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Recording to PC from a SA 8300HD via Firewire - Page 6

post #151 of 474
3/26/07 at 5:17pm
I just started trying this the other day. I bought a cheap CompUSA brand firewire card and an old computer (XP1600, 384mb pc133, 80mb ata100). The firewire card is apparently 1394a. I am using XP Pro SP2, w/ the above firewire fix from MS. Pretty minimal specs.

Preliminary results: SD programs no problem (except Disney Stuff, Showtime). HD programs, I have King Kong(~15000kbps) and Serenity (~10000kbps). I have only done test captures of about a minute or so. Ran both through videoredo to fix errors.

King Kong has a couple of errors (~3), but is very watchable. Serenity seems to have less, but was a shorter capture. Again, very watchable. Sound seems ok in both.

Converted the King Kong capture to 720P (tv is 720, more playable on the old computer, half the size), only 1 noticable error.

I will try for some longer captures, hopefully tonight.

*edit* Looking at some 1394b cards online, they all seem to have a 9-pin connector instead of the six pin connector. Seems to me that the SA8300HD probably has 1394a and not 1394b capabilities since it has a 6-pin connector. If so, I don't think a 1394b card would see any performance gain.

Any thoughts?
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post #152 of 474
3/26/07 at 5:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dannyv@cybernex. View Post

By all means please investigate. If we can get some answers or fresh ideas that would be great. I'll also take a look at the links.

This is very intresting. In a nutshell it states that xp's sp2 locks the transfer to 100mbs as sp1 keeps the port at 800mbs. Thats a drastic throttle down of the port.
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/fw800sp2.htm

This artical also has an intresting approch to reverting the firewire drivers back to the SP1 state. But my question is. Does the firestb drivers superseed the sp1 drives and limit the port?

This link
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222/en-us

Is microsoft's fix to bring the port back to 800mbp. But to get 800mbp you need to make sure your firewire card is 1394B and not 1394A. So it looks like there are a few new things to try. I think I'm going to check my firewire card and maybe invest in a 1394b card if my existing card is not 1394b.

FWIW, the port on the SA8300HD is a 400Mbit port, so I don't think an 800Mb capable 1394b card will buy you any improvements... I'll give this patch a try next week sometime and report back.
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post #153 of 474
3/26/07 at 6:42pm
I've tried falling back to the SP1 drivers, and even went as far as throwing in a harddrive and doing a fresh install of Win XP w/ SP1. Neither made any difference really. I don't think it's a problem with transfer speed, as I get noise (and lots of it) on low bitrate stations as well (3kbps).
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post #154 of 474
3/26/07 at 7:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by codex View Post

I've tried falling back to the SP1 drivers, and even went as far as throwing in a harddrive and doing a fresh install of Win XP w/ SP1. Neither made any difference really. I don't think it's a problem with transfer speed, as I get noise (and lots of it) on low bitrate stations as well (3kbps).

I was about to try reinstalling XP SP1, glad you saved us the trouble!

Seems our experiences all to point to the STB drivers as the culprit. Regardless of our units (8300HD or 8240HD) or firmware, we are all using the same Panasonic STB device drivers:
MEISTB.SYS ver. 1.00.130.1430 date 11/11/2003
MEISTRM.SYS ver. 1.00.130.1100 date 11/11/2003
Those are fairly dated drivers. I think we need to seek out a newer version or some STB drivers from another manufacturer. I haven't found any yet...please post here if you find any!
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post #155 of 474
3/26/07 at 10:36pm
i still, despite reading every post in this thread, cannot get my 824o to connect to vlc, drivers arent working....

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post #156 of 474
3/27/07 at 5:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by toro34 View Post

i still, despite reading every post in this thread, cannot get my 824o to connect to vlc, drivers arent working....


Look at post #137 on page 5 in this thread. It very well could be your problem.
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post #157 of 474
3/27/07 at 5:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by paule123 View Post

FWIW, the port on the SA8300HD is a 400Mbit port, so I don't think an 800Mb capable 1394b card will buy you any improvements... I'll give this patch a try next week sometime and report back.

Good point I didn't consider the stb port.

So if opening the port up on the PC side does show improvement this would mean that the issue is the transport stream speed.

