Originally posted by vondo
... I can't seem to record any digital channels except INHD and Local HD, but I guess that's normal, due to 5C. Any possibility to remove this so I can archive shows on the computer rather than tape?!? No.

Originally posted by jimre
No.

Am I the only one that can record all channels including all of my SHO and HBO HD and non HD channels? Trust me, I am not complaining but it seems to be pretty flawless. I am currently using 6408 boxes. Tomorrow I am getting my 6412 boxes. I will let you all know how that goes.

Originally posted by jimre
No.

Am I the only one that can record all channels including all of my SHO and HBO HD and non HD channels? Trust me, I am not complaining but it seems to be pretty flawless. I am currently using 6408 boxes. Tomorrow I am getting my 6412 boxes. I will let you all know how that goes.

Snowbum, the discussion was about archiving recordings via the firewire port.

Originally posted by Snowbum
Am I the only one that can record all channels including all of my SHO and HBO HD and non HD channels?

I have been lucky enough to be able to record every single channel I get, via FW to my PC. This includes all the SD channels as well as the HD channels. I've got Adelphia service and a Moto 6200. I was kind of surprised that I could record the channels that are supposedly analog (channels 2-99), but it does work. I'm not sure if the 6200 has a built in encoder or if Adelphia is simulcasting all the analog channels in digital format as well.

The HD channels I can record include InHD1/2, ESPNHD, HBO-HD, SHO-HD, STZ-HD, HDNet, HDNet Movies, plus my local CBS, ABC, FOX, and PBS DT OTA rebroadcasts.

--Eric

Eric--

Enjoy this oversight while it lasts. Someday you'll find that the non "free to air" channels are encrypted one way or another.

Originally posted by TPeterson
Eric--

Enjoy this oversight while it lasts. Someday you'll find that the non "free to air" channels are encrypted one way or another.

Yeah, I'm sure it will be that way at some point. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened yet. The fact that I can get everything I'm getting is the only reason I've stayed with Adelphia to this point. I'm not even subscribed to any of the premium channels, yet since I pay the extra $8/mo for the HD box, I get ALL the HD channels. (I don't get the SD versions of those premium channels though.) When that changes, I'll have to reevaluate my options.

--Eric

I NEVER would have said all that publicly.... you'd be surprised about the "ears" they have...

:cool:

I have the moto 6208, and we have cableone internet and tv here in Texarkana, Texas. My question is with the setup yall are talking about to retrieve recorded content off hard drive ( via 1394 port), are yall just recording it from dvr to pc, (which I do using dvd express by ads tech) or actually transferring the digital file off the dvr hard drive? I bought from walmart the dvd express for 30 something bucks and came with capture software and works great to record anything that can plug into it (vcr,camcorder,dvr,dvd,etc...) it has s-video inputs and rca inputs and is also usb 2.0 so it works faster than the 1.1 usb on dvr which is disabled anyway. But I am looking to actually grab the actual file off the hard drive instead of recording it.
Thanks all
Mike from Texas

Until just this night, I've been looking all over to find a solution to recording HDTV from my Motorola cable box and have had tons of strikeouts.

The reason I finally subscribed to AVS Forum is to personally thank "bdraw" for the info that was posted in the original message. I followed the instructions and FINALLY got a recorded HD stream from my box!!! :D Finally, I can record HD shows now and do with the streams as I wish (unlike DVRs from my cable co.) just like old analog!!! :cool:

Thank you to everyone responsible for the info, as this combo works for me!!!

One question though, can I make a DVD from the MPG streams that I capture?

John

I'm feeling kinda dumb right now, which is unusual. I've got my JVC 30k connected to my PC via the FW port. I can record use capDVHS no problem. But for the life of me I can't get a real-time playback using VLC 7.2. VLC plays back the recorded files without a problem. I know my computer can handle it (see specs below) and that it sees the signal because capDVHS works. I’ve been looking all over but without any results for a way to get this working. If anyone that has this working could share their settings I would be very grateful.

Seems like a very limited number of people have the JVC 30k and even less try to use it with there PC, hoping one of these people can help.

Screech

Asus P4C800 Deluxe (onboard audio disabled)
Pentium 4 3.2c
2x 512M PC3200
2x WD raptor SATA 18G (raid0)
WD or Maxtor 40G ide drive
Maxtor 5000DV 160G ext firewire drive
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128M
Plextor PlexCombo CD-RW/DVD-Rom
Asus DVD-+R/RW
Audigy Platinum

Screech are you able to use the preview tool in DVHSTool?
I would start with that, also what driver are you using?

DVHSTool 2.13 crashes anytime I try to open settings, so I've never been able to use the preview tool. This is what the debug screen says about it: "Unhandled exception at 0x10006d6e in DVHSTool2.exe: 0xC0000094: Integer division by zero."

Driver info for "JVC Tape Device"
Driver Provider: Microsoft
Driver Date: 7/1/2001
Driver Version: 5.1.2600.2180
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Publisher

Need a little guidance please. I want to try recording from the 6412 but am no computer expert. running XP, SP1, with enough speed and memory etc.
So I follow directions in the first post from this thread and I should be ok, is that correct or is there any other suggestions. Also, do I need a 4 or 6 pin firewire cable? I am with comcast, not sure if that matters and firmware is 9.12.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Ok... Stupid User Question...

How does one send a Recorded file back to a display device from XP via 1394?

Thx,
Vidkidd

Originally posted by pkwjr
Need a little guidance please. I want to try recording from the 6412 but am no computer expert. running XP, SP1, with enough speed and memory etc.
So I follow directions in the first post from this thread and I should be ok, is that correct or is there any other suggestions. Also, do I need a 4 or 6 pin firewire cable? I am with comcast, not sure if that matters and firmware is 9.12.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Following the instructions, you should be OK. The determination of which cable you need depends on what kind of firewire connector you have on your PC and Cable Box. Just count the pins before you head out to the store... (I had to guess, but I was lucky :D )

Good Luck

I second that, it was six-pin for me. I can confirm that the procedure on this thread works fine for the 6412.

Indeed, I took a flyer over the weekend to see whether I could record (to PC) a show I had RECORDED on the 6412. It worked. Play the show on the 6412 as if you were watching it, use CapDVHS on the PC, get a .TS.

Originally posted by vidkidd
Ok... Stupid User Question...

How does one send a Recorded file back to a display device from XP via 1394?

Thx,
Vidkidd Try DVHSTool (http://kgbird.com/DVHSTool/)

"How does one send a Recorded file back to a display device from XP via 1394?"

Uh...that would depend upon what is the display device. As tall1 said, DVHSTool would work if you're viewing via a tape player (e.g., the component output of a JVC deck). If you have a Mitsubishi TV or similar with HAVI controls you can use Firebus. Otherwise, it's generally more convenient to display the files via a PC-based display device with appropriate software. See, for example, the discussions about FusionHDTV, MyHD, and TheaterTek.

Hey thanks for the information, after hours of searching i stumbled across it and it was of immense help.

i have one question though
I understand that this procedure doesn't work with win2k so im gonna have to upgrade my laptop...not a problem, however my firmware is v.7.15 and i was wondering if that was gonna be a problem....

thanks

TheToyman

oh and one more thing, is this just for live recording or will it also allow me to take my recorded programs fromt he hard drive in the dct6208?

Originally posted by TPeterson
"How does one send a Recorded file back to a display device from XP via 1394?"

Uh...that would depend upon what is the display device. As tall1 said, DVHSTool would work if you're viewing via a tape player (e.g., the component output of a JVC deck). If you have a Mitsubishi TV or similar with HAVI controls you can use Firebus. Otherwise, it's generally more convenient to display the files via a PC-based display device with appropriate software. See, for example, the discussions about FusionHDTV, MyHD, and TheaterTek. True. I am guilty of providing a quick answer with little detail. Thanks for helping out. What I do because my JVC 40K is over 15 feet away from my PC and I didn't want to buy a powered 1394 hub...I ran an RGB cable to my Sammy DLP and it works great. I don't have DVI on my PC or I would use that.

Thanks everyone for the update. I have a Sony GWIII XBR950 with Firewire. It can take feeds from a DVHS. I don't think it works with firebus. My set does not have a "true digital path" over DVI, so I wanted to send to back via firewire. Component works, but it "softens the image".

Thx,
Vidkidd

Originally posted by vidkidd
Thanks everyone for the update. I have a Sony GWIII XBR950 with Firewire. It can take feeds from a DVHS. I don't think it works with firebus. My set does not have a "true digital path" over DVI, so I wanted to send to back via firewire. Component works, but it "softens the image".Well, if your Sony works like mine (KD34XBR2) you're right that it doesn't have the HAVI sw necessary for Firebus. It will "sniff" the FW bus and display whatever A/V stream is passing by, so when you use DVHSTool or similar sw to perform a copy of your HDD file to a DVHS unit the DTV can also play it. But this is really a kluge! Sony should provide a WinXP driver for their DTV such that DVHSTool, etc., can play files to them. (Don't hold your breath, however, as I don't see this likely until Sony divests itself from Hollywood. :()

Originally posted by TimHuey

I tried using Windows Media Encoder and it crashed, gave an error, and blue screened XP Pro. I guess it doesn't like the stream it found.


Tim-

Did you ever figure out a way to get it to work with Windows Media Encoder. I tried to do the same thing and got the same blue screen this afternoon.


Mark V.

Great guide I was up an going in about 10 minutes, thanks.

I have a question though when I watch a capture in the upper right there is a box of about 9 small white squares is this normal? I am worried about burn in on my RPTV. Is there a way to remove this box? Also is a 630MB normal for a broadcast show?

I tried CAPVHS and DCTrecord.

sounds like the demo version of the Elecard MPEG decoder...

:cool:

Does this process work with the moto 6412?
Tom

Originally posted by d2tw4all
Does this process work with the moto 6412?
Tom Yes.

In the spirit of sharing: I now have my 6412 working perfectly via these instructions. The last bit of the puzzle- I was getting some glitches in the audio and some blocking- was to uninstall my antivirus software. Dangerous, I know, but I don't use the HTPC for email, and I have a 'clean install' pantition image stored on a removable disk. Evidently the AV software was checking to make sure the files being captured were virus-free and thereby interrupting the stream.

By the way, I've found a really cool thing about the 6412/PC combo. I've been unable to CapDVHS any channels except the majors- InHD and Discovery HD, for instance, produce no information on the CapDVHS screen, and produce no useful files. However, if I record those channels on the 6412, then *play* the file on the 6412, it captures just fine. A joy for archiving and freeing up space on the puny 120 gig drive in the box.

So, following the instructions from the very first post in this thread and using the 620x driver, I can do this with my 6412?
Tom

How many ways we gotta say it, d2tw4all? YES.

Sorry I should have elaborated more, I just wanted to make sure there are no extra steps, since there are so many pages to this thread and I wasn't sure if anything specific to the 6412 was buried there. I'll have to give this a shot this weekend! Will programs like Ulead VideoStudio and others that accept video camera input via firewire also work with this?
Tom

Originally posted by drbenson
By the way, I've found a really cool thing about the 6412/PC combo. I've been unable to CapDVHS any channels except the majors- InHD and Discovery HD, for instance, produce no information on the CapDVHS screen, and produce no useful files. However, if I record those channels on the 6412, then *play* the file on the 6412, it captures just fine. A joy for archiving and freeing up space on the puny 120 gig drive in the box. Really? Even the 5C channels (e.g. HBO SHO)? I believe I tried this and only got a black screen. I will try again tonight.

Don't know about the premium channels, because I don't get them. My experience so far is limited to a recording I did at the end of the Navy-Rutgers game on InHD. There was a very charming 10 minute short on afterwards called Fair Phyllis that I wanted to save, without having to keep an hour of other crap. I took a flyer and tried it. Successfully captured and played back glitch-free.

Really? Even the 5C channels (e.g. HBO SHO)? I believe I tried this and only got a black screen. I will try again tonight.

Apparently i am not the only one get 5c materials from 6412 to xp. I just figured out this hour ago. it worked fine with all hd channels, so you know i got the full package.

I have not firewired comcast hd to pc for a long time since the i tried it on 6208 long time ago. The 5c kicked in just fine over 6208 to pc. I doubt anyone got that combo to work?

So i thought it would be nice to transfer the "rookies" to pc since i am running out of DVHS tape and it would be nice to have few more ota movie for my pc. ( just got the dell 2005 wd, just want to test most hd clip on it) and besides, i still have the impression that only ota hd non-5c works firewiring to pc.

dude, i was so wrong and i am glad i did. I tested inhd BOn jovi live from borgata plus hbo hd, starz hd, showtime hd and max hd programs to my surprised. The capdvhs read them just fine and i have no problem recording and watching them over zoomplayer.

so i delete all my ota recordings,including the junk ota LOTR hd from WB(the pq sucks compare to starz) clean up both my 6412, ready to load up 5c recodings to 6412 then to pc.

tell you guys, i am very exciting, I never thought i could live to see 5c to pc. i figure it won't be long before comcast fix this. I got 600GB raid 5 left from T1.6 and i am loading it up. :D

I am thanksful, the 5c is taking a break on this very day. :D

First, what kind of firewire cord do I need if I use that method? 6 pin/6 pin, 6 pin/4 pin, or 4 pin/4 pin? Secondly, is that the only way I can get stuff from my 6412 hard drive, through the firewire? If it's not, can someone please list all of the ways to get recordings off of a 6412 DVR to a PC, please? Third, what's the whole "5c" thing mean? I don't get that. Forth, how do I find out what firmware I have for my DVR box? Do some kinds not work with the firewire method at all? Also, what if I got a TV tuner in my PC that could plug into the DVR box? Then I could just directly record it, right? Thanks!

5C (also known as DTCP) is the encryption method used to restrict the use of programs sent over FireWire. Each program has a "flag" that tells the unit what type of restrictions should be applied, for example:

0=Copy Freely
1=Copy One-Generation only
2=Copy Never
etc.

Programs flagged "0" are not encrypted, and can be copied by any FireWire device, including a PC. On Comcast I believe this includes all analog channels, plus local digital channels.

Programs flagged "1" are encrypted and can only be copied over FireWire to a 5C-compatible device, for example a D-VHS tape deck. On Comcast, this includes all digital channels except locals. Once copied, the 5C-compatible device ensures that no additional copies of this program can be made. There are currently no 5C-compatible hardware or software solutions for PCs, nor are there likely to be any.

