Dual Tuner Colossus

Help with tuners from ATI, Hauppauge, AverMedia and more.
mceguy...

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#81

Post by mceguy... » Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:50 am

Pir8Man wrote:well if you're gonna give up then thats that.
if you want to solve it. im sure we can. it's tough, but not impossible.
Well, I had a brain fart after I posted that... I tested the IP control using a cmd window and the string "DTVipcontrol.exe /i 192.168.xx.xxx /c 269" and both STBs would change channels correctly for 1, 2, and 3 digit channels... So, the "trigger" isn't getting from MCE to Colossus (or is it Colossus to MCE?)... Good news is my network is configured and allowing traffic to the STBs locally...

Yes, I uninstalled the IRSS software along with the IR software from Hauppauge. I'm using an external USB transceiver/MCE remote/Blasters and all other functions on the remote work fine, but IR control for channel changing... This USB transceiver worked fine with (2) 1850 tuners and composite RCA inputs although not HD they did have a good picture/sound...

I think my next step should be using the "hcwclear.exe" to remove all Hauppauge software and start a new, like Michelle did... I'll be back...

Pir8Man

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#82

Post by Pir8Man » Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:16 pm

which external usb transceiver are you using? My solution does not take into account any extra hardware. I may have completely different answers for you, depending on what you are working with.

mceguy...

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#83

Post by mceguy... » Sun Jan 18, 2015 6:30 am

Pir8Man wrote:which external usb transceiver are you using? My solution does not take into account any extra hardware. I may have completely different answers for you, depending on what you are working with.
The Microsoft answer guy asked the same question, it has no label, made in China, has "The Green Button" for MCE and pretty much any handset with that green button will operate it, I believe it was included with a MCE 500 Hauppauge Duel tuner (really old). The receiver has (2) blaster ports and the driver is Microsoft, automatically loads when plugged into a USB port.

Last night I backtracked a bit, and reloaded the IR Blaster & Remote Hauppauge software and plugged in the Hauppauge IR receiver/blaster cables into the Colossus cards and ran the remote config utility to select IR code... It didn't work and the blaster ports are still greyed out and neither one blasts any light.

I also loaded WinTV 7 to see if the remote worked there and no it doesn't, there is another utility from Hauppauge to select either WinTV or MCE for the Hauppauge hardware, but it says there's no Hauppauge hardware found and defaults to MCE then greys it out, so I'm not able to change it.

As a last resort, I ran the MCE_setup plugin again and I swapped the IP addresses in the argu field for each card, and WhooHoo it started working after I rebooted, I should have known it would be simple... I tested with a couple of scheduled recordings, and the 1st had no sound (after the machine came out of sleep), the 2nd was fine...

My thanks to anyone who contributed to this thread, I hope it gets "pinned" somewhere...

Pir8Man

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#84

Post by Pir8Man » Sun Jan 18, 2015 8:49 am

mceguy... wrote:
Pir8Man wrote:which external usb transceiver are you using? My solution does not take into account any extra hardware. I may have completely different answers for you, depending on what you are working with.
The Microsoft answer guy asked the same question, it has no label, made in China, has "The Green Button" for MCE and pretty much any handset with that green button will operate it, I believe it was included with a MCE 500 Hauppauge Duel tuner (really old). The receiver has (2) blaster ports and the driver is Microsoft, automatically loads when plugged into a USB port.

Last night I backtracked a bit, and reloaded the IR Blaster & Remote Hauppauge software and plugged in the Hauppauge IR receiver/blaster cables into the Colossus cards and ran the remote config utility to select IR code... It didn't work and the blaster ports are still greyed out and neither one blasts any light.

I also loaded WinTV 7 to see if the remote worked there and no it doesn't, there is another utility from Hauppauge to select either WinTV or MCE for the Hauppauge hardware, but it says there's no Hauppauge hardware found and defaults to MCE then greys it out, so I'm not able to change it.

As a last resort, I ran the MCE_setup plugin again and I swapped the IP addresses in the argu field for each card, and WhooHoo it started working after I rebooted, I should have known it would be simple... I tested with a couple of scheduled recordings, and the 1st had no sound (after the machine came out of sleep), the 2nd was fine...

My thanks to anyone who contributed to this thread, I hope it gets "pinned" somewhere...
Its awesome when the problem finally gets solved.

I think your usb IR blaster is a clone of the Microsoft IR6 adapter & remote. I wish I still had mine. but it died and could not find a replacement. That blaster works regardless of hauppauge IR. completely replaces it with it's own IR receiver and two separate IR transmitters. it can handle 2 sat or cable boxes regardless of the capture cards behind it. And media center is so in tune with that USB blaster that it will switch tuner cards automatically (if needed) during the setup process.

