Jeffrobinson1327 Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 What are people using/liking the most now for an IP directv driver? I have the HR44 and C31 clients in my system. Want the best/most cost effective solution. Has Control4 created one for free yet? Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 I believe there's a 2-way IP driver either in Control4's online database, or if not, it can be found on the Dealer forums. RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 EV driver gives some advanced functionality, but they won't/haven't added the metadata to show what program is playing to the TS like the free driver does. Maybe its just me, but I like it when a paid driver would do at least everything a free one does... in EV defense I doubt the free one did that at the time they created their driver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillEV Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 EV driver gives some advanced functionality, but they won't/haven't added the metadata to show what program is playing to the TS like the free driver does. Maybe its just me, but I like it when a paid driver would do at least everything a free one does... in EV defense I doubt the free one did that at the time they created their driver. Thanks for reminding me - I'd updated the driver to add support for this here but hadn't had a chance to push it to the update server yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 Great, thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tebery Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 I've been using IR on my 4 boxes for 7 years now. Probably the most stable part of my system over the years (never had a problem with it). Always thought about making the switch to IP, but why fix something that isnt broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecodeman Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 Thanks for reminding me - I'd updated the driver to add support for this here but hadn't had a chance to push it to the update server yet.And there you have it, folks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericscales Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 I recently updated all of my IR drivers to the EV driver. I started with the free solution, but it didn't provide me the capability to control the Genie slave devices (just the master unit). For me, that was well worth the purchase of the EV driver (and low cost in my opinion). I was fine with the IR drivers, but I have a bit of OCD with IP drivers :-) Have had zero problems with it as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillEV Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 I recently updated all of my IR drivers to the EV driver. I started with the free solution, but it didn't provide me the capability to control the Genie slave devices (just the master unit). For me, that was well worth the purchase of the EV driver (and low cost in my opinion). I was fine with the IR drivers, but I have a bit of OCD with IP drivers :-) Have had zero problems with it as well. The only known issue with the Genie Mini boxes is that they do not currently support power on over IP (as their network interface is not powered up when off, like all regular smart TVs). This becomes an issue if you have more than three (as then they will exceed the RVU limit) or regularly schedule 3 or more recordings at once. Otherwise you can simply set them to not power down automatically and leave them on, or if you're *super* lucky, can power them up using CEC, but I wouldn't rely on that unless you're masochistic. We're hoping that DirecTV will resolve this issue in a future update, but they've known about it for a while and we don't have any visibility into their development process on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 Let me guess, like GM manufacturing Volts to offset SUVs, maybe DirecTV wanted to go overboard on how eco-friendly the Genie infrastructure would be to offset all those bad DVRs they've put out? (as their network interface is not powered up when off, like all regular smart TVs). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrobinson1327 Posted February 27, 2014 Author Share Posted February 27, 2014 So, the free version will not control the genie mini clients? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericscales Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 So, the free version will not control the genie mini clients? Correct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericscales Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 Thanks for reminding me - I'd updated the driver to add support for this here but hadn't had a chance to push it to the update server yet. Hey there. I haven't seen my drivers update yet (still on 7.0.5). I tried turning auto updates off then back on, rebooted director, even added a new instance of the driver to a dummy room but no update yet. Is there something I can do to force an update? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiam Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 I just had a Genie and 2 mini clients installed. Having the C4 guy come on Wednesday to program everything. So I need to get the EV paid driver? If I don't and just use the regular free version or C4's version, can the boxes be controlled via an IR bug from a controller? Also, one of my new TVs will have the RVU built in meaning I don't need the physical box. does that mean the free version will work with that? Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericscales Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 I just had a Genie and 2 mini clients installed. Having the C4 guy come on Wednesday to program everything. So I need to get the EV paid driver? If I don't and just use the regular free version or C4's version, can the boxes be controlled via an IR bug from a controller? Also, one of my new TVs will have the RVU built in meaning I don't need the physical box. does that mean the free version will work with that? Thanks in advance. I'm not sure if my dealer gave me a break on this as it was bundled with several thousand $ in other add-ons, but just looked and the invoice line item for the EV DirectTV IP driver was $35. That was a no brainer for me for eliminating IR bugs on all the remote genie devices. Regarding your questions. Do you need the paid driver. No, you don't. The IR driver works just fine, however, I encourage you to get the EV driver given the modest cost and it may even reduce your cost with the dealer not having to run a bunch of wiring for the IR bugs (depending on the location of your controllers and all that). If you don't go with the EV driver, you can still use the free IP driver for your main box and the IR drivers for the remote boxes. An RVU built-in. That is an excellent question. I *doubt* the free IP driver will work with that and have no idea how that works with IR. I'd have to defer to the EV folks to correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm 90% sure the EV driver will work with that as it communicates with the main receiver solely. Even when you are controlling a remote genie box (or in this case a built in RVU), the EV driver sends the commands to the main box which then does it's thing with the remote boxes. HOWEVER, as mentioned earlier, you have to have power always on for the DTV boxes for the EV driver to work. I don't know how that works in the case of an embedded RVU. When the TV turns off, does the RVU turn off? If so, is there a config command to keep the RVU running?Hope this helps. Others, please