Detailed information on 5C is at http://www.dtcp.com

First, what kind of firewire cord do I need if I use that method? 6 pin/6 pin, 6 pin/4 pin, or 4 pin/4 pin? Secondly, is that the only way I can get stuff from my 6412 hard drive, through the firewire?
6/6, and as far as achieved hd content, yes, firewire is the only way. I don't watch much SD not to mention recording them to pc. I don't think you will have trouble getting them ota sd into tv tuner via s-video,composite) for recording but i have not comments on this topic.

If you are interested in getting hd content firewires to xp,the steps are listed on the very begining of this thread, help yaself.

what to know 5C? read this 5c (http://www.dtcp.com/data/wp_spec.pdf). [edit: vb code typo]

Forth, how do I find out what firmware I have for my DVR box?

two ways.
1) go to main menu on ya DVR, select setup...then. i can't remember which sub menu on top of my head, but they are only fews over then. if you select the right place, it should says firmware version, mine is 9.12. Besides, it's good to learn what you can do with basic setup ya on DVR right?
2) Turn off power on ya DVR, press but not hold "menu" button on ya remote while the DVR is off. you should see the much "advanced" setting on ya DVR in black and white screen. Again, go through each sub menu of them (look for firmware infor) and don't make any chances on the settings if you don't know what u are doing. This is also the only way you can select the video format out on ya DVR, 16:9, 1080i,720p...etc.

Thanks, guys. Now, are the normal movie channels all digital? Like HBO channels (not HD ones), Encore, ect.? Second, is 9.12 the firmware I should have? I do have it, but is that the right one for getting stuff off the hd via firewire?

Third, in the User Settings when the box is off and I press menu, for TV Type, do I want 4:3 Letterbox or 4:3 Pan and Scan? I have a normal 4:3, 21 inch TV. For YPbPr Output, I have no clue what that is, 480I is the only one that shows a proper picture, can someone explain this to me please? Thanks.

Originally posted by Scar
Thanks, guys. Now, are the normal movie channels all digital? Like HBO channels (not HD ones), Encore, ect.? Second, is 9.12 the firmware I should have? I do have it, but is that the right one for getting stuff off the hd via firewire?

Third, in the User Settings when the box is off and I press menu, for TV Type, do I want 4:3 Letterbox or 4:3 Pan and Scan? I have a normal 4:3, 21 inch TV. For YPbPr Output, I have no clue what that is, 480I is the only one that shows a proper picture, can someone explain this to me please? Thanks. The movie channels are all in digital. Anything above channel 100 is digital, 1-99 is your analog channels. Firmware 9.12 will work for firewire recording. 4:3 Letterbox will display black bars on the top and bottom of the screen when viewing widescreen programs, 4:3 Pan and Scan will crop the picture to fit in your 4:3 display. YPbPr output is for component video out. I doubt you have component input. 480i is 480 lines of resolution interlaced. Dude, if you are not planning to upgrade to HDTV I am confused why you chose the 6412 as a recording option? This 6412 user manual (http://broadband.motorola.com/dvr/downloads/DCT6412_UserGuide.pdf) will answer most of your questions.

So even with my TV tuner card plugged into my DVR box, and I directly recorded a movie on a digital channel, it's not gonna work? Also, can I transfer movies I recorded from HBO that are ALREADY on my DVR hard drive, to my PC? Or will it still not read them because of 5C?

OK, I downloaded the files in the first post, then I plugged in my firewire cord, and my PC rebooted by itself. When it was back on, I tried removing it, it rebooted again. I switched to a different firewire port, and I was able to avoid the reboot once, but there was no Hardware Found wizard coming up. :confused: So then I tried removing again and it rebooted. Can someone tell me how to manually open the hardware wizard or something? Thanks.

Originally posted by tall1
Dude, if you are not planning to upgrade to HDTV I am confused why you chose the 6412 as a recording option?

Because it is the only DVR option available by my Cable company.

I wish I could get the 6412 to stretch the image correctly in 480i like my DVD does (anamorphic) since my TV will unstretch it. But, it doesn't have that capability. Sigh

Also, can i transfer movies I recorded from HBO that are ALREADY on my DVR hard drive, to my PC? Or will it still not read them because of 5C?

If u read my previuos post, i been dumping all premium material to pc via firewire. In fact, i am doing the starz world premium ROTR3-Return of the king now in HD. I wouldn't be able to do that in the past with 6208.fw.7.15 due to 5c. It must be a major flaw somewhere with current 6412 fw9.12, That's why i said load it up before comcast fix it.

OK, I downloaded the files in the first post, then I plugged in my firewire cord, and my PC rebooted by itself. When it was back on, I tried removing it, it rebooted again. I switched to a different firewire port, and I was able to avoid the reboot once, but there was no Hardware Found wizard coming up. So then I tried removing again and it rebooted. Can someone tell me how to manually open the hardware wizard or something? Thanks.

Mine does the opposite, when xp posts, it reboot the 6412. I don't know the what's the issues, i don't see this with previuos 6208fw7.15. But i have so fine with this as long it doesn;t keep me from capdvhsing to pc. Just remember to unplug the IEEE when start window. (Restart 6412 is a pain by the way, guide take hours to load). Besides, i got too many IEEE devices in the loop. 2x6412, Mits 1100U and JVC 40k DVHS, can't really tell which is the trouble maker here :D

Check ya bios setting and it's XP right?, see if IEEE ports are enabled and make sure all IEEE are working properly. if only u have IEEE device to confirm....

I have the Comcast box plugged in, and the right firewire cord. I've checked Device Manager and everything is enabled and SHOULD be working properly. So is it maybe possible Comcast disabled the ports around my area (Chicago subarb)? That's the only thing that could be wrong, because I've checked, and my firewire ports are enabled and perfectly fine.

don't restart xp or power/on/off 6412 at anytime while firewire remain connected, that's the flaw with 9.12 i believe. Once restart and ieee is in place, it kicks the other off. The temp solution is to unplug the ieee when restart windows. Once it's posts, load into desktop, put the connection back in. If you power/on 6412, wait for 3-5 minutes before plug in ieee to xp. If not, it crashs xp. I'll taking advantage of the issue to get premium recording, so i can;t complaint that it does.... :D

If ya ieee is not actived, i doubt it crashed ya xp then? so it's actived plus you have the 9.12 right??

I just connected my 2nd 6412 to 2nd pc and it works just fine in the loop, i can copy premium hd to xp as well. So it's not just one unit flaw.

I have 9.12 and my firewire ports ARE activated, yes. It doesn't seem to be the DVR box that's the problem then. So, I either need to play around with the cable like you said, or I installed something in the first post wrong.

ok, i got it all set up and am excited to say that i am successfully recording streaming tv. woo hoo

well anyway i still really want to just copy the files that are already there directly from my 6208 to my laptop, any suggestions?

so u know, it's not copy and paste.
HIt play on the moto, hit record on capdvhs. it captures whatever that' playing on the source.

2 hours movie will take 2 hours to transfer, live or existing record

I finally got this working or at least half way. I finally got my HTPC (XP Home SP2) to recoginize the DCT6200 via firewire. I'm not getting any audio though. I can play DVDs and PVR analog TV via SageTV and get sound out but when I load VLC I don't get any audio out.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

I've tried everything with the 1934 cable, the PC isn't detecting the 6412. I have the right firmware, I have CapDVHS running when I plug in the 1934 cord, I have had the 6412 on for more than 5 minutes after plugging the cable in, my firewire ports are enabled, and we're pretty sure it's not the 6412. So what could be the problem?

I've tried everything with the 1934 cable, the PC isn't detecting the 6412. I have the right firmware, I have CapDVHS running when I plug in the 1934 cord, I have had the 6412 on for more than 5 minutes after plugging the cable in, my firewire ports are enabled, and we're pretty sure it's not the 6412. What does MeidVHS do? I did download and extract it, but should I be extracting it to a specific place or doing something else with it? If not, then I don't understand what the problem could be.

Capdvhs has to start after IEEE in place. If not, it won't see anything.

when you start capdvhs, does it see unknown video#1(assuming you have only 6208>pc.? Mine see #1-#4 cause i got 2x6412, 1xjvc40k and 1xmits1100u. Then select the # over capdvhs, hit record while the show is playing over 6412. One cute thing about it, once you figure out which # is belong to what devices, you just change the # for recording.

When i first connect the IEEE without the driver even in place, xp see all devices being connected, from dct6412 to jvc40k and it named them correctly. But it's not going to work without the driver. But i don;t think it makes any diff. BY the way, i used sp1.

if you like to reinstall, delete all devices that being installed over IEEE(tuner av device) at system device on ya XP. Disconnected IEEE before restart xp...wait till it settle at desktop. connect IEEE and reinstall again and make sure you follow the instruction correctly. I missed a step on the first time and nothing was showing over # selection.

OK, I did EXACTLY what you said, but every time I reboot, let it settle at desktop, and plug the cord in, the PC reboots. So it's impossible to do without the PC rebooting. When I do this, should the cord be plugged into the 6412? Should the 6412 be on? When I do this, I do have it plugged into the 6412 and it is on.

yes, let the 6412 be on. It does't matter which end is on as long as one of them is not connected when power on/off (power cord) 6412 or restart xp

ya IEEE may have share IRQ with other device that create conflict causes the reboot. If that not the case, you have any IEEE devices being installed on that pc before?

you mentioned the other ieee port does nothing when you plug it in right? Something doesn't sound like with ya mobo.

I used xp sp1 on both machine, none of them generate this reboot problem.

I have never used a firewire port for anything, this is the first time. Actually, both ports do the same thing. And I'm on SP2.



EDIT: OK, I got it so it wouldn't reboot finally, by plugging in the cable to the 6412 about 20 mins after the reboot. Still, the PC nor CapDvhs detected the 6412. I've tried both of my firewire ports, both of the 6412's ports, so I'm completely out of ideas now. Can you tell me what Meidvhs is? I have that downloaded and extracted to My Documents but I don't know what it's for or if I need to do something with it. The only other thing I have is CapDvhs, and I ran it AFTER I plugged everything in like you said. Well, that's me out of ideas. If you can't think of anything else to do, I'll try switching my box without the one downstairs to see if that hooks up. If not, it's got to be my PC.

hhhmmm....oops. sp2, that i can't help. No comment. I still on sp1 over work and home...hee hee. i take no risk.

meidvhs is the driver you need to install over xp to get them moto-capdvhs to work. I guess you really not much of a pc guy. if you get the firewire part to work, once it recognize it and ask for driver. You have to follow the instuction over the very first post and point the driver to meidvhs folder. Of course, i assume you have replaced one of the file as suggested by instruction to be used with moto at that point.

could it be sp2? i am not sure, buddy. if you have 2nd box, it wound't hurt to try

Well, basically, it doesn't matter whether I have meidvhs or not if the PC doesn't detect the 6412, correct? If that's the case, then I'll know the problem lies either with the 6412 or my PC.

Scar, since you say that you've not tested your firewire ports at all before, I suggest that you try some other FW device, such as an external HDD, DV camera, iPod, etc., to see if the ports on the PC work as expected. Then, assuming that the PC sees the other device(s), you'll know that the 6412 is the bad actor.

Originally posted by Scar
Well, basically, it doesn't matter whether I have meidvhs or not if the PC doesn't detect the 6412, correct? If that's the case, then I'll know the problem lies either with the 6412 or my PC.

You should have the 6412 turned on and the firewire cable plugged into it. Plug the other end into the PC. You should get a message that new hardware is detected. If you don't then there is something wrong with either your PC, the 6412 or the 1394 cable.

Meidvhs is the driver that allows the PC to understand the 6412 as a streaming video device. The PC should see a number of of different hardware pieces. The Meidvhs is only for the streaming video. Follow the directions exactly to make sure you install the Meidvhs for the right piece of hardware, otherwise it won't work.

Also, don't forget to replace the one file in the Meidvhs directory. This makes it work with the 6412.

CAPDVHS only sees video streaming devices you have installed. It is not reading the 1394 directly.

I hope this helps.

Okay, first, I unfortunately don't have another cord to test out for my DV camera. I will buy a 6pin/4pin cord to test it out tomorrow as well as a new, different brand 6pin/6pin cord for the 6412 to the PC. I have everything correctly installed, I've went over your posts and the directions countless times. I've done exactly the methods told to me to get the PC to read the device, but I get nothing. Even when the PC doesn't reboot. So I think it could be the cord. If the new cords don't work tomorrow, I will try the other 6412. If that doesn't work, I will be bringing my PC in to the guy that built it to take a look at it. Thanks guys.

scar, before you go through all the trouble and time.....

Getting Transport file to play effortlessly on you pc is another story, it's much diifficult and complicated than setting the capdvhs right. Yet, it's not glitch free and it does require powerful pc to load and search in middle of transport file. But depends of file size or broascast channels, some just choke on seeking. The great part of all, you can't transfer the file back to 6412 for playback, 6412 doesn't support that. So, you can't simply use pc as storage DVR for 6412, If that's the intention.

That's why i drop pc in the first place even i spend tons of money to built a media sever and a FX51 box tweaked for dvd/hd play back to my projector.

The reason i get back to it because
One.... it's fun and i tend to get bored with electronic toy if it's too simple. :D.

Two, it's funny how i can trick 6412 to transfer premium hd into pc and i love doing that.

Three, i can capture the image file from playback those hd movie and it's worth dying for. The 'beauty of snake' is now at my desktop wallpaper over the new dell 20" 2005 WD monitor. it;s definately wow effect all over again. it's stunning!!

if you get want to do analog recording, does the capture card not working for you? instead of going through all the trouble

Well, I have a powerful PC, athlon 64 3200+, 1 gig ram, Radeon 9800 256mb. I was hoping I could use the PC as storage, yes. I will be getting a new capture card for christmas. Can I record stuff from the 6412 through the capture card with S-Video? Because that's what the capture card will have.

Anybody have any thought on why I can get video but no audio?

In my HTPC setup I can get analog and digital audio to play, I just can't get any audio from my CAPVHS recorded files.

Thanks!

Originally posted by LaVike
Anybody have any thought on why I can get video but no audio?

In my HTPC setup I can get analog and digital audio to play, I just can't get any audio from my CAPVHS recorded files.My guess is that your playback software isn't handling the AC3 audio stream properly. What playback software are you using? If not one of the DVD players (WinDVD, PowerDVD, TheaterTek) you could try one out.

