This is the email I received from Comcast:
" I regret to inform you that the DVI-D or IEEE Firewire are not active.
Let me assure you, you will be notified of any updates to the
converter.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,"
Do I have any recourse to this? I just started Comcast, Box DCT 6208, Location Troy, Michigan.
Thanks,
PaulYou should post this in your local comcast avsforum thread. I am willing to bet the folks there have an answer for you.

I got a question.
I use Cogeco Cable in canada and Have the moto 6412 box
I wanted to archive some shows..
I checked the system infor and found this

under d11 INTERFACE STATUS
1394 I/O DEVICE INST (so that meen I have firewire ports right?)
ACTIVE PORTS=0(and I am guessing that this meens they do not work right?)

if my assumptions are right is there any way to activate the ports or transfer the data for archive purposes?

I insert my newly made DVD in the DVD player and it doesn't work.. [edit] I tried several other disks that I have DVD-r , dvd+r , and they all work perfectly in my DVD player... the DVD's I made [edit]... these DVD's won't play in my DVD player, I'v tried 4 of these dvd's and non work..... I know its not the DVD player, and I know its not the blank DVD-r disks.. I have used these same disks to copy other media and work perfectly in my DVD player... I don't know what I'm missing or doing wrong..... any ideas ???

Unless your using DVD+-RW disks then rerecording over the DVD+-R disks is only hurting your case as you can only record once to them. If your burner is only a DVD+R/RW drive then you may not have the correct media, if your burner isn't the problem, then try burning them at a slower speed see if that helps. Hopefully your not trying to play the blank DVD-r disks, of course that could be the problem too. Try playing them first in Power/Win/NVDVD and see if they play correctly there or not. If you can't get them to play on a software DVD player on your computer then chances are you screwed up somewhere along the way.

Ok, I have finally gotten caught up on this thread, as I can tell, there are still people here whom refuse to read and think that by jumping to the end they will find what they are looking for, so for them I am including the following link: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=5550532#post5550532 Start there and work your way down!!! It has the latest Motorolla drivers I am aware of, as there aren't any 64-bit ones that I am aware of or you're more likely to find them at the beginning of this thread or in another one.

Now that we've gotten rid of the 64-bit junkies, the rest of you will find my instructions rather easy enough to follow, and if necessary, (I highly reccomend it anyways,) wipe your drive first and start over with a fresh install using the directions I gave in a previous posting in this thread. Make sure you use the RyanVM pack I mention and test your newly created install disk before wiping your drive. Also, make sure you have the important things you want to keep backed up otherwise you will lose them in a wipe.
Anyone who is willing to do this should have a secondary drive for their captures that is at least 200GB, you can make secondary folders in that drive for different stages of the process, (ie. "Capture", "CommercialFree", "DVD", "Authored", etc.,) I reccomend at least a 7200rpm HDD and at least 1GB Ram processor speed as fast as possible, you can get by with less, but it will take you longer to do it or your storage space may not be sufficient.
With your freshly wiped hdd, reinstall your "created" xp on it, if you did it correctly, it will have the drivers already installed for your system and the drivers for the STB as well. I have reinstalled my system already 3 times since I last posted here, (back in may,) and have had no problems recognizing the Motorolla box which has remained plugged in. I don't do much in the way of recording on the pc, I use my Mac Laptop for that mostly, but I have done some pretty good DVD's from the pc and I have never had any problems watching any channel from the tuner, though I still have yet to figure out how to get the channel.exe programs to tell the box to change to the On-Demand section, I can and have recently watched/recorded from that as well.

As far as the 5-c crap goes, if they have it on where I live, I can't tell it, which I threw up the FCC regulations to them about it being on there to begin with, since then I haven't had a problem getting any channels, since according to FCC if there is a firewire device on your box, and the newer ones are required to have them, it must be activated and able to transmit anything you would otherwise be able to watch if you had connected it to the back of a tv. They supposedly cannot block your ability to record from that jack, anymore than they block a vcr so that it can't record a show you're currently able to view. Even if they did have 5-c encryption enabled, since the drivers/software that is currently available has no way of recognizing it, then like the old addage goes, what you can watch, you can record.

As far as your cable companies goes just tell them the firewire thing on the back of the box is broken to give you a new box if yours doesn't work, make them do it as it has to be able to work according to the FCC. I'm not sure of the current firmware of the unit I have is but I do know it's been upgraded several times since I have had it and I still get all my channels through the firewire. No I don't mean just the locals either, I get any channel my box can tune in, I can watch on the pc. I would also assume I can record from them as well still, but I haven't tried in a couple weeks since the last update. Most times how I do it is I'll record it to the built in DVR and then watch/record it through my DVico app which does a much more consistantly better job than the CapDVHS for the pc.

Hope that this helps you newbies out there that are beyond reading the rest of this thread to figure out what their problems are. As mentioned several times in previous posts there are a couple other great links that are mentioned that also help in explaining things and should be sufficient for anyone who wants to make a go of this to make it work on their systems.

I also have a comment on the posting about the drivers not being certified M$ drivers, so what, they guy who made the original drivers said that he wasn't paying out to have M$ make them certified, other than that they are even more stable than a lot of drivers I have had the misfortune of using in the past and as far as "beta" versions go, these are so far beyond that point that I would say they are solid "RTM" version drivers without M$'s blessings and are much more superior to even some of M$'s so called "certified" drivers are. If you don't want to use them on your system then so be it, but don't downgrade them to everyone else because they do work and are very stable and do exactly what they are supposed to do. I look in a future version of Windows for these drivers to be certified and included with the OS. Can anyone say MCE2006?

HTH
DT

I'm having success capturing video using CapDVHS and then encoding and authoring the file using the newest Nero along with the multichannel plugin. 5.1 DVDs!! I have the file extentions set to .mpg on CapDVHS. Then it's a breeze to encode, author, and edit using Nero. Nero doesn't work for the capture though, wish it did! Think that firewire.zip might be what I need to enable Nero for capture?

Wolf
Are you using Nero exlusively without needing any of those other programs (other than CapDVHS)? I'm able to capture the .ts files, and they play perfectly, but I'm having trouble with some of the other software (audio sync and other audio issues)... if I could simplify it to using just one program that would be great. Anyone else having success using Nero? Also, which Nero app(s) do you use, since there are quite a few?

(I'd try the demo, but mine expired before I got into this HD stuff and I can't reinstall it)
Thanks!

I'm using the latest Nero Ultra 6.6.0.15 along with the multichannel plugin. Primarily NeroVison Express 3. I have CapDVHS file extentions set to .mpg . For the most part I am able to do it all with Nero but their documentaion sucks. You might try running this:

http://www.nero.com/enu/General_CleanTool.html

Then delete the Nero folder in "Programs" and DL the trial again.

http://www.nero.com/enu/nero6-ultraedition.php

The multichannel plugin is not avilable as a trial.

There are a lot of settings I am just starting to figure out but this seems to be a very viable option.

Wolf

I'm using NeroVison Express 3, does it automaticly come with the multichannel plugin ? or do you have to down load it..? I guess the key is to set CapDVHS file extension to mpg. .. Ahhh ha.. so that's the trick...

Another problem I have found, using Nero vision express 3, during the play
back of a video during editing and pre video playing before the final burn
to DVD, the video and audio play back stutters it is very choppy and audio
cuts in and out.... I have a good video card in my computer so I know its
not related to my video card.... I all so have this same problem on my
other computer..

Thanks! Would love to hear more about the settings and method you're using as you figure it out.

I've tried the CleanTool but unfortunately it didn't let me reinstall the demo. Sounds like it might be worth purchasing though.

ETA- will using the HDTVtoMPEG2 app have the same effect as setting CapDVHS to have .mpg extension? Because I already have a bunch with the .ts extension that I'd like to use

Try going to your Programs folder and deleting the Nero folder

**
it's actually called "AHEAD".**

THEN run the clean tool.

Nero Ultra includes ALL the toys but you need a valid serial number to activate them. Heres the link to the Multichannel plug-in:

http://ww2.nero.com/enu/Multichannel_Plug_In.html

I agree that Neros editing features SUCK. At least I can't accurately edit frame by frame. I was hoping someone here would be able to show me what I am doing wrong. I thought about using Womble MPG-VCR to edit them but I think that might destroy the 5.1 info. Nero does allow you to make a nifty looking DVD with customized menus and toys galore though.

Wolf

Try going to your Programs folder and deleting the Nero folder

**
it's actually called "AHEAD".**

THEN run the clean tool.

Just tried that, but same results.. I guess they wouldn't want to make it that easy. But if it works with less hassle and no audio sync problems I wouldn't mind paying for it..

Ok, I have finally gotten caught up on this thread, as I can tell, there are still people here whom refuse to read and think that by jumping to the end they will find what they are looking for, so for them I am including the following link: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=5550532#post5550532 Start there and work your way down!!! It has the latest Motorolla drivers I am aware of, as there aren't any 64-bit ones that I am aware of or you're more likely to find them at the beginning of this thread or in another one.

Now that we've gotten rid of the 64-bit junkies, the rest of you will find my instructions rather easy enough to follow, and if necessary, (I highly reccomend it anyways,) wipe your drive first and start over with a fresh install using the directions I gave in a previous posting in this thread. Make sure you use the RyanVM pack I mention and test your newly created install disk before wiping your drive. Also, make sure you have the important things you want to keep backed up otherwise you will lose them in a wipe.
Anyone who is willing to do this should have a secondary drive for their captures that is at least 200GB, you can make secondary folders in that drive for different stages of the process, (ie. "Capture", "CommercialFree", "DVD", "Authored", etc.,) I reccomend at least a 7200rpm HDD and at least 1GB Ram processor speed as fast as possible, you can get by with less, but it will take you longer to do it or your storage space may not be sufficient.
With your freshly wiped hdd, reinstall your "created" xp on it, if you did it correctly, it will have the drivers already installed for your system and the drivers for the STB as well. I have reinstalled my system already 3 times since I last posted here, (back in may,) and have had no problems recognizing the Motorolla box which has remained plugged in. I don't do much in the way of recording on the pc, I use my Mac Laptop for that mostly, but I have done some pretty good DVD's from the pc and I have never had any problems watching any channel from the tuner, though I still have yet to figure out how to get the channel.exe programs to tell the box to change to the On-Demand section, I can and have recently watched/recorded from that as well.

As far as the 5-c crap goes, if they have it on where I live, I can't tell it, which I threw up the FCC regulations to them about it being on there to begin with, since then I haven't had a problem getting any channels, since according to FCC if there is a firewire device on your box, and the newer ones are required to have them, it must be activated and able to transmit anything you would otherwise be able to watch if you had connected it to the back of a tv. They supposedly cannot block your ability to record from that jack, anymore than they block a vcr so that it can't record a show you're currently able to view. Even if they did have 5-c encryption enabled, since the drivers/software that is currently available has no way of recognizing it, then like the old addage goes, what you can watch, you can record.

As far as your cable companies goes just tell them the firewire thing on the back of the box is broken to give you a new box if yours doesn't work, make them do it as it has to be able to work according to the FCC. I'm not sure of the current firmware of the unit I have is but I do know it's been upgraded several times since I have had it and I still get all my channels through the firewire. No I don't mean just the locals either, I get any channel my box can tune in, I can watch on the pc. I would also assume I can record from them as well still, but I haven't tried in a couple weeks since the last update. Most times how I do it is I'll record it to the built in DVR and then watch/record it through my DVico app which does a much more consistantly better job than the CapDVHS for the pc.

Hope that this helps you newbies out there that are beyond reading the rest of this thread to figure out what their problems are. As mentioned several times in previous posts there are a couple other great links that are mentioned that also help in explaining things and should be sufficient for anyone who wants to make a go of this to make it work on their systems.

I also have a comment on the posting about the drivers not being certified M$ drivers, so what, they guy who made the original drivers said that he wasn't paying out to have M$ make them certified, other than that they are even more stable than a lot of drivers I have had the misfortune of using in the past and as far as "beta" versions go, these are so far beyond that point that I would say they are solid "RTM" version drivers without M$'s blessings and are much more superior to even some of M$'s so called "certified" drivers are. If you don't want to use them on your system then so be it, but don't downgrade them to everyone else because they do work and are very stable and do exactly what they are supposed to do. I look in a future version of Windows for these drivers to be certified and included with the OS. Can anyone say MCE2006?

HTH
DT
You might want to try the firewire.zip from http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=26&MessageID=104152
I have updated the inf to support some more STBs including the SA3250HD, SA4250HD, SA8000HD, SA8300HD as well as the DCT-6XXX.
The installer will upgrade those STBs and the Motorola STBs during install or if installed before the STB will place the inf so the inf will be found using the recommended driver install option. If you dont want channel.exe or its other variations or the MCE integration you can deselect those during the installation.

Help. I have installed a 1394 firewire card in my PC. WinXP home.
When inspecting hardware via "system", it is not listed under
"network devices" or any other place.
I have tried installing new hardware, failing, and listing devices
for installing, and I am asked for a driver in regard to the 1394
device.
It is a snazio card, and on the board it says "V-one".
I tried swapping it with another working slot, but no success.

I read from Snazio that I need open host controller(s) so I
downloaded this from MS ver. 1.1. But the driver dialog box
is looking for an *.inf file and there are none in the unpacked files
from the downloaded file..

Q.1 should WinXP home recognise a 1394 without any fuss?
Q.2 Is there still some *.inf file out there which is not in my windows?

Eventually I wish to download from a JVC camcorder to record on DVD.
It is listed as JVC DR D33-AG

Q.4 Would somebody help a beginner please?

p.s. I can take it if you tell me I have a dead board..... :-)

Thanks, Bigshoes

Well my last dvd movie made with NeroVison Express 3 just turned out with horrible audio sync problems!!! Nothing seems to work properly ... Very frustraing and disapointing...

Well my last dvd movie made with NeroVison Express 3 just turned out with horrible audio sync problems!!! Nothing seems to work properly ... Very frustraing and disapointing... Could well be your problem originates in the captured .ts file, so no matter what tools you use for re-encoding you will have the problem. I just ran into one yesterday where the .ts file would play fine without audio/video sync problems but the final re-encoded mpeg was out of sync. The fix turned out to be running Womble's GOP fixer on the original captured .ts file. The .ts file was full of GOP errors that Womble was able to fix. Then I went through my normal re-encode procedure and the end result was in sync audio/video.

I ran the Womble's Gop fixer on the .TS file and re did the dvd with NeroVision Express 3... exact same out come.. Audio sync problem.. that's two more dvd's in the garbage.. I play the orginal .ts file with VLC and Audio sync is perfect !!! Nero does'nt work.. QuENC for sure does'nt work, that's even worse....

Running DgIindex,save project, I get a .ac3 file with out the .ac3 file extension... supposed to look like... try AC3 PID 034 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY -710ms.ac3

All I get is this... try AC3 PID 034 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY -710ms

when I try to rename the file to try.ac3.. Quenc program fails to open the file....

Yet another grey area.....

I tried re capturing the movie and setting Capdvhs file extensions to .mpg. and re created the dvd again with Nero.. this time the audio synce was perfect!! omg.. some thing actually worked for once ?!!! I was so amazed... but very shortly lived till I found out only 3/4 of the movie got recorded to the dvd.... !!!! This is an f'n joke!!!!!

Is their any way to play the origianal captured .ts file back to the MotorolaDCT6412 or directly to the TV?? I guess you can buy a Rocu 1000 player... or watch the .TS file movie on your computer... other than that is their any way to play the raw .ts file back to the MotorolaDCT6412 or directly to the TV??

Hello everyone.... thanks for all the late night reading material!

