bluesincenew

Trying to bind individual channels to a specific HDHomeRun device

Recommended Posts

I've got two HDHomeRun tuner devices connected to a single antenna (so potentially 4 programs can record at once), but run into certain signals that would be better with the antenna pointed in a different direction.  I'd like to move each tuner to it's own antenna, but then I need to make sure that the request for a spacific channel goes to a specific tuner/antenna combination. Is there any way, even if it requires going into underlying configuration files or settings to associate an affinity between channels and tuners? Right now I haven't found anything, and it appears that either of the tuner devices (and then either of the two tuners within them) could be selected by EyeTv at any given time when a channel is picked for display/recording.  Looking for any suggestions or ideas to try.  Thanks!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There is a solution but it is buried in the vaults of the Elgato forum. However Elgato decided (years ago) to kill that forum without any warning so no one was able to save the contents.

You might be able to find it using Google. It was however a rather complex procedure where you had to make changes to several XML file. Resulting in problems when an update was done. Also scheduling becomes less flexible.

Better solution would be to use a different antenne system that is able to receive the correct signal.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

May I suggest that there might be a much simpler and more effective solution to this -- but you'd need to change a couple of your initial preconceptions:  Rather than trying to solve this in software, just connect both antennas to both tuners.  I realize it sounds counter-intuitive at first, but I know from experience that it actually works.  When I was a teenager, my dad had installed two VHF/UHF long range antennas on the roof of our house, one pointed at one major city and the other pointed at another.  He then connected the two to a single coax cable via a standard 70 ohm combiner/splitter box, and ran the combined cable into the house.  On the other end, the cable was connected to an amplified 4-way splitter, which delivered the signal to the TVs in the rest of the house.  We were able to pick up reception from both antennas with good success.  (I probably never would have cut my teeth on Dr Who, otherwise!)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 9/26/2016 at 0:27 PM, zarmanto said:

just connect both antennas to both tuners.

This can work, as @zarmanto remembers from Old-Who days. There is typically a huge hit in signal strength, though — and not the kind you can make up for via amplification. This means it will only work well when your stations from both directions come in fairly strongly. In my location this approach is a complete non-starter.

On 9/26/2016 at 2:32 AM, Ton said:

Better solution would be to use a different antenne system that is able to receive the correct signal.

I’ve been doing this for several years now, with pretty good success. On our barn, one directional antenna facing due west, cabled to three receivers; one directional antenna facing due east, cabled to two receivers. All receivers connected via ethernet to a router in the barn, with ethernet running to the house.

The big problem, as @bluesincenew has found, is that there’s no way to tell EyeTV which receiver you want to use to receive a given channel. That one feature would solve the whole problem.

The workaround is to use two different Macs to do your recording. (I have a 2009 Mac mini and a 2009 MacBook Pro which I keep running for this and a few other, lighter-duty functions.) Make a note of each of your receiver’s 8-character device ID numbers (of the form 103af8bc) and notate which antenna is plugged in to each. Then, on each Mac, run EyeTVSetup Assistant from the EyeTV menu. Choose “Network” and your receiver manufacturer. After you get through the (re-)registration and setup screens, choose the the device(s) connected to the antenna whose stations you want to record with that Mac, and set the input to “Antenna.” Make sure the other devices are set to “Not Used.” Obviously, you’d the devices up the exact opposite way on the other Mac.

There is a bug to beware of: the ordering of the devices in the pop-up menu is random and changes when you adjust your settings. Keep your wits about you, though, and you’ll be fine.

All this presumes that you have an extra Mac ready to hand, of course. If you want your recordings to automatically be moved to a server drive somewhere, I’d recommend Hazel by Noodlesoft.

On 9/26/2016 at 2:32 AM, Ton said:

There is a solution but it is buried in the vaults of the Elgato forum. However Elgato decided (years ago) to kill that forum without any warning so no one was able to save the contents.

You might be able to find it using Google. It was however a rather complex procedure where you had to make changes to several XML file. Resulting in problems when an update was done. Also scheduling becomes less flexible.

I’ve been thinking it would be a good idea to “simplify” my setup and try to get everything working on one Mac, so I was looking into this. I’d been hoping that I could use separate user accounts on one Mac, for example, instead of two separate Macs. No dice: the relevant preference file is kept in `/Library/Users/Shared/Preferences/` (at least in macOS 10.11 El Capitan), so changes made to devices affect both user accounts.

The set-up is pretty convoluted, and looks like it may involve more than one XML .plist file. Possibly relevant files are stored in various different directories. Several of EyeTV’s .plist files are completely overwritten by EyeTV whenever changes are made within the app and/or when the app is closed. And some of the .plist files are exact copies of the same data stored in different places, where a change to one without the identical change in the other can cause EyeTV to complain of corrupted data. And aliases and symlinks won’t help — they’re great for pointing to one thing from multiple places, but not for tricking an app into looking in different places for something depending on certain criteria.

I’m very happy to hear that this was documented at one point. I’m going to try searching. I suppose the wayback machine didn’t capture it?

Edited by erikmh
The forum software doesn’t understand Markdown‽

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The only way I can think of getting around this issue is to run a Virtual Machine per channel and all VMs write back to the same EyeTV Library when recording.

I have 5 tuners, (1 x Elgato C410 Firewire, 2 x DigitalEverywhere FireDTVs Firewire & 1 x Elgato Diversity USB)

Might give it a go...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There is a simple solution:

Assign 1 HDHR to EyeTV and 1 HDHR to DVBlink (or TVHeadend if you have a NAS). That way you can setup both programs so that each will only record the assigned channels.

Similar when using HDHR Extend then 2 tuners assigned to each software.

 

Edited by Ton

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Revisiting this.

I used to run two instances of Final Cut… in Terminal you can type open -n /path/to/application.app which will launch another instance for you...

You would probably want to copy EyeTV.app and create EyeTV2.app actually, then go inside the app and modify it's com.geniatech.eyetv.plist files to read and write to different plist files. This way you could have the 1st EyeTV.app to use a specific hardware tuner, and then the 2nd EyeTV.app to use your other tuner.

I haven't tried this myself with EyeTV, but I have done it this a while back with widgets. (i.e. the same widget duplicated to display different/seperate info)

I'm guessing Apple's GateKeeper would have to be disabled for the 2nd app too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

so had a bit of a play just now and don't think it's possible.

Perhaps someone with more skill might get it to work as I had to append "2" to a lot of binaries and plist files within EyeTV2.app

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.