I'm using VLC to playback the .ts files. Are there problems with this approach and getting audio out?

I've not used VLC, so I don't know about its configuration. It should be able to handle AC3 streams but you may need to install the appropriate filters. Check what it says about the active filters when you play the file to see if it says it's using AC3, which is certainly what the TS file contains.

zeroendless, I'm brining my PC by the guy who built it later. He has a PC shop. Anyway, he'll check out the ports and test them to see if they're OK. If they are, he'll give me a new firewire cord that he knows works. Then I'll come home and try it, if still nothing, I'll try the other box that's downstairs.

I'm brining my PC by the guy who built it later. He has a PC shop. Anyway, he'll check out the ports and test them to see if they're OK.

You didn't mention much of ya pc spec, if you seeing you shrink later, connfirm ya mobo or ieee card(if seperated pci card) works fine with sp2.

if not, somebody chime in if moto 6xxx works with sp2?

Works fine with Win MCE 2005 (which has SP2) for me... I just wish I could get playback a bit smoother!

Okay, I'm back. There's nothing wrong with the PC or the firewire ports. I've bought a new cord and it doesn't cause the PC to reboot. The bad news is, it's still not detecting the 6412.


EDIT: It WORKS. Everything is going ok so far. I'm at the point where i select the driver. There is a slight problem. I pointed it to the meidvhs folder that I extracted and put the new file in, but it didn't work with that. Here's what I don't get from the first post:

C:\meidvhs\ ( The path of where you extracted the core_driver.zip.)

What is core_driver.zip? I only got meidvhs and there's no such file in there. So I don't know where else the drivers are it wants. I've tried twice now with the Meidvhs folder, and it doesn't work with that. Capdvhs won't find anything. Help is appreaciated. Thanks.

snow we're getting something scar.

forget about c:\meidvhs, you can name what ever you want or where ever you place them.
After unzip core_driver.zip, by default and if you don;t change the folder name,you'll have core_driver folder. right?

edit : you can put and rename the folder to c:\scar_driver or c:\core_driver or c:\xxxxxxxxx. it doesn't have to be c:\meidvhs

next, replace the file within that folder. if you got it rigjht, xp should ask for confirmation if you like to replace the file with same file name(Meitape.inf). say yes.

now, reinstall the driver.

Okay, I'm still stuck here. I'll show you in detail.

First screen: http://img57.exs.cx/img57/2970/12100.jpg

Next, what do I click here?: http://img57.exs.cx/img57/4549/12102.jpg

If I click "Don't Search" like the directions say, I see this and I don't know which hardware type to pick: http://img57.exs.cx/img57/8770/12103.jpg

Edit: Fixed third image.

i dont' think avc panel is the one you should worry about.

if you like a fresh reinstallation. Delete both from the sys devices. Unplug ieee at one end. Restart xp.

Settle in desktop, plug in ieee to xp and 6214. Xp should detect new ieee device and ask for driver. The rest is pretty much from the first post here....hit cancel until you see av/c tuner then DON'T SEARCH, and select all type should work, then click next.

so what's next? remeber to uncheck "show compatible hardware or something like that... follow the first post from here. it should work.

You guys know your stuff!!!! This is going to be a long post, please bear with me.

I have been browsing this forum for a while. I have been through hell and back trying to make a pc monitor display HD. I have no wanting to record it, just SEE it.

The options are not cheap and I had this niche to make it work without spending a whole lot of money.

I tried the technique at the beginning of this post and it didn't work for me. I WAS using Server 2003 and had all the "gameing" features turned on, so I thought. My games work better in 2k3 than XP.

After pulling my hair out, I installed XP again....HD worked like a charm, except for the lines and choppy video. I am blaming this on my machine and this brings me to my question.

My equipment

AMD Sempron 2200+
512mb of the cheapest ddr 400 I could get
GeForce TI 4200 (128mb)
Mobo is an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe

If I go out and buy an AMD 2800+ or higher (Barton Socket A) will I see better framerates? Or would a better video card help, or faster memory. I know every little bit helps, I want to upgrade the "biggest help" I am thinking the CPU is the way to go? Anyone tried this with an AMD 64?

I DO NOT CARE ABOUT RECORDING HD!!! I just want to watch it on a pc monitor.

Another question...Before I moved up to the IT field I was the lead installer/troubleshooter for the big C (in my area)

I installed HD on just about every TV you could imagine. INHD 1&2 were always the best looking HD I had ever seen. Our local HD channels, including HBO and the other premiums looked like crap. When I made the HD work on my PC monitor it looked as good as INHD 1&2....whats the deal? Is it the time of day/programming? Normally when I did HD installs they were in the daytime (I know Regis and Kelly ain't taped with an HD camera) I'm assuming tonight I caught a "real HD show on the locals.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the help and troubleshooting. I got giddy when I made it work tonight (wife still not impressed enough to spend the kids college money on a Samsung DLP)<---best HD I've ever seen!

Please help!

ZERO, I got it! :D OK, I see the device in CapDvhs, I have the right settings, but when I click record it says "Error: Cannot connect SampleGrabber" The capture device is Panasonic MPEG2TS Tape Submit Device (Unknown Video #1), is that right?

HiTymz--

Could be your hw...or the wrong sw. For best HD rendering with minimum CPU you'll need to make sure that you're using DxVA hardware acceleration. IIRC, however, DxVA either isn't available or doesn't work as well on the TI NVidia boards as it does on either their MX or ATI's boards. So you may want to "splurge" on a $30 GF4 MX 440 or 4000 video card to see if the choppiness is tamed.

Thanx Tp for the info. I started laughing when you mentioned an "MX" card. I didn't think I was that far in the hole, hahah.

I just figured the "Sempron" was the prob. It's not the most savy CPU in the world and its "budget based" :)

Hell, I'm impressed I can see anything at all. My monster puter got fried during a power surge and I'm trying to be humble and buy "budget" crap.

Thanks again, I'm going to go dig out my Savage S3 card :)

ZERO, I got it! OK, I see the device in CapDvhs, I have the right settings, but when I click record it says "Error: Cannot connect SampleGrabber" The capture device is Panasonic MPEG2TS Tape Submit Device (Unknown Video #1), is that right?

Good and i just finished my hd collection of cropped matrix trilogy to pc.. hee hee

Unknown video #1 is lokking good. I seen the same error in the past but can't remember how i got it. If i am not wrong, the source is empty and nothing to capture that bounce the error. what channles was on 6412 when this happened? Try OTA sees if same error return? have you changed the setting as suggested by the post? convert 188 bytes and check pts...etc

Anyone tried this with an AMD 64?
bit older 3400 and fx51 but it works...:D

Huge chunk of memory and juicy power always help, you see huge diff when seeking or loading huge ts file. i can have photoshop cs, capvhs, and zoomplayer with ts file at full screen with plenty of juice left.

I DO NOT CARE ABOUT RECORDING HD!!! I just want to watch it on a pc monitor.
hd card then??

I've correctly set all the settings, and it was on NBC. I've tried several other channels including premium channels. I don't know what OTA is.

Great job on this entire topic. I have the .ts file, and now how do I apply that to a blank DVD. .ts is not a supported file format in Nero6.6

THanks

Matt

Sasem expired. Today i launched my Sasem ONAIR player & it has a message that it has expired. Does anyone know how to allow it to cont. working normally?

I've correctly set all the settings, and it was on NBC. I've tried several other channels including premium channels. I don't know what OTA is.

OTA is hd broadcast on the air channel, like nbchb,cbshd...etc

NBC hd or regular ? Can you turn to local hd channel for a test, i never tried any others channels but hd. I'll give it a run tonight and see if i can duplictae ya error.

If you have any antivirus, sw firewall like zone alarm. Turn it off. Also turn off xp built in firewall, see if that helps. I am on the blind trying to figure out the possibility.

Great job on this entire topic. I have the .ts file, and now how do I apply that to a blank DVD. .ts is not a supported file format in Nero6.6


if you are talking convert ts > dvd format then
ts>mpeg2>mpeg dvd format
and it take day and many process to convert...LOL.

if you just want to achieve ts file into DVD, i don't see why nero can't burn any file. Extra hdd is less trouble and cost effective these day.

I tried some HD channels, tried shutting my firewall, XP firewall is off.

Originally posted by theswid
Sasem expired. Today i launched my Sasem ONAIR player & it has a message that it has expired. Does anyone know how to allow it to cont. working normally? Yeah...buy it. :)

Got this working right off the bat following the instructions with no problems. Great job!

I have to move my STB into my office to hook up my firewire which my wife won't let me do all the time; so I have a couple of questions that I'm hoping someone can confirm for me:

1) Does the 5c flag value shown on the setting page change depending on Live vs pre-recorded? I saw one post that said he was unable to record the live show, but recording it and then trying to capture worked fine. Can anyone verify this?

2) All Comcast's OnDemand (well, I looked at about 15 different HBO series/movies) are shown as 5C=0. Is this true or incorrect reporting by the box? I know that it isn't just showing the last live channel play as I switched to a show which I verified was 5C=1 and then switched to OnDemand and then switched to the settings and it showed 5C=0. Can anyone confirm if all the content on Comcast's OnDemand is 5C=0?

3) I recorded some content which plays fine in Elecard or WMP, but trying to convert it using HDTV2MPEG takes awhile (like I would expect) but then I have a 6k file that doesn't play. There are no errors.

4) I tried to convert straight from TS to WMV. Windows Media Encoder happily accepted the file and processed it (Took 30 minutes for a 5 minute HD stream on an AMD64 3500 so it will take a long time for a movie), however, the final file was only 6k and no content. The properties showed the right size, etc.

5) Can the 5C value shown on the page be wrong? i.e. a lazy update bug? Or is it safe to assume that any channel which shows 5C=0, will be able to be recorded?

6) Is there any active development being put into CapDVHS or similar tool to enhance the flexibility and functionality?

Thanks!

Heres the simple way of making software work when it expires.

Reinstall windows. Get all updated drivers/updates and install all software that is yours and paid for. Export your registry file and save it.

Install your trial software, use until trial expires, uninstall.

Get your saved registry file and replace the existing one. Back in business.

Or, if your good with registry editing, when your trial software expires, remove all registry entries.

There are programs that will monitor the registry for changes when software is installed, will make it easier to remove entries.

I'm sure I'll get some flak for being a cheap bastard, but hey, I figured I would try and give back to this forum that has helped me so much.

yo, scarface

I was able to duplicate this error "Error: Cannot connect SampleGrabber"
Guess what, only when ieee was unplugged.

it's odd how capdvhs can see the # from 6412 but reported error when recording. You last defect ieee didn't toast the ieee port on 6412 i hope.

Thanks for this post fellas. I am signing up for digital cable today (hopefully they can activate me, and I can go pick up a box all in the same day). I look forward to trying and capturing TS when I get it all setup =).

zero, would it toast BOTH ports on the 6412? I just tried the other one but it didn't work either.

I hope you get it working for you Scar. I am going out in the morning to pick up a firewire cable before work, and was j/w the pin size for the cable box. I have a 4 pin connector on my computer, is the cable box 6 or 4 pins (I assume they are all 6 pin, but I wanted to be sure)? Thanks.

Edit: I wasn't planning on buying an HD box, just a regular digital cable box. I hope I'll still be able to capture TS from it though. Is anyone here using a regular digital cable box? If I won't be able to capture video/audio to my PC, then i'll just pay the extra 5$/month for HD, even though I don't own an HDTV.

Edit 2: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?j=1&id=1087342416873&type=product&ref=03&loc=01 <= I already have analog cable through Comcast, I wonder if I can go to Best Buy and just pick this up. I have a bad feeling I will be spending many hours on the phone today x.x.

I figured out the answer to part of one of my questions. Check 5C on ESPNHD and it showed 1. Started recording and then check the 5C flag on the recording and it showed 0. So I have a feeling that the 5C information provided in the setup isn't correct for pre-recorded material. This would make sense as to why OnDemand is showing up with 5C=0. I thought it was pretty crazy to not have any of the OnDemand stuff protected. I'll find out more once I get some time to really do some testing with this stuff.

I just ordered two digital cable boxes from Comcast. The lady on the phone said almost all of the connectors are locked out, so it looks like I won't be able to connect to it's firewire port. I'm going to pick up a 4pin - 6pin wire just in case it does work. If it doesn't, I will have to get in touch with the tech support people and see if they can enabled ports, they may want me to upgrade to HDTV service to do so though.

I figured out the answer to part of one of my questions. Check 5C on ESPNHD and it showed 1. Started recording and then check the 5C flag on the recording and it showed 0. So I have a feeling that the 5C information provided in the setup isn't correct for pre-recorded material. This would make sense as to why OnDemand is showing up with 5C=0. I thought it was pretty crazy to not have any of the OnDemand stuff protected. I'll find out more once I get some time to really do some testing with this stuff.


i mentioned the flaw in current 6412 fw, you aren't suppose to transfer flagged material to pc. Not from my last two 6208,i couldn't. Whatever that's not working right for them, works for us :D

Occasionally, it will kick in when you're dumping and capdvhs is recording a blank screen even on pre-recorded show. You just have to trick it and try again. it will works. That happened on ROTR3, Matrix3 and the other one movie i forgot, probably bruce almighty. They are all from diff channels u see..

So, don't try argue these with ya beloved comcast csr ot tech. I doubt they can spell ieee or 1394 and what the heck is firewire. Besides, the less they know the better, i'll get to keep recording.....:D. And don't call for tech support on this issues, it never helped.

I wish VOD is working in my area, we'll see if i can do the same to supposingly copy never to pc.

I just ordered two digital cable boxes from Comcast. The lady on the phone said almost all of the connectors are locked out, so it looks like I won't be able to connect to it's firewire port. I'm going to pick up a 4pin - 6pin wire just in case it does work. If it doesn't, I will have to get in touch with the tech support people and see if they can enabled ports, they may want me to upgrade to HDTV service to do so though.

dude, what you need to know is what DVR model you are getting in you area and find out current FW for that model. They can't active the port if fw is not avaliable in you area.

digital cable box? non-hd capable? that i don't know if they even have firewire. But why one need to firewire a non-hd material anyway?? so much time and trouble for worthless pq-wise material.

