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 Post subject: DirecTV Notes
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 10:50 am 
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Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:36 pm
Posts: 2
Just wanted to share my recent experiences, frustrations and solutions regarding KnoppMyth with DirecTV, as that may help some folks.

My hardware for this is an old homebrew machine with a mini-ATX AOpen MX34 mainboard, P-III 933 CPU, 512MB PC133 SDRAM, 250GB WD IDE hard drive, Nvidia MX400 video, cheap 100 Mbps ethernet card, AOpen mini-tower case, Pioneer DVR-112D CDRW, and a brand-new Hauppauge PVR-350.

I installed KnoppMyth R5F1, initially with no listings grabber as I was anticipating creating my own, and didn't have a solution yet for changing channels on my RCA DRD435RH satellite receiver. I put in one dummy channel for testing purposes.

My first problem was a black screen when going to watch TV. To make a long and anguish-filled story short, there were two problems causing this:

1. xorg.conf specified /dev/fb1 in the [Device] secsion, and this needed to be /dev/fb0.

2. I needed to add "options ivtv-fb osd_compat=1" to /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv.

It seems to me these could and should be handled by the installer. I can't imagine how the typical prospective KnoppMyth user could be expected to figure it out.

Next problem: crappy video quality. Flashing, pixelation, snow, off colors. It turns out that when you send composite video to the S-video input of the PVR-350 using the adapter provided with the card, you need to specify "Composite 1" as the capture type and not "S-Video 1". The adapter is not really capable of generating a proper S-Video signal. I can see that someone with less patience than I might have just concluded that video quality sucks with this card (or with MythTV), and moved on to another solution. I almost did that.

Next, I signed up for an account at labs.zap2it.com (soon to go away), grabbed listings and ran mythfilldatabase. Good.

Since I had no channel changing solution yet, I needed to give Myth a channel-changing executable that will make it happy while doing nothing. Putting my vast programming skills to work, I accomplished the task with this shell script which I installed as /usr/local/bin/changedummy:

#!/bin/bash
exit 0

Now I could at least record things manually, and it was time to move on to a proper channel changing solution. For that, I made myself a cable as described at dtvcontrol.com, and tried running /usr/local/bin/d10control.pl with various arguments from the command line (accessed via ssh from another machine).

Alas, it didn't work. Tried reversing the cable connections, still no luck. I called DirecTV support and finally talked with a technician who was reluctant to say anything beyond "the low speed data port is just for diagnostics". I told him, "look I already have documentation for this thing and know that it supports commands to change channels; I don't need your help in doing that, I just need to know if the feature has been disabled so I don't waste my time trying to make it work." So he put me on hold for a while to check, and finally came back and said that it appears to be disabled. I believed him.

Fortunately, I still had in another room an old Sony SAT-B2 from about 1997 when I first started using DirecTV. Did a bit of googling, made a serial cable for it, found a "sony.pl" script for changing channels (why doesn't KnoppMyth include this?) and tried it all out. Success!

Back to the matter of program listings. Like most of us, I'm not happy that the free ones are going away. Nothing against Zap2it or Schedules Direct of course, they can and should do whatever they want.

And it's not that I can't afford the fee - I certainly can. But quite frankly, part of this whole experience for me is an act of rebellion against corporate greed. I'll skip the rest of this rant and just say that I'm in the process of coding a DirecTV grabber. More on that later.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 6:22 pm 
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Joined: Sat Sep 02, 2006 9:17 am
Posts: 359
Quote:
But quite frankly, part of this whole experience for me is an act of rebellion against corporate greed.

That's why I'm glad Schedules Direct is a nonprofit! And from what I read it looks like TMS is bending over backwards to NOT be greedy.

I say if you wan to stick it to the greedy, support the people who are trying to help.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 6:38 pm 
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Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:36 pm
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Didn't mean to imply that SD is an example of corporate greed - quite the contrary, it appears to be setting up a very welcome service. I was referring to cable and satellite providers that try in every way possible to restrict or "tax" PVR users.

I want to automatically skip commercials, burn DVDs, and use the same listings that I already get without an additional monthly fee. I can't do that with DirecTivo.


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 Post subject: Good idea!
PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:37 am 
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Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:18 pm
Posts: 86
Location: Dayton, Ohio
rod wrote:
Didn't mean to imply that SD is an example of corporate greed - quite the contrary, it appears to be setting up a very welcome service. I was referring to cable and satellite providers that try in every way possible to restrict or "tax" PVR users.

I want to automatically skip commercials, burn DVDs, and use the same listings that I already get without an additional monthly fee. I can't do that with DirecTivo.


I'm a DirecTV subscriber w/two DTiVos (one currently networked; another one to come) and I wondered how hard it would be to just use the listing data I'm already paying for with my MythTV box. If you are successful, I hope that you will make it available for others to use. Bravo!


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 Post subject: networked DTivo?
PostPosted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 11:35 am 
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Joined: Fri Sep 01, 2006 6:58 pm
Posts: 3
Harbinger, can you share a little on how you got your DTivo networked? I have two DTivo's and am frustrated by not being able to watch a show recorded in the den anywhere except in the den....

Thanks -


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