I've been following moyekj's instructions on his web page. I've got a Comcast Motorola 6412, and bought a firewire card and cable to try this out after reading this forum.

With the instructions, I got the drivers installed, hardware recognized and the diagnostics menu in the 6412 shows an active ports = 1.

The problem I have is getting CapDVHS to recognize it. I keep getting the 'cannot find capture device' error. I have unplugged and re plugged (both the computer and the 6412) in the firewire cables as instructed, but it hasn't worked.

Is there any other way to see if I am getting the handshaking to take place? Is there anything else I might be missing to get this to work?

I'm beginning to doubt this is going to work for me - especially since most of the movies recorded on my DVR are from TCM which shows the 5C Implementation. Still, it would be a nice thing if I could get it to work for some other channels.

thanks

You might want to try the firewire.zip from http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=26&MessageID=104152
I have updated the inf to support some more STBs including the SA3250HD, SA4250HD, SA8000HD, SA8300HD as well as the DCT-6XXX.
The installer will upgrade those STBs and the Motorola STBs during install or if installed before the STB will place the inf so the inf will be found using the recommended driver install option. If you dont want channel.exe or its other variations or the MCE integration you can deselect those during the installation.


Thanks for letting us know, you said you updated the drivers for the Motorolla's, or am I reading that wrong? What exactly did you update about them? I took a look at that .zip file on your post there but all I could get out of it was an installer which didn't have any useable files in it when it was extracted, do you have WinZip or 7Zip where you can create the same files except in a way that can be extracted so that one can use the files inside it? You may find that 7Zip files are smaller by comparison, and help you're bandwidth usage as well.

I ran womble gop fixer, when you set the out put file to a specific folder nothing gets out putted ! no new file is recorded...????? what is going on... ????

I tried re capturing the movie and setting Capdvhs file extensions to .mpg. and re created the dvd again with Nero.. this time the audio synce was perfect!! omg.. some thing actually worked for once ?!!! I was so amazed... but very shortly lived till I found out only 3/4 of the movie got recorded to the dvd.... !!!! This is an f'n joke!!!!!


I suspect it's a case of us not being aware of, nor understanding the implications of the possible settings. As I've said I think Neros documentation sucks. It's possible what happened is due to you having set a file size restriction.

I think if we can learn more about the process Nero will work quite well.

I have not yet figured out yet how to edit a video with Nero accurately.

Wolf

Thanks for letting us know, you said you updated the drivers for the Motorolla's, or am I reading that wrong? What exactly did you update about them? I took a look at that .zip file on your post there but all I could get out of it was an installer which didn't have any useable files in it when it was extracted, do you have WinZip or 7Zip where you can create the same files except in a way that can be extracted so that one can use the files inside it? You may find that 7Zip files are smaller by comparison, and help you're bandwidth usage as well.
You really want to run the installer, you get the option to just install the drivers, or the drivers and channel.exe, the installer does the update existing drivers and place the inf in a position that windows will find it. The files without the installer are just newer versions of the drivers and inf you have with some added motorola PnPIDs and SA STBs. The .sys files havent changed, the infs contain more STBs and the installer makes sure the new inf is applied to existing STBs and makes it easier for new installs of STBs

I have followed Kevin Moye's excellent instructions to the letter, but I am having a little trouble with the audio. Hope someone can help me.

Capture from Motorola 6412 via Firewire using CapDVHS, no problem, save using .ts extension
.ts file plays fine with VLC, Media Player Classic.
Run DGIndex to make the .dv2 and .ac3 files, no problems
The .ac3 file plays no problem, sound is good, using Nero Showtime
Run QuEnc to encode.
This works fine, except the resulting .mpg file SOMETIMES has no audio, at least no audio I can hear with a whole slate of players.
Have setup QuEnc exactly as Kevin says.

I am trying to encode an HD Program from Channel INHD 665, Comcast Cable, Seattle, Wa. I have successfully encoded from this Channel all the way through, with audio. However, sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't, even though I follow the exact same steps. The longer the capture, the less luck I have.

Related Issue: I often get the following error when loading the .avs file in QuEnc:
"DirectShowSource: the filter graph manager won't talk to me"
on line 8 of the .avs file, which is the line that loads the audio. Again, this is intermittent, and apparently depends on exactly when I start the capture, as far as I can tell.

Thanks for your help!

Rioutous

Has anyone with a Samsung DLP TV or any TV with IEE1394\DTV connections and an HD tuner (ATSC\OTA) with Cable Card access, ever been able to record from their TV to computer?

If I want to record an output to or from the device. But is there a way to just copy already recorded shows from the device? They should be stored as files on there right?

Thanks to this thread, I've been able to get some shows off of my Comcast 6412 over to my PC. However, I'm running into a problem with long HD shows. CapDVHS seems to stop recording when the file size reaches 4GB. Since almost every file maxes out at this same point this must be a known issue related either to CapDVHS or Windows. What's the work-around here? I've looked for a setting in CapDVHS to split the file in 1GB increments or something, but I can't seem to find anything.

Thanks to this thread, I've been able to get some shows off of my Comcast 6412 over to my PC. However, I'm running into a problem with long HD shows. CapDVHS seems to stop recording when the file size reaches 4GB. Since almost every file maxes out at this same point this must be a known issue related either to CapDVHS or Windows. What's the work-around here? I've looked for a setting in CapDVHS to split the file in 1GB increments or something, but I can't seem to find anything.


Sounds like a limitation of your Operating System or Filesystem. I'm using the
6412 and CapDVHS on WinXP SP2 with NTFS and have no problems with files
over 4gb. What OS and File System are you on?

CapDVHS seems to stop recording when the file size reaches 4GB. Since almost every file maxes out at this same point this must be a known issue related either to CapDVHS or Windows. What's the work-around here? I've looked for a setting in CapDVHS to split the file in 1GB increments or something, but I can't seem to find anything.

Sounds like you're recording to a FAT32 partition. The maximum file size in a FAT32 partition is 4GB. Try recording to an NTFS partition instead.

I'm totally clueless on hard drive partitions other than being familliar with the terms. Do you guys recommend NTFS for all hard disks or just those for use with high volume media as with movies, etc?

I've been thinking of doing a system re-load on that PC anyway...maybe this is the time. There's no way to change the partition type without reformatting, right?

I'm totally clueless on hard drive partitions other than being familliar with the terms. Do you guys recommend NTFS for all hard disks or just those for use with high volume media as with movies, etc?

I've been thinking of doing a system re-load on that PC anyway...maybe this is the time. There's no way to change the partition type without reformatting, right?

You can see what type of partition you're using by opening Windows Explorer and right-clicking on a drive, and then selecting Properties from the pop-up menu.

Windows XP has a command line program called CONVERT that is capable of changing FAT32 partitions to NTFS without any loss of data. You can open a command prompt and type in CONVERT /? to see the options available.

As for FAT32 vs. NTFS preference, it really depends on what you do with your computer. I use NTFS for the convenience - there's no practical file size limits, and there's the added bonus of enabling folder/file access restrictions, and the more complex software RAID configurations are only available under NTFS. However, you may prefer to stick with FAT32 for compatibility reasons (for example, if you have an external hard drive that you connect to WinXP and older Win9x or WinMe systems).

You may want to check out sites like this (http://windows.about.com/od/filesfoldersdisks/l/aa001231b.htm) for more info.

If I want to record an output to or from the device. But is there a way to just copy already recorded shows from the device? They should be stored as files on there right?This question has been posted many times in this thread which means you haven't bothered reading at all. Do you think for a second if this were possible that this thread would be 1,500+ posts long discussing how to "record" from the blasted thing versus mapping it as a network drive and simply copying the files?

Help.

I'm try to get my SA 4200HD talking to my Windows XP Pro SP2 machine. I have Firewire patch installed from M$. I'm using the SA drivers found in green button forum.

In testing, I'm using VLC. The picture comes up, but it's VERY pixelated.

Any thoughts?

Hi, i recently got a Moto 6200 with firmware 7.17. Has anyone seen it that high? Will it still work?


LOL, i just noticed that im a bit late! My cable company sucks :eek:

I've been monotoring this thread hoping for a answer to a problem that I'm having with Digital OTA ( ATSC ) Recording. but have yet to see any like issues.
Equipment as follows:
Sharp LC32D7U HDTV LCD ATSC/QAM/CableCard?Ieee
Custom Media PC w/ Windows Media Center 5.0 Operating System,
meidvhs/CapDVHS for recording
MSI K8 NEO w/ AMD 754 3400 cpu
400 gb SATA Drive
ATI Radeon 9600 Video Card
Hauppage WinTV150 NTSC Tuner Card
Creative Audigy2.zs w/ firewire

My problem lies in recording the OTA channels in the Savanah, Ga. area. With one station, WTOC 11.1 Digital ( CBS ), I have no issues with recording using firewire between TV and PC, having recorded over 20 hours of HDTV w/ Digital Stream audio. Playback on Windows Media Center 10 without issues.

One the other local station, WSAV 3.1 Digital ( NBC ), I am unable to playback any recorded programming, including Sundays NASCAR event from Indy, Sunday or Monday Primetime HDTV, or Tonight Show. CapDVHS shows a recrding in process, what appears to be a valid Windows Media file is generated, but either playback or trying to access file causes system to hang, and generates a " Windows Mdia Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file"
C00D1199 Cannot play the file

I have tried recording a partial off the working channel, playback is fine
I have tried recording a partial of the working channel, changing the TV Tuner to 3-1 and doing a partial recording, then stopping and attempting to replay. It will not playback and generates the same error.

Any ideas would be appreciated
Dave

Here's what I found so far.

My equipment is as follows:
Abit IS7 System Board
512Meg
Pentium 4 2.0Ghz
Windows XP Pro SP2
SA 4200HD on Cablevison


Without the Windows Firewire hotpatch, I install per the instructions in the first post with the all the software as well.

When I run CapDVHS, I am able to record the lower channels in SD (I tested channel 02 and 04). CapDVHS in the data info tab correctly displays the bit rate, size, and fps. I was then able to play the file back using VLC. When I go to record a HD channel, CapDVHS show no data info and the file created is 0 in size. Sometime CapDVHS crashes. I also wasn't able to get VLC to show a stream from the cablebox.

I'm going to run more tests with different drivers. I'm backing up and restoring my machine so I don't get conflicts as I install the drivers.

OK, so most people have been able to record HD (and non HD) via firewire using CapDVHS. I've successfully done this and played the program back via MediaPlayerClassic. My question is this...

Is there any way to automate this process with "Tivo-Like" functionality? Ideally my goal would be to build a fairly powerful PC with a large HD capacity, hook it up to my cable box via firewire and record HD or non HD content with a Tivo type of interface. Has something like this already been programmed? Would this be do-able with something like MythTV? I'm assuming an IR Blaster of some kind would be needed for the cable box, but that seems possible.

Thanks for any info. :)

Ok, So maybe I've been able to answer my own question after piddling around on my day off.

I tried again, using both .mpg ( as I have been ) and .ts extensions and both yeild the same results on the NBC Main Channel and weather Sub-Channel, nothing. I actually looked at the capture screen in CaDCHS and there is no data listed...... So is this a sign that the Programming is being Flagged by either the station or by NBC??
I tried the same with the CBS affiliate and its 3 channels, Main 1920 x 1080 & Two other
704 x 480 Sub-channels ( one weather radar & a music channel ) and both yeild perfect picture/sound recordings with Media Player 10.

Anyone having similar issues?
Do I have any recourse?
Is this intentional by NBC & or Affiliate or an oversight?

Dave

OK, so most people have been able to record HD (and non HD) via firewire using CapDVHS. I've successfully done this and played the program back via MediaPlayerClassic. My question is this...

Is there any way to automate this process with "Tivo-Like" functionality? Ideally my goal would be to build a fairly powerful PC with a large HD capacity, hook it up to my cable box via firewire and record HD or non HD content with a Tivo type of interface. Has something like this already been programmed? Would this be do-able with something like MythTV? I'm assuming an IR Blaster of some kind would be needed for the cable box, but that seems possible.

Thanks for any info. :)
Its been done for MCE, see http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=26&MessageID=104152

Here's what I found so far.

My equipment is as follows:
Abit IS7 System Board
512Meg
Pentium 4 2.0Ghz
Windows XP Pro SP2
SA 4200HD on Cablevison


Without the Windows Firewire hotpatch, I install per the instructions in the first post with the all the software as well.

When I run CapDVHS, I am able to record the lower channels in SD (I tested channel 02 and 04). CapDVHS in the data info tab correctly displays the bit rate, size, and fps. I was then able to play the file back using VLC. When I go to record a HD channel, CapDVHS show no data info and the file created is 0 in size. Sometime CapDVHS crashes. I also wasn't able to get VLC to show a stream from the cablebox.

I'm going to run more tests with different drivers. I'm backing up and restoring my machine so I don't get conflicts as I install the drivers.
I had the 4200HD working with Cablevision in NJ for some time (including pay channels). Something changed about 2 weeks ago (probably some type of firmware update). There is a thread here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=564643) that discusses this.

Nothing showing up in the data tab is consistent with the 5C copy protection flag being set. Overall, the stability of CAPDVHS with the new Cablevision 4200HD update is bad. I've tried some different settings (unchecked the 'Convert 188 bytes' options), but I haven't found a way to stop CAPDVHS from crashing. Recording from a real DVHS deck does seem to work. I did get Starz-HD to record, but everything else would crash. I didn't let the Starz recording go very far, though, so it may have crashed later.

Help.

I'm try to get my SA 4200HD talking to my Windows XP Pro SP2 machine. I have Firewire patch installed from M$. I'm using the SA drivers found in green button forum.

In testing, I'm using VLC. The picture comes up, but it's VERY pixelated.

Any thoughts?



I was experiencing the same problem when trying to capture the stream live with directshow in VLC version 0.8.1 but I just downloaded version 0.8.2 and it is working for me using the motorola 6200.

Hey guys, newbie here, been perusing the posts trying ot do a bunch of learning as i just got a mot 6412. I'm a video editor and have a Win XP machine set up to edit and author dvd's. I haven't tried anything here yet (need to do some more reading and get a good firewire cable to reach my PC), but I was curious if anyone had any luck going from the DVR right into the DVDStorm card. It has a firewire input as well as s-video and composite video/audio, as well as it's own capturing software.

I'm mainly interested in capturing stored programs, all in SD (no HD, still working on that).

Sorry if I'm in the wrong place (and if this is WAY to long an introduction into your fine board), but so far what I see here seems close and I haven't seen any stuff on going into a DVStorm. Any and all advice would be fantabulous.

I'll be doing more searching and research, and willing to answer any other questions that may help out.

Thanks in advance. Just found this and already see myself with a few long nights up reading......

After starting to play with this stuff I haven't slept since Spring...

Wolf

i know this may be an "illegal" question but is there a work-around for encrypted material? copy protected stuff?

Hello everyone.... thanks for all the late night reading material!

I've been following moyekj's instructions on his web page. I've got a Comcast Motorola 6412, and bought a firewire card and cable to try this out after reading this forum.

With the instructions, I got the drivers installed, hardware recognized and the diagnostics menu in the 6412 shows an active ports = 1.

The problem I have is getting CapDVHS to recognize it. I keep getting the 'cannot find capture device' error. I have unplugged and re plugged (both the computer and the 6412) in the firewire cables as instructed, but it hasn't worked.

Is there any other way to see if I am getting the handshaking to take place? Is there anything else I might be missing to get this to work?

I'm beginning to doubt this is going to work for me - especially since most of the movies recorded on my DVR are from TCM which shows the 5C Implementation. Still, it would be a nice thing if I could get it to work for some other channels.

thanks

Make sure you are using the correct .inf file, not the one Windows automatically selects. I let Windows pick the .inf file first and no go. I went back and re-read moyekj's site and followed it exactly, which worked (well worked as far as getting the content to the PC, now I'm trying to sort out other issues).

