A SIRIUS Geek and setting up Sage.TV

[Jeremy]

There is one think that is for sure, I'm a geek. maybe it's my office which sports a dozen computers, my main computer which has no less than 6 monitors (thanks to a dual head PCI-Express card and a Matrox Quad monitor card) or My Car PC which was the first in the world to run SIRIUS Satellite Radio from a computer, or even my love for satellite radio which brought me to create ItsOnSIRIUS.com which pulls the currently playing title and artist from a modified SIRIUS Satellite radio and puts it online. Yep, I'm a geek.

Currently, we have in the house, two Modified DirecTV TIVO receivers which runs 4.0.1 with all the added little goodies including TIVO Web and they are networked together so we can watch stuff from either TIVO in either room. But I was never (and I do mean NEVER) happy with my DirecTV TIVO. My major bitch is the Guide is just too slow (I don't know how you could release something that slow.) Not to mention limited space and usability on these units (even though both of mine have 200g hard drives.)

So I started looking around, MythTV was highly recomended, but I'm not a big believer in Linux GUI interfaces unless they are embedded. Plus configuring devices under linux isn't my thing - and hardware support sucks (A wise man once told me to build linux boxes with hardware atleast a year old.) But I wanted multiple tuner capability, DirecTV support (no cable here) and the big one was the ability to run one main box with clients attached which would allow a bunch of tuners in one room to serve the entire house.

SageTV really fit the bill. I ran the demo for a couple of hours, then I ordered a couple Plextor DIVx usb recorder devices. After seeing the posts about using multiple devices not working, I also got a PVR500. Add a couple USB-UIRT's (2 for the house, 1 for the car - for a new stearing wheel remote I want to add.), a few StreamZap remotes and 4 older DirecTV Receivers off ebay and some serial cables for the receivers and I was off and running.

I started with One of these systems. I had to change out the AGP card to something with s-video output and add a USB 2.0 card (I couldn't believe they were usb1.1) and finally bump up the memory, but most of that was just done from stuff laying around. In the box is 2 200g hdd and a dvd rom drive (although I may change that out for another hard drive and a LCD display later.) The case only had 2 PCI slots so I had to take the add on av header card for the PVR500 and find a spot for it inside the case and run the av cables out a hole in the back of the case. It's all a tight fit but it's been running for a week, no heat problems - so I'm golden!

I activated and setup all 4 directv recievers so I have 4 tuners at my disposal (very nice, I love that!) And I have a matching system in the living room over the network with a streamzap remote running SageTV Client.

So the hardware was up, SageTV installed like a champ, worked good, and configured pretty easily. I also added the Weather and Dynamic menus (which ROCK!) and a couple of the other STV mods laying around. And of course, it took me a good half hour to set up all my channels properly.

I'm very impressed with the setup over all. I still have to setup my menus perfectly, but am milling over the flow I want.

Now for the bad:

- No Pay-Per-View Support! <-- THIS SUCKS! I've read about the issues with the zapit data, but really want to see this resolved.

- Setup Sucks! <-- With the exception of my car pc, setting this stuff up was the most involved setup I've ever had. Yes, I installed some mods which often take long anyways, but just setting up the tuners and the channel data, then the remote and everything. --- Out of the box, SageTv doesn't even work properly with the remote I bought with it!

- "TIVO Suggestion" type recordings (stuff SageTV records which is not on the favorites) just dumps into the recorded items. I really want them in a seperate folder.

- Searching for Programs - I want this to function like my tivo, where it is alphabetical, not just contains what I'm typing. Acutally, I want both ways.

- Multiple Identical Plextor devices don't work. You can't set up 2 of the same Plextor USB Divx recording devices on the same computer - SageTV will not detect the second one. Any fixes around? Perhaps a Registry hack to change the name of one of the two devices?

Questions
- Is there a way to use an external program to setup to record a certain channel at a certain time? I'm thinking of something I can write that will allow me to do Pay-Per-View. The program would operate outside of SageTV (or could be called by the dynamic menus) so it wouldn't have the restrictions of problems with the channel data.

Overall, good program. i'm still messing with the remotes and of course, i have to then program my Harmoney Remotes when it's all said and done. But it's definately a keeper in this house. And as a bonus, I can sell my DirecTV TIVO's on ebay for $200 each!