plugreport is showing 2 nodes, 0 and 1 with different GUIDs. It seems to switch from 0 to 1 and I can't figure out why or what the second device is, as there is only 1 firewire device on the MB.



At some point, this will switch to node 1 and everything will stop working. What is going on?

Unfortunately, this is "normal" behavior. I used firewire for 6-9 months with a Motorola DCT-6200 box and there were time when it will switch nodes for no obvious reason. When this happens you need to stop the backend, go into the setup utility, change the node and then restart the backend. You may also find that anytime you attempt to record a show that has any type of protection set, things will be left in a state where future recordings fail with 0-length files until you reset the box using something like firewire_tester.

After dealing with this for 6-9 months, and even attempting to develop some scripts to automate recovery, I gave up and purchased a PCI-based tuner card. I haven't had a problem since.

Marc

Its only *normal* because no one has figured out what is happening. If you can fix it with firewire_tester, then it can be done automatically as well. Its just a matter of figuring out the proper procedure, or more importantly, figuring out why it stops working.

A PCI card won't let me get HBO or ESPN so its not of much use. I already have an HDHomerun with works fabulously for unencrypted digigal channels.

Are you able to record HBO and ESPN over firewire? My experience is that those channels, as well as some episodes aired on Fox are protected so that you can't record them over firewire. I would get the first few seconds of the episode, then it would cut off and leave the motorola dct-6200 box in a state where subsequent recordings would fail until firewire_tester was run again.

After doing some research what I learned is that the tuner will enforce various copy protection technologies including encryption and/or the copy protection flag.

Marc