Are there any good resources that talk about differing resolutions and video but rates? I've been capturing 1 hour shows (I'm a Stargate SG-1/Atlantis fiend), and keep getting differing results.

When I first got the 6412, captured a few shows, got 720x480 @15MB/S, then got 720x480 @7.5MB/S, now getting 528x480 @15 MB/S. Any ideas why? Using CAPDVHS to capture. Is it that the 6412 is getting full and it is using a different sample rate to conserve space?

Some of the above won't convert properly using HDTVtoMPEG2. I kinda shelved that for a while, DL'd the 30 day eval of Womble, that can read and edit the .ts files, but is this a good idea, or should they be program streams prior to editting?

Thanks in advance for replies.

The nut.

Hi, posted earlier about the Canopus DVStorm card. As an update, i can record using CapDVHS, which is cool, but I go in through my second firewire card. The Canopus card has it's own firewire port, but it does not seem to recognize it the STB.

I may have lost you...but my question is more basic, what is the format that the cable box sends out? is it just a video image? Is there any way to record it as an AVI file so I can edit it in Premiere? Are there other good recorders? Can I connect the box to my computer through the composite video? If I split it would I lose a ton of image quality? Why hasn't Mary Ferguson called me back? (Wait that last one just slipped out, been buggin me for awhile).

I know some of the answers lie in the is forum, but although I know video, this end has me in new territory, so a primer is cool. Or at least directions to said primer.

Drive fast. Take chances.

I tried to convert my MPEG TS file to MPEG PS using QuEnc (with AviSynth) and then write it to DVD with Sonic MyDVD 5.0. However, I either can't write the DVD or the sound is horrible. Any assistance would be appreciated.

CAPDVS indicates the video is 720x480, but does not indicate interlaced or progressive. I am assuming progressive. The audio is AC3 2/0 320. If I tell QuEnc to convert to AC3 the sound is very good. However, Sonic MyDVD 5.0 tells me the mpeg file is not compatible. If I tell QuEnc to convert to MP2 audio, Sonic MyDVD 5.0 will read it, but the audio is really bad.

Any suggestions?

I just got this to work. Thanks OP!
My Details:
Sharp 32D7U
Dell GX270 PC
3.2 Ghz Pentium IV
80Gb Seagate HD SATA
1 Gig RAM
ATI ALL IN WONDER 9600
Comcast Cable Card (in Chicago)

I've only fiddled around with it for a bit and I was able
to get crystal clear recordings of INHD for about 5 minutes
before I got anxious and wanted to see it.
Thanks again

i know this may be an "illegal" question but is there a work-around for encrypted material? copy protected stuff?

Negative Ghostrider....

Are there any good resources that talk about differing resolutions and video but rates? I've been capturing 1 hour shows (I'm a Stargate SG-1/Atlantis fiend), and keep getting differing results.

When I first got the 6412, captured a few shows, got 720x480 @15MB/S, then got 720x480 @7.5MB/S, now getting 528x480 @15 MB/S. Any ideas why? Using CAPDVHS to capture. Is it that the 6412 is getting full and it is using a different sample rate to conserve space?

Some of the above won't convert properly using HDTVtoMPEG2. I kinda shelved that for a while, DL'd the 30 day eval of Womble, that can read and edit the .ts files, but is this a good idea, or should they be program streams prior to editting?

Thanks in advance for replies.

The nut.


According to the preview for the Sci-Fi's friday line-up, they have changed the format in which they are recording the shows. They were using a 16:9 analog format now they are using the digital anamorphic widescreen sizing. ?2.33:1 I believe is what it is? Sci-Fi channel is supposed to switch to full digital later this year instead of being the analog channel they are currently using, so a lot of thier line-up is already switching formats getting ready for the switch. Too, you have to remember they are filming those shows in Canada so they may also be using the PAL format instead of the NTSC which also uses different sizing. Though the show may be originally filmed in PAL, they are converting it at the head end to send it to you in NTSC, though it may not be a full conversion therefore the sizing wont change only the format in which it's being sent.

As far as the 6412 using a different sample rate to conserve space, I'm not sure that it does, as I have one and have noticed no differences when mine starts to get full. But I don't record my Sci-Friday shows to it either, I have a F3Q which I use to record those shows to the PC and what I do record to the DVR, (primarily Drew Barrymore/Vin Diesel movies,) are only there to view on the TV since I don't have the Mac nor the PC setup for playback on the TV.

When I record shows, over firewire, I use the Mac then move the files it saves to the PC for storage/playback/conversion purposes as it handles those functions better. Besides the Mac is a PowerBook with limited HDD space and the PC has several drives for storage and the CapDVHS software is native to the Mac unlike the PC. For those shows I would try using a regular tuner in the PC to record them until Sci-Fi moves to a digital channel.

One last thing, if your using the CapDVHS to capture, that has nothing to do with the DVR functionality of your 6412 they are two different things, one records to the 6412's HDD and the other uses the Mac/PC's HDD's to hold the files.

This question has been posted many times in this thread which means you haven't bothered reading at all. Do you think for a second if this were possible that this thread would be 1,500+ posts long discussing how to "record" from the blasted thing versus mapping it as a network drive and simply copying the files?

I looked too and didn't seem to find it. I even searched but maybe I'm not using the correct terms to find it. I even searched using my box and only found a few replies.

Im new here, and read almost every page of this thread, but unclear about a few things, so maybe you guys can clear them up.

Im used to archiving mainly analog signals.But i want to start doing digital to digital.Since most of the shows i archive arent in HDTV, will the firewire port on the moto 6208 work with non hdtv broadcasts?
And is 5c only hdtv, or is it also in premium channels like starz/encore?
Also instead of using my pc or my mac, has anyone tried recording from the firewire port to a dvd recorder(like dvdirect vrd-vc20) with firewire input? I havent found any discussion on this, and i know d-vhs is used, but i dont own a d-vhs vcr.

Thanks in advance.

I looked too and didn't seem to find it. I even searched but maybe I'm not using the correct terms to find it. I even searched using my box and only found a few replies.Sorry, it was in the 6412 iGuide thread. Try HERE. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=5906601#post5906601)

So I have gotten this all to work and have a program on my PC in MPG format. I am trying to get this onto a DVD in a format that I can play back in a DVD player and am having issues. I am using Nero to either burn it directly or do a recode to put it into correct format but I am getting errors all the time when trying this. What is a good program to help me with this?

Too, you have to remember they are filming those shows in Canada so they may also be using the PAL format instead of the NTSCJust FYI: Canada uses NTSC as well: http://www.photo2video.co.uk/International%20Video%20TV%20standards.htm.

Xesdeeni

I have been trying to get the MPG file to DVD using nero and it seems no matter what I do I get errors. The error I keep getting is Segment format and MPEG format are incompatible idea?

So I have actually gotten this through nero and burned to a DVD. However it is somewhat choppy every mintue or so it chops up for a second and continues. I see this has happened a few times in this thread but not sure what to do about it at this point. I used nero vision express and exported the MPG to a movie file then burned to a disc. Are there settings I should be changing or different software first????

I'v been using Nero Vision express 2 and 3.. using .ts files... while Using N. V. express 2 the Dvd's turn out perfect!!! no skipping.. as soon as I updated to N. V. express 3.. nothing but probplems... Dvd's skip and choppy images.. I have to uninstall Nero and reinstall back to N.V express 2. seems to be working better than N.V express 3 for me... hope this helps.....

When you burn it to DVD, doesn't that downrez it?

I just setup a Moto DCT6412 from Comcast in Atlanta and a 25 dollar firewire card in an XP PC. So far I've been able to record anything I want to.

Thanks for the info.

So effectively to transfer anything off the box via firewire you have to watch the program? I haven't found anything that states you can just pull the file off the box.

When you burn it to DVD, doesn't that downrez it?

It depends on the source broadcast resolution.For normal SD broadcasts, I believe the source is 640 x 480. And with typical dvd recorders, they record at 720 x 480 (NTSC), so for SD it wont downgrade the resolution.Im not familair with HD broadcasts, but i believe the resolutions are 1080, so in that case it would be downgraded.
As soon as dvd-hd becomes available there wont be any downgrading.
I dont know much about blu-ray, but i believe once thats available it will be the solution of choice.

So effectively to transfer anything off the box via firewire you have to watch the program? I haven't found anything that states you can just pull the file off the box.You have to playback the movie to record it. Whatever is displaying, except the graphics of course, is being sent to the firewire port. I usually record stuff before I go to bed or before I leave for work. You can also watch DVDs or if you have another 6412, you can switch inputs and watch something recorded on the DVR or live TV.

Well i just picked up a moto 6208 (firmware 8.12) and checked if the firewire ports were active and they are.I also checked if 5c was enabled, and it wasnt. So i decided to hook up my dvdirect vrd-vc20 via firewire, and it didnt detect signal, so I guess the only option to record is via pc or mac firewire. Funny thing is that the moto 6208 detected something was on the firewire port, but the dvdirect didnt detect a signal, so wont record.

Maybe im misunderstanding something here...

When using a digital source(STB firewire port), is it a a/v signal like an analog signal, or is it something different like a file? Trying to figure out the difference between a signal you get from a DV camcorder firewire port versus the firewire port on the STB.

Are there any good resources that talk about differing resolutions and video but rates? I've been capturing 1 hour shows (I'm a Stargate SG-1/Atlantis fiend), and keep getting differing results.

When I first got the 6412, captured a few shows, got 720x480 @15MB/S, then got 720x480 @7.5MB/S, now getting 528x480 @15 MB/S. Any ideas why? Using CAPDVHS to capture. Is it that the 6412 is getting full and it is using a different sample rate to conserve space?

Some of the above won't convert properly using HDTVtoMPEG2. I kinda shelved that for a while, DL'd the 30 day eval of Womble, that can read and edit the .ts files, but is this a good idea, or should they be program streams prior to editting?

Thanks in advance for replies.

The nut.


I can't say for sure but with my motorola 6200 analog channels that were being converted to digital by the cable box came out 720x480 @ 8.5Mbps and now we have gone to an all digital platform and they are coming through at 544x480 @ 15Mbps. Some of the control over digital channel resolution and Mbps is done in your cable companies head end. So my guess is it may be something that the cable company changed. Here are some examples of my channels resoltion and bitrate:

ABC HD 1280x720p 12Mbps 60fps
CBS HD 1920x1080i 19Mbps 29.97fps
FMC 704x480 3.8944Mbps 29.97fps
HBO 528x480 2.3452Mbps 29.97fps
HBO HD 1920x1080i 25Mbps 29.97fps
HDNET 1920x1080i 25Mbps 29.97fps
History 720x480i 8.5Mbps 29.97fps(after all digital it is now 544x480@25Mbp)
IFC 704x480 3.7944Mbos 29.97fps
MTV2 528x480 1.8868Mbps 29.97fps
NBC HD 1920x1080i 25Mbps 29.97fps
NFL Net 704x480 15Mbps 29.97fps
Science 528x480 15Mbps 29.97fps
Showtime 528x480 2.3036Mbps 29.97fps
Showtime HD 1920x1080i 25Mbps 29.97fps
Starz 704x480 1.9248Mbps 29.97fps

I can't say for sure but with my motorola 6200 analog channels that were being converted to digital by the cable box came out 720x480 @ 8.5Mbps and now we have gone to an all digital platform and they are coming through at 544x480 @ 15Mbps. Some of the control over digital channel resolution and Mbps is done in your cable companies head end. So my guess is it may be something that the cable company changed. Here are some examples of my channels resoltion and bitrate:

ABC HD 1280x720p 12Mbps 60fps
CBS HD 1920x1080i 19Mbps 29.97fps
FMC 704x480 3.8944Mbps 29.97fps
HBO 528x480 2.3452Mbps 29.97fps
HBO HD 1920x1080i 25Mbps 29.97fps
HDNET 1920x1080i 25Mbps 29.97fps
History 720x480i 8.5Mbps 29.97fps(after all digital it is now 544x480@15Mbp)
IFC 704x480 3.7944Mbos 29.97fps
MTV2 528x480 1.8868Mbps 29.97fps
NBC HD 1920x1080i 25Mbps 29.97fps
NFL Net 704x480 15Mbps 29.97fps
Science 528x480 15Mbps 29.97fps
Showtime 528x480 2.3036Mbps 29.97fps
Showtime HD 1920x1080i 25Mbps 29.97fps
Starz 704x480 1.9248Mbps 29.97fps

history in now 544x480@15Mbps not 25Mbps...oops

can I get directed as to how or where to find this info? Using Comcast Moto DCT 6412 DVR.

can I get directed as to how or where to find this info? Using Comcast Moto DCT 6412 DVR.
http://www.powerpage.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/powerpage.woa/wa/story?newsID=13379
AND
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=386740&perpage=20

Hello,

First off thanks a million for those who put this thread together. I was able to record off the 6412 using CAPDVHS via firewire within minutes.

However, I'm having a problem that I don't see described here. While CAPDVHS was recording, I noticed that the timer on the bottom of the app would sometimes stop, then restart after a few seconds, with no apparent regularity. I let the recording finish ("Finding Nemo" off of my DVR recordings, 106 minutes ), and played back the ts file using VLC.

In places where I noticed the CAPDVHS timer pausing, the recording did indeed "jump" due to lost time. I played the discontinuity over and over again to make sure it happens consistently and it does. So I'm pretty sure it's the recording, not the playback.

Any ideas what's going on here? One interesting thing I noticed was when the recording timer stopped, if I wiggled the mouse it would always start up again. Strange... At the end of the movie I had about 12 minutes extra on the timer, to account for the "lost" time.

I'm using an emachines T6212 which is an athlon 64 3200+ with 512M Ram (-64M for onboard video) and a 160G ATA (not SATA) hard drive, not sure what the rpm is on the drive. I have all windowsXP power management turned off as well.

Any ideas would be appreciated.
-coflo

Since my original post above, I have added a hard drive to my system, did a fresh install of XP Pro and set up the moto-firewire-capDVHS software with all the latest drivers.

I'm now recording to an independent drive (160G Seagate Barracuda IDE), separate from the OS/Swap/Temp drive, so nothing else should be accessing the drive I'm recording to. I also turned off indexing and restore services for the drive. I'm still getting random pauses during capDVHS recording. Some of these pauses can last several seconds, even tens of seconds, and seem random in occurence. The the capdvhs recording time counter actually stops during these pauses.

Anyone have any other ideas what could cause this?

Thanks,
Coflo

Since my original post above, I have added a hard drive to my system, did a fresh install of XP Pro and set up the moto-firewire-capDVHS software with all the latest drivers.

I'm now recording to an independent drive (160G Seagate Barracuda IDE), separate from the OS/Swap/Temp drive, so nothing else should be accessing the drive I'm recording to. I also turned off indexing and restore services for the drive. I'm still getting random pauses during capDVHS recording. Some of these pauses can last several seconds, even tens of seconds, and seem random in occurence. The the capdvhs recording time counter actually stops during these pauses.

Anyone have any other ideas what could cause this?

Thanks,
CofloThis is a shot in the dark but did you install the Windows XP SP2 1394/firewire patch. (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CA0F2007-18B5-4112-8BD6-8BF4BD3130B9&displaylang=en ??) I had the same symptoms as you but it was a forewarning that my HDD was about to crash. I replaced the HDD and it recorded fine. So with everything you did above I don't see how it could be the HDD.

Since my original post above, I have added a hard drive to my system, did a fresh install of XP Pro and set up the moto-firewire-capDVHS software with all the latest drivers.

