Ben Drawbaugh

It started off bad because it took me a few hours before I could even get the tuner added to my setup, but after I got it working, I thought I everything was cool and wrote up a nice little post about it. At the time everything did seem cool except the occasion drop out, which I assumed I could fix by checking my coax connections etc. But since then, not only has the occasion drop out not gone away despite spending a few hours messing with my connections — the same exact connections that work perfectly with a Series3 TiVo — but every single morning since I woken up to a system that is not operational. Then even after I remotely kill the process, I still have to reboot the system and the ATI CableCARD tuner to make the signal watchable.

First some background, skip this paragraph if you want to go straight to the problem. I’ve had a Series3 Tivo since the day they were announced and have had it working with two different providers using both SA and Moto CableCARDs. I’ve had a total of 10 CableCARD tuners installed without ANY issues and the wiring in my house is brand new. Speaking of the coax, it’s all high grade RG6, with good splitters (there are only two) and I use compression fittings.

When I removed one of my Series3 TiVos to replace it with the ATI CableCARD tuner, I took the exact same coax cable and CableCARD that has been serving me well without any issues for 14 months and used them for the ATI tuner. So I’m pretty confident that I don’t have a bad CableCARD or a signal problem. But just in case I tried both CableCARDs from my TiVo and double checked all my coax connections. I even hooked up an old attenuator that I used to use on my old HR10 TiVo, which only made things worse, so I don’t think the signal is too hot.

Anyways, on to the issue. I originally posted this at The Green Button, but since no one has really responded, I’ll try again here before throwing the thing out the window. Ever since I installed my CableCARD tuner every morning when I turn the TV on after being off all night, there is a just a black screen (TV indicates it’s receiving a 1080p signal). If I hit the buttons on the remote, I can hear the sounds and the extenders continue to work fine, but if I get out the mouse and keyboard I can’t see the cursor and it doesn’t seem to respond to any keyboard presses (not even ctrl+at+delete or ctrl+shift+esc). If I telnet in and kill ehshell.exe, it returns me to my desktop, then I re-launch VMC that then works properly, except all the CableCARD channels (ATSC channels are fine) have unwatchable pixelation (yes I checked every channel I watch, about 20). If I reboot and unplug the ATI CableCARD tuner for a second, then all the channels work fine — aside from the occasional drop out.

In the System log, I see this event every 2 seconds from some time after I turned off the display, until the time I killed ehshell.exe.

Log Name: System
Source: atikmdag
Date: 4/20/2008 9:06:46 AM
Event ID: 52233
Task Category: CPLIB
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: VMC1
Description:
CPLIB :: General – Failed to authenticate output protection

My setup is pretty much a out of the box Dell XPS 420.
Intel Q6600 quad core.
3GB Ram
500GB SATA HDD
ATI Radeon HD3650 via HDMI @ 1080p60 (tried both Catalyst 8.3 and 8.4)
Pioneer PDP-6010FD
1 ATI CableCARD tuner
1 VBox PCI ATSC tuner
1 HDHomeRun dual ATSC tuner.

Since this is obviously completely unacceptable, if I can’t get it resolved, no matter how much I enjoy the VMC UI and extender architecture, I’ll just have to go back to using my TiVos.

**Update**  The issue was resolved by setting Windows Power Setting to turn off the display after 5 minutes, even though Windows isn’t capable of turning off the display this appears to tell the ATI driver to stop trying to verify the HDCP handshake.

I successfully completed everything I set out to do yesterday, and more, and am feeling more confident that this solution will be able to replace my TiVos, but I’ll wait until I receive my CableCARD tuner to pass final judgment.

I ended up reinstalling Vista, because it was quicker than repartitioning and uninstall all the crapware, AV, firewalls etc. Then I installed all the updates including SP1. Next I installed both Logmein and Ultra VNC — because logmein is very slow locally — but I’m having problems getting VNC to launch at boot and I also had to disabled uac, since it was interfering with VNC. Later I plan to try an RDP hack. I then configured it to login automatically and start Media Center. I had some trouble configuring the display because although the video card properly set the HDMI output to 1080p, it also had underscan turned on by default. I’m sure this is helpful for some, but I prefer to use the “dot by dot” feature of my TV to disable overscan.

