Hello All,

I'm posting this only after spending the last four hours troubleshooting, including extensive research online for a solution. I'm tired, mentally exhausted and just plain frustrated! lol

Anyways...a bit of history first.

I have been capturing every single Comcast HD channel with CapDVHS via firewire hack to HTPC without a single issue for the past several months. In fact, I chose this option because I would actually capture at 1920x1080 and the quality from each and every capture was absolutely stunning!

However, things have somewhat oddly changed on me out of the blue. I can't figure out why. ??

First Issue: I used to capture at full HD with CapDVHS directly to PS (mpg) and the files would play just fine on any computer. Now, I can no longer do this. Files captured do not play and not recognized by the many video editing tools that I use. Why? What happened?

Second Issue: So I decided to play with the CapDVHS settings and did set it to capture TS instead of my usual method. This works, but not without some unnecessary extra work! The TS file would then need to be converted with HDTVtoMPEG2, then loaded on Womble (preferred cutting tool). If I don't take these extra steps now, it simply will not work.

Final Issue: This is the most bothersome of all...the super nice 1920x1280 captures are no more! Now, it will only capture at 1280x720. I can't figure out why and absolutely nothing was changed on my system.

The only thing I can think of is that something was changed that was beyond my control. Perhaps Comcast actually made some change that killed this perfect setup all of the sudden? A firmware upgrade? Blocked ports? Encryption? etc?

I know this post is rather long, but I'm hoping someone can help, as I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing this. Yes, I can still capture every single channel, but it is just not the same.

Many thanks,
--mike

Uh, well since these are digital captures, that means your cable company started sending you content in 720p. No, nothing to do with encryption, blocked ports, or anything else.
What you see is what you get over firewire.

Since the cable boxes don't re-encode or otherwise screw with the stream, the problems you describe above (about capping as PS) are also fairly irrelevant, though I would imagine the method capdvhs uses to extract PS out of TS is probably not very well tested with 720p content cause nothing is broadcast in this format in Japan and thats where capdvhs author is...

So keep capping TS, and use tools to cut/play TS, there's very little reason to keep stuff as PS, if youre authoring HD-DVD/etc you need them as ES, if you're just playing, everything plays TS including MediaPlayerClassic and any network player out there, so get with the program and just use TS.

Thanks for the reply.

What is the benefit of keeping captures TS? The problem I'm having now is that I can only capture in TS but the captured files do not play. I actually have to import it into Womble (for example) and edit then export before it will play.

The raw captured file will not play.

About the 720p. What should I do about that? Mostly everything I have captured the past serveral months when everything was working fine was all in 1080. Is there something I need to do or they need to do on their end?

Thanks,
--mike

There's no benefit or disadvantage to keeping capture as TS. The files should play, however. Obtain a copy of TSReader Lite and run it in file mode and see what is different about the files you capture now vs the captures from before.

What player are you using? Media Player classic or VLC do not play the new 720p content?

And about 720p, call your cable office and ask why they started downrezzing stuff.

timecop,
After you have taken the time to reply to my issues, I decided to spend this evening doing additional testing to try and pinpoint the problem. Unfortunately, this has lead to more questions than answers :mad:

Here's what I did tonight...

I used CapDVHS to capture a large number of recordings from a variety of HD channels. They ranged between 1 minute to 10 minutes long. Using your advice, and considering I stated that I can no longer capture the way I used to in the past, all were transport streams and all source files were in this particular format. (.ts)

First, channels that where captured on Comcast....

Discovery Channel HD
National Geographic HD
HBO HD
MOJO HD

Note: These are all channels I used to capture from just fine in the past at very high resolutions stated in the initial post here.

Turns out that mostly all the recordings where unreadable or "unplayable". The only files that seemed to be read by preferred editing/encoding tools were those recorded from the National Geographic Channel. The rest I could not load or play, regardless of the methods I took or the numerous tools I used.

Here's what it interesting though. I noticed that CapDVHS would actually show the resolution on the status tab when recording only when recording from the National Geographic Channel. However, this was still the lower resolution I told you about...1280x720p. Mostly all of the other recordings were unreadable and CapDVHS would not show resolution on the status menu. (1080?)

Any ideas? I just don't see why this was all working and all of the sudden it stopped. Is there a way to check if Comcast made a change in terms of content that can be captured and 5C protection? I even went into the diag menu of the STB and can clearly see that the channels are not restricted in any way.

I'm at a loss here and just don't know how else to troubleshoot. You did mention TSReader and I actually did install it, but I just couldn't figure it out to the point where I could find any use for it and compare the files for some kind of relevant info that may help determine the issue.

Any additional advice you can provide will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for your time.

Regards,
--mike

If you're not seeing CapDVHS pickup statistics about the stream then yes, most likely, those channels got enabled w/copy protection. Isn't there a test menu on the STB to access this, check the comcast/motorola/etc related threads.

Seems like they were overdue for copy-once anyway, HBO HD etc sounds like a premium channel that you shouldn't have been capturing to begin with.

Regarding TSReader, hold down CTRL key while starting it and select 'File' driver as source, and try loading good (1080), not so good (720), and "unreadable" transport streams and compare the difference. If it says something along the lines of cannot find sync then most likely the files are encrypted and theres nothing you can do at this point.

Also National Geographic broadcasts in 720P, that is why that channel is 720P. The other channels have the 5C copy protection set so you cannot record anymore, same happened to me- bummer. Try all the HD channels to see if CapDVHS reports the info, if it does, then you should be able to record that channel.

For the last several months, apparently Comcast turned off 5C for the HD channels(non locals) because they were causeing problems with TiVO users or something. Also all my "digital cable" channels(100's) the flags are turned off, but who wants to archive SD, that's what VCRs/DVDs are for. Another poster told me this, but what I thought was a mistake on my local system, is indeed at least a regional thing in all of SE PA.

If you aren't seeing the stats on CapDVHS as it is recording, then it's not getting the stream, probably because of 5C. Even though it is off on my system, sometimes the CCI flag gets detected as "set" in the diagnostic when I change to a channel. Changing channels then going back usually fixes it. Don't seem to have this problem when I play DVR'ed shows.

NGeo is a 720P channel, so Comcast isn't touching it or downrezing it.

You know what you are looking for in the "current channel status' menu of the diagnostics, right? The CCi flag should be 0. Make sure you aren't checking for "ENC" towards the top, that just indicates that the channel is encrypted over QAM, nothing to do with 5C.