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PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 3:01 am 
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I wasn't able to find any information about good Firewire cards that are supported well by MythKnoppix.

I've come across two different chipsets that I'm looking at...

NEC uDP72874
VIA VT6306

Any good tribal knowledge on using any of these?


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:49 am 
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Location: Nashville, TN
have a look at Jarod's guide. http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/
In his firewire section he mentions a little something about it. He only goes into like one or two one that didn't work and one that did but might be worth looking at.

P.S. what cable company do you have and who did you have to kill to get them to give you a box with a firewire port?

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 2:55 pm 
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Xsecrets wrote:
P.S. what cable company do you have and who did you have to kill to get them to give you a box with a firewire port?


Cox Cable. The kicker? I didn't even have to ask for it. I got the HDTV DVR (Motorola DCT 6412) and it came already enabled. Based on my questions to them, this seems to be business as usual.

I've already done a bit of recording under Windows. Its just too bad that firewire playback (output to a TV that takes FireWire input) just isn't there under Windows or Linux yet. (Firebus is glitchy on my Sony.) Letting the TV take the role of the MPEG2 decoder is really a CPU saver, both with SDTV and HDTV audio/video streams.

Thanks for the pointer to Jarod's guide! I'm kinda reading that he like the NEC chipset (I'm assuming NEC doesn't make multiple firewire sets) and no opinion on the VIA.


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 3:33 pm 
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Location: Nashville, TN
yeah I have comcast, and I've seen posts all over the net with people saying yes all I did was ask for an hdtv box and they gave me the moto 62?? but of course I get an hdtv box and it doesn't even have a firewire port on it, just a little spot where one could go.

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 10:44 pm 
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Xsecrets wrote:
yeah I have comcast, and I've seen posts all over the net with people saying yes all I did was ask for an hdtv box and they gave me the moto 62?? but of course I get an hdtv box and it doesn't even have a firewire port on it, just a little spot where one could go.


I understand. It is possible (at least something to check into) that they rotate between a number of different models at random. If that's the case, probably the only thing you can do is return your HDTV box, and then 'change your mind and decide you want one again'. It is likely that they aren't going to slap you with a big fee for it.

If they hand you the 'wrong one', at least try to play dumb and say that you really wanted the same one as your sister because she was going to show you how to use it and everything.

Of course, when I went into the local cable company's office, the woman who served me was extremely polite verbally, at the same time she was non-verbally very mean. Exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to see working at a cable company in a customer facing role.

I think if I saw one of those people again, I'd turn around and come back another day.

My problem is that if I go through firewire to my MythTV setup, I'd likely want to go with one of the Motorola 64xx receivers, but without the hard drive and DVR functionality. (Reason: Lower monthly fee for receiver without DVR functionality.) But, if I'm just wanting an HDTV receiver (and not a DVR), it is going to be hit-or-miss which model I get from Cox.


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 8:22 am 
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I read somewhere that if you ask for a box with firewire they supposed to have to give you one. But of course I can't find the reference now. Um, here's something... http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_ ... ms&id=1181


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:44 am 
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you are correct the FCC requires them to give you a box with a functioning IEEE1394 port if you request it. The problem is the morons answering the phones don't know that nor do their supervisors. I've already talked to a supervisor once, and she was supposed to have a manager call me, which never happened. So I'll have to start it all over again, and at some point after I give them a few chances I'll have to file an official complaint with the FCC. Fun Stuff.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 10:37 am 
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Location: Arlington, MA
Try coming at it a bit differently. I know paper is old school but it often makes a bigger impact... Try sending them a registered letter with the appropriate FCC directive attached, and the citation to verify it. It should say something like "As per the attached FCC directive I am requesting ... As you can see by this directive you are required to ... I will expect action on this matter by ..." Then thank them in advance for their quick cooperation and compliance. ;-)

Letting them know that you can make a big enough stink to cause them excessive misery is often half the battle... This after all is why skunks and lawyers both wear striped suits... ;-)


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PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:03 am 
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yeah If I get to that point I was planning on using paper, but I'm going to give it a good go through the phone lines first. I want them to tell me which best buy or radio shack I can get a stb that connects to their network, because that was what they said last time. lol I figure if I call a few times I'll finally find someone who knows that firewire is not "firewall" and will actually understand that I'm looking for a port on thier supplied box.

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:03 pm 
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crabby wrote:
I read somewhere that if you ask for a box with firewire they supposed to have to give you one. But of course I can't find the reference now. Um, here's something... http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_ ... ms&id=1181


I don't have the reference, but I could have sworn that in another forum (AVSForum?) when this was being discussed, someone else came up with a document that gave the cable companies an extra year's extension to comply with providing firewire ports on request.


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PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:20 pm 
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there was an extra year added, but the extra year ended april of 2004. And actually as of July 1 2005 every hd box is supposed to have functional firewire and hdmi/dvi.

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 4:57 pm 
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Joined: Mon May 02, 2005 3:59 pm
Posts: 70
I have Comcast and received a newer Digital Cable box and it came with
FireWire.

I have had some success with this. Although it seems that Comcast does
a reset on the Cable box at will and this seems to lose connection to
Firewire.

I have a couple of show's scheduled to record via Firewire... It has been
hit or miss thus far... Even the node # has changed on me once. Not sure
if its my FW Card or Comcast.

I am currently using this on a Via Firewire card.

The HD shows that I did record {I have several now} looks incredible...


Last edited by linuxgeek on Tue Jun 28, 2005 8:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 6:46 pm 
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Yeah It is mandatory for them to give you fire wire.
I have posted a link from the FCC documetn that says so.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/a ... -225A1.pdf


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 2:17 am 
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I got my firewire card for the MythTV box and plugged it in. The instructions at the wilsonnet site talked about using a test-mpeg2 tool to test the firewire connection. Does this exist anywhere within KnoppMyth? Plugreport does, and I've used that.

Also, is my connection type point-to-point, or broadcast? I have the motorola DCT6412 connected to the Sony XBR TV, and the Sony XBR TV connected to the PC. (I've verified under Windows that this arrangement works.)

The best I can get is, after I set up the video source, if I go into myth and watch livetv, it locks with a blank screen... escape key doesn't work. Nothing consuming much CPU. (But I can still use ALT-X to open a terminal window and do things.)

UPDATE: I downloaded the iec61883 package from:
http://www.linux1394.org/dl/libiec61883-1.0.0.tar.gz (available off of the homepage)

I did a ./configure, but it failed with some package error, and I ended up having to set the variable...

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH
./configure
./make

I went into the examples directory, and there was test-mpeg2.

But I can't seem to get any output out of it. Argghhh! The best I get out of it is...

libiec61883 warning: Established connection on channel 0.
You may need to manually set the channel on the receiving node.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 3:00 am 
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Okay. I've done some more playing.

About one out of every three times, a "test-mpeg2 -r 0" will lock onto and capture the transport stream. (Sometimes it'll be several times in a row, sometimes it'll be a few times with nothing coming back.)

Also, I needed to do a chmod ugo+rw on /tmp/raw1394... myth would lock up on playback because it couldn't access the device. Now, when you go to play livetv, one out of three or so times, it'll do it. The rest of the times will have about a 20 second wait with a black screen, then return to the menu.

Any ideas on this?


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