So now it seems you have hauppauge's "external" blaster pushing commands via directvipcontrol.exe. (I hope you have the internal blaster boxes unchecked for each card and uninstalled IR Blaster. Which disables the IR xmitter on each card.) Now you can leave your usb adapter un-plugged. Leaving the Hauppauge IR receiver cord to one colossus card. (my xmitter part of this cable is coiled up and zip tied to the receiver cord right behind my pc.)
Or, you can remove the IR32 sofftware as well. disabling all IR from your colossus cards. Plugin your USB blaster and stick its IR emitters to each tuner. Then re-run media center tuner configuration. Media center will see your usb blaster as the only blaster available and set itself up accordingly.

The network solutions does support more than 2 colossus cards though. Useless for me, but still pretty cool.

mceguy...

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#85

Post by mceguy... » Mon Jan 19, 2015 9:12 am

Pir8Man wrote:
mceguy... wrote:
Pir8Man wrote:which external usb transceiver are you using? My solution does not take into account any extra hardware. I may have completely different answers for you, depending on what you are working with.
The Microsoft answer guy asked the same question, it has no label, made in China, has "The Green Button" for MCE and pretty much any handset with that green button will operate it, I believe it was included with a MCE 500 Hauppauge Duel tuner (really old). The receiver has (2) blaster ports and the driver is Microsoft, automatically loads when plugged into a USB port.

Last night I backtracked a bit, and reloaded the IR Blaster & Remote Hauppauge software and plugged in the Hauppauge IR receiver/blaster cables into the Colossus cards and ran the remote config utility to select IR code... It didn't work and the blaster ports are still greyed out and neither one blasts any light.

I also loaded WinTV 7 to see if the remote worked there and no it doesn't, there is another utility from Hauppauge to select either WinTV or MCE for the Hauppauge hardware, but it says there's no Hauppauge hardware found and defaults to MCE then greys it out, so I'm not able to change it.

As a last resort, I ran the MCE_setup plugin again and I swapped the IP addresses in the argu field for each card, and WhooHoo it started working after I rebooted, I should have known it would be simple... I tested with a couple of scheduled recordings, and the 1st had no sound (after the machine came out of sleep), the 2nd was fine...

My thanks to anyone who contributed to this thread, I hope it gets "pinned" somewhere...
Its awesome when the problem finally gets solved.

I think your usb IR blaster is a clone of the Microsoft IR6 adapter & remote. I wish I still had mine. but it died and could not find a replacement. That blaster works regardless of hauppauge IR. completely replaces it with it's own IR receiver and two separate IR transmitters. it can handle 2 sat or cable boxes regardless of the capture cards behind it. And media center is so in tune with that USB blaster that it will switch tuner cards automatically (if needed) during the setup process.

So now it seems you have hauppauge's "external" blaster pushing commands via directvipcontrol.exe. (I hope you have the internal blaster boxes unchecked for each card and uninstalled IR Blaster. Which disables the IR xmitter on each card.) Now you can leave your usb adapter un-plugged. Leaving the Hauppauge IR receiver cord to one colossus card. (my xmitter part of this cable is coiled up and zip tied to the receiver cord right behind my PC.)
Or, you can remove the IR32 sofftware as well. disabling all IR from your colossus cards. Plugin your USB blaster and stick its IR emitters to each tuner. Then re-run media center tuner configuration. Media center will see your usb blaster as the only blaster available and set itself up accordingly.

The network solutions does support more than 2 colossus cards though. Useless for me, but still pretty cool.
Now you're starting to confuse me, Pir8man... This whole sleigh ride started when my USB blasters wouldn't work, but I have new problems to work on, when my scheduled recording brings my machine out of "sleep" mode to record a show, the recording has no sound (works ok on 2nd recording or if already awake). Have you ever heard of a similar problem? Plus MCE seems a bit unstable when I move around the recorded TV folder using the remote, many time now it stops working and closes, to reopen again searching for a solution at Microsoft...

Pir8Man

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#86

Post by Pir8Man » Tue Jan 20, 2015 9:30 am

just ignore me. you got dual colossus tuners in Media Center and you can tune them. hazzah!!

if you can't find answers to your other questions via search, then start a new thread. sorry to say, but my answer would cause a spew of conversation that is not fair to this thread.

michelle

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#87

Post by michelle » Wed Jan 21, 2015 1:17 am

(michelle's issue was she forgot to change the limittosingle registry entry first time around)

Pir8man - this was not my issue, this was one of the first things I did. I had to uninstall everything and start from scratch as far as the tuners and hauppauge software to get mine to work.

