Am I screwed? MCE & Sage at the same time?

[korben_dallas]

I hate to say this, but I think you'll be better off using MCE until SageTV gets HD recording capability.. unless you can live without HD, then SageTV is of course the answer.

[KenFab]

Originally Posted by salsbst

That is why I'm suggesting that you (use regedt32 and the services control panel) to run the MCE services that Gerry identified under a user account that cannot see your PVR-150 card.

If I do that, won't Sage then be unable to use the PVR-150 card to record SD material?

Are you're suggesting I run MCE under one account, and Sage under another?

[KenFab]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

I hate to say this, but I think you'll be better off using MCE until SageTV gets HD recording capability.. unless you can live without HD, then SageTV is of course the answer.

Well, honestly, I've already resigned myself to that inevitability.

I’ve got a “tech support” ticket open, and I hope they come up with a solution, but I’m not holding my breath… I’m a realist, after all. =)

[salsbst]

If I do that, won't Sage then be unable to use the PVR-150 card to record SD material?

Not if Sage runs under your normal account.

Are you're suggesting I run MCE under one account, and Sage under another?

Sort of.. I'm not proposing that you run the MCE GUI itself under a different account, just the two services that Gerry pointed to. The Services control panel allows you to do this. You would create a new user account (I'd just make it a member of the administrators group for each of configuration), and then use the Services control panel to have that user account be the one used by the two services.

Once you have that much done (and you should at this point test that MCE still functions properly, just in case), then use regedt32 to take away this new user's permission to read the registry keys that identify your PVR-150.

To find the key of interest, start in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP . A value in there will identify a key under HKLM\System\ControlSetXX\Services that contains all of the information on your hardware. It is this key that I would suggest you block from the MCE service user.

I'm not guaranteeing that this will work... I don't have MCE so there is no way for me to test it... but I think it may be worth the 15 minutes or so that it should take to try out (if you're comfortable with the notion of a little registry hacking).

[src666]

Isn't MCE limited in the number of tuners that it supports? Can't you just overload it with another tuner or two, and the unused tuners will be available to other programs (i.e. Sage)? I know that it's more money, but you are asking for something to work in a very specific way that it wasn't designed for, so you can't expect something for nothing.

[KenFab]

Originally Posted by src666

Isn't MCE limited in the number of tuners that it supports? Can't you just overload it with another tuner or two, and the unused tuners will be available to other programs (i.e. Sage)? I know that it's more money, but you are asking for something to work in a very specific way that it wasn't designed for, so you can't expect something for nothing.

Money isn't the issue here, and I'm curious about your assertion "you are asking for something to work in a very specific way that it wasn't designed for". Do you know something I don't? If so, please educate me… if you know this for a fact then I’d appreciate some links from a credible source.

I've got two tuners installed already (well three, actually... see below), and adding another most likely won't help me here.

I've already performed the well-known "hack" that enables MCE to see the ATI HDTV Wonder's Analog tuner, and have set up MCE to use the Wonder's HD tuner for HD, the analog tuner for SD, and deselected the PVR-150 altogether.

So, in theory, MCE shouldn't be affecting the PVR-150 at all, yet it does, as can be proved by disabling the four MCE services as I mentioned earlier.

[src666]

Well, you might try disabling the MCE services, loading Sage which will grab the 150 tuner, then reactivating the services, which should now see the 150 as unavailable.

My "wasn't designed for" comment was related to the fact that MCE doesn't expect to share the capture cards (or other media resources, for that matter) with another application, and doesn't seem to be very polite about it even when you tell it not to use the card. Frankly, if it was designed to do that, then you wouldn't be having these problems in the first place.

In my mind the key is to make the card unavailable to MCE. The only way I know to do that effectively is to have some other process take it. I don't know the in's and out's of restricting access to the hardware by user, but as was mentioned earlier that might be a way out.

[KenFab]

Yeah, you guys may be right about another card working, though at this point I'm not going to do that until I've exhausted all other options.

Why do you say “The analog portion of the HDTV card does not count in this instance”? After performing the “hack”, MCE sees two analog tuners. I selected the HDTV analog tuner and deselected the PVR-150 during the setup. You’d think that would do the trick…

EDIT: Hey, what happened to gplasky's post (right before this one)? Did you delete it?

[gplasky]

Yeah-I was replying but hadn't read the next page. So with the "hack" you don't need an analog card installed-you can use the ATI HDTV as both the HDTV and the analog tuner? Since MCE can only handle 2 (analog) tuners (+1 HDTV) then installing a 3rd (analoog) tuner should do it.

Gerry