Would it be correct to assume that if the pc port matches the speed of the STB port you should be able to get a decent capture. So the problem must be with the STB output.
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post #158 of 474
3/27/07 at 6:22am
I installed the MS update with the firewire fix.

My STB was upgraded to 1.89.20.1 late last night;
I will try to make some time and try a partial capture of Into the Blue and Return of the Jedi and report back.
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post #159 of 474
3/27/07 at 11:01am
We may want to try a newer version of VLC.

Beta copies of the newest versions can be found at:

http://nightlies.videolan.org./
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post #160 of 474
3/27/07 at 5:24pm
I installed the MSKB firewire update and it did not cure the glitches in my VLC recordings of 720p and 1080i prerecorded content.

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 5100, P4 2.66 GHz, 512MB RAM, XP SP2 with the firewire fix. Laptop has a built in firewire 400 port. STB is SA8300HD running SARA 1.88.22.1 on Wide Open West cable in Cleveland.
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post #161 of 474
3/28/07 at 9:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by paule123 View Post

I installed the MSKB firewire update and it did not cure the glitches in my VLC recordings of 720p and 1080i prerecorded content.

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 5100, P4 2.66 GHz, 512MB RAM, XP SP2 with the firewire fix. Laptop has a built in firewire 400 port. STB is SA8300HD running SARA 1.88.22.1 on Wide Open West cable in Cleveland.

paule123,

Did it make any kind of improvement at all. Or would you say its exactly the same or worst then before.
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post #162 of 474
3/28/07 at 9:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dannyv@cybernex. View Post

paule123,

Did it make any kind of improvement at all. Or would you say its exactly the same or worst then before.

I would say it's the same.
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post #163 of 474
3/28/07 at 12:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by paule123 View Post

I installed the MSKB firewire update and it did not cure the glitches in my VLC recordings of 720p and 1080i prerecorded content.

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 5100, P4 2.66 GHz, 512MB RAM, XP SP2 with the firewire fix. Laptop has a built in firewire 400 port. STB is SA8300HD running SARA 1.88.22.1 on Wide Open West cable in Cleveland.

paule123

I've been trying to capture HD in so many ways and with different PCs is not even funny and I came to the conclusion the firewire driver in XP is broken, until is fix or we get a new one I don't think we'll be able to sucessfuly capturing HD.
The funny part is I have the same laptop as you and reading your previous post of having good results using a Mac I decided to convert my Dell in a MacIntel and guess what it works great !!! and let me tell you it's a pleasure to run not crashes it just plain work.
My next computer is definitely a Mac, please don't ask how I did it, Google it.
I leave you a screen grab of my Dell capturing HD.

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post #164 of 474
3/28/07 at 12:53pm
Excellent work, Meteor. I think that pretty much puts the blame on the XP firewire drivers.

Now if I could only upgrade my JVC 40K DVHS deck to Mac OSX, so it would work properly with the SA8300HD, I'd be all set
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post #165 of 474
3/28/07 at 1:13pm
Meteor,
I was actually looking into getting Mac OSX loaded on my PC since it seemed like Mac users were having no issues with recording via firewire. Before I went through the trouble of doing so, I called my friend who has a MacBook and he said he'd swing by sometime this week to allow me to do some testing on it, so I held off on the OS install on my machine.

With Macs having no issues recording, this rules out the software versions on the STBs. So it looks like the culprit is one of 3 things: the drivers we are all using for out STBs, the software we all using to capture the stream (VLC and/or CapDVHS), or something else within windows XP SP2. My guess is the drivers. When I did a fresh install of WinXP SP1, this ruled out any kind of change from SP2 being the problem.

Since I was still getting errors using SP1, same drivers, and same software that preiously worked in the same envoirnment, it leads to maybe something has changed with the streams themselves.
Maybe the software we are using to capture doesn't know how to handle some of the info in the streams?
Maybe the driver is having problems with the streams?
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post #166 of 474
3/28/07 at 2:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by codex View Post

Meteor,
I was actually looking into getting Mac OSX loaded on my PC since it seemed like Mac users were having no issues with recording via firewire. Before I went through the trouble of doing so, I called my friend who has a MacBook and he said he'd swing by sometime this week to allow me to do some testing on it, so I held off on the OS install on my machine.

