Another firewire issue - SA4250HD intermittently working?

[Calmor]

I have the SA4250HD (according to the front of the device), and have it connected via firewire. Priming and channel changing functions always work, but the ability to watch video via firewire comes and goes, sometimes for no particular reason. Sometimes a restart of the PC and/or STB causes it to work again, sometimes a restart of mythtv-backend seems to help, sometimes it just fixes itself automagically.

I tried upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 (x64) with no change.

What could possibly cause the firewire to only work sometimes and go dark for long periods of time (weeks/months/until I start playing with settings)? Is it a STB issue? Perhaps a PC firewire issue or cable issue? I do have a PCI add-on firewire card, is it worth a try?

I have tried using different channels, thinking that perhaps one was flagged with the encryption bit, but none of the channels work (SD or HD), and I get the timeout message in the logs. (I don't have that computer nearby or I would post them).

Thanks for your help - this issue is quite frustrating. I do have an analog capture card (PVR-150) but the video quality is terrible (video noise), so the HTPC sits mostly useless until I can get firewire working.

[rschapman]

I am having the exact same issues. My firewire seems to work in the same way. It's considerablly more stable now with my new setup but still hit or miss. The last system I tried had an addon card. This one uses an integrated firewire.

I am running:
Mythbuntu 64bit
Time Warner Cable SA4240HD
Point to Point
200MBPS

[Calmor]

I think I'm running the recommended transfer rate (don't remember if it's 400MBS or 800MBS) for the 4250HD, but again, it works flawlessly sometimes, so I'm assuming the transfer rate is acceptable. Maybe this assumption is incorrect?

[Calmor]

rschapman - what procedure do you take to try to remedy the situation, and are there any specific things that seem to cause it to break?

For a while, I was convinced that shutting off the box was causing issues. Since the firewire support is sketchy, we typically just watch it like a normal STB through the TV, and turn it off when done. I found that often, leaving it on reduced the problem, but didn't solve it completely.

[Calmor]

I just tried changing the motherboard (due to other unrelated issues with the onboard video causing a system crash). It has the same Firewire chipset, and still seems to be about the same, only this time I didn't even get it to connect initially. Mythprime fails completely (mythprime -v shows everything, even broadcast, fails).

[halseyb007]

I have a SA4250HDC plugged in via firewire. I just downloaded the most recent 8.1 release of mythbuntu. At first, some of the channels were working. Then the channels stopped getting a lock and showed a partial lock even though I had 100% signal. I've tried P2P and Broadcast and I've tried all the speeds, 100/200/400/800. Nothing seems to allow me to get a full lock anymore. I found another forum that said to press the select button for a few seconds followed by the info button. Then scroll to a page for IEEE 1394 (firewire) to see if it is set to free (i.e. no C5 encryption) See this url: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/330469

I confirmed the channel I'm trying to tune is not encrypted. I've seen code snippets to try rebuilding certain parts and I've seen recommendations for updating ieee modules. Anyone have any direction for me? Should I try the 9.x release instead?

[bml137]

This might be a recently introduced problem. I also have an SA4250HDC and it has been working from August until I did an update in the afternoon of 3/31. On 4/1, in hopes of fixing, I updated from 8.10 to 9.04 without success (with respect to resolving the issue). 'mythprime' does not work but my channel changer does.