Branched this off the FIOS thread to prevent from going off topic. In there, Thom gave some nice pointers regarding using the HDPVR to capture the video stream from a settop box for TV viewing or redirect to other MDs.
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php/topic,13316.msg97433.html#msg97433Just wanted to follow up that I finally got this working (more or less) on my setup which I'm pretty pleased about.
Some pointers that I will wikify once I am more confident-
I flashed the HDPVR to the latest firmware. You have to do this on a windows machine so you need to suspend your conscience and principles temporarily. Basically I had the HDPVR plugged in (usb) to the windows laptop and I downloaded and installed the latest driver from Hauppauge (circa March 2012) on the laptop. I think this process updates the firmware of the plugged-in HDPVR while it's going.
HDPVR was recognised and installed as device automagically by LMCE (prior to this but I assume it would be unaffected by firmware upgrade) but I just needed to go back to Sarah and sort out the AV connections. This was a bit of a black art which I'll go through again and try to document but basically you need -
- Device Template for your Settop box with the outputs you want to connect to the HDPVR (in my case composite video and L,R analog audio)
- HDPVR device detected/installed.
Then in AV setup wiz, you ensure you add the Settop box device and then you somehow indicate that the appropriate input of the HDPVR is connected to the appropriate output of the Settop box.
As Thom says above, this creates a media scenario that basically plays the captured stream from the HDPVR and then puts your orbiter in control of the stb (however you are controlling that).
So you can use this scenario on any MD which is pretty cool. I have the HDPVR connected to one of my MDs in the TV room where the STB is and I can now watch TV on that MD (nicely wrapped in LMCE so any notifications etc still come through and I don't have to switch source on the TV) or on any other MD.
Glitches and issues -
1. Latest firmware of HDPVR has nasty colour saturation bug
Resolvable by running the following command on the MD/Core where the HDPVR is connected-
sudo /usr/bin/v4l2-ctl --verbose -d /dev/video0 --set-ctrl brightness=0x80 --set-ctrl contrast=0x40 --set-ctrl hue=0xf --set-ctrl saturation=0x40 --set-ctrl sharpness=0x80
Replace /dev/video0 with the node created for your HDPVR.
Need to work out how to stick this in as a default... possibly in the HDPVR code somewhere. Shouldn't cause problems with older firmware.
2. Long latency (5-7 seconds) delay between capture and view. Which is fine once you're viewing but you have to wait this long for any command to the STB to reflect on screen. Ouch. I think this may be due to the MD doing the capture/display battling a bit with resources. Strangely, when I stream to another MD and just use this MD for capture the delay is shorter. Haven't measured but possibly half as long.... almost usable. Which may support the resource issue- playing a stream and capturing one might just be too much for the little fella.
3. Occasional x-server crash on capture MD. Caused when I tried to play a normal video on Capture MD while capturing and streaming TV from STB to another MD. Possibly related to resources as alluded to above.
Note that my capture MD is a Zotac AD04. 2Gb memory dual core AMD-E450 proc. Radeon ATI video. Not a heavy-weight and the X-server is not fantastic with this and displays some other issues.
Still, I'm pretty pleased with this progress and I hope this info helps someone else.
Next steps-
- probably need to swap out this MD with a more potent machine with properly supported Nvidia card to see if that helps with the issues.
- Try the whole lot on a 12.04 experimental server - still to setup
- Get my settop box IR code blasting working. Not sure why, but I can record codes from the remote but the STB ignores them when blasted back. Works with my TV but STB not interested
- Sort out the colour saturation thing as code that runs with HDPVR device start
