fix to deal with new firewire behavior of video-switching cable boxes

[Martin Purschke]

Cablevision on Long Island switched a number of channels to "switched-video", meaning that the (SA4250HD) cablebox talks to some upstream server to request that particular video stream, rather than just picking from streams that arrive all the time.

The actual channel change takes effect a long time after we are done with the change command, and we are losing lock on the firewire stream at this point. The end result is a recording of a few seconds, a few hundred KB; the recording stops after that. From that point on, the firewire is blocked and we need a restart of the backend to get back to normal.

I envision a per-channel setting for an adjustable delay to wait with the onset of the actual recording until after the channel switching is done. This will take some work with an additional column in the channel table and a new GUI to set this. The attached interim patch adds a hard-coded global 15s delay to wait out the channel change. This is for users who are desperate because their recordings routinely fail. The patch will work in .21 versions, too.

mythfrontend --version Please include all output in bug reports. MythTV Version : 21818 MythTV Branch : trunk Network Protocol : 48 Library API : 0.22.20090912-1 QT Version : 4.4.2 Options compiled in:

linux release using_oss using_alsa using_arts using_backend using_dvb using_firewire using_frontend using_hdhomerun using_hdpvr using_iptv using_ivtv using_joystick_menu using_lirc using_mheg using_opengl_video using_opengl_vsync using_qtwebkit using_v4l using_x11 using_xrandr using_xv using_xvmc using_xvmc_vld using_xvmcw using_bindings_perl using_bindings_python using_opengl using_ffmpeg_threads using_libavc_5_3 using_live using_mheg

[Martin Purschke]

a quick interim patch for those of us whose recordings routinely fail

[sphery]

See, also, #6719

[Martin - mlp00@…]

Unfortunately this seems DOA - the change by my cable provider was just the first step. They moved to block the firewire output for all the pay-for premium channels, which are the ones affected by this. At this point I can no longer test this (or record any of those channels). I'm still working the customer service lines to see if this is just something that some tech guy switched on, but I'm afraid that the block is here to stay. They were quick to pitch their own proprietary pay-for DVR. So unless the block goes away, this change is dead.

[robertm]

Reporter no longer needs this patch, and an artificial 15 second sleep is definitely out of the question. Closing as this is all we've ever heard of this and sounded then (and now) like a broken cable system.

[mlp00@…]

Replying to robertm:

Reporter no longer needs this patch, and an artificial 15 second sleep is definitely out of the question. Closing as this is all we've ever heard of this and sounded then (and now) like a broken cable system.

Agreed. I have taken care of this by additional features in the external channel changer that works with the cable box - see ticket 7671.