i can really tell the difference without the surround sound

as i mentioned before, i for now have decided to shy away from the hdmi option. the issues you and everyone else seem to speak of would be way to annoying for the wife...lol, and the component seems sufficient on my 47" visio.

theirs one thing i wanted to mention in here, i dont know if it was mentioned elsewhere but i found the information in a sagetv forum i think. it seems dumb, but it had me stumped for about an hour....in order to get the H24 boxes to recognize that they are connected to a network, they need to be power cycled while they are plugged into the network (or obviously connect the network before connecting the power). for some this might have been a no brainer i guess, but its just one of those things i guess.

1 quick question about this setup for yall...my h24 has some features like social network, youtube, pandora, etc. is there anyway to setup a button push that would change the channel to whichever of those services? the only one i am really interested in is the pandora...since the mediaportal pandora plugins never work for more then a few months anymore. i would just use the directv remote, but the two boxes are stacked on one another, so every button push will be reflected on both units simultaneously.

 

[mm1352000]

1. not useful for US users

On what basis do you say that?
Even if many or all of your logos are missing, submitting the ones you've gathered would help other people.

2. would not even work in my 1.8 install

Did you install it with MP Extension Manager?

 

[sjevtic]

thanks for offering...but after discovering that the logo manager is 1. not useful for US users, and 2. would not even work in my 1.8 install, i just went to the tv listings on directv website and right clicked and saved as and named them all the way they needed to be. took some time but worked just fine.

I never found anything more than tiny thumbnails on DirecTV's web site, so I got all my logos from Lyngsat, which is painful in its own right. I seem to remember writing a script to grab a lot of those for me to save on clicking, but that still didn't help with the renaming.

can you share the specifics of this "query" you speak of? the optical adapters are on the way and would like to have the conversion go smoothly. i can really tell the difference without the surround sound

Take a look at this post where I explained it in detail:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...vr-colossus-support.94850/page-74#post-856737

There is significant discussion about this matter in the following posts in that thread, including how to do this on MySQL; I explained how to do it on SQL Server.

as i mentioned before, i for now have decided to shy away from the hdmi option. the issues you and everyone else seem to speak of would be way to annoying for the wife...lol, and the component seems sufficient on my 47" visio.

That's unfortunate. I was hoping someone would do this dirty work for me.

theirs one thing i wanted to mention in here, i dont know if it was mentioned elsewhere but i found the information in a sagetv forum i think. it seems dumb, but it had me stumped for about an hour....in order to get the H24 boxes to recognize that they are connected to a network, they need to be power cycled while they are plugged into the network (or obviously connect the network before connecting the power). for some this might have been a no brainer i guess, but its just one of those things i guess.

Well, at a minimum you have to enable the SHEF functionality on the receiver's menu but I assume you found that out already. Though dated, section 2.4 here is still mostly accurate:

http://www.satinstalltraining.com/homeautomation/DTV-MD-0359-DIRECTV_SHEF_Command_Set-V1.3.C.pdf

It is possible that the receivers only try to configure their network interfaces only once at boot, but it seems unlikely and I never tried to verify this. I also don't know if changes to the SHEF configuration take effect immediately. However, I do know there is a menu screen on the receiver that gives you information about the current state of the receiver's network connectivity.

1 quick question about this setup for yall...my h24 has some features like social network, youtube, pandora, etc. is there anyway to setup a button push that would change the channel to whichever of those services? the only one i am really interested in is the pandora...since the mediaportal pandora plugins never work for more then a few months anymore. i would just use the directv remote, but the two boxes are stacked on one another, so every button push will be reflected on both units simultaneously.

You could modify the SHEF plugin to send whatever SHEF commands you want. But the reality is that this alone won't help much because you'd also need to develop user interface elements to support that logic and present it in a friendly fashion. Alternatively, if you want something quick and dirty, you can send requests for button presses and other functionality using a web browser (bookmark button) or even wget (to call from a script). The document I linked to above contains all the SHEF commands.

Sasha

 

[Timothy Cobb]

1. not useful for US users

On what basis do you say that?
Even if many or all of your logos are missing, submitting the ones you've gathered would help other people.

2. would not even work in my 1.8 install

Did you install it with MP Extension Manager?

yeah, i suppose i could contribute my images to the plugin but it would not even run on my install. and no, i did not try extension manager i used there installer. every time i tried to go to it in mediaportal is would give a black screen saying something like "missing or invalid file" and clicking "config" within the mediaportal configuration did nothing. i'm more then happy to contribute anything i can, but when i take over the mediacenter to work on this stuff i need to get it back up quickly for the wife, so i was in a hurry for a solution.

@sjevtic i went through the thread you gave me and although i am sure its all good information, it is well over my head. i wonder, if i change the settings in the schedules direct plugin and restart the tv service, will this change the settings in the channels? doubt it could be that easy, but sure would be nice if it was. alternatively i wonder if i could export the channels to xml, then edit the xml, then re import them.

You could modify the SHEF plugin to send whatever SHEF commands you want.

actually i never had to do this, it just seems to work out of the box once i got the network configurations done with static ip's.

You could modify the SHEF plugin to send whatever SHEF commands you want. But the reality is that this alone won't help much because you'd also need to develop user interface elements to support that logic and present it in a friendly fashion. Alternatively, if you want something quick and dirty, you can send requests for button presses and other functionality using a web browser (bookmark button) or even wget (to call from a script). The document I linked to above contains all the SHEF commands.

i looked around breifly and found on another site that they are having to do a sort of series of arrow and select commands to get to it. i was hoping for something similar to channel numbers/ids. like maybe if the pandora app had an id similar to the channel ids so i could go directly there rather then simulating a bunch or remote control actions.

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=17649.0

the bottom line in all this, i am not educated in the art of development, i can get by on the web dev front, but thats about it. i wish i could contribute more to some of these things. ive stumbled around a bit tweaking skin files to help some plugins support more skins though...perhaps after i offer my logos i can make some skin file for streamed mp since i dont see them as being supported on there threads. time is tight these days though, as i have a 7 month old daughter that grabs much of our time.