The WORST "feature" of SageTV is...

[chrisc16]

...the one that automatically enables new channels in the guide.

Why is this bad, do you ask? Because if you have dish network, and IR is on, Sage will immediately start recording from these new channels. Problem is, just because Dish Network added the channels to their lineup, that doesn't mean I subscribe to them, and then my satellite boxes get "stuck" on the screen that says "You do not subscribe to this channel... blah blah blah".

This has happened twice this week alone! And I have missed several favorite recordings because of it. My wife is NOT happy that she missed Gilmore Girls. Why can't we just get a simple option to NOT enable new channels by default? I guess the best fix is to turn off IR, which IMO is the best feature of Sage.

How do I get the attention of those who can make this change??? Is anyone else pissed about this??

-Chris

[PGPfan]

Your best bet is to send this in as a 'bug report' for fast attention from Sage. This definately cripples the proper functionality of IR.

-PGPfan

[blade]

Personally I like the feature because when the cable company adds new channels it's nice for them to automatically be added to my lineup. To tell the truth Comcast rarely informs me when new channels are added and if it weren't for Sage it would likely be months before I even realized I had new channels available. An option to auto add them or not would be best.

[ripple]

Better yet, how about adding newly-discovered channels to a "New Channels" page similar to the "Resolve Conflicts" page. That would allow you to know when channels are added and be able to confirm whether you add them to your lineup or not.

Kevin

[kevpriest]

Originally Posted by blade

Personally I like the feature because when the cable company adds new channels it's nice for them to automatically be added to my lineup. To tell the truth Comcast rarely informs me when new channels are added and if it weren't for Sage it would likely be months before I even realized I had new channels available. An option to auto add them or not would be best.

I've heard this defense before, and it makes no sense for satellite users. Understand that is adds them to the guide EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN'T ACCESS THEM! We're talking about Dubai TV, Shenzen Talk Channel, stuff like that. And on Dish in particular, if you try to change to that channel (which IR, for some reason does every freaking time because I guess it thinks I'd like to watch some Urdu language programming) then the Dish receiver pops up a message that must be dismissed by the Dish remote. Until you dismiss it, the channels will no longer change, so presto, you just missed all your favorites until, two weeks later, you finally getting around to watching Battlestar Gallactica and notice that for two weeks you've been recording a screen that says "This channel requires a subscription. Press Up or Down to change channels." So then you've got to go through and delete two weeks worth of garbage recordings and wonder whether or not Sharon's had her baby yet!

So, you have to check the guide every other day and see if Sage has snuck a new channel in on you, and if you wait too many days before you check, bam, IR just knew you needed to catch the latest in Abu Dhabi talk shows, and you're stuck with the stupid message again.

It really needs to be fixed.

[DFranch]

One of the STVI imports will allow you to assign a favorite to a specific channel. Then you don't have to worry about a favorite trying to record on a bad channel.

[GKusnick]

This sounds like two separate issues to me.

1. The Dish receiver won't let you change channels until you dismiss the error message. That's a bug in the Dish UI and I'd complain to Dish about that one.

2. IR records from channels you're not interested in. The fix here is to have some way to enable/disable IR on a per-channel basis. The default for automatically added channels should be to disable IR until explicit enabled by the user. That way you find out when new channels get added to your lineup, without borking IR in the process. This seems like a better compromise than not adding channels that you might actually be able to receive.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by chrisc16

...the one that automatically enables new channels in the guide.

Why is this bad, do you ask? Because if you have dish network, and IR is on, Sage will immediately start recording from these new channels. Problem is, just because Dish Network added the channels to their lineup, that doesn't mean I subscribe to them, and then my satellite boxes get "stuck" on the screen that says "You do not subscribe to this channel... blah blah blah".

This has happened twice this week alone! And I have missed several favorite recordings because of it. My wife is NOT happy that she missed Gilmore Girls. Why can't we just get a simple option to NOT enable new channels by default? I guess the best fix is to turn off IR, which IMO is the best feature of Sage.

