How to record via IEEE 1394 (Firewire) to Windows XP - Page 108

Not true - see the Firebus thread for one of the few options available to record a Mits TV tuner on a PC. Note that the Firebus software, at least until the latest release, has been dreadful (which is being charitable) but it does show that the PC can be used instead of a D-VHS deck.

thanks ill take at look at the Firebus thread. However, just for clarification.. I didnt mean to go off topic. I was only responding to someone who said that I would have to use a D-VHS instead of my PC. I was attempting to record to my pc from my Mitsubishit HDTV integrated tuner television through firewire. THat was not successful when install drivers for firewire posted on this thread because It would read the HDTV as a "AV/C Monitor" and therefore would not work.

Same sh!t happened to me
Damn Comcast, why did they have to fix what was working...

Anyone get the 8300hd to work? I have everything installed and it is recognized in CapDVHS but the file size of the capture is zero and no data is shown on the data info tab.

Anyone have a gray line across the bottom of their recordings? I'm using a 6412 III, and it's all working well, except every recording has this gray line all the way across the bottom of the recording.

I'm a total newby at this, but I am recording from a Comcast Motorola 6412 via firewire to my HTPC using CapDVHS. I am able to record and play back programming from INHD just fine, but I've tried recording movies from Universal HD, and the files seem to be corrupt. CapDVHS doesn't seem to have a problem recording the signal (at least it creates the files without a problem), but the files won't play back without freezing up or stuttering badly right from the beginning. The signal on this station does not appear to be the greatest (the picture and sound break up at least a couple of times an hour), but shows recorded on my DVR play back fine, except for an occasional break-up of the picture. Could the poor signal on this station be contributing to my problems, or should I be able to play back the files and see problems only at the times when the picture also breaks up on the DVR?

I'm not sure seplant, but could that be because of some copyright protection?

im trying to capture video from my dct 6412 digital cable box to my comptuer through firewire. the drivers do not work properlly on my comptuer. i am using windows xp pro. i have the box connected to the computer through firewire. what do i have to do be able to capture video?

ive installed the drivers listed on this site. but nothign has worked for me. my cable provider is cogeco. and according to them firewire is enabled but usb and ethernet is disabled.

in the past i have successfuly captured video using the exact same drivers posted on the site. the only difference is the box has been switched, as my box is rented and there was a problem with it so it was replaced.

please help.

You may have received a box with disabled firewire ports. In my case, the Time Warner tech support center did a remote factory reset on my box and now the ports are disabled and nothing I can do or say to them will get them turned on (sounds like my last girlfriend). I'm having the box replaced Friday but if firewire is off, it's off they say. With no way to test it at their center, a replacement is hit and miss. I dare say that tech support admitted they haven't been trained on the relatively new 6416 III boxes and are clueless on what an IEEE 1394 port is. Now, CapDVHS on XP2 Home doesn't recognize the Moto box at all despite previously installed and functional drivers. With no way to reinstall drivers with the PC 'seeing' the cable box, there's no way to check for corrupted drivers. I can live without offloading files to PC for archiving or just to make more space available, but it's disappointing not having the option.

can someone please link or quote, which law requires cable providers to provide ieee1394 on their stb? i can't seem to find it anymore, i'm sure i read it in this forum.
i want to use it as a weight when i talk to comcast about this new firmware 16.20 crap!

I was able to use my pc to capture, in real time, Star Wars from Cinemax. When I tried to transfer the same movie from my DVR to my pc, the file had a lot of digital break-up. I also tried to transfer last years Super Bowl and some episodes of LOST to my pc and it would not even stream over firewire. I assume that 5c protection is occurring in both instances, but why will a movie recorded from a premium channel at least output from the DVR, while a content recorded from ABC will not even stream over the firewire output?

Isn't that how 5c works? It only allows recording of a program once. You can capture programming as it is being broadcast, but you can't capture a recording.

if 5c=1 or it's from on-demand, i could never capture it (not even once).
but once i was able to capture it (5c=0), then the .ts is good forever.
some shows would be premiered with 5c enabled, then later on, the repeats usually are not - but it depends on the channel, some channels always have 5c=1 all the time

not that it matters now, since my 6200 fw is messed up from the comcast fw update

Yes. That is how I believe it works, but being able to transfer from DVR to pc isn't necessarily my question. Ultimately, neither program can be transferred it seems, but I was just curious because the attempted transfer behaved differently. My specific question is why one program will stream from my DVR to pc, although the file is apparently encrypted, while another will not stream at all? This can be observed with CapDVHS within the data info tab. Is one program flagged differently than the other?

