Mapping Composite to Channel #

[Enraged78]

Hey all,

I have analog cable feeding my PVR-250, and a digital cable box on a seperate feed so I don't have to watch what I'm recording. I have a feed from the digital cable box piped back into the composite input of the card so I can record digital cable channels when I want to (not that often). Is there any way to map a composite input to an actual TV channel so I can set up a manual recording on it?

Thanks,
Matt.

[Narflex]

Sort of. You can add another lineup for the composite input and then just disable all of the channels on it but one. Then that channel will be the composite input.

[Enraged78]

Narflex,

When you say "add another lineup", do you mean add another configuration instance of my PVR-250 to the setup screen? That would effictively fool Sage into thinking I had two PVR-250's, right? Then, as long as I didn't try to pull multiple recordings off of it, I would be OK?

Also, one other question for you, when you guys go national with EPG as of November 1st, will that include all local cable setups, or just directTV? The manual EPG is kind of annoying, even with scriping taking care of it. I would like to just enter my zip code and go. And also, when Sage studio comes out, I don't want to have to reconfigure everything.

P.S. - Excellect software and support. Best I've had so far. If I can get these last few bugs worked out, I'll be purchasing it this weekend. I can't wait for the configuration options of Sage Studio.

Thanks,
Matt.

[justme]

Go to Setup>Setup Wizard>Add or modify a source. Go thru the wizard as normal and this time select your digital cable lineup. Make sure you remove any channels that overlap your analog lineup as well as all but one of your digital channels. I kept the first digital channel # that was out of my analog lineup's range. When get to input selection make sure you chose Composite. You now effectively have two sources. Note to my knowledge this canonly be done with the Sage Service. I don't know if the XMLTV plugin will support two service providers.

This actually works very well for me. What Narflex describes is my current setup. At least until native USB-UIRT IR transmit support is added to SageTV. In the meantime I just tune my digital cable box manually. This is really not that big a *deal for me since only two digital channels(TechTV,Science) exist worth watching on a regular basis. All of the rest of the channels I watch are duplicated by my analog cable.

Paradoxidly, the analog channels look better than their digital counterparts where one exists. I guess my cable provider overcompresses the digital channels to add more bandwidth. Yet another step backwards rather than forwards. I can't wait til they try and do away with the analog channels totally.(sarcasm)

*The only "hard" part was the tedious job of unselecting all but one of the channels for my digital lineup. It would be nice if there were a global unselect/select in channel wizard setup. This way you could unselect all channels and then just reselect the one/ones you wanted. This would help beyond just this unique situation. Let's face most of us don't ever watch 80% of the digital channels we're provided with. It would be nice to just select the ones you do want. Just my 2 cents.

[Enraged78]

Justme,

Thanks for the reply. I have XMLTV, but should only have to use it for another month or two... (Can't wait for nationwide EPG). This should work for me in the meantime. What I can possibly do to get this to work with XMLTV is just to pull the entire Digital channel setup over, and have the guide work with that through both sources. My digital cable provider keeps all the channels below 73 in analog format anyway, so I'll restrict my Sage recordings to that. Like you, there are very few digital channels I watch anyway, and the quality of my analog cable is also higher than that of the analog passed through my digital cable box.

Thanks again,
Matt

[dkardatzke]

Originally posted by Enraged78
Also, one other question for you, when you guys go national with EPG as of November 1st, will that include all local cable setups, or just directTV? The manual EPG is kind of annoying, even with scriping taking care of it. I would like to just enter my zip code and go. And also, when Sage studio comes out, I don't want to have to reconfigure everything.

After November 1st, we will support every possible lineup across Cable and Satellite for every Zip Code in the United States. There will be no reason to use XMLTV anymore for the US after November 1st.

The Studio will come as an add-on program to SageTV version 2.0 so you'll just upgrade to v2 and all your previous settings will remain.

[Enraged78]

Awesome. That leaves no more reasons for me to look for anything else.

Thanks,
Matt