With Macs having no issues recording, this rules out the software versions on the STBs. So it looks like the culprit is one of 3 things: the drivers we are all using for out STBs, the software we all using to capture the stream (VLC and/or CapDVHS), or something else within windows XP SP2. My guess is the drivers. When I did a fresh install of WinXP SP1, this ruled out any kind of change from SP2 being the problem.

Since I was still getting errors using SP1, same drivers, and same software that preiously worked in the same envoirnment, it leads to maybe something has changed with the streams themselves.
Maybe the software we are using to capture doesn't know how to handle some of the info in the streams?
Maybe the driver is having problems with the streams?


Guess its time to start looking on ebay for a cheap MAC.....
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post #167 of 474
3/28/07 at 5:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by codex View Post

Meteor,
I was actually looking into getting Mac OSX loaded on my PC since it seemed like Mac users were having no issues with recording via firewire. Before I went through the trouble of doing so, I called my friend who has a MacBook and he said he'd swing by sometime this week to allow me to do some testing on it, so I held off on the OS install on my machine.

With Macs having no issues recording, this rules out the software versions on the STBs. So it looks like the culprit is one of 3 things: the drivers we are all using for out STBs, the software we all using to capture the stream (VLC and/or CapDVHS), or something else within windows XP SP2. My guess is the drivers. When I did a fresh install of WinXP SP1, this ruled out any kind of change from SP2 being the problem.

Since I was still getting errors using SP1, same drivers, and same software that preiously worked in the same envoirnment, it leads to maybe something has changed with the streams themselves.
Maybe the software we are using to capture doesn't know how to handle some of the info in the streams?
Maybe the driver is having problems with the streams?


I have no answers but am encouraged by the effort being put forth here. I'm not an engineer, or programmer, but am wondering:
Is it possible that a firmware upgrade would allow apple computers, but cripple windows?
The apple drivers must be different than window drivers since different O/S.
If streams have changed - aren't streams just pure condensed data - why working on apple?
Is there program that can convert apple drivers to windows drivers?
What is cost of apple o/s, and how difficult is it to do a dual boot?
My computer is set for automatic updates, could Mr. softy be telling me that I have to buy his $400 version of vista?
I think when I originally installed I had four driver selections to record in CapDVHS - unknown panel and tuner, and sa3250 panel and tuner. Now I only have two - sa3250 tuner and panel. Reinstall does not add unknow tuner and panel drivers now. Could this be the problem, and if so, why would it reinstall differently?
Though it would take me at least a month of Sundays to do(no thanks), would a windows fresh reinstall work?
Is the code for the windows driver viewable, changeable, and how difficult would it be to correct by a programmer if that is our problem?
No answers here, only questions.
Scientifically speaking have we really ruled out any causes? cable firmware upgrade, firewire driver no longer functional because of firmware upgrade or change, windows update, some kind of change in stream size, amplitude, improper reinstalation of drivers, or something else altogether?
I am offering $20 to anyone who can get my windows box recording HD again, cause I'm just about ready to throw my cable box out the window.
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post #168 of 474
3/28/07 at 6:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by a8vdeluxe View Post

I have no answers but am encouraged by the effort being put forth here. I'm not an engineer, or programmer, but am wondering:
Is it possible that a firmware upgrade would allow apple computers, but cripple windows?
The apple drivers must be different than window drivers since different O/S.
If streams have changed - aren't streams just pure condensed data - why working on apple?
Is there program that can convert apple drivers to windows drivers?
What is cost of apple o/s, and how difficult is it to do a dual boot?
My computer is set for automatic updates, could Mr. softy be telling me that I have to buy his $400 version of vista?
I think when I originally installed I had four driver selections to record in CapDVHS - unknown panel and tuner, and sa3250 panel and tuner. Now I only have two - sa3250 tuner and panel. Reinstall does not add unknow tuner and panel drivers now. Could this be the problem, and if so, why would it reinstall differently?
Though it would take me at least a month of Sundays to do(no thanks), would a windows fresh reinstall work?
Is the code for the windows driver viewable, changeable, and how difficult would it be to correct by a programmer if that is our problem?
No answers here, only questions.
Scientifically speaking have we really ruled out any causes? cable firmware upgrade, firewire driver no longer functional because of firmware upgrade or change, windows update, some kind of change in stream size, amplitude, improper reinstalation of drivers, or something else altogether?
I am offering $20 to anyone who can get my windows box recording HD again, cause I'm just about ready to throw my cable box out the window.