I am capturing hi-def programming from my Comcast DVR on my HTPC via firewire using CapDVHS. Is there an application to allow viewing the video stream in a window on my HTPC prior/during capture?

From 47CFR76.640:

"(4) Cable operators shall:
(i) Effective April 1, 2004, upon request of a customer, replace any leased high definition set-top box, which does not include a functional IEEE 1394 interface, with one that includes a functional IEEE 1394 interface or upgrade the customer's set-top box by download or other means to ensure that the IEEE 1394 interface is functional."

Yes, VLC does that nicely and it's free.

hmmm, I have astound cable service and well, i have a 3250HD box with firewire ports. The drivers install perfectly fine. However, i was able to get capdvhs and vlc to play/record one second of video before it would crash. capdvhs would just crash the program while vlc would crash my computer.

oh wait.. hmm, it seems i can record all SD HBO channels. thats weird. but it doesnt seem to do anything for anything else. i cant even grab the local HD channels.

EDIT: also, ive been trying to look for the command/keypresses to show the status of the 5c protection. to see which programs/channels are copy once, free view, etc. but i havent found anything that says this. any ideas?

Eric, Thanks! Really appreciate it.
I'm all set for this Monday, I'm going to try to get a replacement STB from Comcast (one below 16.20) and ask them how to avoid future firmware push.

I found a Copy Protection section on the diagnostic menu. (i did some more searching and i got it to that point, it turned out i was pushing the buttons wrong)

under it it says

Outputs
-----------Protection Type Enabled Constrained
DVI/HDMI: none-----------no-------- no
YPrPb: none ---------------yes-------- no (strangely was disabled when first starting PC until i changed channels)
1394: Unavailable---------Unavailable
Composite: none

Policies
HDMI: 0x0000000C v1
YPrPb: 0x00000002 v1
1394: 0x00000000 v1
Composite: 0x00000000 v1
VOD: 0x00000000 v1

CCI Events

Source Destination CIT EPN EMI BF APS
RF------Video Output---no--- no--freely-no--disabled
RF------Video Output---no--- no--freely-no--disabled


Now this screen true for all channels.

I am able to watch all of my HBO channels without any glitches using vlc. changing to HD froze the computer, the music channels work but the audio skips like crazy.

strangely, i just power cycled the tuner box and i can view through vlc most hd channels. however the only one that comes through without breaking up/glitches is HDNET. local channels come through all blocky, HBOHD is even worse. Everything else is about teh same as the local channels. i was also able to record a brief few seconds of my channel 902 (local channel FOX2, in HD broadcast) they just finished the news, and was playing a non hd version of friends, before it just cut off the recording and crashed the capdvhs recording program. the recordings do look better without glitches, there is just some page tearing objects as things get jagged when being moved around. im guessing thats just from being recorded from interlaced instead of progressive mode. any ideas on why my computer/program crashes when recording certain channels? but i can view them in vlc with tons of artifacts?

Is there a way to get these techniques to work to archive content off an AVHD via the IEEE1394/firewire interface ? So far I have not had any luck using it with my new Symbio on a Toshiba 42HP595 TV with cablecard. It would be helpful to archive some of the shows before the Symbio fills up. I am not sure which driver to use, or even where to get the proper driver. CapDVHS allows a Generic driver I found somewhere, but after the recording is done the file size is 0, or about 90bytes and unreadable. I am using Windows XP. Any suggestions would be welcome. Coincidentally, I do have a Motorola DCT6412 in another room, but that is not the unit I need to archive from. Thanks

At one point in installing the firestb.msi my XP Home edition recognized my Pace Micro TDC 775 - but the installation could not complete - both the Tuner AV/C Device and the AV/C Panel show incompatibility issues in Device Manager. I am going to assume this device is just simply unsupported at this time, unless someone else has a solution......

Hey, don't you hate it when someone says, "hi, I'm new here", as if it's not obvious? Yeah, so I won't bother with that.