I've been using two tuners successfully now, except that I'm having trouble with Media Center and the ip changing of channels. Every three days or so, it goes wonky - changes the channel to something really weird, like it's programmed for 392 and it instead goes to 841. Something not even close. If I use a command prompt and type "DTVipcontrol.exe /i 192.168.0.11 /c 392" it works perfect, but not through WMC. I have to rerun tv setup to get it to work again. I have tried, resetting WMC, swapping receivers with cards, changing ip addresses, changing ethernet cables, resetting receivers, exiting out of WMC nightly.....I have both the ip program and the ehome folder excluded from real-time and scanning plus the firewall. I cannot figure out what is going on here - it is clearly some sort of corruption in WMC itself.

mceguy...

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#88

Post by mceguy... » Thu Jan 22, 2015 12:12 am

@Michelle, do you have Win7 or Win8 or Other?

I have Win7 and when I ran the MCE tuner setup, I didn't use the automatic tuner findings it gave me, I chose to do other options (which is manual setup)... After choosing my lineup (in my case DirecTV SF area), MCE started to scan for channels (which took under 1 min to complete, instead of hours for the auto) it found 774 channels for me. Since this is way more channels than my package has, I edit my channel lineup by printing it out from DirecTV, so my EPG only shows channels I get...

I don't know if you want to try this, but I also "split" the TV source for the channels I record most, so MCE will utilize each tuner separately, just click the "name" of the channel when editing...

I hope this helps...

PS: are you on "wireless" network? Make sure your security is set up on router and monitor any MAC addresses that are unknown to you... I found a couple on mine and had to setup MAC filtering...

michelle

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#89

Post by michelle » Thu Jan 22, 2015 1:24 am

mceguy - I have Win 7 Pro x64. I do let it do the automatic setup - it finds two satellites (DirecTV-Davenport, IA) and then 758 channels pretty quickly. The only thing I do to edit the lineup is comedy central. For some reason it sets it up as Comedy-MSN, so it doesn't get the guide until I rename it and change the listings. I was taking out all the spanish channels and other ones I don't get and thinking about splitting the tuners, but since I have to rerun setup so much I just don't want to do all that work over and over.

I am on a wireless, but I've always had MAC filtering, don't broadcast SSID and also have MAC/IP reservation for my devices. My router is also setup to block all new devices so that I have to go in and approve each new one.

I had Hauppauge 1850 & 1650 before and never had any troubles, so I had alot of customization with those tuners. It seems like quite a bit of a hassle with the colossus cards. As a last resort, I have switched the usb ir blaster from the hauppauge approved two port blaster usb to the original Microsoft two port usb ir blaster. I don't know why that would matter, but I'll see what happens.

Next time If I have to rerun setup - I'll try the manual route. Thanks for the suggestions.

michelle

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#90

Post by michelle » Wed Feb 04, 2015 4:20 pm

Well, I went two weeks with a good setup and now it happened two nights - Sunday and Tuesday. I forgot and did the automatic setup on Sunday, but did the manual setup last night. I'll see how long it lasts this time. I still can't narrow down why this is happening. I was trying to test if it had anything to do with remoting in to the machine, so I tried that on Saturday, but Saturday night the feed went out due to snow on the dish. So can't tell which thing was the culprit.Then on Sunday, I reran setup and then decided to reset the receivers. Monday recording went fine, Tuesday night one receiver was all wrong channels again. The only thing I did Monday was record a program with playlater. I think I'll start a new thread to see if I can get some help......

drumdandrum

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#91

Post by drumdandrum » Wed Mar 09, 2016 7:22 pm

Pir8Man wrote:i know this is an old topic. But I had to re-setup my WMC today from scratch. Configuring Dual Colossus cards was relatively simple with the devcon batch file linked on page 1. My WMC box is secondary to my main DVR unit. It runs dual Colossus cards that are running Genie mini receivers. As I could not find definitive instructions for channel changing, I thought I'd post my findings here:

The Internal Blaster is fully supported via WMC, but not when using dual cards. This is a Hauppage limitation that will NOT be resolved. I did come across a few examples to setup dual tuning via 3rd party software/hardware. In my testing, I could not get any of the free versions to work and I was not going to pay for a product that may/may-not work. Fortunately, there is not need to use/purchase 3rd party software if your WMC and DVR are on the same network... You can use HTTP (SHEF) commands to control the main DVR and any mini units in the house...

Working from a link about resolving this issue for SageTV, I created a batch file that fed the necessary commands to the main DVR unit via CURL application to change channels for my two mini tuners:
NOTE: "XXXXXXXXXXXX" below for CLIENTADDR needs to be changed to the MAC addresses of each of your mini tuners, and "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" must be changed to the IP of your main DVR unit.

