Installment 009 of The Custom Integrator Show is not quite live yet, but we wanted to get the screen captures related to what we will be discussing out there ahead of time so you can use them as reference materials when you listen to the actual Podcast. For this installment, we really start digging into the guts of the Digital Cable Tuner (DCT) by looking at the Man-Machine Interface (MMI) screens hosted by the web server built into the DCT itself. There is a lot of good information buried in there, but you have to know what to look for and understand what they are telling you.
Following are screen captures of what I consider to be some of the more important screens that the MMIs show you. I will not provide a whole lot of text related to them because we discuss them in more detail during the Podcast. As mentioned, these are more for reference to make it easier to follow when just listening to a description of them. Of course, the ideal thing is to be sitting at a machine with the “live” screens up at the time, but that usually is not possible. It is important to note that these examples are from a Scientific Atlanta S-Card only. I wanted to keep the information consistent between screens, so I stuck with that configuration. Your information may vary. If you have Motorola cards, they will be similar, but they will be different in several areas, especially for M-Cards. The same is true for Multi-stream S-A cards.
The main thing is to understand the concepts and to tie what you are seeing back to the architecture we discussed in Installment 008. Most of these are used for troubleshooting purposes, but I included some informational ones so that you can see how the data we discussed earlier is exposed through the MMI. Hopefully, those will help you understand how it all fits together and will reinforce the topics and terminology we covered as part of the architecture. Keep in mind that most of this information and the way the handshaking works is the same across all products that use CableCARDs. It simply is exposed differently through the UI for DCTs connected to a Windows Media Center PC. Additionally, much of the core-level information shown here is exposed through the WMC 10’ experience when your navigate into the diagnostic screens from within the TV Setup panes, but sometimes it is more efficient to diagnose issues using the web browser approach. Yet another advantage of having a PC as the Host device for the OCUR platform….
This first one is the screen that comes up when you double-click on the ATI TV Wonder OpenCable Receiver device from within the Network Explorer. It is an informational screen for the Device itself (also available if you click on the Device tab on the top navigation bar once you have been checking out other screens). The most important thing is the Serial Number, which is one of your only ways to associate a screen to the physical DCT itself. Also notice the two Forward Application Transport (FAT) tuner types we showed in the architectural diagram and the fact that WMDRM is part of the actual DCT platform, also as we indicated earlier. You can see that the DCT obtains an IP address that is on a different subnet than the “normal” network interface card within the machine. You cannot do much with this, but the UPnP technologies built into the programmatic interfaces require some sort of IP address for the discovery and query methods to work.
The important piece of information is the version level of the firmware in the DCT circled in the upper right. At the time of this writing, this is the most recent release and it is important that you update the firmware if the DCT has an earlier version. This also will become more important when the new version is released within the next few months since most of the DCTs out in the field currently are at this version. It especially is important if you are working with Windows 7 at all because it takes advantage of the new Tuner Resolver functionality and cleans up a lot of the DRM limitations with this release. The firmware updates are available on AMD’s site at http://support.amd.com/us/psearch/Pages/psearch.aspx?type=2.5&product=2.5.1.3.1&contentType=GPU+Download+Detail&ostype=&keywords=&items=20.
This is the Card screen that allows you to get to the other informational web pages via the URLs highlighted in the center of the screen. Notice again that the descriptions for those pages tie back to the terminology we discussed as part of the architecture. This also shows that we are using a Scientific Atlanta CableCARD and that it is inserted into the DCT. Sometimes when you plug the CableCARD in for the first time it appears to just “sit there” and the lights on the DCT do not go solid green. This field is important because it will tell your that there is an “Update Pending” if the CableCARD automatically accepts firmware updates from the cable provider when it first is inserted into the DCT and it is connected up to the cable system. Just let it do its thing and it will reboot and be ready to go. If this field displays “Error,” you obviously have a problem. If you see this, check the Content Protection (CP Info) page shown below to see if you have received proper Authorization from the head-end.
The Host ID screen is displayed when you click on the CableCARD CA Screen URL highlighted above. This page shows that we have communicated properly with the head-end and have obtained a Host ID, which is required for any device Hosting the CableCARD. If the Host ID is not displayed, it usually means something is wrong with the pairing of the card with the head-end. In extreme cases, this is your indicator of a potentially bad CableCARD. A symptom might be a black screen when you tune to different channels even though the provider thinks the card is there and paired properly. The other field that is important is that the Authorization for the card from the head-end has, in fact, been received and things now are paired up.
There are two fields within the Conditional Access Details screen that I always check. One is that the Status is ready. The other value to check is that the Entitlement Management Messages Processed (or EMM Counts from other types of CableCARDs) has a value. This means that the CableCARD is receiving messages from the head-end. If you have called the provider and told them to send you a “hit” to the card (an EMM), this number should increment. Note that there is a URL link at the bottom of this screen (More CA Details). Clicking on this takes you into other screens for a more detailed view of other information associated with this aspect of the handshaking process between the DCT, CableCARD, and head-end.
