2024-04-18, 01:39 PM
(This post was last modified: 2024-04-21, 01:11 AM by mvallevand.)
Many Rogers and Shaw customers in Canada (like me) received a letter that our legacy cable devices https://www.rogers.com/support/digital-c...retirement where being phased out at the end of April and I have successfully migrated to the replacement service Ignite so I thought I'd share some of my experiences.
This is partially relevant to some American users since the system is the same X1 system as Comcast Xfinity use. Also I read that 18 million legacy cable users in the US will lost cable service later this year with the PowerKey bug https://www.lightreading.com/cable-techn...-the-blink.
The key new factor is the new devices (XiOne and Xi6) don't offer component video out for HDPVR users. To address this there are several workarounds with devices easily available on Amazon. For HDPVR 1212 users there are HDMI to component adapters. You can also use HDMI with HDMI duplicators. Instead of a duplicator I chose an audio extractor since it allows me to keep AC-3 input. The new boxes are smart and detect the audio and video capabilities of the device. I did find I have to set the box for 5.1 since the HDPVR doesn't understand Dolby Digital+ 7.1
Solutions like network HDMI recorders and cheap UVC/UVA adapters that ignore HDCP will also continue to work. The new cheap adapters work quite well if you have a relatively powerful backend that can do VAAPI or QSV encoding of mmjpeg and h264.
Another potential factor is firewire tuning is no longer available and there are difficulties blasting with the HDPVR. One user seems to have figured it out here https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?tid=65495 but I never got it to work. There is also this info https://web.archive.org/web/201402190742...og/?p=1552 on the Wayback machine but it didn't help me.
Fortunately thanks to user pkscout here I have been using the Iguanaworks LIRC USB blaster for years and it is quite stable and it works well and is very reliable on Windows and Linux. I was lucky and got the 4 transmitter version which is no longer made but they still sell the 2 tuner model. I have created an LIRC tuning file that works very well for all the keys on the remote. It is based on the RNG-150 conf file found in the LIRC database. This tuning file should work with any LIRC device. I don't think WinLIRC supports Hauppauge blasters as transmitters, that is greyed out here.
The tuner will require the channel digits and an OK. However I found because of notifications and screensavers you likely will also need to send the Back key to clear the OSD information. I do turn off all notifications and set the screen saver to 5 hours in the STB settings but that isn't good enough.
This device does support IP tuning which works because Control4 boxes can tune it. However I joined the comcast developers forum and could not find any document on how to to this. If anyone finds it I will gladly create a blaster app for NextPVR
Anyway, once it is all installed as a bonus I found the solution more stable than the HDPVR since there is no issue during the tuning process with OSD going blank and resolutions changing. My worries about the lose of firewire tuning
Finally once I got this all figured out I came with a new use case. I connected my network HDMI capture device to the STB in my main TV room and HDMI out from the capture device to the TV. I also connected an old RPi to control the tuning so now I can connect to both remotely and control it from my NextPVR backend. Since I don't keep the main TV on all the time and often use it for non TV playback I have a secondary tuner using existing parts. True the device has VOD and Cloud DVR (200 hours and 1 year retention) but I still get to use comskip and NextEnd when I use NextPVR.
Martin
This is partially relevant to some American users since the system is the same X1 system as Comcast Xfinity use. Also I read that 18 million legacy cable users in the US will lost cable service later this year with the PowerKey bug https://www.lightreading.com/cable-techn...-the-blink.
The key new factor is the new devices (XiOne and Xi6) don't offer component video out for HDPVR users. To address this there are several workarounds with devices easily available on Amazon. For HDPVR 1212 users there are HDMI to component adapters. You can also use HDMI with HDMI duplicators. Instead of a duplicator I chose an audio extractor since it allows me to keep AC-3 input. The new boxes are smart and detect the audio and video capabilities of the device. I did find I have to set the box for 5.1 since the HDPVR doesn't understand Dolby Digital+ 7.1
Solutions like network HDMI recorders and cheap UVC/UVA adapters that ignore HDCP will also continue to work. The new cheap adapters work quite well if you have a relatively powerful backend that can do VAAPI or QSV encoding of mmjpeg and h264.
Another potential factor is firewire tuning is no longer available and there are difficulties blasting with the HDPVR. One user seems to have figured it out here https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?tid=65495 but I never got it to work. There is also this info https://web.archive.org/web/201402190742...og/?p=1552 on the Wayback machine but it didn't help me.
Fortunately thanks to user pkscout here I have been using the Iguanaworks LIRC USB blaster for years and it is quite stable and it works well and is very reliable on Windows and Linux. I was lucky and got the 4 transmitter version which is no longer made but they still sell the 2 tuner model. I have created an LIRC tuning file that works very well for all the keys on the remote. It is based on the RNG-150 conf file found in the LIRC database. This tuning file should work with any LIRC device. I don't think WinLIRC supports Hauppauge blasters as transmitters, that is greyed out here.
The tuner will require the channel digits and an OK. However I found because of notifications and screensavers you likely will also need to send the Back key to clear the OSD information. I do turn off all notifications and set the screen saver to 5 hours in the STB settings but that isn't good enough.
This device does support IP tuning which works because Control4 boxes can tune it. However I joined the comcast developers forum and could not find any document on how to to this. If anyone finds it I will gladly create a blaster app for NextPVR
Anyway, once it is all installed as a bonus I found the solution more stable than the HDPVR since there is no issue during the tuning process with OSD going blank and resolutions changing. My worries about the lose of firewire tuning
Finally once I got this all figured out I came with a new use case. I connected my network HDMI capture device to the STB in my main TV room and HDMI out from the capture device to the TV. I also connected an old RPi to control the tuning so now I can connect to both remotely and control it from my NextPVR backend. Since I don't keep the main TV on all the time and often use it for non TV playback I have a secondary tuner using existing parts. True the device has VOD and Cloud DVR (200 hours and 1 year retention) but I still get to use comskip and NextEnd when I use NextPVR.
Martin
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