chime in if I stated incorrectly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillEV Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 While our driver will control the RVU client in the TV (Genie Minis are RVU clients, just with an HDMI output rather than built into a TV), there is *no* way to select that source via IR on the TV driver (and good luck with an IP driver for a TV...). There is no discrete code for it, as each RVU source shows up differently. The RVU is also fractionally slower and flakier than watching through a Genie Mini in my experience, although this is a late 2012 Samsung TV and new ones may be better. The result of this is that unless you *only* watch DirecTV on that TV (and thus just need to power on the TV and the last RVU source will be the source that starts up), the C4 system will not behave well with an RVU source built into a TV. Get a Genie Mini for this TV. It will make you much happier. I have an RVU TV at home here which I use both the built in Smart Functions for Hulu/Netflix/HBO and DirecTV RVU. It is impossible to program this setup into C4 in a way that would not get me divorced in a week, so we just use the original remote for the TV for all of that, and it works fine. At some point I will replace it with a Genie Mini and a Roku, and then everything will be better for C4 integration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 It is impossible to program this setup into C4 in a way that would not get me divorced in a week, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillEV Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Always have an out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 Hey there. I haven't seen my drivers update yet (still on 7.0.5). I tried turning auto updates off then back on, rebooted director, even added a new instance of the driver to a dummy room but no update yet. Is there something I can do to force an update? Me too. Its definitely better to know the change has been made, but now its a guessing game as to whether the driver is upgrading like it is supposed to or not. Either way the result is the same...no new metadata... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillEV Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 Hey there. I haven't seen my drivers update yet (still on 7.0.5). I tried turning auto updates off then back on, rebooted director, even added a new instance of the driver to a dummy room but no update yet. Is there something I can do to force an update? I haven't updated the driver yet (you can check the current version by looking on our website and the driver will also report whether it's the current version in Composer) as I'm chasing down a power on/select channel bug that is complicated by HDMI HDCP handshaking blocking IP commands from being received. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillEV Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 Issue is now resolved and new driver is live on our website with more feedback in Navigator. Auto update will pick this up within 24 hours (essentially, when your driver next checks in to our license server). Please note that we don't provide support through these forums, but thanks all for reminding me to get on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 Hmm, I wonder if the bug you mention would result in commands being delayed, or if they would be completely blocked. I'll be interested in seeing if I still see those issues (missed commands pretty rare, delayed more than I would like). Thanks for the heads up... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillEV Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Hmm, I wonder if the bug you mention would result in commands being delayed, or if they would be completely blocked. I'll be interested in seeing if I still see those issues (missed commands pretty rare, delayed more than I would like). Thanks for the heads up... If the box was on, the bug I mentioned would not affect it. If the box was off, the bug would affect the first 3-6 seconds of the box powering on because it was not yet ready to receive commands (and these commands would simply be dropped I would expect). After that time, there are no known issues. If commands are "delayed" you should look into whether the commands from the remote control are appearing in the Lua window of the driver in a timely fashion (i.e. immediately) when you press them on the remote/touchscreen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Good troubleshooting step. It was bad for a while but fairly intermittent now. I will say I know there are more layers with EV/C4, but the iOS DirecTV app seems to be snappier and I don't ever see these types of delays/misses like the issue I mentioned. Also, looks like I got the new version, at least I saw metadata I hadn't seen before with the EV driver. Thumbs up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiam Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 While our driver will control the RVU client in the TV (Genie Minis are RVU clients, just with an HDMI output rather than built into a TV), there is *no* way to select that source via IR on the TV driver (and good luck with an IP driver for a TV...). There is no discrete code for it, as each RVU source shows up differently. The RVU is also fractionally slower and flakier than watching through a Genie Mini in my experience, although this is a late 2012 Samsung TV and new ones may be better. The result of this is that unless you *only* watch DirecTV on that TV (and thus just need to power on the TV and the last RVU source will be the source that starts up), the C4 system will not behave well with an RVU source built into a TV. Get a Genie Mini for this TV. It will make you much happier. I have an RVU TV at home here which I use both the built in Smart Functions for Hulu/Netflix/HBO and DirecTV RVU. It is impossible to program this setup into C4 in a way that would not get me divorced in a week, so we just use the original remote for the TV for all of that, and it works fine. At some point I will replace it with a Genie Mini and a Roku, and then everything will be better for C4 integration. I just spent 8 grand on 3 new Smart TVs! This is not what I wanted to hear!! I just assumed the paid EV driver would work with the latest equipment. Updating to the Genies allowed me to get rid of 2 of the DirecTV boxes and a component matrix. Since the TVs had RVU built-in I didn't run coax to the far rooms. Instead 2 Deca converters sit in the equipment closet and the only wires running to my far TVs are cat6. Works great. Except for the above mentioned problem of not being able to call up the RVU input. Not TOO big a problem, I guess. I can teach my son and wife that they have to put the TV back onto the RVU input if they switch to something beside regular TV (apple TV, the control4 Nav.) Still... I can't easily downgrade to Mini boxes because there's no coax in the far rooms. I guess I could keep the boxes in the closet and run an HDMI cord to the far TVs (hoping it isn't too far). Control4 could then control the mini boxes via an IR bug from the controller box in the closet, correct? Rich people problems, huh? Is there a way for Control4 to navigate through the Smart TV menus. It know when to talk to the direcTV box (change channel, bring up menu) and when to talk to the TV (volume up, shut off) so is there a way to get the Control4 remote to navigate to the Apps part of my Samsung TV and interact with the apps? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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