Apple has embraced Firewire technology from Day 1, so IMO their programmers have had much much more experience with firewire than Microsoft. It doesn't surprise me that the Apple firewire implementation works so much better. With Apple's firewire SDK, you can really see a lot of the "plumbing" going on, options galore, and it's well documented, whereas on Windows, firewire programming seems to be a bit of black magic mastered by a select few. If I remember history correctly, Apple was doing digital video editing with firewire peripherals long before Windows/Intel.

Firewire has always been a bastard child on Windows/Intel platforms, partly because Intel was always promoting USB technology in their chipsets. Intel probably didn't want to pay the extra 10 cents for another vendor's firewire chip on their Intel boards.
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post #169 of 474
3/28/07 at 6:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by paule123 View Post

Apple has embraced Firewire technology from Day 1, so IMO their programmers have had much much more experience with firewire than Microsoft. It doesn't surprise me that the Apple firewire implementation works so much better. With Apple's firewire SDK, you can really see a lot of the "plumbing" going on, options galore, and it's well documented, whereas on Windows, firewire programming seems to be a bit of black magic mastered by a select few. If I remember history correctly, Apple was doing digital video editing with firewire peripherals long before Windows/Intel.

Firewire has always been a bastard child on Windows/Intel platforms, partly because Intel was always promoting USB technology in their chipsets. Intel probably didn't want to pay the extra 10 cents for another vendor's firewire chip on their Intel boards.


Nice sumation of Win/Tel and firewire - bastards.
Cost of apple o/s, and dual boot?
But when my was working for about a year I had no problem.
Still hoping that someone will find a windows solution since many of us seem to have lost our firewire/cable box recording HD option. Wasn't it bdraw who came up with this brainstorm?
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post #170 of 474
3/28/07 at 8:30pm
No more questions. I quit, the cable box just went out the window, down 8 flights towards the trash bin, bounced off plastic covering of bin, went over the fence, just missed a car parked there, and may it rest in peace.
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post #171 of 474
3/29/07 at 5:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Meteor View Post

paule123

I've been trying to capture HD in so many ways and with different PCs is not even funny and I came to the conclusion the firewire driver in XP is broken, until is fix or we get a new one I don't think we'll be able to sucessfuly capturing HD.
The funny part is I have the same laptop as you and reading your previous post of having good results using a Mac I decided to convert my Dell in a MacIntel and guess what it works great !!! and let me tell you it's a pleasure to run not crashes it just plain work.
My next computer is definitely a Mac, please don't ask how I did it, Google it.
I leave you a screen grab of my Dell capturing HD.


Meteor,

Intresting thought of converting the PC to a mac. I often thought about installing virtual machine for macintosh but as this is an MS product I'm sure there firewire implementation is the same as on XP. I do have a power mac G4 hanging around doing nothing that I'm thinking of installing OSX on and giving that a try. I'll report back my results.

One question,
Are the TS files created on a mac compatable with a PC. I have limited space on the mac so I would need to capture on the MAC then move the stream to a PC to edit and convert.
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post #172 of 474
3/29/07 at 10:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Meteor View Post

paule123

I've been trying to capture HD in so many ways and with different PCs is not even funny and I came to the conclusion the firewire driver in XP is broken, until is fix or we get a new one I don't think we'll be able to sucessfuly capturing HD.
The funny part is I have the same laptop as you and reading your previous post of having good results using a Mac I decided to convert my Dell in a MacIntel and guess what it works great !!! and let me tell you it's a pleasure to run not crashes it just plain work.
My next computer is definitely a Mac, please don't ask how I did it, Google it.
I leave you a screen grab of my Dell capturing HD.



What app do you find does a better job, the VHS or AVC?
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post #173 of 474
3/29/07 at 10:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Meteor View Post

paule123

I've been trying to capture HD in so many ways and with different PCs is not even funny and I came to the conclusion the firewire driver in XP is broken, until is fix or we get a new one I don't think we'll be able to sucessfuly capturing HD.
The funny part is I have the same laptop as you and reading your previous post of having good results using a Mac I decided to convert my Dell in a MacIntel and guess what it works great !!! and let me tell you it's a pleasure to run not crashes it just plain work.
My next computer is definitely a Mac, please don't ask how I did it, Google it.
I leave you a screen grab of my Dell capturing HD.


