Talk:SureWest IPTV

From MythTV Official Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Great article. This did the trick for me. I'm also on SureWest and using Gentoo. For my setup, I had already been using a serial IR Blaster over LIRC to change channels while using a PVR-150 to record over the SVID cable. So for now, I am still using the IR Blaster to change channels, have unplugged the PVR-150. In my settings I did not clone the MAC address. This allows me to switch over to the Amino box without messing with cables in case we want to use Video-On-Demand or listen to music channels.

The life saver for me are the IGMP settings under "/proc" I'd been searching for days on various multicast problems because I could see the packets with tcpdump, but no program would play or save the streams.

[Nate: Aug 8, 2008] In reply to Rkuris: DHCP is setting a 69.x.x.x address for me, but it doesn't seem to care. It's all working with the exact same thing you specified for "/etc/conf.d/net"



Thanks for your feedback! Glad to see it's working for you. I couldn't get it to work unless I spoofed the MAC address. It kept assigning me 65.x.x.x addresses and wouldn't connect.

--Rkuris 01:15, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

First step not working

I have a service provider with IPTV. So I've been wanting to use the mythTV network tuner for a while but can't get it to work. I am using ubuntu not gentoo. But I thought I accurately translated your steps to work with ubuntu. unfortunately I am having problems with the very first step.

To clone the MAC address I edited the file:

/etc/network/interfaces

and make the eth0 part look like so:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
	hwaddress ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

Then I ran:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
ifconfig

I see eth0 using the cloned MAC but I get no response from the DHCP server. eth1 is my NIC that connects to home LAN -> router -> internet. eth1 continues to work fine. So atleast I didn't break that.

Any ideas?The goat 14:54, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Some ideas

Some of these are "duh" but I have my share of silly mistakes too.

  • Can you see the "link up" messages in /var/log/messages (or equivalent)? Something like:
eth2: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
  • Check and see how dhcpcd is being called. My command line parameters are:
/sbin/dhcpcd -h potato -G -R eth2

You could see what happens if you add a "-d" (debug) flag. That might give you additional information.

  • Is anything at all coming in on the interface? Run something like:
tcpdump -i eth0 -n

You should at least see the dhcp request and response packets. ifconfig will also show raw packet counts...

  • You are unplugging your amino or other STB right?
  • Does your interface card have a green link light?
  • Have you considered swapping eth0 and eth1? Maybe you have a hardware problem?

New Surewest Channels

Has anyone taken a look at the new channels recently added by Surewest? They don't appear to follow the existing udp://@225.1.x.y:2001 url format. I haven't yet been able to figure out the new url format.

Re: New Surewest Channels

I can't tune these channels on my old AminoNet SD STB, so they may only be available through the new MediaRoom STBs.

Re: New Surewest Channels

I'd have to hook up my old box and sniff again to figure it out, probably. The technique I used is on my user page. I'm moving and so chances are I won't have time to do that before having to switch back to comcast :-(

Meh -- I deleted it some time ago. The wiki has an old copy here: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki?title=User:Rkuris&diff=46734&oldid=32658

Other Observations

Hi, I am working on trying to figure this out. My local IPTV provider also uses the Amino STBs. The content provider appears to be Minerva Networks. I want to confirm if this is the same provider for SureWest as well? I have seen almost identical functionality regarding content streaming, and they appear to use the new "Surewest Channels" methodology as well, where channels are no longer port-dependant. I have done a capture of the network traffic where I have performed 4 up channel changes and one down change. However, I am not versed enough in these matters to determine what is actually happening. It almost appears as if there is a channel change authority server that is separate from the streaming server, and that the channel change requests are somehow encoded (binary, compressed, etc., not sure) and sent as the content of the packet to the channel change server, which then (my guess) tells the media stream server to change the content it is streaming to my MAC address to the new channel. I would be interested in helping to solve this "riddle", but need some guidance. :) ~ Mike (mike _d_o_t_ bronner -a-t- gmail _d_o_t_ com)

Spoke to Surewest

I spoke to a Surewest installer to confirm my guess - Surewest is using Microsoft Mediaroom tehnology for the new channels. I do not yet know a way to view the new channels on MythTV or MS Mediacenter.