How do I get the attention of those who can make this change??? Is anyone else pissed about this??

-Chris

It sounds like the problem is that the IR overrode a Favorite which shouldn't happen.

[DFranch]

Originally Posted by jominor

It sounds like the problem is that the IR overrode a Favorite which shouldn't happen.

I don't think that is the problem. I misunderstood the problem when I posted as well, my earlier suggestion will not help. I think the problem is that IR is changing the Dish STB to an invalid channel, and until the error on the STB is fixed, no channel changes from SAGE occur on the STB.

[blade]

Originally Posted by kevpriest

I've heard this defense before, and it makes no sense for satellite users. Understand that is adds them to the guide EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN'T ACCESS THEM! We're talking about Dubai TV, Shenzen Talk Channel, stuff like that. And on Dish in particular, if you try to change to that channel (which IR, for some reason does every freaking time because I guess it thinks I'd like to watch some Urdu language programming) then the Dish receiver pops up a message that must be dismissed by the Dish remote. Until you dismiss it, the channels will no longer change, so presto, you just missed all your favorites until, two weeks later, you finally getting around to watching Battlestar Gallactica and notice that for two weeks you've been recording a screen that says "This channel requires a subscription. Press Up or Down to change channels." So then you've got to go through and delete two weeks worth of garbage recordings and wonder whether or not Sharon's had her baby yet!

So, you have to check the guide every other day and see if Sage has snuck a new channel in on you, and if you wait too many days before you check, bam, IR just knew you needed to catch the latest in Abu Dhabi talk shows, and you're stuck with the stupid message again.

It really needs to be fixed.

It's not a defense, it's my personal preferrence. I never said it was a benefit to everyone. You have channels that are added that you can't access. The channels added to my lineup I can access. Just because it's not beneficial to you doesn't mean it's not a handy feature to other people, which is why I said it should be an option. The suggestion by ripple is probably the best solution.

[chrisc16]

Originally Posted by DFranch

I don't think that is the problem. I misunderstood the problem when I posted as well, my earlier suggestion will not help. I think the problem is that IR is changing the Dish STB to an invalid channel, and until the error on the STB is fixed, no channel changes from SAGE occur on the STB.

Yes, you described the problem accurately now.

I submitted a support request, hopefully Sage will respond. I know this isn't a big deal for most people (read: cable, OTA, and Directv users), but it really cripples Sage when it happens.

-Chris

[sleonard]

There was another recent thread on this exact subject. In the end we decided that Sage should simply notify the user whenever there is a change to the lineup. If, for example, your cableco added 5 new channels to their lineup that are not included in your subscription and one of them happens to broadcast one of your favorites you will have a chance to disable those channels in Sage before you get a 1 hour recording of "Please call xxx-xxxx to enable this channel" instead of your favorite.

I personally prefer that Sage set any channels newly added by the provider to disabled until you see the notification and explicitly enable it. Even if Sage continued to auto enable any new channels at least you would find out about them in a timely manner.

Also, DirecTV subscribers face an additional challenge in that, if a DTV reciever is tuned to a channel that is not in your subscription, manual intervention is needed before the reciever will change channels again. This means that several scheduled recordings could be nothing but the "Please call..." message before the user gets home from work to manually remedy the situation. This is another good case for my preference to have Sage auto disable new channels until the user is notified and given the choice to enable them.

I see a little pop-up as soon as a client (or psuedo-client) is started. It should state something to the effect of "Notice: Channels 140, 141, 142 and 143 were recently added by your provider. Would you like to enable any or all of these new channels? <Yes> <No> <Cancel>"

Choosing No would just leave all the new channels disabled and go straight to the Main Menu. Choosing Yes would take you to the appropriate setup menu or better yet a different pop-up would list just the new channels, each with an <Enable> button next to it.

One additional feature is needed to really foolproof the system. The server would need to trigger this notification on every client so that if, for example, my son gets home from school @ 3 and sets them incorrectly I would still get the notification and a chance to set them correctly on my bedroom client when I get home later.