I'm going to set up a mac g4 with OSX 10.4 tiger this weekend. Can you give me some detail as to what I will need to set up capturing such as firewire driver, video capture software etc. etc. plus any other hints or tricks you can think of.
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post #174 of 474
3/29/07 at 11:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dannyv@cybernex. View Post

I'm going to set up a mac g4 with OSX 10.4 tiger this weekend. Can you give me some detail as to what I will need to set up capturing such as firewire driver, video capture software etc. etc. plus any other hints or tricks you can think of.

Follow the steps here:
http://www.pressleypress.com/blog/?p=35

The Firewire SDK package has the AVCVideoCap application already built in. I followed his "AVCVideoCap" method, those were easier than fooling around with the Virtual DVHS "channel 63" weirdness. So, to paraphrase the Pressley site:


AVCVideoCap :

1a) Perform steps 1-4 ...

1) Download and install Apple's Firewire SDK found at ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Develo...eWireSDK22.dmg
2) Connect your Mac to either firewire port located at the back of the 8300HD while the Mac is off.
3) Power on the Mac
4) Tune to the HD channel you wish to capture. (On your STB)

2a) Run the AVCVideoCap app located under /Developer/FirewireSDK22/Applications/
3a) Select your device in the AVCVideoCap UI.
4a) Click the Capture from Device button.
5a) Choose where you want the video saved.
6a) Enter how long you want to capture in minutes.
7a) Hit continue.
8a) Capturing occurs!


Note I am using the Firewire SDK 23, which is a little bit newer and available here:
http://developer.apple.com/sdk/
You have to set up a free Apple developer account to access it, though.


To answer your previous question, yes, TS files are compatible between Mac and PC. Transport Streams are just the raw data from the broadcaster without any re-encoding, so they are playable on anything that supports TS.
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post #175 of 474
3/29/07 at 11:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by paule123 View Post

Follow the steps here:
http://www.pressleypress.com/blog/?p=35

The Firewire SDK package has the AVCVideoCap application already built in. I followed his "AVCVideoCap" method, those were easier than fooling around with the Virtual DVHS "channel 63" weirdness. So, to paraphrase the Pressley site:


AVCVideoCap :

1a) Perform steps 1-4 ...

1) Download and install Apple's Firewire SDK found at ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Develo...eWireSDK22.dmg
2) Connect your Mac to either firewire port located at the back of the 8300HD while the Mac is off.
3) Power on the Mac
4) Tune to the HD channel you wish to capture. (On your STB)

2a) Run the AVCVideoCap app located under /Developer/FirewireSDK22/Applications/
3a) Select your device in the AVCVideoCap UI.
4a) Click the Capture from Device button.
5a) Choose where you want the video saved.
6a) Enter how long you want to capture in minutes.
7a) Hit continue.
8a) Capturing occurs!


Note I am using the Firewire SDK 23, which is a little bit newer and available here:
http://developer.apple.com/sdk/
You have to set up a free Apple developer account to access it, though.


To answer your previous question, yes, TS files are compatible between Mac and PC. Transport Streams are just the raw data from the broadcaster without any re-encoding, so they are playable on anything that supports TS.

Paulie does AVCVideocap allow one to set the size of files to save? For example if I wanted to save a 2 hour movie into 4GB files will it allow that type of save or can it only be done manually?

thanks
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post #176 of 474
3/29/07 at 11:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by uncertainty View Post

Paulie does AVCVideocap allow one to set the size of files to save? For example if I wanted to save a 2 hour movie into 4GB files will it allow that type of save or can it only be done manually?

thanks

I really don't remember what the options are in AVCVideoCap. Here's a little AVCVideoCap tutorial I found:
http://project-tigershark.com/people...irewire-hd-pvr

I also stumbled across this, something called iRecord might be useful to you:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...60421212958602

How-To: MacOS X Firewire HDTV recording
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=386740

Google is your friend.
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post #177 of 474
4/1/07 at 12:38pm
OK everyone, some questions. I tried viewing firewire content on an older system and was met with less than spectacular results. I now have an Core 2 Duo setup that's ten times as far, so hopefully it'll work better.