I'm now recording to an independent drive (160G Seagate Barracuda IDE), separate from the OS/Swap/Temp drive, so nothing else should be accessing the drive I'm recording to. I also turned off indexing and restore services for the drive. I'm still getting random pauses during capDVHS recording. Some of these pauses can last several seconds, even tens of seconds, and seem random in occurence. The the capdvhs recording time counter actually stops during these pauses.

Anyone have any other ideas what could cause this?

Thanks,
Coflo

It could be happening if you have poor signal quality on that particular outlet that is hooked up to the cable box and you are recording a digital channel. The box may be having trouble staying locked on to the digital QAM. But if you can watch it on a tv from that cable box and not see any tiling or loss of picture it obviously is something else and I have been no help at all. But if you want you can also check the diagnostics of a motorola cable box by pressing the power button(while tuned to the particular channel you want to check) and then the select button(but not at the same time) If you go to the current channel status option or something to that effect it should give you a signal to noise reading and if you have High short term error counts that could indicate a problem

I have been able to record from my Motorola 6412 using CapDVHS for several months without problems. Today, although the program appeared to be recording and I was watching it on the TV, the data info never appeared in the CapDVHS screen. I thought this was strange. After it finished, the .ts file was about 1.5 GB which is on the small side but I've had a few others that were similar. When I tried to play it with VLC there was no picture or audio. I had this semi-large file but it appeared blank. VLC didn't even show static, the viewer never appeared. I tried a couple of other shows that I had recorded several weeks ago that were still on the DVR and they recorded via CapDVHS just fine but the one I wanted seems to be blank. I contacted Comcast, mainly to find out if anything had changed and what their position was on recording from DVR to computer. This is their response. " The Firewire port is enabled on the DVR box and will allow you to connect the box to your computer. Comcast does not offer any assistance with this type of connection. Pay Per View and OnDemand programs cannot be recorded by the DVR machine. All other programs should successfully record."
Does anyone know what could have happened?

I've had several occasions where CapDVHS appeared to have been capturing the whole show, even showing normal info in the Info tab but the resulting .ts file ended up way too small and either was not playable or cut off a portion of the show. The solution for me is to try the capture again (I always capture from pre-recorded shows not live shows) and so far the second try has always worked.

Hello
I followed the instructions, was able to load the driver and it appears OK. Problem is that the software I downloaded (Capsomething) does not find a device when I start it up, over and over. Any ideas? does the memory card slot works at all?
Thank you
Ra

Hello
I followed the instructions, was able to load the driver and it appears OK. Problem is that the software I downloaded (Capsomething) does not find a device when I start it up, over and over. Any ideas? does the memory card slot works at all?
Thank you
Ra

When you check in control panel does the tuner/avc device under imaging show that you have the motorola version under details?

I have been able to record from my Motorola 6412 using CapDVHS for several months without problems. Today, although the program appeared to be recording and I was watching it on the TV, the data info never appeared in the CapDVHS screen. I thought this was strange. After it finished, the .ts file was about 1.5 GB which is on the small side but I've had a few others that were similar. When I tried to play it with VLC there was no picture or audio. I had this semi-large file but it appeared blank. VLC didn't even show static, the viewer never appeared. I tried a couple of other shows that I had recorded several weeks ago that were still on the DVR and they recorded via CapDVHS just fine but the one I wanted seems to be blank. I contacted Comcast, mainly to find out if anything had changed and what their position was on recording from DVR to computer. This is their response. " The Firewire port is enabled on the DVR box and will allow you to connect the box to your computer. Comcast does not offer any assistance with this type of connection. Pay Per View and OnDemand programs cannot be recorded by the DVR machine. All other programs should successfully record."
Does anyone know what could have happened?Most likely 5C was enabled on that channel. In my comcast area I was getting all channels in the clear until Aug. 8th. Now the only HD channels in the clear are the nets. Check the "d06 current channel status" in the 6412 user menu by pressing power off then SELECT on the remote. If you see ENC next to the TYPE: DIGITAL then you are out of luck. Go HERE (http://cjhengineering.com/hdtv/cablehdtv/dctdiag.htm) for more details.

This is a shot in the dark but did you install the Windows XP SP2 1394/firewire patch. (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CA0F2007-18B5-4112-8BD6-8BF4BD3130B9&displaylang=en ??) I had the same symptoms as you but it was a forewarning that my HDD was about to crash. I replaced the HDD and it recorded fine. So with everything you did above I don't see how it could be the HDD.

Looked promising, but the XP firewire patch had no effect. I believe I've eliminated the hard drive as the issue as I've tried different physical hard drives and had the same problem.

One of the interesting facts is that during one of these pauses, if I wiggle the mouse the recording starts up again. That leads me to believe the problem could be in the OS process scheduling, maybe it's preempting the the CapVHS process with something else it thinks needs to be done. I'm going to try bumping up the process priority to "Realtime" in the task manager to see if it helps.

If that doesn't work, I'm beginning to suspect the motherboard firewire port is to blame, I've read that the ATI rs480 chipset has some performance issues... Maybe using a firewire card could help... I'll keep trying.

-coflo

When you check in control panel does the tuner/avc device under imaging show that you have the motorola version under details?

Hi,
yes, I am see Motorola AV/C panel Device (DCT6412) under imaging devices when I connect to DVR via Firewire with no problems. Let me know please if u have any ideas why device not recognized when using software, thanks much
raffi

Im trying to convert some shows from the comcast box to dvd but im geting audio problems, In the ts file the audio is fine but after i encode it to dvd in QuEnc the audio is gone i get no audio. Ive double checked every setting and have the right audio delay and everything set. Any ideas what could be wrong? I used this guide http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/dct6412/index.html great guide btw thanks to the author for puting that togather :)

nick2003, you may try experimenting with the audio amplification on a short clip. Start with the amplification line commented out then keep increasing it and see if it works. Back when I wrote the guide I needed some pretty hefty amplification to hear anything:
audio = audio.Amplify(16)
Since then I've changed to a different laptop and different codecs and I don't need to amplify the audio at all so the above line is commented out. QuEnc relies on whatever codecs you have installed for decoding audio/video so can give different behavior to different users.

You also should examine your QuEnc encoded mpeg to make sure there actually is an audio stream. You can use a tool such as Mpeg Validator:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=MPEG_Validator

Thanks Moyekj, I tryed increasing the amplification to 50, 100 and 900 but still no luck, Does my code look right? audio = audio.Amplify(50) Also i checked that program for the audio stream and it says i have one under number of audio streams but i get the following errors:

*PTS underflow (Mux Error)....!
*DTS underflow (Mux Error)....!
*PTS//DTS Out of Sync (Mux Error)....!
Sequence_end_code NOT FOUND, in Stream E0!!

Any idea's what that means and what i should try doing? Thanks for your help

Even when i do it your other way at first with the HDTV to MPEG2 program the mpeg2 file from that doesn't have any audio so i guess i couldn't have messed up the process. Ive tryed installing another mpeg2 codec with no luck also. Its weird cause the ts file plays fine.

Nevermind, It was the codecs i guess it just took a few times of opening the media players to get it going, thanks for the help.

Most likely 5C was enabled on that channel. In my comcast area I was getting all channels in the clear until Aug. 8th. Now the only HD channels in the clear are the nets. Check the "d06 current channel status" in the 6412 user menu by pressing power off then SELECT on the remote. If you see ENC next to the TYPE: DIGITAL then you are out of luck. Go HERE (http://cjhengineering.com/hdtv/cablehdtv/dctdiag.htm) for more details.
Thanks, by any chance are you in central CA. Aug 8 is the last good recording I got. Is there anything that can be done? It doesn't seem right that we can't record anymore. The DVRs don't hold enough to keep shows very long before running out of space. What happened to the "good old days" when we had shelves of VHS tapes we had recorded from TV? Isn't this the same thing only on a different media? It's not like we're selling them. I contacted Comcast this is the response I got. "No this is not decided by Comcast, it is the movie studios and broadcasters ultimately get to decide what shows to protect, cable and satellite operators act as distributors, who honor the rules so you will need to contact the networks that air the restricted programming."
I'm very disappointed that the networks have done this.

Looked promising, but the XP firewire patch had no effect. I believe I've eliminated the hard drive as the issue as I've tried different physical hard drives and had the same problem.

One of the interesting facts is that during one of these pauses, if I wiggle the mouse the recording starts up again. That leads me to believe the problem could be in the OS process scheduling, maybe it's preempting the the CapVHS process with something else it thinks needs to be done. I'm going to try bumping up the process priority to "Realtime" in the task manager to see if it helps.

If that doesn't work, I'm beginning to suspect the motherboard firewire port is to blame, I've read that the ATI rs480 chipset has some performance issues... Maybe using a firewire card could help... I'll keep trying.

-coflo

I finally licked this problem. Not sure exactly what did it, but it took a combination of latest ATI rs480, chipset drivers, windows updates, disabling my modem and tweaking the "initialize first" bios setting to intialize the on-board video first. I've done so many patches and reboots over the last few days that I can't pinpoint the exact action which fixed it, but I'm happy it finally works.

On to .ts conversion and DVD authoring!
-coflo

I finally licked this problem. Not sure exactly what did it, but it took a combination of latest ATI rs480, chipset drivers, windows updates, disabling my modem and tweaking the "initialize first" bios setting to intialize the on-board video first. I've done so many patches and reboots over the last few days that I can't pinpoint the exact action which fixed it, but I'm happy it finally works.

On to .ts conversion and DVD authoring!
-cofloCongrats! Now Ghost an image of your OS drive. Good luck.

Thanks, by any chance are you in central CA. Aug 8 is the last good recording I got. Is there anything that can be done? It doesn't seem right that we can't record anymore. The DVRs don't hold enough to keep shows very long before running out of space. What happened to the "good old days" when we had shelves of VHS tapes we had recorded from TV? Isn't this the same thing only on a different media? It's not like we're selling them. I contacted Comcast this is the response I got. "No this is not decided by Comcast, it is the movie studios and broadcasters ultimately get to decide what shows to protect, cable and satellite operators act as distributors, who honor the rules so you will need to contact the networks that air the restricted programming."
I'm very disappointed that the networks have done this.No. Minneapolis/St. Paul Comcast. From what I understand, 5C is enabled by the cable company in the STB. MSO's have an agreement with content providers to enable 5C if requested. Your networks should be in the clear. I can still record all the OTA networks via firewire. I think the spirit of the Betamax ruling is "time shifting" not archiving a library of content (i.e. shelves of VHS tapes).

You can always buy a standalone DVD recorder then you can record even the 5C enabled channels i think but none of them record 5.1 as far as i know. The panasonic ones are supposed to be good and can be had for about $180.

I'm having problem getting this stuff to work right. I am able to capture the video using CapDVHS or whatever it is, but I get a large mpeg file out of it. For example a two hour high def movie is 10+gig. I can then play this movie in Windows media player but the timer says it is only 18 minutes long. Once the slide reaches 18 minutes the movie keeps playing but the timer sets still. The movie will continue to play the entire 2 hours, but the slide just stays at 18minutes.

Then when I try to add the video into Nero to burn to DVD Nero also sees it as a 18 minute movie, but when I transcode the video it shrinks the entire movie down to 18 minutes so it plays in fast forward and takes up like half a gig on the dvd.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a way to record to a group of smaller files like 10 minutes long each? Do I really have to mess with the .ts file stuff and audio delays? The mpeg video plays fine without any audio delay in WMP. Is there a free program I can use to split the large mpeg file into smaller files that I could then use as chapters? I'd appreciate any help I can get.

Very little success here. Most channels have 5C=1. I am able to record PBS HD channel, using only VLC, (as per someone's instructions in this thread somewhere). I would like to be able to record stuff that's in my DVR. But that doesn't work using either that method or capdvhs.

Very little success here. Most channels have 5C=1. * * *

Where might "here" be? I would be helpful if people who are posting about local conditions indicate their location.

- Phil

I'm in MA, using Comcast Motorola 6412. I was able to record anything analog (I have a capture card) using Cyberlink Powerdirector Pro, but res is small even on highest quality. Any analog capture software where you can choose the res and HD stuff comes out looking good? Seems to me if I could choose a good widescreen res like 1920 x 1200 it would look pretty much the same.

Will this work with firmware 8.12? Shaw gives us firmware v8.12.

I am in need of help. I have a DCT6200 and I connected to to my PCI Firewire card. When connecting, I get 4 devices detected. AV/C Tuner, AV/C Panel, Unknown Device, and SM Bus Controller. I installed the AV/C Tuner device following the directions on the front page, and I then went into CapDVHS and I hit record. When I hit record, I don't see any activity going on in the DataInfo tab, but a file is saved on my desktop and it is 25 MB big. (I hit record for a couple of seconds). The file is a mpg file, but will not play in any video player. I tried reinstalling the drivers and still no luck. Any help would be appreciated.

Not sure where to post this problem, it is HD record to computer and play back problem.
this is what I have--computer--Asus mother board 1.8 G new, new firewire card - (CompUSA), Western Dig. HD 250 G (new), Win XP w/ servicePack 2, I record Dish network HD through 16:9 system w/ AVX , JVC 40000 DVHS, Vividlogic Firebus record program in computer, Elecard MPEG 2 playback software (new install). All works ok in record to computer HD, problem comes when I want to preview what I have recorded on the HD. Elecard brings up the recorded HD video and audio - starts to play but hangs about every 2 seconds-then plays-then hangs, repeats, audio does not hang. I was told I needed more ram--bumped it up to 1 G---no change. Now they say I need faster computer-3-3.5 G CPU, another person says I need fast video board with lots of ram. I don't know which to believe! Here is what record video is in HD---3 min. of HD video = 443 MB on HD.
I need some computer info help!
thanks--

Just got HDR-HC1 and downloaded meidvhs and CapDVHS to XP computer. The device manager is defaulting to microsofts avcstm.sys driver for the HDR-HC1. Of course CapDVHS can not find capture device.

The XP Device Manager does not like the meidvhs drivers when manually try to update to it reporting:

"Specified location does not contain information about your hardware"

Anybody here actually install CapDvhs with the SONY HDR-HC1 or installed with other supported HW and then available to the SONY?

I believe my problem maybe related to fact when updating "AV/C Tape Device" and I select manufacturer = Panasonic only two models show up: "Panasonic Tape Device" and "Panasonic Vendor Unique Subunit" instead of the desired "Panasonic D-VHS AV/C Device". Selection of either of these models yields result of above.

Any assistance appreciated!

I've recorded a small snipet(1 minute) using the required software. I am getting some very inconsistant results. But the main one is that it will play about the first 2 or 3 seconds of the clip and stop. Has anyone heard of why it would be doing this?

I have the 6412 and using the method explained on the 1st page of this thread.

Is it simply possible to connect to a PC through the 6412's ethernet port, with Win XP set up to 'see' the 6412 HDD and saved movie directory/files, then transfer to the PC HDD with copy/Explorer drag and drop, view the HD content with the new H.264 codec in either Media Player or Quicktime, and then burn archive copies to DVD on the PC?

Anyone know of any guides for doing such?

Thanks in advance.

That would be interesting but I have never heard that the ethernet ports are activated.

Anyone?

Good info here, everybody - thanks!

I have a Motorola DCT6410-2005, HD-DVR. I can get the video capture to work with a normal channel, but I can't get it to record the playback of a previously recorded show.

In CapDVHS, the size I get for the normal channel recording is:

528x480
4:3 ratio
29.97 fps
15 mbps

For DVR playback (of a normal channel - not high def):

720x480
4:3 ratio
29.97 fps
7.5 mbps

For the normal channel, it works great. When recording playback from the DVR, I get the full file but it is all black. I tried starting out with a normal channel and then starting the DVR'd program after a few seconds, but the playback file halts at the point I hit Play.