Hehe well you are right zero. The two boxes I got today have no firewire ports whatsoever. I was going to swap one of the boxes for an HDTV unit, but they said that someone has to come out and install it. The only reason I wasn't planning on jumping on board HD right away, is because I don't have a HDTV (as of now), but I still want to be able to capture transport streams for playback on computer/regular tv. I will probably play with the digital cable over the weekend (if analog to digital is this fun, I can't wait for HD playback on an HDTV), and then see if someone can "install" an HD box on Monday... although I can't think of a non-stupid way to say I want an HD box, but I don't own an HDTV x.x.

Worse comes to worse, I wait to get an HD box until March (when I can afford a nice HDTV), but waiting is no fun... must... have.... geek.... toys... even... though... I'm broke! Hehe also I'm loving these forums, I can't believe it took me so long to come across them.

Someone direct me to the easiest way to make a DVD from a transport stream? It seems there's no easy way.

Nerovision Express will do it all in one step, except it won't do 5.1, just 2.0.

It also appears to take hours to mix down from a Transport stream to DVD resolution.

I have used Nero Vision as well, and the resulting quality is not the greatest, even when burning to a DL DVD where you don't have to compress as much. As with other method that I have tried so far (TMPEGENC), the resulting video looks choppy, or jumpy. Also with Nerovision, when I did a movie that recorded from TV in HD, it took 38 hours to encode! I am running a 2.8 P4 with 512 ram. Not exactly a x286! I have really been dissapointed with the lack of a solution in this department. I had thought that Nero vision would do it but the video was worse then TMGENC and the audio was not synched with TMPGENC. Any other solutions would be greatly appreciated!

Transport conversion to quality DVD...I think i'll eventually drop it even with dual xeon emt64 processor . There's no simple step and there's no quick compression.

I used to think if i could ts>DVD my Tv series, that would be nice...so i have TMPEGENC xpress3.0 for reprocess/convertion, taking out extra ignoring 8 pixels over NBC and INHD material. That's before HTPC2MPEG, then burn to DVD format. It took hours of work for minutes of playing but the PQ is xcellent if compression is not to high. However, setting higher quality ain't gonna fit much in 4.5GB DVD blank.
Also, Keep it mind your cpu process is pretty much fully loaded during the conversion. There ain't much juice left for anything. single clog or wrong click may froze up darn thing, then you have to redo it all over again. How many night you have it leave this over for one single movie?
End of the day, i sticked with orig transport and stores at pc for playback.

Well, that sucks. I guess I'll just use DVHS.

Hey again guys =). Thanks to all the info you guys have provided, I have decided to go for it and get an HD box from Comcast. I just bought an LCD moniter (with regular connection + DVI), it's not as cool as a Plasma HDTV, but it should provide a good picture, and I will loop the sound through my surround sound setup.

I still have a couple of questions (does the HD box my local Comcast offers come with an optical sound connection? DVI connection? Working firewire connection?), but I can't find anyone at Comcast that can answer these questions. Can anyone recommend a method I can use to get in contact with someone that can answer these? Thanks again to all active members, you make these forums rock.

Originally posted by DBG
Hey again guys =). Thanks to all the info you guys have provided, I have decided to go for it and get an HD box from Comcast. I just bought an LCD moniter (with regular connection + DVI), it's not as cool as a Plasma HDTV, but it should provide a good picture, and I will loop the sound through my surround sound setup.

I still have a couple of questions (does the HD box my local Comcast offers come with an optical sound connection? DVI connection? Working firewire connection?), but I can't find anyone at Comcast that can answer these questions. Can anyone recommend a method I can use to get in contact with someone that can answer these? Thanks again to all active members, you make these forums rock. 1) Yes 2) Yes 3) It should by FCC mandate. I have been having no luck getting the 6412 to dump to my JVC 40K. I am able to get it to dump to my PC (the non-5C channels of course)

Thanks for the info tall1. I hope you have luck though, I would be pissed if I had a D-VHS and was unable to use it. I will paroose around the web and see if I can find anything regarding the 6412 and the JVC 40k... as for now, dinner time, mmm...

*Edit* I know you've probably looked through the forums already, but I think you should check out these two posts for some more info, maybe someone has the same problem and has already solved it.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=475069
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=473246

Hey again guys =). Thanks to all the info you guys have provided, I have decided to go for it and get an HD box from Comcast. I just bought an LCD moniter (with regular connection + DVI), it's not as cool as a Plasma HDTV, but it should provide a good picture, and I will loop the sound through my surround sound setup.

I still have a couple of questions (does the HD box my local Comcast offers come with an optical sound connection? DVI connection? Working firewire connection?), but I can't find anyone at Comcast that can answer these questions. Can anyone recommend a method I can use to get in contact with someone that can answer these? Thanks again to all active members, you make these forums rock.

6xxx has optical and digital coax, DVi out is hdcp enabled. So make sure your LCD monitor is hdcp compliant. If not, it lasts 5 seconds then went to blank. Occasionally it throws hdcp error so you know you are screw.... Again, firewire is totally depend on FW and area.

Originally posted by DBG
Thanks for the info tall1. I hope you have luck though, I would be pissed if I had a D-VHS and was unable to use it. I will paroose around the web and see if I can find anything regarding the 6412 and the JVC 40k... as for now, dinner time, mmm...

*Edit* I know you've probably looked through the forums already, but I think you should check out these two posts for some more info, maybe someone has the same problem and has already solved it.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=475069
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=473246 Thanls DBG..I had read those forums before and after doing some pondering last night over a couple of martinis determined that maybe it was a signal strength issue here. I have two 6412s and a SA Tivo on one coax cable (split 3 ways). I had the same setup with a 6200 and a 6208 and SA Tivo before and had no problems. But I may be losing some signal strength as I noticed some problems on another analog set in my bedroom. So after the games today I will have comcast see what they can do to boost my signal. I'll report back with good news I hope. Thanks for the help.

Originally posted by zeroendless
6xxx has optical and digital coax, DVi out is hdcp enabled. So make sure your LCD monitor is hdcp compliant. If not, it lasts 5 seconds then went to blank. Occasionally it throws hdcp error so you know you are screw.... Again, firewire is totally depend on FW and area.

Ah crap, I did not know about this. I thought all it needed to have is a DVI-D port. I bought an LCD moniter from NewEgg yesterday not knowing this, and I do not believe it is HDCP enabled x.x. Oh well, NewEgg has a good return policy, but damn zero, I wish I could clone a 5inch version of you to put on my desk and warn me before I screw up.

*Update* Ugh, I might not be able to cancel it in time, which means paying 120$ or so to ship it back unopened and pay the restocking fee. Oh well, it's my problem, not yours, just another reminder to do better research next time.

I don't think you need to pay 15% restocking fee if package not opened.
If you need monitor to watch hd from moto, CRT may be a better chioce in term of pq and is much cheaper compare to pc-lcd. Get a component-vga transcoder and a used $100 22' CRT.

Hmm you are right zero. I can refuse the package and get a full refund. I'm buying an LCD because I need a new moniter for work, so I wanted to get the dual function of being able to watch HDTV and have a nice, bright, lightweight moniter. Thanks again for your help zero, and others on the board. I should be watching HDTV by the weekend, or next week at the latest =). Decided on the ViewSonic VP201b moniter, it's very purdy, and has a great price.

Decided on the ViewSonic VP201b moniter, it's very purdy, and has a great price.

i was on the same boat, went with dell widescreen instead. Less bars when watching hd material and 1600x1050 is plenty of room for work. keep it mind, it doesn't work straight from either from dvi or vga. The price and spec is unbeatble on the market. 12ms finally works OK on hd without ghosting.

i don't know how you plan to watch it on ya viewsonic, you better make sure it sync with vga 720p but not dvi 720p. Your only straight source input is component to vga transcoder.

Wait, why won't I be able to plug a DVI connection from the cable box into the LCD? (Thankfully I haven't bought the ViewSonic yet, but I was planning on doing so, because I assumed I would be able to use the DVI connection). Also, what's the model number on your Dell, I'll check it out.

Originally posted by DBG
Wait, why won't I be able to plug a DVI connection from the cable box into the LCD? (Thankfully I haven't bought the ViewSonic yet, but I was planning on doing so, because I assumed I would be able to use the DVI connection). Also, what's the model number on your Dell, I'll check it out. Assuming that the cable box is looking for an HDCP handshake, the DVI input on the LCD won't work with it unless it's also HDCP enabled. Some are and some aren't.

I would say 99% of pc - lcd monitor doesn't have HDCP but hdtv LCD monitor(TV monitor). Manufacturer doesn't want to pay for license fee to get hdcp onboard and extra cost to built in. There are plenty of TV LCD out there, but why built pc monitor with hdcp? pc/video card will never get license for hdcp anyway. So far i know only one, HP 24" 1900x1200 built for HT that does hdcp dvi and resolution is more than enough for pc. The higher you go, you gonna need better video card and juice for pc...downside.

DBG, not even the new dell i got. if you need straight dvi into monitor. Go for high resolution TV monitor. Anyway, it's a 20" model 2005FPW, i have to firewire 6412, record into pc then play from pc...you could get as much as $200 off dell coupon if you watch them close....

California - Cox Cable
Motorola DCT6412 Dual Tuner DVR/STB
Windows XP Box connected to 6412 via Firewire.

I followed bdraw's instructions (5/19/04), "HowTO record via 1394/Firewire to WindowsXP." I did not use the older Meitape.inf file.

With the firewire cable placed in the left-most (when looking at the 6412 from the back) IEEE 1394 port, CapDVHS would run but not grab anything as illustrated by the lack of data on the CapDVHS "Data Info" tab. I moved the firewire cable to the right-most port on the 6412 and it worked.

I used the Elecard software to play the file back. My understanding is that the .ts file generated from the above is "Transport" versus "Presentation?" i.e. the .ts file captured by CapDVHS is not an mpg. Therefore, which software do you use to convert the transport file to mpg? I would like to play the files from Windows MediaPlayer.

Fran_T--

If you have the Elecard filters installed, WMP should play the TS files and you won't need to convert them to MPEG. (If you must convert them for some reason, search this Forum for HDTVtoMPEG2, which may work for your need)

Originally posted by zeroendless
I would say 99% of pc - lcd monitor doesn't have HDCP but hdtv LCD monitor(TV monitor). Manufacturer doesn't want to pay for license fee to get hdcp onboard and extra cost to built in. There are plenty of TV LCD out there, but why built pc monitor with hdcp? pc/video card will never get license for hdcp anyway. So far i know only one, HP 24" 1900x1200 built for HT that does hdcp dvi and resolution is more than enough for pc. The higher you go, you gonna need better video card and juice for pc...downside.

DBG, not even the new dell i got. if you need straight dvi into monitor. Go for high resolution TV monitor. Anyway, it's a 20" model 2005FPW, i have to firewire 6412, record into pc then play from pc...you could get as much as $200 off dell coupon if you watch them close....

Hmm, you saved me again zero. Since I don't think I'll find a nice LCD panal with DVI-HDCP for under 900$, i'll look at other solutions =). J/w, how does DVI compare to, let's say... YPrPb component. I will be using firewire to capture, so I suppose I don't need DVI, I just need something I can hook up to my HD box and can use RGB analog connection for pc moniter use.

*Update* http://cheap.typepad.com/cheapster/2004/11/dell_ultrasharp_1.html <= looks like a good deal for the moniter, haven't checked elsewhere yet, google just provided that when I entered in the model name. I assume you are connecting using the composite connection, it looks like I might end up with that as well.

DBG

i just reliazed we went too far from the original thread. if you need further help on monitor topic, PM me. This will be my last respond over with this topic.

NO, i am bit picky on pq quality. I only watch HD and hardly even DVD. I ditched composite and s-video long time ago. I only used DVI if possible, my projector is hdcp capable and component is my last media i could tolerate. i can't used 6412 straight to pc monitor, none of 3 of the LCD falttie sync with component-> vga transcoder. I have to stick with my sony tubes 21" CRT transcode from component-vga.

so you best bet is to get a LCD-TV that provided component in. Dell 19" TV is dvi-hdcp and has component in with 1280x768 and it's well below $900. Find you a dell coupon when in sale, it will cut you another $200? (mod, hope this is not off limited with this price talk)

if you are planning on recording from firewire then playback... you don't have to worry about anything. Da viewsonic will do just fine. But choose wisely before you proceed, widescreen or 4:3. this is for multimedia movie pleasure or works... hard it's? you can flip a coin but hard to stick with it..been there done there.
good luck

Thanks a lot of your help zero. hehe yes, it seems I've lead this topic off-track. Well thanks to all of you regardless, and I will take the info you've given me zero and do some more research. This'll be the last you all will hear from me on this thread until I snag an HD box and can code some custom tools that we all can use =).

Thanks to all who worked this out. I installed the driver and app a few weeks ago with no problem and it worked like a charm!

My problem has come about after re-installing Windows XP professional. When I attempt to install the driver now, I do not see the "Show all compatible hardware " box.

Does anyone know why this would happen or how to correct it? Is there a registry change?

Thanks in advance.

I was somewhat disappointed today when I realized that I could only record the signals I was receiving from my antenna input on my T-165 to Windows XP (I use an antenna to get my HD feeds here in my condo, not digital cable or satellite). I had hoped to pass the audio/video signal from my TiVo through the T-165 and into my laptop but to my surprise, despite changing to the AV1 input on my receiver and viewing my TiVo (via the T-165 passthrough) on my TV screen, it only recorded what the antenna was seeing.

Has anyone else experienced this or tried to do something similar?

The recording feature works great I just wish I could record from a different input on my T-165.

I recently got a motorola 6200. I was bummed when the ethernet port didn't give a link light .. so on to firewire it was.

I've got a motorola 6200 box. v 7.15
I'm using windows 2000.

I was getting the

Error 80040217: Cannot connect SampleGrabber

Upon plugging in the cable box I see 2 devices were detected. One of them takes the drives your provided and I selected the Panasonic d-vhs video capture device. The device reports responding from the control panel. So I figure the driver *looks* to have installed.

I have tried both inf files.

Any idea hints on getting some more verbose error message to debug this a bit better ?

Thanks !

-Kevin

Hello Everyone,

I need a little help. I have a 6412 with 9.11 firmware.
I followed all the directions and for installation and used the old media file that I copied in with the newer driver.
It installs fine, recognizes the capture device in capdvhs.
When I try to record, I see nothing under data, and my files don't play. Any ideas?

Thanks.

