MPEG4 decoder help - Comcast

[aleckrohto]

Hello everyone.
I use a cablecard with service from Comcast. Comcast recently made all the channels MPEG4 and broke how I watch channels. I have tried changing the MPEG4 decoders in settings and nothing has worked. What should I do? Is there a patch I can install?

[sub]

What capture card are you using? If you're using a HDHomeRun, you can go into your Settings->Devices screen, double click the device, right-click on each channel, selecting the 'edit channel' context menu option, and changing the type to H.264, then hit ok.

[HarryH3]

The problem is that Comcast doesn't send ALL the channels in MPEG4, so you have to find which ones are in MPEG4 yourself. (Calling Comcast was a waste of time. Their "support" staff didn't have any idea what I was talking about because for 99% of their customer base the Comcast-supplied set top box was automagically updated. The end user didn't know anything had changed (unless they noticed that picture quality had degraded on those over-compressed channels).

Here's how I updated with the HD HomeRun Prime (I had to do this several times over many weeks, as Comcast rolled out MPEG4 here on only a few channels each week).

Go to the home page of the HDHR Prime. Click "Channel Lineup". Click "Detect Channels" so it will scan and show the latest changes. Go have coffee, this is gonna take a while.
Once it is done, every channel that is MPEG4 will now have an "AVC" icon next to the channel. For ONLY those channels, follow sub's directions above to change the type to H.264.
(And yes, I had to perform a new scan first, and then find new MPEG4 channels, every week for several weeks in a row).

NOTE: If you don't see any AVC icons then you probably need to update the firmware on your device. To do this, click "Installation Instructions" from the HDHR Prime home page. It will detect your current version and let you know if an update is available. Mine is currently showing: "Firmware: 20161117". Earlier versions didn't show the icon.

[aleckrohto]

I have a Win-TV DCR 2650. What should I do for that?

[mvallevand]

For the h264 channels with live tv problems follow the steps here https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...post514489

Unfortunately Hauppauge haven't updated their firmware to help what these channel are.

Martin

[aleckrohto]

It works! However, I wonder if somebody has created a patch to change specificed channels to H.264 without having to change them manually. If not, how could I create a patch that did that?

[mvallevand]

You could create a sqliite script on NPVR.DB3 to change the service type to 25 in the channel mapping table for the appropriate channels.

Martin

[sub]

It works! However, I wonder if somebody has created a patch to change specificed channels to H.264 without having to change them manually. If not, how could I create a patch that did that?

Those with the current firmware in their HDHomeRun, setting up for the first time don't have to go through this - it all happens automatically (since the HDHomeRun scan function now returns info indicating if a channel is MPEG2 or H.264).

For existing users, with existing MPEG2 channels listed in their database, then can either manually update individual channels to H.264, or delete all your channels in NextPVR and rescan. (deleting and rescanning will mean having to recreate any scheduled recordings though)

[tvfiend]

I have xfinity (comcast) cablecard in an HDHR Prime and ran into this issue last week. I was able to fix the viewing of channels by changing them to H.264. However NPVR recordings, whether it's local MPEG2 or cable AVC channels the .ts files won't open in anything. The size looks correct and the data is likely there but header could be bad. I tried an old WMC install and that no longer works to view or record either. HDHomeRun's beta DVR is the only thing I've found to record them but it could use a lot of work and I'd really like to use the much more convenient NPVR to record. Is there anything I can try?

[mvallevand]

I hate it when threads are hijacked. It's not clear what your problem is, are you saying you can watch a channel as live tv in NextPVR but you can't record new recordings on that same channel?

Martin