Any ideas? My firmware versions are:

SW Ver: 71.44-1203 (yes, the decimal place is in the correct place)
Firmware Ver: 09.19

Cheers!
John

Is it simply possible to connect to a PC through the 6412's ethernet port, with Win XP set up to 'see' the 6412 HDD and saved movie directory/files, then transfer to the PC HDD with copy/Explorer drag and drop, view the HD content with the new H.264 codec in either Media Player or Quicktime, and then burn archive copies to DVD on the PC?

Anyone know of any guides for doing such?
As stated before in this thread do you really think there would be this huge thread about firewire recording if direct access to the files via ethernet or otherwise were possible?

First post and I'm new at this. I've got a lot to learn.

I was finally able to get my moto 6208 drivers loaded, and I can capture video, but from live programming only, plus I'm getting no audio. I would like to be able to capture from an HD recording. Is that possible, and why am I getting no audio. I'm using the programs recommended here and my 6208 is version 7.43. Using firewire from DCT to PC.

Maybe you have to capture it as .TS and then convert to .mpg

http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/dct6412/index.html

try the section that says
"Converting Transport Stream (.ts) To Program Stream (.mpg)"

I've never tried capturing directly to mpg, but I've done TS->MPG, and these directions worked well for me on 4 separate DVRs.

Womble gop fixer question...
I set the out put file to the same folder as the in put file.. select the bottom button (all above), run gop fixer, it finishes, and no new file gets recorded... ?? I don't under stand why... am I missing some thing blatantly obvious??

Hey guys new here. I've got a quick question about recording from the 6412. I've read a lot of this thread and from what I gather I should be able to record via firewire channels with the 5C=0. Is this correct? I am able to cap analog channels, but nothing digital even though they have 5C=0. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Hey Guys, I am in Kansas and am also one of those people that used to be able to capture everything fine but now cannot.I orginally got everything working in May. It was early in august when I tried last and was having problems. I tried a totally different computer last night. The only things the same were motorola drivers, firewire cable and cable STB. Unfortunately new computer doesn't correct anything.

Analog channels cap fine but anything digital, HD or SD act like they cap, but they don't play correctly or at all. Whether or not it is live TV it still won't playback. The few times I can get certain files to pb it is very choppy. I checked the options in settop box d06 channel status and they all say digital ENC except for the analog channels which say analog CLR. They all have 5c=0 on them. THE HD local channels say digital UNK. Could that be my issue? One other thing I found is that when I try to cap HD it is giving me some crazy bit rate like 38.710mbs. I remember in the past when I could cap HD I was getting more like 14-19mbs. I am also on cox. Its possible this may be the same problem as husker. Could someone with hd recording with the motorola STB check the current channel status on the HD and digital channels and tell us if it says whether or not those channels are encrypted or not.

TIA

E

mystere2, It will say 5C=0 but if you page forward and back it toggles it from 0 to 1. At least on my box it does. So try paging down and back up again and see what happens. Either way, I believe your digital channels are going to be 5c=1 no matter what.

Quite frankly, I have two replaytv boxes that I can record analog stuff with so this whole process won't do me much good unless I can record the HD stuff.

I checked the options in settop box d06 channel status and they all say digital ENC except for the analog channels which say analog CLR. They all have 5c=0 on them. THE HD local channels say digital UNK. Could that be my issue? on the d06 page, Does it say RC Flag = 0x01

On my cable box that causes me not to be able to record most of the locals. Also talking to motorola they said it comes from the station and not the cable company.

When i capture hd stuff from my 6412 box with capdvhs the audio in the ts files are out of sync, Any idea what could be wrong? Thanks

I just got this to work. Thanks OP!
My Details:
Sharp 32D7U
Dell GX270 PC
3.2 Ghz Pentium IV
80Gb Seagate HD SATA
1 Gig RAM
ATI ALL IN WONDER 9600
Comcast Cable Card (in Chicago)

I've only fiddled around with it for a bit and I was able
to get crystal clear recordings of INHD for about 5 minutes
before I got anxious and wanted to see it.
Thanks again

Are you able to play back to the TV via Firewire (instead of using the video card on the computer)?

I captured an HDTV video (Dick Tracy) from my Motorola 6412 cable box via Firewire and CapDVHS to my PC. I edit and convert the clip using HDTVtoMPEG2. I check the resultant .mpg and all looks fine. I have (among other apps) Nero 6.6.0.15 including the 5.1 plugin. After adding the clip to NeroVison Express 3 I have a light gray bar on the bottom of the clip. I have TMPGEnc 3.0 and know about using "mask" but that will kill my ability to produce a 5.1 disk.

I want to use Nero cause it alone allows for the creation of 5.1 disks.

On some clips there is no problem but others(maybe all HD ones) have had lines at the top or bottom as this one does. Only Nero seems to produce this problem.

WTF?

I appreciate your help as I've been screwing with this for weeks .


Wolf

Hey all,

I've read through some of this thread, but not all of it. So I was wondering if someone can help me with something...

All I'm trying to do is to be able to at least View all the HD channels through my Fusion HDTV card. I get some, even Yankees HD, but not all. Would I be able to do this using a firewire and a Scientific Atlanta box with this method?

hope I don't sound like a broken record, but thanks :)

I have motorola 6412 HD/DVR When I plug in firewire- I keep getting a hardware malfunctioned warning and cant seem to install these drivers---what to do?


[

Just got HDR-HC1 and downloaded meidvhs and CapDVHS to XP computer. The device manager is defaulting to microsofts avcstm.sys driver for the HDR-HC1. Of course CapDVHS can not find capture device.

The XP Device Manager does not like the meidvhs drivers when manually try to update to it reporting:

"Specified location does not contain information about your hardware"

Anybody here actually install CapDvhs with the SONY HDR-HC1 or installed with other supported HW and then available to the SONY?

I believe my problem maybe related to fact when updating "AV/C Tape Device" and I select manufacturer = Panasonic only two models show up: "Panasonic Tape Device" and "Panasonic Vendor Unique Subunit" instead of the desired "Panasonic D-VHS AV/C Device". Selection of either of these models yields result of above.

Any assistance appreciated!

Same boat.
No matter what I do, I can't get the capture device to show up in CapDVHS, and the drivers won't load, etc, etc. WinXP Sp2 is the culprit, likely, has anyone with WinXP Sp2 gotten this to work ?????

Same boat.
No matter what I do, I can't get the capture device to show up in CapDVHS, and the drivers won't load, etc, etc. WinXP Sp2 is the culprit, likely, has anyone with WinXP Sp2 gotten this to work ?????

Got my answer from timecop in "New Sony HDV Camcorder HDR-HC1 Info" thread.


Hm. To make it not load AV/C Tape,
Plug it in and let it detect as tape.
Then uninstall the driver. (devmgmt, uninstall).
goto c:\windows\inf and move mstape.inf somewhere temp and delete mstape.pnf (shouldn't matter, its rebuilt automatically).
Unplug the cam.
Plug the cam back in, and it should fail detecting as Tape, and just show up as a question mark AV/C Subunit.

Then you can goto "reinstall driver", "not at this time", "install specific location", "don't search choose driver to install", "show all devices", wait, "have disk", point to meidvhs, uncheck compatible hardware, and it "should" work. maybe.

Just got my DCT6412 set up with firewire to my new windows xp media center pc about a week ago. I have Cox cable in the Norfolk VA market.

I've successfully captured CBS and PBS HD with no problem. But although DiscoveryHD displays 5c implementation as 0, everything I capture on that channel is full of video errors, mainly heavy pixelization which occurs every time there is a scene change in the video. Audio is also out of synch.

Is this problem fixable or should I just give up on trying to capture from that channel? Thanks.

Can anyone help me please? Still can't get the audio in sync, It plays for a while fine then goes out of sync.

I read the post on the Firewire support of the various recievers. Great work and thank you for all the information. I was wondering if you could help with a problem I am experiencing with my SA 3250HD Receiver. I have hooked it up to my PC via Firewire. it detects a "unknown" device. I point it to the "C:\meidvhs\" path and the various .inf files. Whichever one I point it to manually it says it does not contain information on the device.

Any ideas?

iI GET THE SAME MESSAGE!

In my trials with getting this to work, a few things I noticed was I had to plug and replug the damn firewire cable about 100 times before I got an AVC/Tuner device to come up. Nothing I did worked till I got an AVC/Tuner to come up. I could not, under any circumstances, load the correct drivers with an "Unknown Device".
After I had an AVC/Tuner detection, I followed the instructions EXACTLY from the first post. They are a bit more tricky than I first thought, and I had missed a small, but very important part in one of the few times before that I got an AVC/Tuner detection.
I'm embarrassed to say that had I followed the first post directions EXACTLY the first time an AVC/Tuner device was detected, I likely would have been capping direct to hdd days sooner.

I just took a good look at the back, and did indeed spot two 1394 connections and a USB connection. Now, Two questions.

Can I try this method using the USB cable? I won't blow up my equipment if I try it, will I? And 2)

If I use these drivers provided in the first post, and point my Fusion HDTV Tuner to the box, will that allow me to tune in the channels just as well without DVHS or is that not possible?

Thanks!

For the normal channel, it works great. When recording playback from the DVR, I get the full file but it is all black. I tried starting out with a normal channel and then starting the DVR'd program after a few seconds, but the playback file halts at the point I hit Play.

Any ideas? My firmware versions are:

SW Ver: 71.44-1203 (yes, the decimal place is in the correct place)
Firmware Ver: 09.19

Cheers!
John

I have a similar problem with the converted .mpg file - but it happens for both recording normal and DVR playback. It's all black, no sound and it seems to be a much shorter clip than the one recorded. When I play it back through DGIndex, the picture is all there (albeit with no sound) but it disappears after conversion through HDTV to MPEG. What am I missing?

Finally got pc to recognize new hardware with firewire. On found new hardware wizard, it even pops up Motorola dct 1614, AV/C Tuner. After going to " Don't Search. I will install the driver myself", then "next" I get a window in the wizard that says- ( this is where I get diverted from instructions)HARDWARE TYPE...Select a hardware type and then click next. I have an AVC DEVICE CLASS that shows up on list...so I select that and i grt Tuner AV/C device. When I try to uncheck show compatible hardware--it disapears. I'm stuck here...any suggestions?

I just took a good look at the back, and did indeed spot two 1394 connections and a USB connection. Now, Two questions.

Can I try this method using the USB cable? I won't blow up my equipment if I try it, will I? And 2)

If I use these drivers provided in the first post, and point my Fusion HDTV Tuner to the box, will that allow me to tune in the channels just as well without DVHS or is that not possible?

Thanks!

No, it won't blow anything up. But it won't work either. So far, to my knowledge, none of the USB ports on these boxes are working. Dunno bout question #2.
Good Luck

Jeccker
You said when you had a "normal" channel you were playing off the dvr and it didn't work. Is it a digital channel or an analog channel? In the cox market I am in the analog channels are 2-72 and the digital channels are 101 and up. I can capture the analog channels fine using this method, but all the digital channels except for the local HD channels are 5c enabled.

Artmo
I also was getting this problem. Things appeared to capture correctly with correct filesize but all I would get was a black screen, or heavy pixelization with large audio dropouts. The only channels that would capture was the local HD channels (ABC,FOX,PBS) and analog channels.

What I found was that Cox had enabled 5c. When you check the interface status on d11 it says 5c=0 but if you toggle the screen between page 1 and page 2 and then check 5c again you will see it has flipped to 5c=1. You may have to toggle it a few times. I sure wish there was some way to get around this.

Does anyone have a link to a summary of the courts decision on this 5c thing?

thanks to huskerfan for helping me figure this out.

E

SA3250HD Driver/SageTV Help...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was wondering if you guys could help me with a few things.

My first problem is I have tried a few different FW drivers for my 3250HD including:
MCE 2005 STB Controller package
Hacked mstapeo.sys drivers

I was wondering which are the correct/best ones to use for SageTV. I have gotten the DVHS to record with both with no problems. One thing that I notice no matter which one I use I still have (2) "unknown devices" in device manager along with the "A/V Tuner" and "A/V Panel". Any clue what they are? Has anyone seen this before with this unit?


My Second problem is I do not recieve sound in Sage when watching live tv. I get video but no sound. I have followed all the tutorials to the letter in regards to SageTV. Like I stated above I can record in DVHS and also with the Firewire.gfa. I also created a TStoPS.GRF which also works perfect (sound and video). I have also double checked the sage.properties file to make sure all the mmc-lines are there.

- when watching live TV with no sound for some reason it is recording to the Video directory (I dont know why) and when I play back the recorded file it has Video and Audio!!


I would appreciate any help/advice you can offer. Thanks again!

jL

Just got my DCT6412 set up with firewire to my new windows xp media center pc about a week ago. I have Cox cable in the Norfolk VA market.

I've successfully captured CBS and PBS HD with no problem. But although DiscoveryHD displays 5c implementation as 0, everything I capture on that channel is full of video errors, mainly heavy pixelization which occurs every time there is a scene change in the video. Audio is also out of synch.

Is this problem fixable or should I just give up on trying to capture from that channel? Thanks.Check the CCI setting under the d06 Current Channel Status menu, if the setting is 0x00 you should be able to record, if it is 0x02 that means copy once. CCI controls what goes through the firewire port. If it is set to 0x02 while your 5C is 0, then I believe CCI is independent of the 5C setting.

As far as flipping between pages and seeing 5C change from 1 to 0, I don't know how other cable cos do it but on Comcast, when you go from page 1 to 2 you are changing between the 2 tuners. If #1 was set to a premium with 5C=1 and the other tuner had been on a local HD with 5C=0, that could account for the changes you see.

Is there a way to use the firewire port to view/hear the output live vs. recording? This is of much more use to me.

Thanks,

Keith

I didnt see much on this set top in this post, so I think it is safe to post this.. I have serached and searched and havent found much so I am hoping beyond hope I can find someone to help me.

I have tried and tried and tried to cap from this set top and its a no go. I have followed the directions in the beginning of this post 100 times, and still nothing. I have the box going right to my laptop through a 14' 6to6 cable. I have installed the windows firewire hotfix, and still nothing. When using CAPdvhs, it appears as though it is recording, but leaves me with a 0KB .ts file. And then once in a while it will give me a 47KB .ts and error out (capdvhs.exe has encountered a problem, blah blah blah) 2 seconds after I start recording. I know the firewire port is active, and the content I am trying to record is copy freely (local CBS) as I can see that in the box diagnostics.

Something of interest, when looking at the copy protection page of the diagnostics (page 31 or 32, I cant remember) WITHOUT the firewire plugged into the laptop, it says that the firewire is disabled, but as soon as I plug it into the computer and it detects the first unknown piece of hardware, the box turns the firewire from disabled to unavailible in red letters. I have been in contact with Scientific Atlanta, and they have confirmed that this box has an active firewire port. Also, after having the cable connected for more than 20 minutes or so, the box reboots itself. :(

Thanks to all for the hard work in this post, it has been some great reading. I see that people have had great success with the 3250 and it would really stink if it doesnt work on this box. If ANYONE has had any success with this set top, let me know, PLEASE. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Drew

When we down convert a HD captured movie so we can burn it to a DVD+R disk..
If we play that disk now in a dvd player with HDMI Output (HDMI-HDCP)
720p/1080i Upconversion (via HDMI output only)
will we re gain the same digital quality in the video as the original HD captured movie?? How would it compare?

Most definitely not. DVD Video is 480i/p no matter what the original resolution was, and upconversion can't magically show detail that isn't there.