I followed the instructions as closely as possible and I can't get this to work. When I pull up capdvhs it says, "imaging device not found." I have a Motorola DCT-6200 with firmware 7.15. The box was detected and I was able to install the driver. I'm running XP Pro. I'm not sure what other information you need and any help will be appreciated.

Error 80040217: Cannot connect SampleGrabber

I was able to duplicate this error once helping out one of the user here.

It happend when firewire was disconnected from one of its end after loading capdvhs.

When I try to record, I see nothing under data, and my files don't play. Any ideas?

Premium channels i assume? The 5c copy protection kicks in.

zeroendless, Thanks for the info. I did a regular channel and it was fine.
Isn't there a way to trick the 6412 on Movie channels? I thought I read this someplace in the thread.

Thanks!

Ok, of this morning I have firmware 09.12 on my 6412. I recorded a movie from HBO HD to the harddrive. Then I attempted to play it back and use capdvhs and it didn't detect any data. From what I have read, this is the correct process to archive 5c material right?

My output is DVI to my TV if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance for the help. Without this forum, I would never have had the joy of switching from Direc to comcast :)

Isn't there a way to trick the 6412 on Movie channels? I thought I read this someplace in the thread.

Yes, but i am not telling... :D

i mentioned the trick to get around 5c but nobody seem to ask and since you are the first one and i am a nice guy so here's it's..haha

This is what i do, trick to flaw in current 6412-9.12 FW, which works for me.


If there's no stream infor shown in capDVHS when recording premium channels, stop it...you are not getting anything.
Tune the channels to local HD, record it for few seconds, stop it.
Then tune back to the premium again, try it and repeat the step till you get it.

40% of premium have to do the trick and it all works with less than 3 trials. I don't record whole movie in one file but split them in 20-30 minutes by stop and record, the playlist in zoomplayer works flawlessly and less resource and hiccup in smaller file playback.
Once you get the first clip going, the rest of the movie a record-freely...

I have not tested with hd-VOD which is currently neing implement in my area now... i can't wait.

Originally posted by zeroendless
Once you get the first clip going, the rest of the movie a record-freely...
Not sure what you mean...once you get the first clip playing or the first clip recording?

I am attempting to come up with a configuration for HD recording and playback that emulates what we can do with Tivo today.

There are about 14 hours a week of HD programming that we want to record. All is series programming on the 4 networks and HBO.

Our viewing habit is to watch a recorded program at our pleasure and speed through the commercials.

We do the same thing for sporting events on the weekends. Starting after the event has begun to be able to speed through commercials.

Currently, because the Tivo's have only one tuner we use the ME feature to move programs between the two depending on where we are watching. (Two rooms in house.)

We also have a CD collection and digital pix that we use the ME feature for as well.

The complication is that we both travel. So, when one is out of town we save up the series to watch when we get home. Also, some series (24 comes to mind) we prefer to record the entire series and then watch it rather than watching the episodes each week.

Comcast in north suburbs of Chicago is supposedly providing DVR and HD via the DCT 6412.

My questions:
Can the firewire download to a WinXP machine be automated? IE every night at 2am can the software be scheduled to copy the programs captured that day to the WinXP machine?
Can these programs then be played on the HD set via one of the networked DVD players discussed in the DVD forum such as IO Data?

My Idea is that we could have one DCT 6412 for the recording, download the programming to the WinXP box and then play it back via the networked DVD player.

I guess an alternative would be to play the content directly from the WinXP box to the HDTV. Any PQ concerns doing that?

BTW do they have the 30 second skip capability or do we have to use fast forward?

well, i record and stop and repeat the same step on one movie with capdvhs to split the huge ts file.
what i meant the first clip is the very first recording file from one movie. Once i get the cap to record the first file, i can continue without have to worry about 5c on the rest of the movie.

Originally posted by zeroendless
well, i record and stop and repeat the same step on one movie with capdvhs to split the huge ts file.
what i meant the first clip is the very first recording file from one movie. Once i get the cap to record the first file, i can continue without have to worry about 5c on the rest of the movie. thanks zero. How many files do you create for a typical 2 hour movie?

How many files do you create for a typical 2 hour movie?


Rather smaller than ota recording from myhd120 last time i checked, which is averaging 8.5g/hour. i find out tonight.

Thanks zeroendless,

I am going to try it tonight when I get off work :)

thanks zero. How many files do you create for a typical 2 hour movie?

Well, varies sizes depend on network and program.
~2.1GB, 24.21 minutes from HBO , The last Samurai
~2.1GB, 20:14 minutes from INHD, Usher Live
~2.1Gb, 30:41 minutes from Maxhd, matrix 1
~2.1Gb, 20:18 minutes from showHD, The Hours
~1.95GB 21:16 minutes from HBO, Love Actually
~1.95GB 17:03 minutes from INHD, "The beauty of Snake" <- wow effect

u do the math

I'm gonna try that also (the repeat channel method), I tried to pause the channel then start recording, it shows data recording, but when time to play back it craps out after 5 seconds!

But I can record VOD premium channels like HBO with no problems and without any tricks, it really doesn't make too much sense to me.

I hope this "repeat channel method" works for comcast detroit area!! If not I guess im stuck with s-video 480i!!!

Hey, guys, you really should take your discussion of 5C circumvention elsewhere because it's against the policy of the Forum owners.

just started playing with this stuff today and have successfully captured video off my 6200 and play it back with VLC. was setting up my HTPC remote to control VLC and in looking at the hotkeys, i can't seem to find how to rewind. it shows how to speed up and slow down the video, but doesn't say how to reverse it. anyone?

also, the jump 10 sec/1 min commands don't seem to work for me. i noticed that there doesn't seem to be any timing info for the .ts file i've created when i play it back. i assume this has to do with why the jump/skip command isn't working. am i missing something in getting this to work?


thanks!

Anyone gotten this to work with a 6412 yet?

Should the original or "blazer" meitape be used?

Thanks!

i got the recording to work now how would i take this file and get it onto a DVD

Originally posted by scooterman
i got the recording to work now how would i take this file and get it onto a DVD Read the Forum and you'll find 37 different ways to make DVDs for stand-alone players...none of them worth the effort for TV shows. :(

If you just want to archive the TS file, any DVD-burner app will do. The trick is to select UDF as the file format so that you aren't limited to 1 or 2 GB per file.

Hey all,

I did everything as zeroendless said and I still can't record from hbo or inhd with shows I already recorded.

I follwed the installation guide, and have tried both the new and the old inf files.

Anything I am missing? Thanks.

I did everything as zeroendless said and I still can't record from hbo or inhd with shows I already recorded.

I follwed the installation guide, and have tried both the new and the old inf files.


if you can dump ota, you did nothing wrong. Perhaps your premium are 5c=1

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to connect my 3250HD to my PC via firewire, but my computer won't detect it. Could it be the version of Sara on the 3250 box? When I went into the diagnostic screens I didn't see any options for firewire. The version info for Sara that it gave me was this: OS High Def Ed 1.0.4., Flash 1.52.11.2, and Sara v. 1.52.11.2. Do I need a new version or am I just missing where to activate (if you can) the firewire ports? I'd appreciate any help/suggestions!

Thanks!

I'm in the same boat as Chuffy. SA3250HD connected to my HTPC but it doesn't detect it. :( Isn't there some FCC law that requires cable providers to make the firewire ports active?

Originally posted by Scotty L
I'm in the same boat as Chuffy. SA3250HD connected to my HTPC but it doesn't detect it. :( Isn't there some FCC law that requires cable providers to make the firewire ports active? If you have a 5C-compliant device, such as a DVHS recorder, that you can plug in to test the FW port I think you can scream bloody murder if it's not recognized and used. But with only a PC hooked up you're on thinner ice, as I understand it.

Does anyone use VLC to record? I played with it but it seems very buggy. Sometimes it works sometimes not. You can change the compression settings by use it. I also use CapDVHS but you can't change anything without it rebooting the puter.

Also, is the signal out of the fire wire port ONLY what the turner is tuned to or can a turner be used on the computer to select Channels? Thanks

opps :) I have the Moto 6200. how do u tell what firmware I have? None of the methods seem to work for me.

thank you very much to everyone for this thread. Exactly what I was looking for...

Anyways, has anyone used any of VividLogic's 1394 & 5C products / software? Could this be the answer to some of the encrypted issues? Is this even apples to apples?

google: VividLogic

bagwellfive--

Look here for "Firebus" and you'll see that VL's stuff is known. And, no, it won't help with encrypted streams--they play by the book too.

Quick question: does this method work on channels received via a Cablecard installation in a Mits integrated TV (like the new DLPs)? Or can it only record the basic, unencrypted stuff?

It can only record non 5C encrypted content, which is not necessarily the same as scrambled cable channels.

ATTENTION ALL THOSE YOU HAVE PROBLEMS PLAYING LIVE VIDEO WITH THE CURRENT VERSION OF VLC.

Videolan has been working on a fix and there is a new nightly build that fixed my problem. You can grab the nightlies here, http://www.videolan.org/~videolan

Or the version that I know works here, http://people.via.ecp.fr/~ipkiss/vlc-0.8.2-svn-win32.zip

Worked first try for me, no more video/audio glitches! WOOHOOO!!!

Cheers,

This may be nit-picky but...

Didn't have a “Tuner AV/C Device” show up automatically. I had to cancel out of all the hardware found boxes then go to the device manager. There was a "AV/C Tuner" listed. Update/reinstall driver from there.

Concerning: (Uncheck “Show compatible hardware”)

The listing my XP gives doen't have a check box for 'show compatible hardware' so i got stuck for a few minutes here. I eventually clicked where a check box should have been and went to the 'have disk'screen fine.

Concerning: (Under “Copy manufacturer’s files from:” put C:\meidvhs\ ( The path of where you extracted the core_driver.zip.)

The file downloaded and extracted wasn't called core_driver.zip. It was called meidvhs.zip.

Other than that! Thanks for all the help it works beautifully!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by TPeterson
[B]Read the Forum and you'll find 37 different ways to make DVDs for stand-alone players...none of them worth the effort for TV shows. :(

Hello TPeterson & the other senior members who've put so much of their wisdom into this board. Thanks for your time.
I've got one observation and one specific question:
Observation first: I really hope that there is a method for cranking out a dvd from a .ts string in a manner that won't drive me crazy. What I'm trying to do sounds very basic - extract several pieces of a soccer match to share with kids on my youth team, edit them and burn them to dvd. Man, I hope you're not serious about it not being worth the effort !

Getting towards my question: I followed the original bdraw instructions for hooking up my comcast 6412 box via firewire to my ibm laptop (1.6GHz Pentium-M). CapDVHS seemingly does a great job capturing video to my hard drive - high def looks great, regular TV is OK.

On the other hand, I am having real trouble with the HDTV to MPEG converter. The resulting mpeg video I produce may or may not be playable on Windows Media Player and Real Player, and never contain sound. All I can guess with my limited knowledge is that the pids may be wrong - they are automatically detected, and do vary, where one site (elsewhere) said that they would be the same from time to time. I suspect that there is something I am missing !

Thanks in advance to anyone that can pick up a piece that I am not seeing.

GSmith

GSmith--

It sounds like you're not talking about run-of-the-mill TV shows. My remark was directed at folks who hoped to save the entire Horny Housewives season to DVD. ;)

If the TS you're dealing with is SDTV (i.e., "regular TV") then editing with HDTVtoMPEG2 (and keeping it in TS form) followed by burning to DVD using Nero Video Express is not terribly painful. You can do the same with HDTV streams but the conversion time in NVE is very long--IMO, only worthwhile for special clips, such as you mention. If you must convert to MPEG2 for some reason, you can use the latest version (1.11.6 I think) HDTVtoMPEG2 which reportedly has the audio-loss bug fixed.

T -

Thanks - that is encouraging. I had to believe that a professional product like Nero would let me do some editing, and then burn the results to DVD - it just sounds like such an obvious thing to do.

I think I gathered from some of your previous posts that you don't use the HDTVtoMPEG2 converter yourself - I got the most recent version of the HDTV program, and must be doing something wrong. I mean, for the audio and video to work so perfectly in the VLC Media player, and then to bomb completely as an mpeg movie must mean that I am doing something wrong. Anyway - thanks for the word about Nero - I'll be doing some shopping for a DVD burner... (maybe Santa will bring the software..)

Regards,
GSmith

G--

I do use H2 and I used to find that it sometimes messed up the audio for some players when converting to MPEG2, but Cris Moore, H2's latest major contributor, says that he fixed that in the current beta. I've not tried it for MPEG conversion since the fix, which is why I said "reportedly".

I am unable to get the drivers to load. Keeps saying no drivers for this device. I have an Mot 6412 with ver 9 software. I have read through the whole Forum and tried about 15 times.

Do you need to have WinXP service pack 2 installed.

Also, has anyone played around with winxp64 bit. I do have an AMD64 processor and the Beta ver of winxp64.

___________________________________________________________
Originally posted by rhdonkin
I am unable to get the drivers to load. Keeps saying no drivers for this device. I have an Mot 6412 with ver 9 software. I have read through the whole Forum and tried about 15 times.

Do you need to have WinXP service pack 2 installed.

Also, has anyone played around with winxp64 bit. I do have an AMD64 processor and the Beta ver of winxp64.
____________________________________________________________

RH - I just did this yesterday, so it's still fresh. I am working with a Mot6208 with version 7.15 firmware, but if I understand your problem, it's with getting device manager to recognize the driver for the panasonic av tuner device, and not with the mot box.

I did everything exactly as the original bdraw instructions indicated, except the part where you actually pick out the driver. Here are the original instructions with my edit:

Uncheck “Show compatible hardware”
Click “Have Disk”
Under “Copy manufacturer’s files from:” put

[B]C:\meidvhs\ ( The path of where you extracted the core_driver.zip.)
Click OK.[B]

I had the meidvhs folder unzipped on my desktop, and browsed to find the open that folder. The "core driver" that bdraw is referring to is the "meitape" file. That's the driver that I actually used. After restart, my set up captures video perfectly well.

Hope that helps - good luck.

GSmith

Also, has anyone played around with winxp64 bit. I do have an AMD64 processor and the Beta ver of winxp64.
IIRC, the XP 64-bit Beta doesn't work well with Athlon64s. I could be wrong, though. At the very least, the drivers for this don't work any different, if they work at all.