I also configured my HDHomeRun for ATSC and scheduled a bunch of recordings, everything works great, but it could change channels a little faster — hopefully the CableCARD tuner will. The biggest problem I’m having is with the remote, it doesn’t seem to work well with my Xantech IR distribution system, just like my AppleTV does. It is working, just not real well, which brings me to my biggest problem; I need a wireless keyboard/mouse. VNC is not working out, and having the keyboard in the a different room is nearly impossible. I’m going to be on the hunt for a nice Media Center Keyboard with integrated mouse, preferably Bluetooth, but IR will work too.

After I got the basics up and running I went out and installed ffdshow and haali so I could playback additional codecs like mkv. This was easy to setup thanks to Chris L, and is passing Dolby Digital and DTS nicely. The last thing I did was copy the contents of my “originals” folder from my iPhoto library and the contents of the “music” folder from my iTunes collection. Those copies finished this morning, so we’ll see how VMC deals with them, and how much work it will require to make those features usable. I may just end up continuing to use my Apple TV for music. I also want to figure out what the best way to import my shows from my TiVos. I copied over an exported show that was already converted to MPEG2, which worked, but I didn’t have as much control as I do when playing back DVR-MS files. So that is on the list of things to do, I may look at VideoRedo for converting the .tivo files to DVR-MS, but I’d rather not buy software as it’ll be a one time deal.

So enough about setup, here’s some Media Center impressions from a long time TiVo owner.

• Setup was much, much, much harder, but not impossible — TiVo you just plug it in and set your res’, Guided Setup take some time, but other than that it’s a breeze.
• The overall UI is so much better than TiVo it isn’t even funny, although some of the plugins look just as out of place as HME applications.
• The grid guide is really snappy, the overlay is really cool, and I love how it actually shows what is recording and what is not because of a conflict in the guide. So no more To Do List to fight with. But the to do list is there, and better than TiVo because it splits it out by days.
• Conflict resolution is also much better, you just pick what show you want per conflict. Of course you can set a priority — which doesn’t take 5 minutes to apply like TiVo.
• The miniguide is very useful, but the info button not so much, I quickly learned you are better off just hitting the ‘up’ button than the info button to check show details.
• I do already miss the ability to control the two tuners, but maybe that will fade as I stop using the TiVo.
• The quick access buttons on the remote are useful, but TiVo did have some shortcuts that worked well, if you knew them.
• The scrub bar is really nice, the FWD, RWD, skip etc, work very well, in this regard the TiVo and the Media Center are very comparable.
• I love being able to play ‘other’ files without converting them.
• Played a little with the pictures, it’s much better than TiVo as well, but then again I never liked the pictures feature on TiVo.
• Setting defaults for recordings is nice as well. I don’t think Tivo has this, but I like being able to set “first runs only” by default.
• The one button recording is also convenient, but I usually end up going in there to edit something anyways, this may pass as I get use,d to it.

For the past week I’ve been going back and forth about trying to use Vista Media Center to replace my two TiVos and today I finally decided to take the plunge. After spending some time with my friend Dave’s setup today, it really just came down to price. With all the deals Dell runs, I didn’t want to pay too much. With Apple it’s easy, no one gets a deal; but with Dell, you have to be more careful. In the end it was a combination of a $400 off deal via Fatwallet.com and no interest for 12 month — you know I’m a sucker for those. The only downside is I had to buy a 22-inch display with it, so you can look for it on eBay in a few weeks.

As for the specs — I’m waiting on the Blu-ray player and the extender until I’m sure it’ll be a good replacement for my wife and I, but I’m getting started with a Quad-Core 2.4Ghz, 3GBs of Ram, 500GB HDD, ATI Radeon HD3650 256MB GDDR4, and a single ATI CableCARD tuner. Ohh and free 2nd day air shipping, but who knows when it’ll actually ship.

All said and done, it’ll cost me $1200 to my door with tax. So after I sell both my TiVos, it’s $400 out of pocket. Of course I’ll only need one CableCARD from FiOS and no more TiVo tax, but even with the $24 a month savings, it’ll take me about 17 months to break even.