1- Has anyone tried this with the HD/DVR QIP6416-2 model from Verizon FIOS?

2 - What are you using to record from Firewire, and how close is the quality to true HD DVD or Blu-Ray specs? I'm wondering if it's worth going through the hassle.

And 3 - Does any old firewire card work? and where are the driver links for the box again?

thanks!
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post #178 of 474
4/1/07 at 2:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by a8vdeluxe View Post

No more questions. I quit, the cable box just went out the window, down 8 flights towards the trash bin, bounced off plastic covering of bin, went over the fence, just missed a car parked there, and may it rest in peace.

Just kidding folks. Here is a precious find for all you diehards...if anyone is left other than me. On demand programs record perfectly with firewire drivers. What does this mean?

When you flip to an on demand channel is looks like the same pixalated crap. But if you play a selection.....presto. I'm recording again. It is only in SD though, and since time warner only has one HD on demand movie channel, and it is PPV I have not tried it yet. But, again, why is on demand recordable but not network channels???
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post #179 of 474
4/1/07 at 3:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by NV5655 View Post

OK everyone, some questions. I tried viewing firewire content on an older system and was met with less than spectacular results. I now have an Core 2 Duo setup that's ten times as far, so hopefully it'll work better.

1- Has anyone tried this with the HD/DVR QIP6416-2 model from Verizon FIOS?

2 - What are you using to record from Firewire, and how close is the quality to true HD DVD or Blu-Ray specs? I'm wondering if it's worth going through the hassle.

And 3 - Does any old firewire card work? and where are the driver links for the box again?

thanks!

1. It works on the Fios HD DVR just as it works on other Motorola DCT units.

2. A DVHS recorder or firewire equipped computer (Windows/Mac/Linux) can be used to capture the digital transport stream. Since the transport stream is transferred digitally, your recording will be EXACTLY bit for bit the same quality that it was broadcasted in by your cable head end. I don't know exactly what you want to know in comparison to HD DVD or Blu Ray, however these new Hi Def movie standards use 1080p HD resolutions, but currently no digital TV provider broadcasts any content in resolutions higher than 1080i. All network HD content is broadcast in either 720p or 1080i, so you're not going to be able to get 1080p recordings yet because the content isn't there.

3. Essentially yes, as long as you have a functional firewire card with updated drivers, you shouldn't have any problems.
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post #180 of 474
4/2/07 at 5:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by a8vdeluxe View Post

Just kidding folks. Here is a precious find for all you diehards...if anyone is left other than me. On demand programs record perfectly with firewire drivers. What does this mean?

When you flip to an on demand channel is looks like the same pixalated crap. But if you play a selection.....presto. I'm recording again. It is only in SD though, and since time warner only has one HD on demand movie channel, and it is PPV I have not tried it yet. But, again, why is on demand recordable but not network channels???

a8vdeluxe,

In my case SD channels record perfectly but the HD channels are all pixilated and audio is choppy. If you read some of my earler posts on this page you will find a firewire hotfix procedure from microsoft. In a nutshell here is the information I refer to.

Quote:
By all means please investigate. If we can get some answers or fresh ideas that would be great. I'll also take a look at the links.

This is very intresting. In a nutshell it states that xp's sp2 locks the transfer to 100mbs as sp1 keeps the port at 800mbs. Thats a drastic throttle down of the port.
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/fw800sp2.htm

This artical also has an intresting approch to reverting the firewire drivers back to the SP1 state. But my question is. Does the firestb drivers superseed the sp1 drives and limit the port?

This link
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222/en-us

Is microsoft's fix to bring the port back to 800mbp. But to get 800mbp you need to make sure your firewire card is 1394B and not 1394A. So it looks like there are a few new things to try. I think I'm going to check my firewire card and maybe invest in a 1394b card if my existing card is not 1394b.

I tryed this and it did make it better but the problem still does exist. It seems the problem is in the firestb drivers. I'm in the process of setting up a Macintosh G4 which from all I have read in the forums seems to work perfectly.

So as fustrating as it is don't give up. Your amoung many of us here who are having the same exact problems.
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