That makes sense..... So what is the point of having these new dvd players that can upconvert to 720p/1080i ?? Kind of point less buying a dvd player with 720p/1080i Upconversion with HDMI outputs then....... good to know... Thanks..!

Or you could get one of the networked DVD players that will play HD TS (as well as DivX HD and WMV HD). IOData has one called the LinkPlayer2, and Buffalo has one called the LinkTheater. JVC is supposed to be coming out with one this month (still haven't seen it). And Zensonic is supposed to have a new one capable of h.264 HD, and with 6-channel analog out (for support of WMA Pro when your receiver doesn't) next month.

Xesdeeni

That makes sense..... So what is the point of having these new dvd players that can upconvert to 720p/1080i ?? Kind of point less buying a dvd player with 720p/1080i Upconversion with HDMI outputs then....... good to know... Thanks..!

Well, your conclusion really isn't correct. The previous reply was correct - upconversion can't show detail that isn't in the signal it's upconverting. When you convert from 720p/1080i down to 480p/i you're throwing away a bunch of detail - it doesn't magically come back when you convert back to 720p/1080i. However, the upconversion in the DVD player may do a better job than the upconversion in the display - that's what determines if it's worthwhile to get a player that can upconvert to 720p/1080i and is going to vary from case to case.

I have a Sony VAIO PVC-RS724G with GIGA Pocket. Has anyone tried capturing directly from a Motorola 6xxx to the GIGA Pocket? I am curious about the difference in quality.

I apologize in advance if this has already been mentioned, but I have Cox in Rhode Island, and all the channels appear to be "5C" except the broadcast channels, plus a few select channels (HBO1 works, but the other HBO's do not.)

I've got a Motorolla "dual tuner" DVR box from Cox. You appear to be able to get around the copy protection issue by first recording the show to the DVR, and then playing it back once the recording is finished. Any shows I've recorded off the "5C" channels are able to be recorded to the PC via Firewire no problem if you play them back from the DVR.

Obviously this limits it's use for a real-time type setup but at least it enables me to get the shows onto the PC at all. This is kickass!

Hey all,

I'm trying to view TV through Sage using the instructions provided, and I got it to work ONCE. But the video was grainy, so I changed the settings, and now it d osn't work at all..............

Whenever I try and view live tv, it gives me an 'unable to set up audio compression' error and then freezes on me. Anyone else get this error and know how to fix it?

Thanks!@

Rhode Island,

I would suggest that the show you recorded was not 5C protected. Are you going into the menu to see if it's a 1 or 0? From what I've gathered here is that no matter what if the show is 5C you would not be able to record it, either live or after recorded to your DVR. I could be wrong. I was wrong once before.... :)

I have a Sony VAIO PVC-RS724G with GIGA Pocket. Has anyone tried capturing directly from a Motorola 6xxx to the GIGA Pocket? I am curious about the difference in quality.

I have a Sony VAIO PCV-RX680G. I only have had the Motorola DCT6412 III one week I have captured to Giga Pocket Via S-Video connection and RCA Audio jacks. But I also have used the Fire Wire port and with method described at the beginning of this thread have been able to record the Transport stream using CapDVHS. The PQ is better through Fire Wire but I haven't be able to sucessfully convert the TS to a lower res mpeg2 file. If the signal is HD the file crashes TMPEGenc and I haven't had much luck with the other programs mentioned. The SD digital Programs and analog ones record fine but I still haven't been able to burn them to DVD. So If I need to make a disk I go through the s-video to Giga pocket and it works fine.

The DVR works fine but I find I have to unplug it once or twice a day for about 30 seconds to get the Fast Foward and 30 second skip to work properly

I can record okay, but is there a better doc on how to watch live HD? I tried the one in the first post, but I don't get sound or picture. I can capture and playback using capDVHS just fine.

Thanks!
Shane

Shoot. Since I tried to run the VLC Media Player for a live stream I accidentally hit configure and the computer rebooted.

Now I can't capture or anything. I even tried to uninstall and reinstall the devices. The program runs, and when i hit record I no longer het info in the box. I get a file, but Media Player says it's unplayable.

What have I done? I tried deleting the DVHS capture .inf file and that didn't even work.

Shane

Maybe someone can help me.

I can record just fine with the meidvhs driver & capDVHS recorder right after the installation (using firewire with an Scientific Atlantic 4200 HD). Produced .ts file plays wonderfully with WinDVD. Now the issue: Any time I try to record after this first successful attempt, there are big problems:

1. Resulting .ts files don't play with WinDVD anymore, only with VLC
2. Sound is very, very loud. Can't seem to get it lower (I'm trying normal channels, and digital, no HD at this point)
3. When I record for more than a couple of seconds, my PC sometimes stops with a blue screen, saying something went wrong in stream.sys, sometimes other drivers
4. When trying to record HD channels, the PC stops almost immediately (always)

I'm running XP professional with SP2. Any ideas/comments are appreciated.

One more thing: I've read in this forum that the resulting files when recording should be "huge" - the first successful attempt I was talking about used less then 10 MB for a 38 seconds clip - that would be about 1.9 GB for a 2 hour clip - that's significantly below DVD quality - how come? When I record via s-video, using whatever capture method (tried 3 different ones over the years), I get much bigger files...

Maybe someone can help me.

One more thing: I've read in this forum that the resulting files when recording should be "huge" - the first successful attempt I was talking about used less then 10 MB for a 38 seconds clip - that would be about 1.9 GB for a 2 hour clip - that's significantly below DVD quality - how come? When I record via s-video, using whatever capture method (tried 3 different ones over the years), I get much bigger files...

I don't have an answer for the problems you are having but i do have an answer to this question. It is because you are capturing standard definition items. When I could still cap a normal digital channel would give me approx 10-20mb per minute. When you are using S-video you are capturing an analog signal. That is the size difference between how you capture now and the way you used to capture. Hope this helps,

E

Is there a way to use the firewire port to view/hear the output live vs. recording? This is of much more use to me.

Thanks,

Keith



I am using VLC media player method to watch live and it is working quite well for me.

Are you outputting from computer to TV, or from tuner to computer?

Reason I ask: I'm trying to use the computer to output via firewire to my Sharp TV, but haven't figured out what software the TV will like.

Are you outputting from computer to TV, or from tuner to computer?

Reason I ask: I'm trying to use the computer to output via firewire to my Sharp TV, but haven't figured out what software the TV will like.

I am watching TV over Firewire from my Motorola 6200 on my PC.

Don't know if Firewire input is supported on all Display Devices.

Are you outputting from computer to TV, or from tuner to computer?

Reason I ask: I'm trying to use the computer to output via firewire to my Sharp TV, but haven't figured out what software the TV will like.

nathan,

What model is your TV. Maybe someone here already has experience with outputting via firewire to it or perhaps someone can help you do some research.

E

I connected my Pioneer 4350 to my PC through the firewire connection. I have the drivers installed on the PC side and it seems quite happy.

But on the Pioneer side it says the device can't be controled and won't show me the PC as a device.

Is there anyway I can force the firewire to output to the PC anyways?

I connected my Pioneer 4350 to my PC through the firewire connection. I have the drivers installed on the PC side and it seems quite happy.

But on the Pioneer side it says the device can't be controled and won't show me the PC as a device.

Is there anyway I can force the firewire to output to the PC anyways?

You'll probably have to control it from the PC side, not the TV side. Note that I am not 100% sure that this is possible, but I think it's more likely that getting it to work from the TV side.

What model is your TV. Maybe someone here already has experience with outputting via firewire to it or perhaps someone can help you do some research.

It's a Sharp LC-37D5U.

I just got the 6412 dual tuner HD box today and had a question. I've only had a chance to read through about half of the 50 some pages but found this around page 23. "Also, after recording with CapDVHS, I was able to burn the ts to DVD with NeroVision express (OEM with Sony DRU-710A dual layer burner) in only a few steps. No intermediate steps - captured with CapDVHS and burned with NeroVision! It did take time (2 hours to capture, and another 30 min. to burn) but, it went very smoothly." My question is, will only a computer be able to play back a ts file? If so I really don't see the point in burning to a DVD unless your HD is limited in size. I'm interested in purchasing an Oppo DVD player which can output 1080i. Zeroendless seems to be the expert in this forum, but has anyone tried this, or is it even possible?

Thanks

Ok, Installed Drivers for Panasonic, I see new hardware, but cannot get CAPDVHS to see device, windows XP pro, sp2. I do get an unknown device that I cannot find a driver for, thinks CD Rom, I use Panasonic Digital Tuner av/c device (tu-bhd100)

Ok, I have Comcast Motorolla DCT6412 III, Installed Drivers for Panasonic, I see new hardware, but cannot get CAPDVHS to see device, windows XP pro, sp2. I do get an unknown device that I cannot find a driver for, thinks CD Rom, I use Panasonic Digital Tuner av/c device (tu-bhd100), Nothing. I also can't get the Firmware version using the prescribed method. Comcast San Jose, CA.

ldegnon

There is a website that gives a nice explanation and also includes the drivers for the motorola box and how to install them properly. Here is the site:

http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/dct6412/index.html

Be sure to thank moyekj for this site. He is the one who gathered all this info and put it in one easy place to find. With his guide you should be up and capturing in no time.

Good Luck,

E

You'll probably have to control it from the PC side, not the TV side. Note that I am not 100% sure that this is possible, but I think it's more likely that getting it to work from the TV side.

The problem is I don't see anyway for the PC to activate the firewire port. I can't find a way to get the Pioneer to send the video out the firewire port.

The problem is I don't see anyway for the PC to activate the firewire port. I can't find a way to get the Pioneer to send the video out the firewire port.

If something like DVHSTool sees the TV as a valid device (like it does when it sees a JVC DVHS deck) then you could use DVHSTool to send the signal. Otherwise, year, I think you're out of luck.

The problem is I don't see anyway for the PC to activate the firewire port. I can't find a way to get the Pioneer to send the video out the firewire port.

Not sure about the Pioneer, but the iLink from the Sharp TVs is supposed to allow recording on an attached DVHS unit (or other iLink comapatible device). This is selectable on the TV and has been reportedly done by other users (another HDTV Recorder thread).

In this case, the PC is the virtual DVHS unit.

It would seem that the essential first step, however, would be to install the required drivers, so that the TV and the PC can recognize each other.

In another thread, I was advised that FireBus ($100) would accomplish this...
... wheras with MAC OSX, VirtualDHS (free) would do it...

Not sure about the Pioneer, but the iLink from the Sharp TVs is supposed to allow recording on an attached DVHS unit (or other iLink comapatible device). This is selectable on the TV and has been reportedly done by other users (another HDTV Recorder thread).

In this case, the PC is the virtual DVHS unit.

It would seem that the essential first step, however, would be to install the required drivers, so that the TV and the PC can recognize each other.

In another thread, I was advised that FireBus ($100) would accomplish this...
... wheras with MAC OSX, VirtualDHS (free) would do it...


The PC sees the Pioneer as a valid device and captures data with no errors.

The problem is on the Pioneer side. When I plug the PC in, the Pioneer says this device is not controlable and will not list the PC as a valid device.

Maybe this firebus will work. I would like to get a DVCR from JVC, but don't really have the money to spend on one right now. I'm not even sure that would work with the Pioneer. I need to ask that quest I guess.

I would like to get a DVCR from JVC, but don't really have the money to spend on one right now. I'm not even sure that would work with the Pioneer. I need to ask that quest I guess.

Some believe that getting a DVHS recorder is a no brainer, since it does not have recording restrictions that emerging technologies are likely to have...

As for me, I shudder at the thought of going back to tapes...
Recording to a hard drive is so much more easier. Even a MAC would not not be so bad... :D

In any case, wish you luck... :)

Get both a DVHS deck and a Mac, and enjoy glitch-free recording and the ability to use your Pioneer to control it ;). XP really does suck for this.

Some believe that getting a DVHS recorder is a no brainer, since it does not have recording restrictions that emerging technologies are likely to have...

As for me, I shudder at the thought of going back to tapes...
Recording to a hard drive is so much more easier. Even a MAC would not not be so bad... :D

In any case, wish you luck... :)It really isn't difficult to record to tape. I think of my DVHS as a backup of the .TS file. I lost a HDD not too long ago with about 20 movies on it and wish I had taken the time to "backup" to DVHS. If I had these 20 non-5C movies on DVHS, at some point in the future when better options emerge (e.g blu-ray/HD DVD), I could've copied the movies from DVHS (at a buck a tape) to that better option. HDD is just too unreliable.

It really isn't difficult to record to tape. I think of my DVHS as a backup of the .TS file. I lost a HDD not too long ago with about 20 movies on it and wish I had taken the time to "backup" to DVHS. If I had these 20 non-5C movies on DVHS, at some point in the future when better options emerge (e.g blu-ray/HD DVD), I could've copied the movies from DVHS (at a buck a tape) to that better option. HDD is just too unreliable.

With hard drives available for 50-cents/gig, why not just back up to another drive if HD reliability is the only issue...? :confused:
It is highly unlikely that 2 drives will fail at the same time (except in a catastrophe such as a fire, in which case the tape back up can also be compromised),

Get both a DVHS deck and a Mac, and enjoy glitch-free recording and the ability to use your Pioneer to control it ;). XP really does suck for this.

DVHS decks are sure hard to find...
Also, have read comments elsewhere that playback from MACs have issues. Could someone please elaborate?

Get both a DVHS deck and a Mac, and enjoy glitch-free recording and the ability to use your Pioneer to control it ;). XP really does suck for this.

Well I ordered the DVHS deck. I'll see about the Mac later.

Firewire playback from the Mac is fine because it relies on a decoder device at the other end. DVHS decks aren't terribly hard. Ecost has them all the time, Vann's, if you have a Tweeters they are clearing them out...

Firewire playback from the Mac is fine because it relies on a decoder device at the other end. DVHS decks aren't terribly hard. Ecost has them all the time, Vann's, if you have a Tweeters they are clearing them out...

Thanks.

On the DVHS, at least one user has clearly stated its a waste of money. I personally am not yet convinced about a technology fast approaching obsolescence.
Just threw out a bunch of old VHS tapes to make space for other (more modern) junk... :D

With hard drives available for 50-cents/gig, why not just back up to another drive if HD reliability is the only issue...? :confused:
It is highly unlikely that 2 drives will fail at the same time (except in a catastrophe such as a fire, in which case the tape back up can also be compromised),
I copied a 27gig .TS file to a $1 SVHS tape last night. That is less than .04 cents a gig. I take it you're not a CPA.

Thanks.

On the DVHS, at least one user has clearly stated its a waste of money. I personally am not yet convinced about a technology fast approaching obsolescence.
Just threw out a bunch of old VHS tapes to make space for other (more modern) junk... :D

Erm.. well, define waste of money. One user clearly thought it was for him. A couple hundred of us here would probably disagree. I can get H471S Fuji tapes for around $1.50 each if I am patient. These are high grade tapes, with a recording time of 120m in HD mode. That's somewhere around ~20-22gb of .ts files. Compared to a hard drive at .50c/gig, the math is pretty easy (as mentioned above). I'm simply talking about archiving existing stuff here. Now, if you have an actual firewire source (cable box, modified sat receiver, or PC) then your ability to record new stuff is covered as well ;). Tapes are a bit bulky so I understand if storage is a problem. On the other hand one tape usually covers an entire movie, so cataloging is easy. All in all, its a matter of choice. But it is a very convenient way to archive and playback hi def material.

-MP

I have a Mits HD2000U DVHS player and would like to transfer some tapes onto my computer using firewire. Is this possible? What software do I need to do this?

I copied a 27gig .TS file to a $1 SVHS tape last night. That is less than .04 cents a gig. I take it you're not a CPA.