I have included this screen just for informational purposes. We spent some time in Installment 008 talking about the Transport Stream and the information it contains, which is used by the Virtual Channel Table (and in other places) for identifying the content types for specific channels. This shows the Program ID for the channel tuned in on this DCT.
The Copy Protection Information screen from the CP Info link has another important piece of data. The Authorization Status show that CP Auth is received. It may use the terminology “Subscribed” if you have a different type of card. If this displays CP Auth Pending or Waiting, you have a problem. If you go through the usual isolation steps with the provider and still have not received authorization, that may be an indicator that you have a bad CableCARD. I also have highlighted the Content Control Information value for that channel (refer to blog post for Installment 008 for the values). In this case, it shows that there is no CCI applied, so it essentially is Copy Freely.
Once again, this is an informational screen. I post it only to show that it is referring to the Out Of Band tuner (for S-A CableCARDs, it is the Forward Data Channel or FDC). You can see that the OOB tuner is locked on to a specific frequency, much the same way as the FAT tuners are. Naturally, it is important that this tuner is Locked in, also.
The System Information Tables show a lot of underlying information that you probably do not need to worry about. However, I have included this one to indicate that there is an actual “version number” associated with the Virtual Channel Table we discussed previously. We will cover the VCT more in a future Installment when we look at the MCIA Digital Cable Tuner Diagnostic Tool.
There is just a ton of information available via the Diagnostics Screen URL off of the main Card Screen. This shot highlights that the currently tuned channel has been authorized for viewing. Once again, we will cover some of these values in more depth when we take a look at the DCT Diag Tool.
The CableCARD firmware screen buried inside of the Diags tree shows the last time the CableCARD firmware was updated, which is different than the ATI firmware in the DCT itself. In this case, it was updated in January. This particular card is tied to a Comcast system. It is interesting to note that Comcast in that area (Florida) had not updated the S-A S-Card CableCARD firmware for several years prior to this. One day they just decided to do it, which supposedly resolved several known issues they had with CableCARDs in general. Unfortunately, the CableCARD showed and “Error” state in the Status field on the Card screen at the beginning of this post. It required a reboot of the DCT and the Windows Media Center PC and everything worked okay again. Coincidentally, that problem happened to occur on January 22. This helped confirm what had happened since Comcast did not inform anyone that they were performing these updates and it was difficult to find someone on their support desk who knew about it.
Once again, this is an informational screen showing the Status Report for both the Forward Application Transport (FAT) tuner (the digital QAM one), which are the ones in the DCT used for tuning in the analog or digital channels themselves, and FDC/OOB tuners. Notice the URL in the Address Bar indicates this is from the fourth page of the Diags link from the Card Screen. Once again, just reinforcing some of the terminology and how the architecture applies to how the system actually works under the wraps.
This is the information displayed when you access the Tuner tab from the main display page. Notice that it shows the In-Band (FAT) tuner and the Out-Of-Band (OOB) tuner status. It is important to see that the tuner is locked on for the particular channel (a value of 1 in both fields). The Program Clock Reference (PCR) field usually is “used” the same as the video’s Program ID (PID) mentioned in our discussions regarding the Transport Stream and the “1” indicates there was a time stamp associated with the last time it synchronized for decoding the PCR. We spent a lot of time in Installment 008 discussing the Signal to Noise Ratio values, so you can refer to the blog post on that. I will reiterate that the numeric value for the Signal Level obtained from the current ATI DCTs is not valid and should be ignored on this screen (it actually does more harm than good looking at it through here). Use a good Signal Level meter or have the cable provider check it to ensure the “real” Signal Level falls within the –8 dBmV to +8 dBmV range across the entire spectrum.
One last thing. You do have the ability to power the CableCARD on and off via the “Force Power To” field at the top of the Card Screen. This is useful for “restarting” just the CableCARD itself, especially if you have internal tuners on the Windows Media Center PC. Simply put a value of 0 into the field and click Apply. Wait for ten seconds or more and Apply a value of 1. Unfortunately, this currently does not change the status of the red/green indicator lights on the DCT if you are trying to identify a particular tuner, but it is useful if you are not at the PC itself or it is difficult to get to the cards.
We were not able to cover all of these screens in Installment 009, so they will roll over into Installment 00A. Hopefully these have provided some more insight into the mystery of the Digital Cable Tuner and CableCARDs. Our discussions will not help you resolve every issue you may encounter, but I know it took me a while to find all of this information, so I hope you can save some time if you do you encounter problems.
There is some great information available at http://www.dslreports.com/faq/sciatl/3.1_Using_diagnostic_screens#11899 with some excellent descriptions of the fields and values I have tried to summarize here. The presentation of the information through the UI is different, but you can see the consistency of the data and deduce yet more information about how the handshaking process works.
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