HDhomerun and SageTV configurations

[KryptoNyte]

I've been using SageTV now for about 5 months with a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2, really enjoying it. This last week I purchased and received an HDhomerun unit and after working with it all week, and reading many posts here at STV forums, it's raising a lot of questions. Help a newbie if you have a moment.

I'll refer to the three tuners as Haup, HDHR1, HDHR2. Forgive me, this might get a little long.

1) I can get SageTV to work with each tuner individually, no problem, I understand channel mapping with the HDHR1 *OR* HDHR2 and got it to work by using just the HDHR1 tuner with Sage and no other tuners active. When I attempt to get the Haup and HDHR1 working together, I'm lost on the EPG. I've tried using the Time Warner - Milw std. cable lineup with the Haup, and the Time Warner - Milwaukee Digital lineup with the HDHR1. Both lineups are nearly the same for all practical purposes, and the two seem to conflict with one another, and only Haup tuner will be used.

Here's an example, Haup can tune Channels 1 through 20 as std. NTSC, HDHR1 can tune mapped channels 5, 10, and 20 as they are unencrypted HD from the cable provider. I was hoping that Sage would be able to use the Haup for Channels 1 through 20, but not 5,10, and 20. The HDHR1 would tune 5, 10, and 20. I anticipated then, when I chose to record a channel 5 one hour program at 9pm on a given day, that Sage would know to use the HDHR1 tuner with the HD. It just doesn't work, it always picks the Haup tuner (the first tuner that was initialized during setup) and never uses the mirrored HD tuned channels on the HDHR1. Once you have one EPG guide lineup configured with the Haup, it's as if the second lineup with HDHR1 is simply ignored. Is there a way to use multiple tuners, one EPG guide, where the end user wouldn't even realize that there are multiple tuners?

It seems that if I add the Haup device and lineup first, and then come back in and add HDHR1 and add custom channels to the master lineup, that the PVR idea behind the EPG guide really doesn't work properly.

2) Strange things happen with Sage and HDHR sometimes. With just the HDHR1 tuner configured in Sage (no other tuners present), I setup the program guide, selecting only 5 channels in the entire lineup, the only 5 that I get unencrypted from the cable company. When I attempt to watch a show, and then choose to record it at the same time (VMR selected), it records as an MPEG, as soon as that scheduled recording event ends, and I continue to watch TV on that same channel, Sage's timeshifting recording continues on the hard disk, but I noticed that it starts to record in *.ts file format rather than *.mpg - what setting(s) is controlling the file type, and how would I lock this down to just mpg or just ts?

[Opus4]

For #1: The channels shown in the Program Guide are from the combined lineups -- see the note at the bottom of p. 42 in the v6.1 PDF manual. If a station is on more than one lineup, it is only listed once, but SageTV knows how to record it on any lineup.

It sounds like it is seeing the PVR-USB2 as the preferred tuner, so it records from it first. You could look into setting the mmc/encoders/<some number>/encoder_merit property -- higher numbers mean higher preference for that tuner.

- Andy

[KryptoNyte]

Andy, it took me a long time to figure out where that data was, but that worked, thank you. Now, if that machine was just capable of playing high def television. I ended up in Overlay mode on the video renderer, seems to work okay, but massive pauses when trying to change stations. It's an XP3200 running a 256mb ATI-X800XT AIW, probably time for an upgrade.

Thanks again for the good info.

[valnar]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Andy, it took me a long time to figure out where that data was, but that worked, thank you. Now, if that machine was just capable of playing high def television. I ended up in Overlay mode on the video renderer, seems to work okay, but massive pauses when trying to change stations. It's an XP3200 running a 256mb ATI-X800XT AIW, probably time for an upgrade.

I had this same problem with the Cyberlink codec. Try changing it to Sage, Hauppauge, NVidia or something else if you have other choices.

Robert

[phelme]

2) set mmc/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=true in Sage.properties and everything will record as MPG.

I run the Cyberlink decoders (either v6 or v7) on an X800GT with VMR9 and it works fine with HD. Not sure what your pausing could be. Do you see any excessive CPU or disk activity when you change channels?

[KryptoNyte]

Yes, viewing HD content with Sage cranks the CPU, changing channels is a 20-30 second nightmare, watch the little sage tornado spin.

[phelme]

you should pick up Process Monitor from the ex-SysInternals folks and see where the CPU is spending the most time. you're not running out of RAM and paging are you? It takes me about 5-6 seconds to change from one HD channel to the next. I'm running SageTV as a service. try that if you haven't already too.

[Naylia]

I can view HD fine with a Athlon XP-M 2400+, 512MB of RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro and the nvidia Purevideo decoders / VMR9. You should have plenty of horsepower. Don't just run out and buy new hardware.....I'd look at the decoders first.