You have piqued my interest as I have about 20 HDs full of ts files sitting around and would perhaps preferr to download some of these to tape as opposed to buying more hard drives. What is a good recommendation for a tape unit that will handle output from Motorola STB and are there units that are also capable of taping ts files that are on an HD?

Is it easy to get such cheap SVHS tapes? I had thought they were more like $5 for cheapest?

* * *

I can get H471S Fuji tapes for around $1.50 each if I am patient. These are high grade tapes, with a recording time of 120m in HD mode. That's somewhere around ~20-22gb of .ts files.

* * *
-MP

I can be patient too but the best I have seen for these tapes is $3.20 or so. What is your source if I may ask?

- Phil

Ebay. Just bought a lot of 100. Does take patience though, I admit it.

Ebay. Just bought a lot of 100. Does take patience though, I admit it.

Is that $1.50 for used tapes or new?

- Phil Klein

I love my DVHS deck but when I want to make sure I get a good backup of an HD TS file, I burn it to DVD-R. Price is good (most movies fit on 3 DVD-Rs = $1.50) and I find them more reliable than DVHS recordings in terms of dropouts, etc.

Hey I have been trying to follow this thread for some time now and have attempted my first capture this week. Everything went good, was able to tranfer from my 6412 to the computer fine. My problem lies with the QuEnc program. I get everything setup like the instruction says and click encode and it closes nothing happens. It creates the files but they are 0 in size. I can tell you what I have done I made the file a .TS file when transferring it crom the 6412 then followed the steps then converted it to a .mpg file using the HDTV2MPG program and then treid to run the QuEnc but nothing. If anyone has any help with this I would greatly appreciate it. I am just kind of stuck right now. Thanks!!!!

Also one other thing I have tried to use Cinema Craft encoder but when I click encode i get ACM Stream Open failed error 512 The wave format is 1 and it does not encode. Any ideas?

Is that $1.50 for used tapes or new?

- Phil Klein

Used one-pass professionally erased tapes in the hard case usually. This last batch I bought was outstanding.


I love my DVHS deck but when I want to make sure I get a good backup of an HD TS file, I burn it to DVD-R. Price is good (most movies fit on 3 DVD-Rs = $1.50) and I find them more reliable than DVHS recordings in terms of dropouts, etc.

I would agree when using XP to archive. Using a Mac it is glitch-free.

You have piqued my interest as I have about 20 HDs full of ts files sitting around and would perhaps preferr to download some of these to tape as opposed to buying more hard drives. What is a good recommendation for a tape unit that will handle output from Motorola STB and are there units that are also capable of taping ts files that are on an HD?

Is it easy to get such cheap SVHS tapes? I had thought they were more like $5 for cheapest?It was easy for me because the first time I looked for them on fleabay I found some used SVHS for approx. $1/tape. I look periodically and found some for $2 - $2.50. I do buy new Fuji 120min SVHS for around $3.50/tape. But I would highly recommend madpoet's Mac solution. I do get glitches using XP.

I recorded a epsode of will and grace last night now I want to move it to my computer, I'm have evertying installed properly and I'm using D-VHS but how do I see what I'm recording, I have to navigate the menus in order to select will and grace to play.... I'm using a Comcast Motorola DVR 6412

I recorded a epsode of will and grace last night now I want to move it to my computer, I'm have evertying installed properly and I'm using D-VHS but how do I see what I'm recording, I have to navigate the menus in order to select will and grace to play....

What software are you using to capture the DVHS recording to your computer?

I'm using D-VHS? I'm following the guide over at replayguide (it wont let me post the url becuase I havent made 5posts. (I sent you a pm with the url)

I'm trying to follow the TheGreenButton guide to add firewire support to MCE, but the site is down. Does anyone have a copy of the firewire.zip or firestb.msi file that is referenced in the guide?

I'm using D-VHS? I'm following the guide over at replayguide (it wont let me post the url becuase I havent made 5posts. (I sent you a pm with the url)

can anyone help me out?

can anyone help me out?

The only place you can see it while transferring is on your tv. On your pc you can navigate to d-vhs's "Data Info" tab and you'll see the stream information. Just try a small clip (i.e. 1-2 minutes of any show) to make sure it's working.

ok... and thats just transfering the files so they will be uncompressed correct until I compress them?

ok... and thats just transfering the files so they will be uncompressed correct until I compress them?

No, d-vhs will give you a .ts file, which is a type of mpeg file, which is already compressed. An uncompressed file would be huge. You could process the file more to compress it more, but then you'd lose pq (obviously).

No, d-vhs will give you a .ts file, which is a type of mpeg file, which is already compressed. An uncompressed file would be huge. You could process the file more to compress it more, but then you'd lose pq (obviously).

So how much quality am I loosing when it gets compressed to ts? or is it considered a lossless ?

So how much quality am I loosing when it gets compressed to ts? or is it considered a lossless ?


You really get no choice. It is transmitted in compressed format. The ts recording
format saves the data as transmitted.

alright I'm trying to do my first capture using d-VHS but I get an error as soon as I hit rec... Error Cannot open output file?

So how much quality am I loosing when it gets compressed to ts? or is it considered a lossless ? As far as I know, the software doesn't actually compress anything - the box itself compresses its output, so you're not "losing" any quality versus what you'd see on the TV. Correct me if I'm wrong though...but that's my understanding.

For playback from a HTPC that has TSs transferred from a 1394-equipped cable box, the Firebus software from VividLogic seemed like a good idea, if you have one of the TVs equipped with a 1394 interface. I tried out the product, and although it has a few quirks to be ironed out, version 1.1.1 worked well for playback. However, the caveat is that once you activate the product, it is tied to your 1394 card. I verified this with VividLogic. So if you upgrade your HTPC, you will have to buy the product again. And of course, if VividLogic goes out of business or decides not to support the product any longer, you won't even be able to buy it again.

Details of the e-mail exchange between myself and VividLogic are in the Firebus thread. But if you agree with me that this copy protection is too limiting for legitimate customers, please let their support department know.

rtillery

Shoot. Since I tried to run the VLC Media Player for a live stream I accidentally hit configure and the computer rebooted.

Now I can't capture or anything. I even tried to uninstall and reinstall the devices. The program runs, and when i hit record I no longer het info in the box. I get a file, but Media Player says it's unplayable.

What have I done? I tried deleting the DVHS capture .inf file and that didn't even work.

Shane
Have you found a resolution for this? I had the exact same thing happen to me word for word. When I hit configure, it bluescreened, and since I can't capture anything.

I followed OP's instruction perfectly. I have a COX motorola 6412 firmware 10.09. Captured to a large file, and attempted to play it. It starts to play then hangs, plays, then hangs again. Tried 3 different players and it all happens in the same spot over and over....tried multiple HD recordings.... any help ?

I followed OP's instruction perfectly. I have a COX motorola 6412 firmware 10.09. Captured to a large file, and attempted to play it. It starts to play then hangs, plays, then hangs again. Tried 3 different players and it all happens in the same spot over and over....tried multiple HD recordings.... any help ? What type of file is it? Are you trying to play the transport stream (.ts file) directly? If so I'd recommend using HDTVToMPEG2 to convert it to an MPG file before playing it. I've had the most luck playing those MPG files in Winamp actually - it tends to really lag pretty badly on Media Player.

Three letters: VLC. If VLC can't play it, it's not playable.

There are various repair apps. HDTVtoMPEG2 is one. MPEG2REPAIR is another. AND TStoATSC is a third. In most cases, I find that just playing back in VLC is the best bet.

The latest version of SageTV will handle firewire quite well. SageTV V3 is still in beta but they are improving TS support in every release.

Lately you can use the firewire drivers and channel change program provided over at thegreenbutton.com. Look here for help with using them with Sage http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9288

And I'll second that about VLC...right on the mark if VLC can't play the TS files then they're not recording properly. VLC is also a great way to figure out which channels are 5C encrytped, you won't get any picture with a 5C channel and VLC is nice enough not to crash so you can try the next channel.

Anybody notice a problem when outputting from an DVHS Deck using an SVHS tape? I have a Mits HS-HD2000U and it works perfectly capturing from a DVHS tape (JVC DF-300) out of the deck into the computer using CapDVHS. But, when I use an SVHS tape that I've taped HD onto, it won't output to the computer. It records but I don't get any video or audio and nothing shows up on the Data Info tab on CapDVHS. I do not punch holes into my SVHS tapes nor have I done the modification to the inside of the Mits. Is this the problem? Do i need the extra hole in my SVHS tapes for the computer to think it is a DVHS tape?

Thanks!

I followed OP's instruction perfectly. I have a COX motorola 6412 firmware 10.09. Captured to a large file, and attempted to play it. It starts to play then hangs, plays, then hangs again. Tried 3 different players and it all happens in the same spot over and over....tried multiple HD recordings.... any help ?

killa,
A few things to try: Capture an analog station and see if it works. Capture a local HD signal and see if it works. If those both play then you have a problem with 5c encryption. A couple pages back there is talk about 5c, encyrpted signals and how to tell if your cable provider is doing that. I have Cox cable as well, and unfortunately in my market they switched to encrypted signals on everything but analog and local HD channels sometime in late July or early August. You didn't say what state you were from. Good luck, and let us know what happens,

E

A few questions.
Has anyone tried this with a firewire cable that is 25-30 feet long? I wonder if that is too long to work??

Also, if I currently have my PC set-up to record the feed from a DVHS unit attached via firewire, will loading these drives conflict with the DVHS and DVHSTool?

Thanks,

i believe the driver files and names that timmoore posted at thegreenbutton.com have been altered such that they won't overwrite your d-vhs drivers...files like mstape.sys are now called mstapeo.sys so I don't think you will have an issue

i don't know why cable length will matter if it properly supports the firewire standard, you just need data to get from one end to the other as it's already digital when it leaves your cable box

I'm using a 25-foot cable to do it and it seems to work fine. I have had a couple corrupt recordings, which could have been caused by the cable (I'd blamed it on the box) but I'm not sure.

Thanks!
Since those files are on the Windows MCE site, will they be OK on XP?

A few questions.
Has anyone tried this with a firewire cable that is 25-30 feet long? I wonder if that is too long to work??

Also, if I currently have my PC set-up to record the feed from a DVHS unit attached via firewire, will loading these drives conflict with the DVHS and DVHSTool?

Thanks,I tried running a 15' and 10' firewire with a coupler and it didn't work. I bought a firewire powered repeater. approx. $40, connected the 10' and 15' fw cables together and it works great.

EDIT: changed pricing info, FW Powered Repeaters run approx. $40

good to know, amazing that'd they'd make a cable with little to no use if there's such a signal loss across it...

yes they will be ok, although the do require SP2, there are detailed instructions in the readme and you'll probably only need to install the drivers and the command line apps if you don't use MCE

if you have SP1 pm me and I can send you a working mstapeo.sys for SP1 (don't know why they are different but they are)

Thanks,
I'm looking at Tims post on thegreenbutton and the firewire.zip file he has in his first post is an MSI file. Before I go through 114 pages, is there a post that has the files seperately?
I don't think I can "extract" the MSI file.

These topics get so big that even searching is not easy.

it's not an extract, it's an installer, windows will just run it


Edit: i mean it's not an archive so you don't have to extract it, just double click and follow the instructions, a page or two in you get to choose what you want to be installed and where to put it

Makes since.
Thanks for your help.

Well, I've determined this only happens on ABC recordings. It's not the SVHS tape at all. I'm using an OTA antenna to record my signal to the DVHS VCR. I couldn't have 5C encryption on my OTA ABC channel could I? When I try to record an ABC show in CAP DVHS I just get a blank record info screen. It records something, but it can't be played back. I don't know what to do.

Anybody notice a problem when outputting from an DVHS Deck using an SVHS tape? I have a Mits HS-HD2000U and it works perfectly capturing from a DVHS tape (JVC DF-300) out of the deck into the computer using CapDVHS. But, when I use an SVHS tape that I've taped HD onto, it won't output to the computer. It records but I don't get any video or audio and nothing shows up on the Data Info tab on CapDVHS. I do not punch holes into my SVHS tapes nor have I done the modification to the inside of the Mits. Is this the problem? Do i need the extra hole in my SVHS tapes for the computer to think it is a DVHS tape?

Thanks!

I transferred 3 hours worth of programming yesterday, and when I played the file back in Windows Media Player Classic, it said the file was 8+ hours long. Is that just some error in the player?

Well, I've determined this only happens on ABC recordings. It's not the SVHS tape at all. I'm using an OTA antenna to record my signal to the DVHS VCR. I couldn't have 5C encryption on my OTA ABC channel could I? When I try to record an ABC show in CAP DVHS I just get a blank record info screen. It records something, but it can't be played back. I don't know what to do. Yes you could have 5C on that channel I believe. That would be my guess, since that's the same "symptoms" I had when trying to record HBO HD on CAP DVHS.

I transferred 3 hours worth of programming yesterday, and when I played the file back in Windows Media Player Classic, it said the file was 8+ hours long. Is that just some error in the player? Either that or there's some corruption in the file itself. As long as it plays I wouldn't worry about it.

Either that or there's some corruption in the file itself. As long as it plays I wouldn't worry about it.

Well I only had a few minutes to test it this morning, but media player classic froze up on me. But that might be due to the fact that the file is 23gb and not the file being corrupt, since media player classic gave me no errors, just froze up.

What's the best program to convert the TS file to something that I can transfer to DVD? And what a good editing program to edit out commercials.

Well I only had a few minutes to test it this morning, but media player classic froze up on me. But that might be due to the fact that the file is 23gb and not the file being corrupt, since media player classic gave me no errors, just froze up.

What's the best program to convert the TS file to something that I can transfer to DVD? And what a good editing program to edit out commercials.

The program that I use to edit out commercials is called VideoReDo. This thing works like a charm and IMHO well worth every penny. I don't do ts files but it's one of the files that it recognizes so it may do that for you also.

Laters,
Mikef5

What's the best program to convert the TS file to something that I can transfer to DVD? And what a good editing program to edit out commercials. I use HDTVtoMPEG2 to convert the TS file to MPG. This program can also supposedly take out the commercials I believe, but I haven't tried that. I edit out commercials using VirtualdubMod, but I use that to encode to AVI - you may be able to also do it back to MPG.

Yes you could have 5C on that channel I believe. That would be my guess, since that's the same "symptoms" I had when trying to record HBO HD on CAP DVHS.

Well, I wonder why it lets me record to my DVHS VCR first? If it had 5C it should block recording to the VCR shouldn't it? I've tried to record it both ways - out of the VCR from the tape and also directly out of the tuner to my computer. Neither works.

The program that I use to edit out commercials is called VideoReDo. This thing works like a charm and IMHO well worth every penny. I don't do ts files but it's one of the files that it recognizes so it may do that for you also.

Laters,
Mikef5

Well can you transfer off the DVR in anything other than TS, or do you change it from TS to MPG before you edit out the commercials?

actually you can record on your DVHS since it is probably a 5C compliant device, essentially the sending device confirms that the recieving device is compliant before sending the signal, since a pc is a non-conmpliant device the sending device stops the siganal...that's my layman's explanation at least, I'll let other people elaborate

other topic...
i believe all firewire transfers are in the .TS format, some people may convert this upon recording to their harddisk, but that conversion is done by the pc. I know that many folks that use SageTV currently prefer having on the fly TS to PS conversion done as it records/plays so that commercial detection and editing works better, since the TS commercial detection and edititng is still a work in progress

Not having any luck with CapDVHS connecting to the DCT6412 III. I precisely followed all instructions, and have plugged and unplugged many times with no success. This is a brand new box from Cox, and it was working fine in DVR mode.