Code: Select all

@echo off
rem  
rem  In the script below, the %1 represents the tuner device (%DEVICE%) name 
rem  passed from Hauppage Setup. The %2 represents the channel (%CHANNEL%) value passed 
rem  from WMC.
rem  Both values used as arguments to the executable batch file

rem  Each device must be assigned to an IP address
set CURDEVICE=%1
if %CURDEVICE% EQU 0 set CLIENTADDR=XXXXXXXXXXXX
if %CURDEVICE% EQU 1 set CLIENTADDR=XXXXXXXXXXXX

rem  Convert channel designations to tuning commands
set CHANRAW=%2

c:\dtv\curl.exe "http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/tv/tune?major=%CHANRAW%&clientAddr=%CLIENTADDR%"
The simple script grabs the device ID from the Hauppage MC Setup application and the channel to tune from WMC and the submits them via SHEF commands. As a batch file, the parameters were not passing correctly to the 'external blaster', so I had to convert it to an executable file here: http://www.f2ko.de/programs.php?lang=en&pid=ob2e
Once converted to an executable I put the new file and curl.exe into a new folder C:\dtv\

Now that I have my "external blaster" script setup, I launched the Hauppage "HDPVR MC Setup" application to configure my new 'external blaster". Provided you configured your two (or more) capture cards as described earlier in this thread, you will see two cards listed in the setup application. For each tuner, uncheck "Use Internal Blaster" and check "Use External Blaster". Enter the path to your script executable file in "App Path". Enter "%i %c" in "App Args". %i will take the DeviceId from the next line. Therefore, the DeviceId file needs to correlate to the two (or more) device id's defined in your batch file. (in mine the tuner on top has DeviceId=0 and the tuner on bottom has DeviceId=1)

Apply all changes and reboot computer.

Finally WMC should use your "external blaster" script to change your channels correctly for each tuner. The first thing you will need to verify is that your DeviceID and MAC address correlate correctly, else trying to change channels on one tuner will actually effect another tuner. This can be edited in your batch file or in the HDPVR MC Setup application. (if you edit your batch file, you need to re-convert it to an exe file)

If anyone needs pictures/better details, let me know.
..
This is perfect!! Had to download the "curl" executable from (https://curl.haxx.se/download.html).. named my batch file "tune.exe" after using the link to convert batch file to exe. Placed my MAC addresses and IP addresses where indicated, placed them both in a c:\dtv that I created... All works perfectly!!

Thanks!

drumdandrum

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#92

Post by drumdandrum » Sun May 15, 2016 12:33 am

OK.... There is an issue with receivers going into "screen saver mode" when the main DVR is left on a menu or not used for a period of time. I changed the batch file to add additional "curl.exe" commands to wake the receivers using "power on" button press command using html script. ***replace the 12 x(s) with the MAC address of your mini genie... repeat for how ever many genies you are using to record TV***

***USE ALL CAPS FOR YOUR MAC ADDRESS OR IT WILL NOT WORK***

Code: Select all

	@echo off
rem  
rem  In the script below, the %1 represents the tuner device (%DEVICE%) name 
rem  passed from Hauppage Setup. The %2 represents the channel (%CHANNEL%) value passed 
rem  from WMC.
rem  Both values used as arguments to the executable batch file

rem  Each device must be assigned to an IP address
set CURDEVICE=%1
if %CURDEVICE% EQU 0 set CLIENTADDR=XXXXXXXXXXXX
if %CURDEVICE% EQU 1 set CLIENTADDR=XXXXXXXXXXXX

rem  Convert channel designations to tuning commands
set CHANRAW=%2

c:\dtv\curl.exe "http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/remote/processKey?key=poweron&clientAddr=XXXXXXXXXXXX"
c:\dtv\curl.exe "http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/remote/processKey?key=poweron&clientAddr=XXXXXXXXXXXX"
c:\dtv\curl.exe "http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/tv/tune?major=%CHANRAW%&clientAddr=%CLIENTADDR%"

Hope this helps!!

grittree

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#93

Post by grittree » Sat Sep 17, 2016 9:54 pm

I want to thank Pir8Man and drumdandrum for solving a problem I had been unable to do.

I added a mini to my D* DVR, and found out it doesn't have it's own IP address that can be used to change the channel. Like with DTVipcontrol.

Searching in D* forums, I did find a reference to SHEF. But not anybody who knew how to implement that.

Not sure how I got here, but probably searching "Colossus", since I bought a 2nd one after getting the mini.

Only thing I can't get working is the 'external blaster', but that is just a minor thing to me. As long as I can schedule a channel change from my desktop, I am happy.

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