is physical tuner really a requirement?

[kman]

I guess my question boils down to this: do you *HAVE* to have a physical tuner card to use Sage to record TV shows?

I have a fairly powerful laptop that I've succeeded at setting up a 1394 connection to my Motorla 6400 cable box. I've also successfully setup the graphs in graphedit to watch live tv via firewire and also to capture to a file.
I've setup SGraphRecorder to use the graph I created for capturing to a file and have that running.

But even after editing sage's property.ini file to reference SGR, I still cant get Sage to let me chose SGR as the capture device. *I'm making the indicated additions to the ini file based on the various tutorials (spaceghost, etc).

Does Sage require that there be a real capture device installed before I could even try to make it switch to SGR?

All I'm really after is have the program guide available so I can click a (future) show to record and have Sage tune to the channel (i have channel changing via firewire working fine) and record for the duration of the show. I dont even really care about live tv. I'm amost ready to give up and try scripting capdvhs or something.

*I should also note I know which channels are 5C and which aren't so I'd only be attempting to record shows with 5C=0.

I would appreciate any info-

[salsbst]

You should be fine with only SGraphRecorder.

But even after editing sage's property.ini file to reference SGR, I still cant get Sage to let me chose SGR as the capture device. *I'm making the indicated additions to the ini file based on the various tutorials (spaceghost, etc).

Forgive me if I'm saying things you already know...

You are editing the sage.properties file in addition to the SGraphRecorder ini file, I hope?

I think you can just add the following lines to sage.properties. I've bolded the two that you should really edit if you choose to copy these entries. BTW, you have to edit the properties file when Sage is not running, otherwise your changes will disappear.

mmc/encoders/269487217/encoding_host=127.0.0.1\:6969
mmc/encoders/269487217/video_capture_device_name=Firewire
mmc/encoders/269487217/100/0/provider_id=0
mmc/encoders/269487217/100/0/tuning_mode=Cable
mmc/encoders/269487217/100/0/video_crossbar_index=0
mmc/encoders/269487217/100/0/video_crossbar_type=100
mmc/encoders/269487217/video_capture_device_num=0

[salsbst]

Or perhaps I'm not understanding you. When you say you can't get Sage to let you choose the device, what exactly are you trying to do in SageTV to get you to the point where you can choose? Perhaps your Sage.properties file is fine, but you haven't found the spot in the UI where the rest of the configuration takes place?

[kman]

Hey I'm not sure what the difference was exactly between the mmc/encoders lines I had originally pasted into the properties file, but when I replaced them with the lines you posted - the Firewire device showed up in Sage the first time I tried!

Worked great!

Thanks!