HDHRCorder Readme

HDHRcorder is a separate application that manages a single recording from a HDHomeRun tuner. When the recording is done, the application ends. Meanwhile, you are free to close, upgrade, and restart any other programs (like BTV-Externinator) without affecting the recording.

The HDHRcorder application consists of the following files:

In addition, a HDHRcorder.pdb file may be present to provide debugging symbols for those adventuresome enough to debug an error. The HDHRcorder.zip file contains source.

After installation and before use, run HDHRcorder.exe once by double clicking or run it from the command prompt without arguments. It will check for the Silicondust utility location and try to select the best IP address. [Typically a home network uses IP addresses from a network like 192.168.1.* selected by the router connected to your DSL or cable modem. However, your machine may have internally assigned additional IP addresses to dummy "network adapters" that it creates out of firewire or other ports. When it first starts up, HDHRcorder looks at the IP addresses of all the adapters and asks the Silicondust utility for the IP address of the HDHR box. Typically the HDHR box will be a 192.168.1.* address, and then HDHRcorder will select the one IP address on the Ethernet port that is connected to the same network. So maybe 99% of the time it can guess right, but there is enough uncertainty here that the author wants you to at least look at what was selected to verify it looks right.]

You typically have to "punch a hole" through the Windows firewall. HDHRcorder uses UDP ports, not TCP. By default BTV-Externinator assigns port number 5001 and up, incrementing the port by one for every real or virtual tuner defined to BeyondTV. If you run HDHRcorder manually, you select the port number on the command line.

During execution, HDHRcorder will attempt to write trace information onto the end of the hdhrcorder-trace.txt file in its own directory. If that file is in use by another instance of the program, .NET generates a long unique prefix to the file name.

Requirements:

You must have .NET 2.0 installed on your machine.

You must have the Silicondust HdHomeRun utilities installed on your machine. It is best if you use the installer and put them in the default location.

Syntax:

HDHRcorder is typically run from BTV-Externinator. It can be run manually, in which case it accepts seven "command line" arguments:

ffffffff 0 93 18 20:59:59 5002 "d:\video\Program..."

  1. ffffffff is the HDHR device id. ffffffff is the default and may be omitted if you have only one HDHR device, but a real ID must be specified if you have two HDHRs.
  2. 0 or 1 is the tuner number.
  3. 93 is the QAM cable RF channel number. This means that the program is being transmitted on the same frequency that would be assigned to analog cable TV channel 93 if there were such an analog channel. Do not confuse this with the three digit channel number on the front of you Cable TV set to box. That is just a dummy made up channel number. This is a real channel with a real assigned frequency. There is a special value of 0. If this field is set to 0, then no commands are sent to the HDHR to select frequency or program. You can control the HDHR manually. This setting can also be used if you have enabled the "broadcast" option for this recording on another computer and are recording the same data simultaneously on two computers.
  4. 18 is the program number. Every channel can have two or three HD programs or as many as 12 to 16 standard definition programs. The programs are assigned a somewhat arbitrary number by the cable company. Therefore, what you think of as ABC or maybe the channel that the Comcast set top box calls 231 is actually a combination of an RF frequency and a program number. When in doubt, the standard HDHR programs from Silicondust will display program numbers for each RF channel. There is a special program number value of 9999 which causes HDHRcorder to tell the HDHR device to not filter out a specific program but instead to send the entire RF channel. This can produce 20 gigabytes of data per hour, but then you can use an MPEG TV edit tool to break the file up into 2 HD or as many as a dozen standard definition programs later on.
  5. 20:59:59 is a stopping time. This is actually a Date-Time in the local format for your country. Any complex value should be quoted. Possibilities include "8:59:59 PM" or the example as a 24-hour clock. You can also specify a number of minutes in the form 1 to 999. Once the recording starts, the stopping time can be changed manually from the menu in the window.
  6. 5002 is a UDP port number. HDHRcorder will tell the HDHR device to send the data to this port and it will listen on this port for the data. If you enable broadcast and want to record a second copy of the same data on a second machine, set the RF on the second machine to 0 but use the same port number as the first machine is set to.
  7. The fully qualified output file name

Configuration options:

The configuration panel is displayed when you launch HDHRcorder with no parameters.  It will also be triggered if a normal recording is requested but during startup there is a problem.

It must be able to find the hdhomerun_config.exe utility supplied by Silicondust, and expects it in the default place it is installed by the installer on a 32 bit machine. You have to configure it manually if you place it somewhere else or install it on a 64 bit Windows system.

It will select an IP address that seems to be on the same network as the HDHR devices.

If you click the Local Broadcast option, the HDHR will be instructed to address its data to the .255 broadcast address (192.168.1.255) where it can be received by every computer in the home network that has some program listening on the port.

"us-hrc" is some cable TV option that you select if you need it.

"use hdhomerun_config save" runs the Silicondust utility to save the data to disk. This should not be needed, but it is available if it makes you feel more comfortable.

Launch Minimized launches the program minimized to the taskbar.

The configuration utility also displays the HDHR devices it finds, their IP addresses, and the port numbers that BTV-Externinator will assign to each tuner when it schedules recordings.