I think this solution solves both issues (lineup changes from any provider and the resulting reciever errors experienced by DirecTV users) in a simple, elegent manner. What do you all think?

[farfromuman]

Lets submit the request form if you haven't already and hopefully sage will respond. I am getting tired of downloading stuff that I missed because of this.
http://www.sagetv.com/request.html

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by sleonard

Also, DirecTV subscribers face an additional challenge in that, if a DTV reciever is tuned to a channel that is not in your subscription, manual intervention is needed before the reciever will change channels again. This means that several scheduled recordings could be nothing but the "Please call..." message before the user gets home from work to manually remedy the situation. This is another good case for my preference to have Sage auto disable new channels until the user is notified and given the choice to enable them.

A question regarding DirecTV, since I don't use it. The Manual intervention needed, could it be programmed into the channel change IR sequence? And if so, would that manual intervention sequence mess up channel changes where it was not needed?

For instance, if it is just a matter of sending an "ok" button to get rid of the prompt, would pressing the ok button before every channel change be a problem?

Now, this would not fix the problem of the scheduler recording shows on unavailable channels, but at least it would not lock up the box and mess up a bunch of shows.

[sleonard]

That was just paraphrased from several DTV users complaints. I personally have Cox cable so I don't have that problem. I just didn't want to leave them out of my solution.

[pawn]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

A question regarding DirecTV, since I don't use it. The Manual intervention needed, could it be programmed into the channel change IR sequence? And if so, would that manual intervention sequence mess up channel changes where it was not needed?

For instance, if it is just a matter of sending an "ok" button to get rid of the prompt, would pressing the ok button before every channel change be a problem?

Now, this would not fix the problem of the scheduler recording shows on unavailable channels, but at least it would not lock up the box and mess up a bunch of shows.

I asked this in the past. Basically for my ExpressVU dish (same STB as a Dish 301 receiver), all I would need is all channel changes to be prefaced by an "UP" command to ensure the receiver wasn't stuck in the "Press UP or DOWN to continue" nag mode. I was told it's not possible, can't remember why.

[priority]

Originally Posted by farfromuman

Lets submit the request form if you haven't already and hopefully sage will respond. I am getting tired of downloading stuff that I missed because of this.
http://www.sagetv.com/request.html

Anyone gotten f/b from support on this?

[priority]

Originally Posted by priority

Anyone gotten f/b from support on this?

Here's the reply I got back from an email to SageTV support:

Thank you for your suggestion. I have forwarded this to the developers.

[chrisc16]

Originally Posted by priority

Here's the reply I got back from an email to SageTV support:

Thank you for your suggestion. I have forwarded this to the developers.

I got the exact same response from support. Let's hope they're listening.

-Chris

[area123]

Originally Posted by chrisc16

...the one that automatically enables new channels in the guide.

Why is this bad, do you ask? Because if you have dish network, and IR is on, Sage will immediately start recording from these new channels. Problem is, just because Dish Network added the channels to their lineup, that doesn't mean I subscribe to them, and then my satellite boxes get "stuck" on the screen that says "You do not subscribe to this channel... blah blah blah".

This has happened twice this week alone! And I have missed several favorite recordings because of it. My wife is NOT happy that she missed Gilmore Girls. Why can't we just get a simple option to NOT enable new channels by default? I guess the best fix is to turn off IR, which IMO is the best feature of Sage.

How do I get the attention of those who can make this change??? Is anyone else pissed about this??

-Chris

Hey Chris. At least you got your blaster working w/ your dish box.

Might I ask which box you have and how you set it up with your blaster? I have a dish 301 about 4 years old. It operates with a uhf remote but I think it is supposed to take IR commands too and even has what looks like an IR sensor.

I setup my source in sage with the dishxx.ir file located in the sage/commonfiles folder but it still won't command my dish 301.

Any ideas for me? It's hard to find people here who have set up an ir blaster with a dish box sucessfully in Sage.