But anyway, I've got a problem. I'm trying to capture HD video onto an older PC from my SA 8300HD, using firewire (obviously). Maybe I should've started a new thread, but this seemed like a good place to post this. Because my newest PC is upstairs and my DVR is downstairs, the PC I'm trying to use is an old Athlon XP 1700+, with a GeForce2 GTS Pro, and only 512MB of RAM. It's a piece of crap, I know, but I'm not planning on watching anything on it. I was planning on burning the videos to DVD and playing them elsewhere.

Because that PC is about 4 years old, I had to buy a firewire PCI card, and I've already installed that without a problem. I had everything up and running just fine, until I tried to install the drivers which are posted on the first page of this thread (firestb.zip). Right near the end of the installation, I got an error message saying "a DLL required for the installation to complete could not be read". I thought that perhaps the installer was corrupt, so I tried again with another copy, but to no avail. The drivers do install on the newest PC though, so the installer can't be the problem. Now, while the older PC is running XP, I don't believe I ever installed Service Pack 2, which I'm thinking may be the problem. I would've just done it right now, and then tried to install the drivers again, but that PC isn't connected to the internet. To do that, I'd have to run an Ethernet cable all the way downstairs, so I don't want to do that unless I absolutely have to. So could the lack of Service Pack 2 be the problem here?

One more thing -- and I feel stupid for asking this -- but, do I need a TV tuner card to do what I'm trying to do? I don't know very much about this, and something it says on the first page, "There are a few pieces of software that I know of that can capture using these drivers..." made me think I could do it without a tuner card. Did I completely misinterpret that?

DJK

I don't know if missing SP2 is the problem. But since you aren't running MCE, you only need the driver files. I've attached them.

You don't need a tuner card. All you are wanting to do is transfer a file from the STB to the PC.

 

firestb drivers.zip 38.1201171875k . file

Ok, thanks. But what am I supposed to do with those? To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure exactly what those drivers are for. It seems the more time I spend on this, the more confused I get. Because the older computer isn't connected to the internet, I put the drivers, and a copy of the first page of this thread on a CD, and took it downstairs to try and hook everything up. But when I plug in the firewire cable, I'm not seeing anything that says "Tuner AV/C Device" or "Tuner AV/C Panel". The new hardware wizard pops up twice, but with something labeled as "unknown". After repeating the process several times, I decided to try and install the drivers for "unknown", so I chose "install the drivers automatically", but it said it was unable to find the software, and asked to look online, which of course it can't do at the moment. So I'm completely stuck here. I've been trying to follow the instructions on the first page of this thread, but nothing is working for me.

Also, there are two firewire ports on the back of the DVR, so I thought that perhaps only one was active, and I had picked the wrong one. So I tried the other one, and while a box on the bottom right of the screen did pop up saying "Scientific Atlanta 8300HD", the new hardware wizard never said anything other than "unknown". During the course of this, I've had to plug and unplug the firewire cord several times to bring up the new hardware wizard, and I've yet to see that pop up box which says "SA 8300HD" like I did that first time. Although, something does pop up in the bottom right corner of the screen for a fraction of a second before the new hardware wizard appears, but there's not enough time to read it.

unknown device pops up a few times, before it says tuner.

i think the third device it found for my 3250 was the tuner, then it was panel..


do this, uninstal all drivers/hardware found in the device manager. then reboot when prompted. install the drivers found on the first page. then wait till after you reboot. after rebooting, then plug the cord into your 8300hd(be sure that the power is off, it will automatically turn on when you plug it in).

But for me, there was no third device. Also, when you say tuner, you don't mean a tuner card, do you? As I said in the first post, I don't have one.

And when you said to install the drivers, exactly how do I do that?

no its the cable box... av tuner device or whatever, and av panel device.


edit: if it helps any, i installed 3/4 of the things that were listed in the msi program. the first and the last two items. i dont know if that had anything to do with it. but it worked for me. i find it kinda strange that your box is somewhat recognized, but then doesnt fully connect. did you look in your device manager? and what happens if you unhide your hidden devices? do you see anything then? im thinking its installed.... check under capture devices.

Is there a FAQ that updates and outlines the recording process? Please post or PM me,

Thank you,

Ralph

everything is pretty much in the first post. including how to record using the software.