Edit: DVR finally reloaded after rebooting. Still can't connect using CapDVHS. Sometimes, the DVR reboots when I plug in the firewire (whether at the PC or at the back of the DVR). Tried installing the patch. Didn't change anything.

Saw some thoughts in a forum on changing SidSpeed settings. Any advice on this?

BTW, XP SP2, upgraded from W2K.

Any thoughts to help me out? Thanks.

Well I only had a few minutes to test it this morning, but media player classic froze up on me. But that might be due to the fact that the file is 23gb and not the file being corrupt, since media player classic gave me no errors, just froze up.

What's the best program to convert the TS file to something that I can transfer to DVD? And what a good editing program to edit out commercials.


I think MPC will freeze on large files, not sure of size, but have had it happen also. When I broke file down, it played OK.

I also use HDTVtoMPEG2 to both edit out commercials and to break files out into sizes usable on data DVDs. If you can play .ts from DVD, why not leave it in that format? IF you can't, HDTVtoMPEG2 should give you files so we can make a disk playable on a std DVD player.

Well looks like the file might be corrupt. It only plays to a certain point and then freezes the player. I noticed that while it was capturing, the image on the tv would get all distorted and not play right. Is that normal? Anyone else ever have this problem transferring HD?

Well looks like the file might be corrupt. It only plays to a certain point and then freezes the player. I noticed that while it was capturing, the image on the tv would get all distorted and not play right. Is that normal? Anyone else ever have this problem transferring HD? Sometimes there are some pretty fatal glitches in the .ts stream that wreak havoc on some of the mpeg processing tools and player decoders. I think in many cases these are problems in the headend .ts but also in some cases the problem is with the firewire capture itself. I say that because in some cases when I have had a "bad" .ts file capture I tried re-capturing it and then it would be OK. So I've learned not to delete the show I captured from the DCT6412 until I'm sure it's OK since sometimes it takes 2 tries to get a good one. This also means that attempting live captures is a bad idea since you may not be able to have a second chance.

I am a Cablevision customer and just got the SA4200HD box. I hooked up my firewire connection to my computer and got the Panasonic DVHS drivers all setup... I then see that all the HD channels come in all blocky and not-watchable. The audio comes in really choppy also. The only channels that come in completely clear are basic cable channels.....

I don't understand how they can do this when the FCC mandates that all channels be "copy-once" unless it's PPV or VOD (Demand)..

I tried calling and asking but all I go is that the networks themselves do not allow HDTV to be recorded via firewire (which I think is bull****).

I see that comcast is very leniant when dealing with firewire and 5C encryption.. and I don't know why cablevision is being such ****s about it. I guess where comcast lacks it in internet they make up for it with good customer service and not encrypting **** I pay for.

I pay for all these channels and would just like to make my PC into a DVR instead of paying for one from Cablevision. I know i'm entitled to it, what should I do!

Sometimes there are some pretty fatal glitches in the .ts stream that wreak havoc on some of the mpeg processing tools and player decoders. I think in many cases these are problems in the headend .ts but also in some cases the problem is with the firewire capture itself. I say that because in some cases when I have had a "bad" .ts file capture I tried re-capturing it and then it would be OK. So I've learned not to delete the show I captured from the DCT6412 until I'm sure it's OK since sometimes it takes 2 tries to get a good one. This also means that attempting live captures is a bad idea since you may not be able to have a second chance.

Well I'm having more problems. I tried capturing it again last night and everything seemed to be going good, this time the image on the TV was fine. But the file didn't want to play back at all. So I tried again and set my alarm to wake up when it was done, this time the file would freeze right away and show only being 16 minutes long. So I tried one more time and it's probably done right about now, but I'm at work so who knows what happened. I'm trying to capture the White Sox Red Sox game 1 in HD, the thing that sucks is, I was trying to get it off the DVR by today so I could DVR game 3 later. Now I might have to DVR game 3 not in HD since I don't think I have space for the HD version of it on the DVR.

Do you think I'd be better off capturing the game in smaller chunks? I don't know why the big files won't play back right, CapDVHS gives me no errors.

Anyone else reading this and still having NO LUCK hooking directly from a Mitsubishi 62525 or other Mitsu Set with cable card directly to a HTPC????

I've tried the panasonic drivers....i've tried Firebus....and i'm almost bald from pulling out my HAIR :confused:

Can anyone give me tips to make this work...or do i need to return the cable card and get a freaking Set Top Box. I really hate additional components in my already cramped entertainment center and I keep reading that this "apparently" works for others with Mitsubishi TV's

I don't have a STB for Digi cable...Don't got a DVCR....

I want to go Directly from the TV firewire to my HTPC.... is it possible?? if yes...HOW??????

Any and All assistance would greatly be appreciated....
HelmetHead

have you tried the drivers over at thegreenbutton.com ...just search for firewire in the forum, they've been posted by timmoore. They have probably the broadest tested range of support among STBs so they may be more likely to be able to handle your TV as a 'Generic AV/C Tuner' device

Naylia,
thanks for the post...I've just read another 1400 posts regarding firewire recording and still no answer saying that it will work without a STB....other than it does for some...but no actual guidelines or secrets that i'm just not reading????

Mitsubishi still hasn't called back with an answer as to what devices are actually supported by their "firewire networkable" HDTV. I'm begining to think that I should have bought a set without a cable card...or just gotten a STB from timewarner...

this is the most frustrating thing i've ever dealt with on a computer.... and my HTPC hard drive may need a reformat just to clean all the system restore/driver rollbacks off of it.

any other ideas????? HELP PLEASE.....

well the starting point for getting firewire up and running on a pc is really drivers and a recent build of vlc...one of their latest nightly builds preferably. Keep trying different driver builds that's really all you have to work with. Don't even bother with recording until you get a driver that allows you to consistently stream video in VLC.

Is the device in your device manager an "AV/C Tuner"? If it is timmmoore may be willing to make minor mods for you if he can get you to pull certain info about your device. He has both moto and SA cable and the 169time sat boxes working, why not a tv? He definitly has the most recenet actively worked and maintained drivers. I think he may have even rewritten them entirely at one point instead of having them based on DVHS drivers.

PCs are not supported by their HDTV, a DVHS recorder/player might be. The TV people pretty much hating supporting PCs hooked up to their TVs.

Clean installs are good, i try to do them every six months, but that could just be sadistic side of me.

Naylia,
Thanks for the tip....I've got the firewire device showing as a panasonic av/c device as listed at the top of this thread but not a tuner....I did try to install the tuner device driver..but MCE2005 didn't like it much. i've been trying to follow the thread and not venture out on my own "blindly"

I've actually sent Timmoore an email asking if he's got a solution to my "ISSUE" and we'll see what he comes back with.

And i can see your point about TV manufacturer's not wanting PC's hooked to "their" products....that would limit their ability to sell additional components such as D-VCR's and PVR's etc.

Again...thanks for the pointers..and i'm not giving up till it works....or i'll be playing games at 62"....which i'd say is kindof working.. :D

HelmetHead

i really think the big issue with the TV guys is that it would be a pain in the butt to support, if the TV has a VGA in then they'll tell you to use that and what resolution it supports and that's a piece of cake, but when you get into DVI/HDMI or component out cables it can vary so drastically from card to card to manufacturer to driver version

have you tried following the instructions in the first post just to play back via VLC? you need to try streaming to VLC because it has by far the best and most universal TS support. We need to figure out if you have driver issues, recording issues or playback issues. What symptoms are you seeing?

Well this is a great thread! I got this working with a Moto DCT6400 series. Unfortunately, the premium HD channels such as HDNet, DiscoveryHD, ESPNHD etc, show a blank screen with no data. This is via MDM cable in Seattle. The local DTV stations are working just fine, as are the SD channels, just not the premium HD ones. Sadly, these are the ones I want, particulary I want to be able to record HDNetMovies (sorry MC). Are these encypted (no handshake)?
Oh well, still fun to play around. Funny thing, this Moto box outputs over DVI, component, and firewire at the same.
Thanks for the invaluable info and drivers!

I am reading this thread, and am wondering if you can record HD programming OTA to your computer? I have a Mitsubishi WS-48515 and a windows XP Compaq with alot of hard drive space. I just bought a DVD recorder for it. I teach social studies and PBS has some fantastic stuff for my classes. Is this possible, or am I just wasting my time. On top of that, I have to have about a 15 ft. + firewire to connect them toghther.

Or, would I be better off with a Humix Tivo? If so, does Tivo record OTA? Please someone let me know and tell me if this is doable. Thanks. -Chil-

I am reading this thread, and am wondering if you can record HD programming OTA to your computer? I have a Mitsubishi WS-48515 and a windows XP Compaq with alot of hard drive space. I just bought a DVD recorder for it. I teach social studies and PBS has some fantastic stuff for my classes. Is this possible, or am I just wasting my time. On top of that, I have to have about a 15 ft. + firewire to connect them toghther.

Or, would I be better off with a Humix Tivo? If so, does Tivo record OTA? Please someone let me know and tell me if this is doable. Thanks. -Chil-it might be easier to get a $99 OTA PC card like the FusionHDTV5 from http://www.dvico.com or http://www.copperbox.com or http://www.digitalconnection.com

Fusion 5 is a great choice with pretty good support among tv recording applications.

it might be easier to get a $99 OTA PC card like the FusionHDTV5 from http://www.dvico.com or http://www.copperbox.com or http://www.digitalconnection.com

So, all I need is this PC card? Is it as easy as a video card to install? And, this will get all the OTA programming? If so, thanks!!!!!

Naylia,
I've tried the instructions on playback via VLC and i get as far as view stream, and it hangs up/crashes VLC.

I sent Timmoore details on each of the 3 devices found when plugging in the firewire to the HTPC, but i've not heard back from him yet. Hoping to hear some good news when he replys back....

So far i can't stream broadcast to the HTPC...the tv set shows up in VLC and DVCRcap, but It is just there...no recording or streaming possible.

Once again..i'm stumped and i'm relying on those who have it working, or those that can make it work... My symptoms are...its plugged in via firewire and it shows up...i tell it to use the drivers as specified...and it does nothing from there.

:confused:
HelmetHead

chilmorg,

yup, it's just pci card, so a piece of cake to installl and you need an antenna too

helmethead,

hopefully timmoore can help you, seems like you're pretty much at a dead end for now, at least as far as my knowledge goes

Ok people, stupid me I guess....I just went out and bought a $35 Firewire cable for my Scientific Atlanta 3250 and plugged it in. I then went and downloaded the drivers provided on this forum and lo and behold, they don't work on XP x64 Edition. Bleh!

If anyone has any suggestions or 64-bit drivers, meesa love you long time!

So, all I need is this PC card? Is it as easy as a video card to install? And, this will get all the OTA programming? If so, thanks!!!!!Well I recommend the Fusion, but it has it's own sets of issues. But that's getting way off topic for this thread, so I'll point you to the Fusion thread in the HTPC forum:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=545967

When recording via 1394 and from a pre-recorded show, is the recording in real-time ?

I have a question for those who have made DVDs out of stuff they've captured.

Is it worth it to capture the HD version? The reason I ask is, a baseball game is 20+gb in HD with commercials. Does editing out the commercials and encoding the file as an mpeg-2 (that's the best for making DVDs, correct?) make the file small enough to fit on a DVD-R or a even a dual layer without losing that much quality?

Because if it doesn't, it's much easier to just capture the non HD version since it takes up less space on the DVR and is much easier to capture. (Don't have to record it in chunks, since I can't get a complete game in HD to play back correctly, but I can with the non HD)

Also what do you feel is the best DVD authoring program?

anyone have any luck trying something like this out in xp64? all of the ways i've tried in this thread and others have given me no luck with my moto box over comcast.

anyone have any luck trying something like this out in xp64? all of the ways i've tried in this thread and others have given me no luck with my moto box over comcast.

I suspect you're going to have to wait for 64 bit compatible drivers to be written - that may be a long wait.

I'm lucky if I can print with Windows XP x64... You want to record HD with it?! LOL

You would be much better of switching back to x32 till Vista is released...

BTW this is no knock to you, I wish x64 had more support, but it doesn't...

yeah i was thinking of doing a dual boot to get the xp side for this kind of stuff. maybe i'll have to build that HTPC afterall though.

When I use capDVHS I get a large .mpg file. A two hour movie is approximately 10gig. Then when I try to watch the movie in WMP it plays fine, but the timer at the bottom of the screen says it is only 17 min long. After the movie passes the 17 min mark it just keeps playing but the timer quits moving.

Then when I try to burn to DVD it compresses the movie and makes it 17 minutes long. So if I try to play it in a dvd player it plays like it is in fast forward.

Anyone have any ideas of why this is happening? Should I uninstall everything and start over? If so, where is the most recent files/instructions for setting this up?

Well this is a great thread! I got this working with a Moto DCT6400 series. Unfortunately, the premium HD channels such as HDNet, DiscoveryHD, ESPNHD etc, show a blank screen with no data. This is via MDM cable in Seattle. The local DTV stations are working just fine, as are the SD channels, just not the premium HD ones. Sadly, these are the ones I want, particulary I want to be able to record HDNetMovies (sorry MC). Are these encypted (no handshake)? Sure sounds like it to me. In general, only analog cable channels (#2-99) and digital LOCAL channels will be unencrypted by the cable company. Any non-local digital or HD channels will be 5C-encrypted/protected. I'm lucky enough to have ESPN-HD non-encrypted, but that's about it. Fortunately MOST of the stuff I'm needing to record is on analog cable.

When recording via 1394 and from a pre-recorded show, is the recording in real-time ? Yes.

When I use capDVHS I get a large .mpg file. A two hour movie is approximately 10gig. Then when I try to watch the movie in WMP it plays fine, but the timer at the bottom of the screen says it is only 17 min long. After the movie passes the 17 min mark it just keeps playing but the timer quits moving.

Then when I try to burn to DVD it compresses the movie and makes it 17 minutes long. So if I try to play it in a dvd player it plays like it is in fast forward.

Anyone have any ideas of why this is happening? Should I uninstall everything and start over? If so, where is the most recent files/instructions for setting this up? It sounds like you need to convert the file. capDVHS doesn't output a true MPG file - it outputs a "transport stream" which contains MPEG video, but also contains other data that can confuse video players. You should set capDVHS to output .ts files instead of .mpg, then use HDTVtoMPEG2 (or a similar program) to convert those .ts files to .mpg. Those files should play better, but you may need to more converting. These instructions and more are on the guide: http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/dct6412/

Is there any brand or type of Firewire I/O card that I wnat to STAY AWAY from? Or any that are preferred?

I am looking at a number of PCI cards with multiple ports. 2 firewire, 2 USB 2.0 for instance (They have 1 each inside too.)

Initial goal: MOTO6412 to HTPC for archiving HD unencrypted content.

Thanks

System is a Dell OptiPlex GX 260 that I am converting to HTPC role.
P4 2.8Ghz
512 MB Ram
80 GB HDD for Operating System
200 GB HDD for media

I think what I will do about x64 not having any support for this is run a VMware install of 32-bit Windows.

Does anyone have any idea if this will even work through a virtual PC?

Is there any brand or type of Firewire I/O card that I wnat to STAY AWAY from? Or any that are preferred?


I don't know what your use is going to be really but if you only need 1 firewire port, you might as well buy a Creative Audigy 2 or 4 and kill 2 birds with one stone. The Audigy 2 comes with 1 firewire port and support for 7.1 sound. Can't beat that, eh?

Edit:
Stand-alone Firewire cards run about $50
Audigy 2 zs runs about $65

firewire cards start at $7 on pricewatch.com and go up from there, so that would be quite a bit cheaper than the $65 bucks for a sound card....unless you need an Audigy that is.