Originally posted by trabneb

Didn't have a “Tuner AV/C Device” show up automatically. I had to cancel out of all the hardware found boxes then go to the device manager. There was a "AV/C Tuner" listed. Update/reinstall driver from there.

Concerning: (Uncheck “Show compatible hardware”)

The listing my XP gives doen't have a check box for 'show compatible hardware' so i got stuck for a few minutes here. I eventually clicked where a check box should have been and went to the 'have disk'screen fine.


What version of XP are you running sp1, sp1a, or sp2?

This is the first post I have gotten saying this has changed so I assume you are on sp2.

If this is the case, I will update the doc after I have a chance to work through it again.

Nevermind...

After further searching I found what I needed.

Thanks
Desai

Originally posted by travisbell
ATTENTION ALL THOSE YOU HAVE PROBLEMS PLAYING LIVE VIDEO WITH THE CURRENT VERSION OF VLC.

Videolan has been working on a fix and there is a new nightly build that fixed my problem. You can grab the nightlies here, http://www.videolan.org/~videolan

Or the version that I know works here, http://people.via.ecp.fr/~ipkiss/vlc-0.8.2-svn-win32.zip

Worked first try for me, no more video/audio glitches! WOOHOOO!!!

Cheers,


That link doesnt work for me, but how is 0.8.2 CPU usage compared to 7.2? I read something on the vlc forum about newer versions using more cpu.

I had originally installed 8.1 but got macroblock garbage on all channels. Falling back to 7.2 works fine but with some audio droppouts. The droppouts are fixed for me when I go to File->Open Capture Device->"advanced options" setting "caching in ms" and increase the value from 200 up to 500 or 1000, etc.

These settings dont seem to keep when adding to the command line though? So I have to go in and set them each time. (Anyone know how to get them to stick?)

BTW. Does anyone know how the deinterlacing is set in VLC? It seemed a little confusing with entries in different sections of the GUI.

I had tried to use the caching feature but it never fixed my problem.

De-interlacing can be handled a few ways, you have it set to use de-interlacing by default in the Video options or on a per case basis by choosing it from the menu when watching a video. The de-interlacing method I use most often is "discard" because it requires the least amount of graphics intervention and therefore uses much less CPU then the others. This matters on my Athlon 2000XP because a 1080i feed uses the full 100% of my cpu. Even without de-interlacing.

It looks as though the nightly build server is down, but the .zip link seems to be working.

Cheers,

We just had our 5100 replaced with the 6412 a couple days ago. I want to buy a firewire cable to go between my Dell Inspiron 8600 notebook and the 6412, but I see there are several different types. What cable do I need to get?

Thanks!

Tim

Hi Tim,

I also am running from the motorola box to a laptop, using an adaptec afw-1430 firewire pcmcia card. The cable I got was a 6pin to 6pin (looks almost just like a usb cable in terms of the size of the plug ends).

Hope that helps,

By the way, to follow up on my own earlier post, I was having lots of trouble with HDTVtoMPEG converter - not getting audio, and having intermittant trouble with video. I was able to get a fully (as far as I know) mpeg by having the HDTV output mpeg2 with the .vob file extension.

I then took the .vob and converted it to mpeg using VideoReDo. Real player, zoom player and Windows Media all accept it as an mpeg, although microsoft media studio does not accept it. Any thoughts anybody ?

Happy Holidays,
GSmith

Hello,

I've been using a Samsung T165 to capture HD broadcasts to my PC via firewire. I have not had any trouble playing back the TS files on my 1Ghz Duron when recording shows from my local (Fresno, CA) CBS and ABC stations (haven't attempted to capture any HD from the NBC station).

The FOX affiliate here, KMPH, just recently (last Thursday) started to broadcast network content in HD.

I tried recording this week's repeats of "Arrested Development" and "House" with the Samsung. When I played back the files, the video becomes severely distorted every 5 or 10 seconds -- both the video and audio become garbage.

Here are some screenshots:
http://tinypic.com/1473f8
http://tinypic.com/1473g4
http://tinypic.com/1473gp
http://tinypic.com/1473hg
http://tinypic.com/1473id

I thought it was my firewire card that was causing the problem, but I tried capturing on another 2Ghz Athlon XP computer I have and I still had problems playing back the TS files when capturing from my FOX affiliate.

Almost always get 95% antenna signal strength for this FOX station.

I noticed when I was capturing regular non-network programming from KMPH, I don't have this distortion or garbled video when playing back the transport streams.

I've been browsing thru some of the threads and I'm wondering is this the 5C encryption being used here by my FOX affiliate? And that its recognizing I'm not actually using a legit DVHS machine to record thru firewire?

If so, I thought the 5C was only for cable and didn't realize the encryption could be used for OTA content (although I did a search and I believe I read in one of the threads that it was being used in Japan for OTA content).

It's most definitely not 5C. If that was the case, the bitstream would not play
at all. With CapDVHS, it's easy to tell if you're trying to capture an encrypted
stream, the bitrate and resolution numbers don't get filled in.

It is interesting that it only happens during network programming. Since FOX
stations use a splicer, the bitstream is different during network programming.
During network programming, the bitstream is being relayed from the network
encoder by your local station, while during non-network programming, the
stations local encoder is generating the bitstream.

From your pictures, you're getting a huge amount of bitstream errors. Are you
monitoring the analog output (component or even S-Video) while recording?
If the analog output looks okay, then the problem is localized to either the
capture, or your playback decoder. The big difference between the network
encoder and the local encoder is that the network encoder is running true
VBR, and the bitrate can change between 8 and 15 Mbps for each scene.

Ron

I got the meidvhs+CapDVHS method working two days ago on my 6412 :cool: Thank you very much, TimeCop and bdraw.

It isn't perfect, though: on average, for every 280 MB captured there is a glitched packet (sometimes two adjacent packets are affected). These glitches almost always have a very particular signature: they immediately follow after a certain kind of null adaption packet. Each glitch is a combination of deletions, overwrites, and insertions of aligned 4-byte groups. I wrote a program to search for these pattern-following glitches, and it reports almost every error that mpeg2repair reports.

I can patch up these glitches by making a second firewire recording of the same recording on my DVR, and with a hex editor, searching for the identical point in the second recording and copying it over the glitch. This is more inconvenient for an HD recording because the bitrate is higher whereas the rate of glitches is about the same.

The process sometimes bluescreens my PC; a couple times it has frozen my DVR's playback requiring pulling its plug; and sometimes CapDVHS simply stops receiving data at some point in the recording. The first two thankfully don't happen too often, and the third can be handled by appending multiple recordings at the points where they are exactly the same.

But all those problems do make the process pretty inconvenient. So I'd only want to use it for programs I really want to keep permanently.

Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to what is causing the glitches? Is it the 6412, the firewire card, my motherboard, the meidvhs driver, CapDVHS, or something else?

Not sure what causes the glitches, but I have used HDTVtoMPEG2 to edit out the bad parts of caputred files. Kinda sucks to miss a few frames.

Originally posted by bdraw
Not sure what causes the glitches, but I have used HDTVtoMPEG2 to edit out the bad parts of caputred files. Kinda sucks to miss a few frames.
Woah, the same kind of glitching happens to you? Here's what it generally looks like: the entire frame fills with a disconnected grid of garbled macroblocks, which disappear at the next I-frame. (Actually, that's what happens on HD content... on SD, I think it may look just like what mad62 posted...)

If this glitch happens to everyone using the process, perhaps the problem is in the meidvhs driver or CapDVHS... and I could write a program taking two recordings captured from the same DVR recording to patch up the glitches. Anyone want that?

Originally posted by trabneb
This may be nit-picky but...

Didn't have a “Tuner AV/C Device” show up automatically. I had to cancel out of all the hardware found boxes then go to the device manager. There was a "AV/C Tuner" listed. Update/reinstall driver from there.

Concerning: (Uncheck “Show compatible hardware”)

The listing my XP gives doen't have a check box for 'show compatible hardware' so i got stuck for a few minutes here. I eventually clicked where a check box should have been and went to the 'have disk'screen fine.

Concerning: (Under “Copy manufacturer’s files from:” put C:\meidvhs\ ( The path of where you extracted the core_driver.zip.)

The file downloaded and extracted wasn't called core_driver.zip. It was called meidvhs.zip.

Other than that! Thanks for all the help it works beautifully!


I had similar issues, but have been unable to get this alternative to work for me.

I have updated XP to sp2, and I see the Tuner AV/C Device, but under Panasonic no DVHS recorder as an option, just DV recorders.

I have also downloaded and used meidvhs as a driver...


When I go to Cap DVHS I get an "capture device not found error"............any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

MitchellA

Thank you Thank you!

That patch works great when I discard the deinterlace thingy. I do have one question about watching hd live....where can I change the aspect ratio??? I have looked in the settings for about an hour and its driving me nuts. I also tried to change it in the stb itself but I think through firewire its not going to work anyway.

Someone please point me in the right menu.

I have recorded tons of movies and shows from 6412 over 500GB of ts files without a single glitche. meidvhs+CapDVHS +zoomplayer.

I have not tried others SW out there except the latest powerdvd but it stuttered. However, the zoomplayer + Filter {intervideo-osmpegslitter-ac3} has been flawless and it sync fast and effecient when drag to FF/Fw the ts file.
Is Playback SW is the key here, i am not sure. What ya guys used for playback?

By the way, the Only Premium that wont let me dumping to PC so far is the VOB. I tested The Passion of C (HD) from VOB to PC and the 5C kicks in good. At least comcast get the 5C on VOB by the book....LOL

I have updated XP to sp2, and I see the Tuner AV/C Device, but under Panasonic no DVHS recorder as an option, just DV recorders.


Co-worker of mine has no problem getting sp2 with the same setup. I don't remember he mentioned any problem at all. If that happened right after you upgraded to sp2, reinstall the driver again??

"NOTE"

For those who's having 'Error 80040217: Cannot connect SampleGrabber'

That could happened when you restart you PC while IEEE is still connected to 6412. In my case, i have to disconnect the boxes when restart the PC. If not, it will crash the 6412. If i run the cap right after the crash without rebooting my pc. I'll get the error. Worst case, i have to reinstall the driver cause it corrupted the driver during the crash.

Originally posted by MitchellA
I had similar issues, but have been unable to get this alternative to work for me.

I have updated XP to sp2, and I see the Tuner AV/C Device, but under Panasonic no DVHS recorder as an option, just DV recorders.

I have also downloaded and used meidvhs as a driver...


When I go to Cap DVHS I get an "capture device not found error"............any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

MitchellA

I had the same problem of not seeing the DVHS recorder. I thought it might be because I have SP1.

After playing around several days, I did finnaly get the Pan DVHS recorder to appear on the list. I just kept trying to load a driver for one of the other devices, and when it came up " driver not supported" I cancel and went back to the list. Not sure of the exact steps but keep trying to load a driver and then going back.

I started a new thread for this issue because in scanning the 34 pages, most folks have been discussing getting this up and running (and dealing with 5C) and that's not my problem. BDraw's description had me up and running in 5 minutes.

But I am seeing occasional hiccups in my recorded HDTV video when I play my files back and I'm wondering if others have seen the same.

The thread is here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=489618

Newbie here. so please be gentle... :-)

I have a Motorola DCT6412, and am exploring options for recording shows with the DVR, and exporting them to my PC for the purpose of creating DVDs. (Primarily for sporting events of my favorite teams, but anyway...)

I currently would have to use my PC for firewire (laptop is work issued :-( ), so I would have to unplug & physically move the box when I wanted yto archive. Thought I would mention that just in case it matters.


I thought this post would do the trick, but after 34 pages I am more confused...

Anyone want to help me with this offline (i.e. email or private message) so I dont clutter this post with dumb questions?

As I described above, I was getting glitches in my CapDVHS-recorded TS files every 280 MB or so. Sometimes a recording would spontaneously stop or even blue-screen my system.

It turns out, I need to do a combination of things! Maybe some of these can be eliminated, but at least two of them are necessary for me.

[list=1] Remove Hipix card. (Confirmed as necessary)
Between recordings, keep firewire unplugged and CapDVHS closed
Plug firewire to left plug on 6412 (when facing front of box; "right plug" when looking at the back of the box)
Only plug it up while video is playing, never while paused; do not fast forward while plugged up
Press "instant replay" button at least once before opening CapDVHS
After opening CapDVHS, don't do anything except press Record at the right moment and Stop when finished[/list=1]Now I'm getting virtually flawless recordings. (I say "virtually" because I did lose one 188-byte TS packet in 4 hours of recording HD. But the situation is immensely better than before.)

So, it's quite possible that for others experiencing this problem, there is a PCI card interfering. Also the other things I've listed, and try closing nonessential programs, unplugging your network cable, and doing nothing on the PC during a recording (I haven't eliminated these factors yet; maybe they don't matter, maybe they do. I'm currently doing all of them.)

Originally posted by qubit
As I described above, I was getting glitches in my CapDVHS-recorded TS files every 280 MB or so. Sometimes a recording would spontaneously stop or even blue-screen my system.

It turns out, I need to do a combination of things! Maybe some of these can be eliminated, but at least two of them are necessary for me.

[list=1] Remove Hipix card. (Confirmed as necessary)
Between recordings, keep firewire unplugged and CapDVHS closed
Plug firewire to left plug on 6412 (when facing front of box; "right plug" when looking at the back of the box)
Only plug it up while video is playing, never while paused; do not fast forward while plugged up
Press "instant replay" button at least once before opening CapDVHS
After opening CapDVHS, don't do anything except press Record at the right moment and Stop when finished[/list=1]Now I'm getting virtually flawless recordings. (I say "virtually" because I did lose one 188-byte TS packet in 4 hours of recording HD. But the situation is immensely better than before.)

So, it's quite possible that for others experiencing this problem, there is a PCI card interfering. Also the other things I've listed, and try closing nonessential programs, unplugging your network cable, and doing nothing on the PC during a recording (I haven't eliminated these factors yet; maybe they don't matter, maybe they do. I'm currently doing all of them.)

Some of this sounds a little crazy, I have to say :( I'm also using the 6412. I have often been using my PC during recording so I'll try cutting that out and see if that improves matters.

FWIW, it seems that 720p programs have more trouble than 1080i channels. I wonder if this is because of bandwidth issues (although the PCI bus should be able to handle the throughput just fine). Or perhaps it's because my box's HD output is set to 1080i usually duri ng transferring and there's some 6412 glitch.

perhaps it's because my box's HD output is set to 1080i usually duri ng transferring and there's some 6412 glitch.

