Jeff’s Place

Just a quick update on the DirectTV2PC application I started fiddling with a few days ago, since I’ve now managed to get things working.

The application seems to work pretty well, even on my laptop that is supposed too under-powered according to their system requirements list. Video is a little glitchy, especially HD content, but I can see that my laptop’s cpu (dual-core 1.2ghz ULV Intel U7600 processor) is pretty much pegged so that’s probably the cause. I’m also using the wireless adapter on my laptop instead of a wired connection but that doesn’t appear to be the problem. It took some poking around but there is a way to point the dtv2pc app at a different DVR - it’s in the “Menu->Settings” menu, you can pick which “server” to connect to. It shows them by receiver ID, which isn’t terribly friendly, so you have to make a mental note of which is which, and you have to use the up/down arrow keys to pick the dvr, the mouse doesn’t make the selection. Switching DVR’s causes the dtv2pc app to load the program list from the new dvr and off you go.

I tried using the app from a remote network, with a vpn connection back to my home network, but the dtv2pc app fails to find the dvr’s. I fired up wireshark to see if I could tell why, and discovered that at startup the app multicasts for the dvr’s, so since that multicast traffic doesn’t get forwarded over the vpn link it’ll never be able to see the dvrs. That is probably a solvable problem with some network hacking but it’s not something the casual user could manage, and I probably won’t bother but it may be possible to get this thing to work remotely ala slingbox if you’re willing to invest some time to get multicast forwarding over vpn to work. I did find that when switching back and forth that at some point one of my dvr’s started reporting that it had no recordings, although it correctly showed only 6% of space available. Again with wireshark, I found the dvr was returning an error when the dtv2pc app requested the program list. I figured I’d probably have to reboot the DVR but it eventually fixed itself, although I don’t know how long that took, it was just working the next morning when I looked at it again. Everything on the DVR itself was working fine, it was just the remote dtv2pc app that didn’t get a program list.

By the way, it looks like the app uses http conversations with the dvr to get it’s program lists and other data. It might be interesting to spend some time sniffing to see what info might be available, I could see maybe writing a script to track which shows get recorded and put the data on a server somewhere. Anyway, that’s all for now, more later when I have time to dig into this more.

This evening while searching for details on why both of my directv HD DVR’s locked up, yet again, I stumbled across some posts on directv’s tech forum about a new application called DirecTV2PC which is supposed to allow playing programs recorded on a DVR over the net onto a Windows PC. I was all set to start a rant about how DirecTV is completely inept in their constant distribution of flawed software and supposed “transmission glitches” which cause the damn DVR’s to lock up randomly. Well I think, now maybe that’s enough rant and here is a new toy to play with instead.

Guess what… IT DOESN’T WORK. Big surprise

I downloaded the application, gave them my email address and they sent me an activation code. When installing the app it asks for a serial number, which I assume is the activation code, copy and paste that code into the installer and off it goes.

When I first started the app after install completed it found my DVR (wow, I thought this might actually work). Then it asked me to activate the program, I click the “Activate” button and what happens? Error: Invalid activation code. And guess what, there’s no way to re-enter the code, just a “try again” button. How fucking stupid is that? Turns out the only way to enter the code is in the installer. So I tried a couple more times, even downloading the software again so I could get a new code, same problem each time. I tried hacking their config files, sniffing the traffic to see what it’s doing (it turns out it uses https to talk to the registration server so that didn’t help much), and poking around the registry, no luck.

Gee, it must be true, DirecTV is completely inept, they can’t even issue a valid activation code for their software. To be fair this application is from Cyberlink so I guess they must be equally inept. Thankfully they finally gave in to all the complainers and signed a new deal with Tivo so maybe this time next year things will get better.

Somebody wake me up when the morons are no longer running the world….

Fast forward to the next morning…. Now the Directv2PC app manages to get through it’s activation step, the activation servers must have just been down last night or something. It now will connect to one DVR and play content saved on that box using roughly the same menu as shown on the DVR itself. I don’t see a way to tell it to switch to my second DVR, and don’t have time to play with this much more at the moment so I’ll have to fiddle with this and post more later.

You can download the Directv2pc application here.

Last week Nokia started shipping the US version of the E71 SmartPhone, the version replacement for the E61i SmartPhone that I’ve been using for about a year. I had placed on order on Buy.com a couple weeks earlier and must have received a phone from one of their first shipments, it arrived on Monday.

My first impression: WOW, this thing is really a lot smaller and lighter than the E61i, and the mechanical design is awesome!

Continue reading ‘Nokia E71 SmartPhone’ »

For the past year or so I’ve been using a Nokia E61i SmartPhone. It’s a pretty good general-purpose phone for messaging, email, web browsing, etc. and it’s also, get this, a pretty good phone. It has it’s strengths and weaknesses, like anything, and some things I had to figure out or fiddle with to make it really useful. I also found some pretty good software for it which lets me use it instead of a laptop for all sorts of stuff.

Continue reading ‘Nokia E61i SmartPhone’ »

To get your music, videos, photos etc. stored on a Windows Vista machine to show up on your DirecTV HD-DVR you just have to get your windows machine set up to correctly share your files. The DVR, once on the net, will find the windows machine and try to get the content.

I did this with a DirecTV HD-DVR HR20-700, and an HP 2510p laptop running Windows Vista Ultimate. It should work more or less the same with any HR20 or HR21 DVR, and any Vista machine with the media components (I think that means home premium or ultimate, vista business probably doesn’t have the media stuff, not sure about the other home versions). The DVR needs to be running one of the latest releases that includes the MediaShare Beta software (otherwise you won’t have the menu item that gets into the shared media area).

Continue reading ‘Playing Windows-Shared Media on DirecTV HD-DVR with MediaShare’ »

I’ve been fiddling lately with Windows Vista, attempting to get the Media Center software to recognize and play DVD’s stored on a hard drive (rather than a dvd in the dvd drive). It’s a bit frustrating but eventually following a few simple tricks it does seem to work. The DVD player functionality seems to be not a good as, for example, WinDVD, but this effort is part of a larger goal to re-build my home media systems to run from a computer-based system rather than individual audio/video components, and since the concept behind Windows Media Center seems to be going the right direction, I decided to give it a try.

Continue reading ‘Getting Windows Media Center to Play DVDs’ »