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Trouble getting Comcast Cable Box to work vis Firewire

Posted: 11 Feb 2012 22:59
by sscotti
I started playing with VideoLan and the AVCBrowser again after getting a new Mac. I had it working once for a few minutes, was able to view an HD channel in a window on the Mac. However, it seems to have stopped working. I am getting the following messages in the Console:


2/11/12 4:52:42.113 PM AVCBrowser: Initializing AVCDeviceControlPanelController for device: Explorer(R) 4300
2/11/12 4:52:42.128 PM AVCBrowser: Found EIA-775 Unit Directory on Device
2/11/12 4:52:48.209 PM [0x0-0x43043].com.Apple.AVCBrowser: [0x10020a018] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
2/11/12 4:52:50.429 PM [0x0-0x43043].com.Apple.AVCBrowser: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 1, expected 0) for PID 0
2/11/12 4:52:50.952 PM [0x0-0x43043].com.Apple.AVCBrowser: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 1, expected 0) for PID 5012

and no image or sound. Looks like I am communicating with the cable box just fine though.

Any suggestions. Was also looking into something called MythTV, but that sound pretty complicated to set up and a little buggy.

Re: Trouble getting Comcast Cable Box to work vis Firewire

Posted: 13 Feb 2012 20:41
by jltnol
It' been a very long time since I had a cable TV box, but I was able to get the FW aspect working with AVCBrowser fine.... for a while. Then the cable company started to scramble the signal to some degree, rendering the FW output useless.

I think they are required by LAW to make that output available, but I'd understand them not making anything not included in basic cable available, even if you are paying for that content.

Don't know if this will work but have you tried channels that would be in a basic cable package? Local broadcast channels?