HD box video format only changes the DVI/Component out but not 1394 out. The firewire is just pass thro with org format.

Try disable unnecessary legacy if not use. I often multitask while CAPing with 2 boxes recording at the same time from 2x6412 and have not seen this glitches so far.

Well, I'm a bit embarrased to say that when I switched DVD codecs from NVDVD to Intervideo, the glitches went away. I'm really surprised by this. I have older NVDVD codecs, so I'm going to try the newer trial on Nvidia's site.

See http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=4907683 for more details.

I'd stick with Intervideo but for some reason it can't do deinterlacing onm 1080i content right. I get "venetian blinds" horizontal distortion when there's lots of motion on the screen.

I too get very bad interlacing if I am watching the content w/ VLC however if I use Windows Media Player the video comes out perfectly. I am using the PowerDVD decoder.

Cheers,

In my experience the Moonlight-Elecard filter is the best by far. Intervideo is only fast because it enables HDFASTMODE by default, giving you half the vertical resolution. Disable this, and it becomes much slower than Elecard. I tested about 5 other MPEG2 filters as well, along with VLC, and they were all slower than Elecard. VLC is so slow on my system that when I press Pause, it takes 5 seconds for the interface to respond.

With the Elecard filter (and only with it), I can play 1920x1080i at the full framerate on my Athlon XP 2000+ / Geforce2 MX. However I need to jump through hoops to do this. Quirky as it is, I need to enable the video card attached to my secondary monitor (an old ATI All-in-Wonder Pro), and use the Microsoft Geforce2 MX driver, otherwise I get only I,P decoding (half framerate on most HD). But when I do this, frame drops are few and far between!

The reason I bring this up here, is that to my chagrin I discovered today that I also need to remove my secondary video card for CapDVHS to work smoothly. This means that I cannot capture video then immediately watch it. I need to turn off my computer, insert my ATI card, turn it back on and boot up to play HD smoothly. Then to capture again, I need to turn it off, remove the card, boot up, capture, etc... OUCH! :(

Your issue with the video cards is very odd, I just noticed that the new elecard supports DXVA(DirectX Video Acceration) which is only supported on a few video cards. I am downloading the new version now to try it out. In the past I have always used the saseam ONAirEdit for playback.(No I don't own the card)

Originally posted by bdraw
Your issue with the video cards is very odd, I just noticed that the new elecard supports DXVA(DirectX Video Acceration) which is only supported on a few video cards. I am downloading the new version now to try it out. In the past I have always used the saseam ONAirEdit for playback.(No I don't own the card) Inspired by some posts on AVS, I tried Sasem's Intervideo. For me it was just as slow as the plain Intervideo (with HDFASTMODE off). The added bonus is that it tries to "phone home" over the internet every time you start a new player session! I refused the connection with my firewall, and as a result it took at least a minute to give up and start playing.

I'll try Elecard. It looks as if WinDVD6 actually can deinterlace OK and can play the TS files in MCE without glitching (I was testing with v4). Strangely enough NVDVD plays fine in its own application, but not in WMP and MCE. Since MCE is my main front end, I need to find a decoder to work with it.

Ok, Elecard works. The video codec does, anyway. I can't get the audio codec to connect for some strange reason. I'm using an old non-timebombed NVDVD audio codec, which seems to work fine.

Tell me: how does one enable this fabled new HW acceleration in the Elecard codec? Also: if I register the product (a scant $20), does the little Elecard "bug" go away in the upper right hand corner?

"if I register the product (a scant $20), does the little Elecard "bug" go away in the upper right hand corner?"

yes.

i just found this thread last night and have gone through the whole thing. i am wondering with the latest VLC that was released and supposed to fix alot of the droppout and problems with live streaming if people are having less problems?


I have a CRT projector with only a vga input and dont have a lot of options driving HD channels to it. i just went to TW today and pickedup an SA3250 so i will try to get things going tonight. Is this a reliable option for watching live hd shows? sa3250->firewire->htpc->vlc->projector

what kind of quality will i see if my system resolution is something other than
what the streaming HD content is in?

-paul
Athlon 1700+, WinXP
512Meg DDR
Radeon 9500
extron 109
Sony 1031Q CRT PJ (960x540)

Wow, Paul, this sounds like a real headache. Isn't there a simpler dedicated way to convert from component to VGA? Like a component-->VGA cable or converter?

I typed "component video to vga converter" into Google, and the first hit was this: http://www.smarthome.com/77706.html.

I have to tell you, getting my HTPC to work is a labor of love and I'm always finding glitches when I play of the fray of what is standard (such as this whole process of using firewire to suck video off of a cable box).

One thing you'll notice immediately with a solution that uses firewire is that (at least on my STB, a Moto 6412) there is no on-screen-display on the firewire, just the pure video stream. So if you want to see the guide or menus, you need to use a different output.

I tried the new elecard codecs no imporvement over the older one(2.1). I guess they don't have DXVA yet.

Originally posted by xkode2002
Wow, Paul, this sounds like a real headache. Isn't there a simpler dedicated way to convert from component to VGA? Like a component-->VGA cable or converter?


It depends on your video card and your TV. If you have RGBHV on your TV you can use a breakout cable like this.
http://digitalconnection.com/Products/Cables/eehd5r.asp

Don't try to use this one, it won't work
http://digitalconnection.com/Products/Cables/eehd3r.asp

If you have a ATI Radeon Card you may be able to use one of these.
http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=2537967
There are a few different ones depending on which card you have.
http://shop.ati.com/searchresults.asp?dept_id=21

But this discussion belongs in the HTPC forum.

Originally posted by bdraw
I tried the new elecard codecs no imporvement over the older one(2.1). I guess they don't have DXVA yet.

It's totally hidden. You need to find the filter here:

http://www.moonlight.co.il/dec_dxva.php

I tried it and it did substantially improve perf. But it didn't really work right--couldn't do trick play in MCE, for example. And you couldn't move the slider in WMP. After finding out that, I wasn't very interested in troubleshooting the strange video behavior.

BTW: I had to use graphedit to get to the property page of the decoder to turn on HW acceleration.

what is needed to drive a component hd signal into any display that supports only RGB is something called a component->vga transcoder. good versions of these are very difficult to come by. there are some cheap versions you can order on the internet and actually people in the htpc section are trying to build some, but currently there isnt a great solution. i agree, that discussion does belong in the htpc section. (if you want to pm me i am more than willing to discuss) however, my initial question does belong here.

that is, how stable is live streaming for most people with the latest vlc software?
and what do people think of this as a reliable solution for watching HD channels?


regards,
paul

Originally posted by xkode2002
[B ..................................

I'd stick with Intervideo but for some reason it can't do deinterlacing onm 1080i content right. I get "venetian blinds" horizontal distortion when there's lots of motion on the screen. [/B]

IIRC you need to regedit a bit to get proper deinterlacing with 1080i content using WinDVD 6. By default it just discards every other field.

Mmmm, your particular settings might be different but here's what I've seen posted as the settings one needs to have.


REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\DVD6]
"HDFastMode"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\DVD6]
"HDFastMode"=dword:00000000


Copy and save as WinDVD6_FastModeOff.reg

Click on the saved file to import the registry entries.

Only for those comfortable with registry editing and knowing the dangers thereof!


Seems to work.

Originally posted by plaiming
that is, how stable is live streaming for most people with the latest vlc software?
and what do people think of this as a reliable solution for watching HD channels?

I was hoping this to be a reliable (and easy) way to watch HD channels but currently VLC is very flaky. If they can make it more reliable and easy to use it will definitely be something I would use.

To date though, I haven't been able to find any other software that allows you to watch the stream from a STB. Man, how the world could change if only we could do this properly, w/ a guide and everything. Man!

Cheers,

Are there max file sizes for CapDVHS and/or DCTRecord? I just got everything working and want to use it tomorrow for the Orange Bowl, so I don't have much time to experiment. Documentation seems to be scarce. I will be recording to a NTFS drive, so I shouldn't have to worry about OS filesize restrictions.

Any recommendations on which to use? I got CapDVHS working the first time but I haven't tried DCTRecord yet. I like how DCTRecord can split files. I haven't figured out if I can do that with CapDVHS.

Thx,
Mofo

Originally posted by plaiming
i just found this thread last night and have gone through the whole thing. i am wondering with the latest VLC that was released and supposed to fix alot of the droppout and problems with live streaming if people are having less problems?


I have a CRT projector with only a vga input and dont have a lot of options driving HD channels to it. i just went to TW today and pickedup an SA3250 so i will try to get things going tonight. Is this a reliable option for watching live hd shows? sa3250->firewire->htpc->vlc->projector

what kind of quality will i see if my system resolution is something other than
what the streaming HD content is in?

-paul
Athlon 1700+, WinXP
512Meg DDR
Radeon 9500
extron 109
Sony 1031Q CRT PJ (960x540)

Paul,

I'd recommend you search the CRT projector forum for "transcoder". You will find discussions/ experiences of the available transcoders there. I have used the ebay one, the KD3C and finally the ISS input card built by member PJ3.

I still have the Ebay and KD unit as well as a breakout cable if you'd be interested in either.

briands,
thanks i will do a search there. i will probably need to pursue a transcoder as a permanent solution.

however, in the meantime i now have the SA3250->VLC working!!! I can record a few channels with D-VHS program. i can also stream live. Video and Audio look/sound great with one caveat!! (see below)

So far, (15minutes of watching live HD) i havent noticed any dropouts or audio problems. I first download the the latest nightly build of VLC, unzipped the folder, and started the app. I wasnt able to get a picture. It seemed like vlc didnt have a codec or something. I realized i didnt really install it. I downloaded the VLC8.1 client and went through the full install. Then after firing up the app and connecting to the capture device, i could get a picture. However, it was terribly blotchy. I then copied all the folders of the nightly build over the folders
in the install directory. Fired up VLC again and VWALA!!! Perfect live streaming!!!


Ok, i do have one problem. I say the video is perfect in that there are no droppouts and it looks really great. however, i am getting some pretty bad mpeg motion zig/zag artifacts on when there is alot of motion/movement. im guessing it has to do with the deinterlacing from 1080i to my resolution (960x540). should i change my SA3250HD to ouput 720p? or do i need to change some VLC settings?


thanks everyone! I love this!!

-paul

FYI I tried Theatertek 2.0 tonight and had fantastic results.
Best playback I have been able to achieve without OnAirEdit(player not filters).
I have some problems with smooth playback, but havn't tried reclock yet, which has been necessary in the past even. Plus OnAirEdit doesn't support 5.1.

What is great is I have always preferred Theatertek in the past for DVD's and now they work the best for everything I throw at it. The auto Aspect ratio works good too, only played with it for a few mins.

Setup
Theatertek 2.0
XP pro sp1
P3 1ghz
Radeon 9500 pro via component dongle. @ 1080i
M-Audio Revolution 7.1 via spdif

Material
DVD's from HD and disc, both DTS and DD5.1
720p last years sugarbowl. captured OTA
1080i Last years Daytona 500 captured OTA
xvid sourced DVD's with DD5.1 or DTS

Finally a multimedia player with no sacrifices, well other than the price tag that is.

Originally posted by ManhttnBeachMofo
Are there max file sizes for CapDVHS and/or DCTRecord?


I'm not sure about CapDVHS, as I haven't used it for much other then to test with, but I have used DCTRecord quite a bit. It does have file size limits. I don't recall if it was 2g or 4g though. I use it to record 128MB chunks which play back much better in the MyHD card with out having to add the null packets back in.

DCTRecord has worked out very well for me. I use Windows Scheduler to schedule my recordings, which allows me to use the power save settings to hibernate/wake up the pc for recording sessions. The only down side to this is I have to remember to leave the STB on the right channel, or setup a duplicate timer on the STB. I do both, depending on the situation.

--Eric

well, a correction on my post/status. i found out that the reason for the artifacts is that obvisouly, i dont have deinterlacing mode turned on in VLC. however, when i try to turn it on, i peg out my poor old Athlon1800+ at 100%. i have tried the discard mode which works ok but looks a little jerky here and there. secondly, i was basing my results on viewing one HD channel for a while and briefly flipping to other channels. i found an audio echo on another hd channel if i select 5.1 from the VLC audio menu. (stereo sounds fine)
so all is not perfect...
.
i dont think i really want to invest any more money upgrading my CPU as im not sure this solution is going to be reliable enough. im going to look for other viewing options, possibly a plugin for windows media player or zoomplayer that would allow viewing of the live stream. does anyone know of any other programs to view the live stream? Can i get Dscaler5 to do this?


-paul

Originally posted by EHHoffman
I'm not sure about CapDVHS, as I haven't used it for much other then to test with, but I have used DCTRecord quite a bit. It does have file size limits. I don't recall if it was 2g or 4g though.

--Eric

CapDVHS appears to have no file size limit. I've recorded up to 15GB files of 1080i and 720p content.

Sorry for this really stupid question, but is there a way to transfer non-HD programs from my 6412 to my pc using a usb port?

While I haven't tried it (I've only done HD), I bet you can transfer ANY program from the 6412 using CapDVHS, but only via Firewire. Just follow the instructions in the first post in this thread.

It's most definitely not 5C. If that was the case, the bitstream would not play
at all. With CapDVHS, it's easy to tell if you're trying to capture an encrypted
stream, the bitrate and resolution numbers don't get filled in.

It is interesting that it only happens during network programming. Since FOX
stations use a splicer, the bitstream is different during network programming.
During network programming, the bitstream is being relayed from the network
encoder by your local station, while during non-network programming, the
stations local encoder is generating the bitstream.

From your pictures, you're getting a huge amount of bitstream errors. Are you
monitoring the analog output (component or even S-Video) while recording?
If the analog output looks okay, then the problem is localized to either the
capture, or your playback decoder. The big difference between the network
encoder and the local encoder is that the network encoder is running true
VBR, and the bitrate can change between 8 and 15 Mbps for each scene.

Ron

Thanks!

Nothing wrong with the analog video. Still can't seem to capture from my local FOX affiliate KMPH.

I attempted to capture "House" again tonite, using CapDVHS and my Samsung T165.

The file was playing perfectly... until the second commercial break --- when local station advertisements started playing, the video and sound became garbled at one point. After the local station ads were done and the KMPH station switched back to network programming, the audio/video was just pure garbage and unplayable/unwatchable.

