Using HDHomeRun Prime with BTV

[Shantanu Gangul]

What kind of copy protection can this config handle? My time warner seems to have the OTA channels as copy freely and everything else as copy once, along with SDV. I hope that the copy-once channels can be recorded otherwise I'm back to using Tivo....

[Jakesty]

Things were very confusing about what I saw or how it's connected. So because I was using the Prime for some testing and only for locals it was already in BTV. So I deleted it, and followed your steps again. I have success with the below anomaly as well.

So to be fair, there is some quirkiness in how BTV-E was getting set up. I have added 2 of the 3 tuners and the below window/message is coming up.

Unhandled exception has occurred in your application...
The request failed with HTTP status 400: Bad Request


I'm not sure where the problem is. .NET, IIS? Stopping and restarting BTVE or BTV and it's services didn't help. Rebooted system, no help, still get the above message when I try to add the last tuner.

With the BTVTOOLS, or by using some command, do you know the command line statement to run ShowSqueeze? I'd like to integrate that with my postprocessing script. When I tried FFMPEG or Mencorder, I never got a quality that didn't show too much pixelation or choppiness in BTV.

What did you do about the command window that does the recordings? I'd like to run them hidden of course or at least minimized.

I think I'm almost there. Now I need to copy over some XML files from the other server which currently does all of the analog recordings and hopefully append them onto this servers XML files. This could be a nightmare.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Jakesty

I'm not sure where the problem is. .NET, IIS?

You might want to make sure that you have .net 3.5 and maybe some the older ones.... MS by not having cumulative versions of .net, sometimes that leads to some odds errors...

Rebooted system, no help, still get the above message when I try to add the last tuner.

So which step is that and do you see anything else in the error? Did you change the default password for web admin?

What did you do about the command window that does the recordings? I'd like to run them hidden of course or at least minimized.

If you are calling the .exe directly, it should be hidden...

[Jakesty]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

You might want to make sure that you have .net 3.5 and maybe some the older ones.... MS by not having cumulative versions of .net, sometimes that leads to some odds errors...

I do have 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0, but they're outdated. I reluctantly update these since they often can break things. In windows update there were updates for 3.5, and I ran those, no change so I'd have to run the others as well to be current.

Originally Posted by Fonceur

So which step is that and do you see anything else in the error? Did you change the default password for web admin?

When I add the new tuner name under the SERVER/TUNER tab, and select SAVE NEW. I don't have a password that I'm aware of. I'm sure it must be default or blank since the other 2 went through.

Originally Posted by Fonceur

If you are calling the .exe directly, it should be hidden...

I assume you mean in this command under the EXTERNAL TUNER...C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config.exe

I just get a CMD window with dots filling the screen.

[risk1994]

Originally Posted by Zogg

Right - we are talking about copy freely recordings here, so the OS doesn't

So how do you get around the lack of hardware acceleration? Doesn't HA only work in XP? This would be a deal breaker with my 5050e proc.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by Shantanu Gangul

What kind of copy protection can this config handle? My time warner seems to have the OTA channels as copy freely and everything else as copy once, along with SDV. I hope that the copy-once channels can be recorded otherwise I'm back to using Tivo....

You might want to do some searching and see what others using a CableCard on TW with a Prime or Ceton tuner card have run into. With Verizon Fios, all of the non-premium channels are apparently marked copy freely or copy once because they record with no playback problems.

I don't have any premium movie channels so I can't tell you for sure, but I don't think they will record with this method. But as lschroeder and others are doing, you could use Win7 MC to record those channels, and there is a way to automate converting those recordings to BTV.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by risk1994

So how do you get around the lack of hardware acceleration? Doesn't HA only work in XP? This would be a deal breaker with my 5050e proc.

I thought you wanted to use XP? You would only use Win 7 to do initial setup of the CableCard. A laptop would do the job. You could probably use Vista too.

Once the CC is working then you can do everything else in XP. My server is running WHS v1, which is really Win Server 2003. Granted I don't use it much for playback, but the point is that Win7 isn't required at all AFTER you get the CC up and working.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by Jakesty

I do have 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0, but they're outdated. I reluctantly update these since they often can break things. In windows update there were updates for 3.5, and I ran those, no change so I'd have to run the others as well to be current.

When I add the new tuner name under the SERVER/TUNER tab, and select SAVE NEW. I don't have a password that I'm aware of. I'm sure it must be default or blank since the other 2 went through.

I assume you mean in this command under the EXTERNAL TUNER...C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config.exe

I just get a CMD window with dots filling the screen.

I've seen a couple of errors when adding a new tuner, but just clicked Continue. Then I killed BTVE and restarted it, and the new tuner seemed to be there.

I also get a CMD window with dots, but it's minimized so I don't see it unless I click on it. Is yours not hidden or minimized?

[Jakesty]

Originally Posted by Zogg

I've seen a couple of errors when adding a new tuner, but just clicked Continue. Then I killed BTVE and restarted it, and the new tuner seemed to be there.

When I hit continue, it's not there. I've restarted it, BTV, services, rebooted, reloaded, started with another tuner to copy, try copying the Prime tuner. I just don't know.

Originally Posted by Zogg

I also get a CMD window with dots, but it's minimized so I don't see it unless I click on it. Is yours not hidden or minimized?

no, not hidden or minimized. There's no properties for a command window to change this as a default I could find.

[lschroeder]

Originally Posted by Zogg

You might want to do some searching and see what others using a CableCard on TW with a Prime or Ceton tuner card have run into. With Verizon Fios, all of the non-premium channels are apparently marked copy freely or copy once because they record with no playback problems.

I don't have any premium movie channels so I can't tell you for sure, but I don't think they will record with this method. But as lschroeder and others are doing, you could use Win7 MC to record those channels, and there is a way to automate converting those recordings to BTV.

Copy freely is what you need. Copy once is Premium channels. 7MC can only transfer copy freely material to BTV. Copy once material must be played back on the same computer it was recorded on with 7MC or an Xbox 360 as an extender.

[Zogg]

I'm pretty sure this version of BTVE uses .NET 3.5 (it's in the Readme IIRC) so I'd make sure it's all patched up.

Hopefully an update will help fix the add tuner problem. Otherwise I'm not sure what to tell you if you can't edit and save as new a virtual tuner. Maybe if you have a USB tuner you could temporarily add that as a tuner, remove the device, and let BTVE "take over" the device.

When I do a recording the command window is minimized. If I restore it then I see the dots. Not sure why BTVE isn't able to minimize this for you. Maybe Fonceur will chime in here with a suggestion.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Jakesty

I just get a CMD window with dots filling the screen.

Version 2.09 should address that...

[Brian L]

Just to clarify, If I have a tuner set up in BTV say Happauge 1600 I would select that and edit to Prime Tuner and save as new three times once for each prime tuner.I originally thought I needed to select each prime tuner on server tab and then edit so I added them to Btv as quam tuners and later deleted them. I got a few recordings but mostly didn't work. Thanks looking forward to using Prime with Btv a lot less isuse for me with BTV over 7mc. NPVR was better but still pain if you try to manage with 8 tvs laptops. link much simpler

[Fonceur]

Every time you modify the tuners in BTV, it's likely that it will undo all the BTVE virtual tuners, as BTV realize that those aren't valid...

[Brian L]

I did notice that behavior. I was going to start my setup over and wanted to confirm my understanding of how I set up virtual tuners I would select any tuner I have set up and modify per Zoggs instructions . for instance the happauge 1600 and repeat twice more