Same thing happened when I tried a test recording with the Who's Your Daddy program on Monday nite.

I even did a rescan of channels as one person suggested in the Fresno, CA - HDTV (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=319177&perpage=20&pagenumber=17) thread.

I was browsing thru the Fresno, CA HDTV thread and one mentions here (URL=http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=319177&perpage=20&pagenumber=12) that KMPH wanted to use their own equipment for the passing of HD (although I don't know if this is true or not, but we here in the Fresno area only got FOX in HD during the last week of December.)

I'm hoping that's not the reason for these weird captures/recordings.

I had assumed that the DCTREcord program was only for the MOtorola, but was able to capture 3 min. of Judging Amy with my T165. I'll try out the DCTRecord program and capture whatever's on FOX tomorrow (or maybe on Thurs. since LOST is on ABC).

I have skimmed and searched this thread for info about pulling recorded content from a Mits 62825 pvr to a PC, but haven't had any luck. So anyone out there able to copy recorded shows from the Mits WD62825 integrated PVR to a PC?

will this scheme allow transfer to xp of dvhs tapes playing back on panasonic pv-hd1000?

Originally posted by phrogiii
will this scheme allow transfer to xp of dvhs tapes playing back on panasonic pv-hd1000? I think what you're looking for is an app called DVHSTool. Look in this forum for its support thread and you'll find download information.

thanks, tpeterson... i'll check it out... one more: if i save the files to dvd how will i play them?

phrogiii--

Too many options to be comprehensive. A few are: VLC, almost any DVD-player software, Windows Media Player, ZoomPlayer, Media Player Classic, MyHD, FusionHDTV, almost any HDTV tuner card app, .....

so now there are many options to play these mpeg-2 ts files... great!... thanks!...

I have a SA3250 with 1394 supposedly installed (waited weeks for TWC to special order it). Plugged it into my Firewire in on my Hitachi 50VX915, selected the 1394 input and . . . . "device not detected."

What do I need to do to make sure that the firewire (firebus) is enabled on the 3250? Is there something else I am supposed to do with the Hitachi?

I noticed that not only is CapDVHS unstable when my ATI AIWpro is installed (sometimes blue-screens, often ends a capture spontaneously), but also when I close it I get a popup "Runtime error 204 at 0040279C". Apparently this means "Invalid pointer operation" in Delphi. This happens even if the firewire isn't connected. I wonder if this error has anything to do with the instability.

When I close CapDVHS when my ATI AIWpro is not installed (which is the only way I can use CapDVHS reliably) I do not get any error message.

Hey everyone. This is an awesome thread. I got everything going with the Motorola (Comcast) except I have one little problem.

All my streams when played with the Elecard/WMP etc have no sound. Elecard actually gives me an error "Warning not all of streams rendering correctly." Any ideas?

Do you have a AC3 audio codec installed? Most HD (and lots of digital) feeds are broadcast in DD5.1.

I use AC3Filter, http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net/

Cheers,

Newb alert on me I guess. =) I just figured out that was the problem. It is great now I installed the K-Lite Code Pack. Is that recommended? I am totally new to this sort of thing but am not 'technically-challenged' or anything.

I noticed that the Audio skips and whatnot and i am guessing it is because my CPU is maxed out on playback. Anything I can do for that? I have a 2500 Barton Athlon, 1Gig RAM, NForce2 chipset (Gigabyte). Is there some hardware I can get to clean this up or can I just tweak some settings. I was looking at the AC3 configuration but didn't see anything that would help.

Thanks for the quick reply. Once again, this thread = awesome. Even just the screen captures of my Longhorns Rose Bowl game look great. =)

"Is there some hardware I can get to clean this up..."

Probably best bet is to invest in a DxVA-capable video card (e.g., Radeon or GF4 MX, or better) and use a codec that can take advantage of the hw accel. Even a cheap GF4 MX400 will do a capable job with your CPU and the right codec, such as Elecard.

I second TPeterson's recomendation.
Also try ac3filter for the ac3 codec. Another great tool that helps is reclock. Both are great utilities. I suspect it is your Video card causing the problems, believe it or not, but high end video cards are for more than just games. I have a AMD 2600, and a Radeon 9700Pro, and using the elecard filters my proc is at 100% but with reclock plays perfectly.

Both reclock and ac3filter are free.

Thanks for the directions, I have my Comcast 6412 box working but the inhd, discovery hd all that doesnt work so im guessing i have the copy protection on my box but my question is will the local hd channels i get from comcast work with this method like fox abc and nbc? I would just check but theres no hdtv on them channels today. Thanks

I am interested in live viewing. I can get vlc working but is there any way to get any other viewers to connect to the firewire capture device?
...Such as zoom player with some sort of custom filter graph?
(or is that program just for file input?)

thanks,
tip

I have got the HD recoding working....thanks bdraw. My mistake was not putting the core drivers in the C:\meidvhs\ folder.

I still get XP balloons on start up recogining a new device, so I do had to turn them off every time. When I do the capture still works..


Is there any way to stop that from happening?

So far testing short (30 sec) captures I seem to be able to capture HBOHD and DHDTV.

Still working on the audio and noticed a lot of chatter on Elecard filters. Looking at the site I am not sure which one to download. Any suggestions?

Thanks again,

MitchellA

Merged threads. I believe you accidentally started a new thread when you meant to post a reply to this thread.

Please help if you know. I have read the instructions at the 1st page and have got everything installed that it asks for, as well as I can with win2k being a little different but when I get everything done and press rec I get the "cannot find samplegrabber" error. I have seen elsewhere on this site the same problem and one person said they also had win2k. Is this a driver compatibility issue because I have win2k pro instead of XP. Also in re-installing again and again many times it will ask for reset to take effect and then it doesn't recognize the imput as dvhs device at the devices in the bottom right corner, but in device manager it is still there. It recognized a MS dv camera and and unkown. I have the 6412 STB and the MS guides. Also what is this replace cor drivers in the meidvhs folder thing. Are they just the meidvhs drivers and they have to be put in a file called C:\meidvhs\

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

ubervision--

Yes, it's because you're using Windows 2000, which does not have the built-in support for A/VC devices that XP has.

Is there anyway I can get around the win2k weakness of no built in a/v c devices. I'm not a big fan of XP. Add them in somehow?

No, it's even less likely now than it was 2 years ago when I was asking that question. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by ubervision
Is there anyway I can get around the win2k weakness of no built in a/v c devices. I'm not a big fan of XP. Add them in somehow?

In my experience, XP is much better overall than Win2k was and is FAR better suited to HTPC / multimedia use than Win2k.

Here here. I don't know what you don't like about XP but I think the best thing to do is just get over that ;) (With all due respect, of course.) There are lots of reasons to upgrade. Nobody is supporting Win2k. Heck, I doubt you can even get security patches on Windows Update for Win2k (I saw a note on Windows Update that they were discontinuing WU support for XP RTM even). So I hope your machine isn't connected to a network :D

Originally posted by xkode2002
Here here. I don't know what you don't like about XP but I think the best thing to do is just get over that ;) (With all due respect, of course.) There are lots of reasons to upgrade. Nobody is supporting Win2k. Heck, I doubt you can even get security patches on Windows Update for Win2k (I saw a note on Windows Update that they were discontinuing WU support for XP RTM even). So I hope your machine isn't connected to a network :D

I don't think that's true (no more security updates for w2k) as I've still been getting them (one of my development systems runs w2k).

Strange... wonder why they discontinue XP RTM support but still support 2000. Maybe it's the "latest rev of the last N operating systems" or something. Nevertheless, "I'm not a big fan of XP" isn't really a good excuse for sticking with its 5-year-old predecessor.

Originally posted by xkode2002
Strange... wonder why they discontinue XP RTM support but still support 2000. Maybe it's the "latest rev of the last N operating systems" or something. Nevertheless, "I'm not a big fan of XP" isn't really a good excuse for sticking with its 5-year-old predecessor. Actually, it's not at all strange since M$ is still supporting security updates to WinME and even Win98. It's one thing to tell your customers that they must use the "free" updates that you offer and quite another to proclaim that they're SOL if they refuse to pay for your latest-and-greatest release when they're perfectly satisfied with what they already have. ;)

I only upped to XP when it became clear that there was zero chance I'd ever get to use my Mits DVHS firewire port if it didn't.

P.S.: I think you meant "there, there" rather than "here, here". In standard speech, the former is a consolation while the latter is a cheer!

I meant "here, here" (just was too lazy to put the comma in.) Although not meant as a cheer. I've always heard it used as an endorsement. As in "I agree." I was agreeing to the post directly before mine that stated:

"In my experience, XP is much better overall than Win2k was and is FAR better suited to HTPC / multimedia use than Win2k."

Oh, I didn't see you turn your head to address a second person in that one paragraph. ;)

Actually, after thinking about it a bit, I suspected that I was mistaken about "here, here" so I just looked up--and I was wrong. The affirmatory cheer, according to Webster, is "Hear! Hear!" From def'n of "hear":

used interjectionally in the phrase Hear! Hear! to express approval, as of a speech.

Here! Here!

Wow are we off topic. ;)

OK guys I'm able to record with CAPDVHS and playback with VLC. I have followed the directions on page one for live video with VLC. HOwever, no joy. I refresh the list and select Panasonic MPEG2TS and click OK. Nothing happens. I'm using the latest VLC 0.8.1. Any help would be appreciated.

Try a nightly build, that fixed me up and I've yet to download a bad one since I started grabbing them a few weeks ago.

Fwiw I'm currently using build 20050109.

Naturally, your mileage may vary.

http://vthr.via.ecp.fr/~videolan/build/win32/

Hi guys:

I have a problem: I need to be able to change the default behavior of the Elecard Demultiplexer to "Use PTS" for seek, instead of "Use bitrate".

The reason, as I'm sure many of you know, is that when copying over 1394, the files are aparently stripped of null bits.

For example, I recorded the first 2 episodes of 24. These were 2-hour episodes. When you set the Elecard demux to "Use PTS" it shows up as 2 hours. When you set it to "use bitrate" the file appears to be only 31 minutes long.

The reason I can't just change it on the fly is that I use Media Center 2005 and it doesn't provide access to the filter properties. Most filters seem to remember their last setting, but the Elecard demux (the only demux that has worked for me) seems to always default to "use bitrate".

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks!

Is there still no app that can change the channel on a motorola 62xx via firewire for Windows? I remember seeing an app that could do this with a Mac months ago, and even documented how they've done it. Is DCTRecord still being developed? If not, is anyone else working on these kinds of things still?

Thanks!

edit: url of mac site: http://mac_hdtv_timer.home.comcast.net/

Thanks to all for the instructions on how to connect my 6412 to my XP box.
I am having some difficulties:
I can record the ts with CapDVHS, and view it with VLC 0.8.1, but cannot view live thru VLC
Also, I cannot seem to convert the recorded ts to mpeg2 using hdtv to mpeg2 ver. 1.10.6 or 1.11 beta. It creates an mpeg file, but I cannot view it.
Thanks,
James

I'm with you James. I can do everything but watch VLC live. I've tried everything with no joy. I'm begging someone to show me a screen capture of how you set up VLC for Live viewing.

I'm with you James. I can do everything but watch VLC live. I've tried everything with no joy. I'm begging someone to show me a screen capture of how you set up VLC for Live viewing.

Don't any of the vlc nightly builds work?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=4963705#post4963705


Just extract to a folder and you can run vlc from there. No installation needed.

I usually make a shortcut to vlc within the folder.

With that shortcut I edit the target field so it looks like the following.

"J:\Backup of F\vlc-win32-last\vlc-0.8.2-svn-20050109\vlc.exe" "dshow:// :dshow-vdev="Panasonic MPEG2TS Tape Subunit Device" :dshow-adev="" :dshow-size="" :no-dshow-config "

Bear in mind that the target field must reflect which build you are using.

"dshow:// :dshow-vdev="Panasonic MPEG2TS Tape Subunit Device" :dshow-adev="" :dshow-size="" :no-dshow-config "

is the line I added to what was originally in the target field. Notice the space between what was originally there and the line I added.

I then rename the file to

vlc_stream.exe

I then create two shortcuts on my desktop to both the original vlc.exe and the shortcut of it I created in the folder.

If I want to use vlc for viewing files I click on the one with the unmodified field.

If I want to view a stream instantly I just click on the one with the modified field.

Btw, changes to vlc's configuration made within the nightly builds appears to carry over in the registry to any subsequent builds you might use. Ditto that for using the reglar versions that come with their own installers. The settings carry over to the nightlies and vice versa.

.

Originally posted by jvheitz
Thanks to all for the instructions on how to connect my 6412 to my XP box.
I am having some difficulties:
I can record the ts with CapDVHS, and view it with VLC 0.8.1, but cannot view live thru VLC
Also, I cannot seem to convert the recorded ts to mpeg2 using hdtv to mpeg2 ver. 1.10.6 or 1.11 beta. It creates an mpeg file, but I cannot view it.
Thanks,
James

Yes, same here using vlc player but the created file views just fine using PowerDVD 6.

All I have to say is WOW!

I am in the Chicagoland area and they told me that the firewire was not enabled on the box. Yeah right! I hooked it up with the directions on the front page and used this program: Capdvhs.

Funny thing is it captured right away for me in .mpg. I was then able to play the thing right away using Windows Media Player. It seemed a little choppy, but my computer has been acting funny and I haven't rebooted in a long time.

Anyway, I thought broadcast flags are always turned on when viewing on HBO. Is that true or not?

Originally posted by airedale
All I have to say is WOW!

I am in the Chicagoland area and they told me that the firewire was not enabled on the box. Yeah right! I hooked it up with the directions on the front page and used this program: Capdvhs.

Funny thing is it captured right away for me in .mpg. I was then able to play the thing right away using Windows Media Player. It seemed a little choppy, but my computer has been acting funny and I haven't rebooted in a long time.

Anyway, I thought broadcast flags are always turned on when viewing on HBO. Is that true or not? 5C copy-protection over firewire (broadcast flag is something entirely different) is normally set to "copy one-generation" by most cable providers for premium channels, which also means the data is encrypted. If it's not set this way for you - then your cable co has probably screwed up & you should enjoy recording stuff until they discover their error.

Is there a website I can read that will get me up to date ont he 5C stuff and all the other HDTV standards like it?