sheduling w/o guide ?

[johandm]

Hi,

I am evaluating SageTV 1.4

I like the networking features, I like the video quality, but I am dissapointed in how cumbersome it is to shedule recordings if you don't (can't!) subscribe to the EPG (SageGuide).

What I was hoping to see is a simple user interface with a number of entries that allows you to type in: date + start time + end time + optionally what days of the week to repeat this on + optionally key in a label or a name to the entry. About 30 or 60 of such entries would do the job.

What I have to do now instead is: go to the guide, browse over empty cells that all are formatted in 2 hour timeslots, shedule that, then go to the sheduled entry, right-click, adjust the start time by pressing & holding the arrow key, then right-click again and do the same for the end time... (and then there is still no ways of repeating the entry)

I saw the screenshots in the manual of how it works if you have SageGuide (with the favorites and all) and I am convinced that works way better, but for people outside of the US that can't get an EPG, I think what I proposed above makes a lot of sense.

Or, am I not using this in the right way ?

Any advise is very appreciated. If you can show me how to do this, you've got yourself a new customer...

Thanks,
Johan.

[nielm]

People outside of the US can use XMLTV to grab EPG data from websites that contain TV listings. This works well for people in various European countries (see the International user forums, and This XMLTV How-To thread.

100% manual recordings are not possible in SageTV 1.4 (but will be one of the new features in 2.0, and is also a feature od SageRecorder, I believe)

[johandm]

Thanks for the advise.

From what I had read about it, the xmltv "project" sounds a bit more than what I was willing to get into... maybe I should just wait for SageTV 2 instead...

I will try to give xmltv a testdrive... it could be that I come back with more questions if you don't mind.

Thanks again,
Johan.

[johandm]

Hello nielm,

Well... I downloaded "xmltv-0.5.25-win32.zip" ( should I download the 0.5.16 instead ? ) and tried to get the listing for the channels:

VRT, canvas, VTM, Ka2, VT4, etc

* I used tv_grab_nl, because I saw that the www.tvgids.nl does have the data for the belgian channels (including VTM). However: it only allows me to grab like Nederland 1,2,3, VRT, canvas...

Is there a different grabber I should/can use ?

* after some attempts, I now have a file "tvdatapre.xml" (attached) with the channels above. So, how do I connect what channel is what preset in my sageTV tuner ?

(my tuner: VRT = 1, canvas = 2, ndl 1 = 11, ndl 2 = 12, ndl 3 = 13)


* I did notice the sample batch file in the instructions for na did not work, xmtlv.exe does not recognize the commands "--listings" "--listings-overwrite true" etc. I guess because I am on a newer build of xmltv?

as before, any help is greatly appreciated...

thanks again,
Johan.

[nielm]

SageTV is designed to work with an electronc program guide: it allows once-click recording, automatic labelling of recordings, and the ability to setup 'favourites' -- the automatic recording of programs you like... These features are what makes a PVR... Without an EPG, all you have is a dumb VCR that uses a hard-disk instead of tape, and SageTV will look and feel crap because you are trying to make it do something it is not designed to do...

Outside the US, the only EPG available is by using XMLTV, so youwWill need XMLTV to use SageTV. V2 will not change this requirement very much, and as it has not yet gone into Beta test, it will be a while before it is publicly useable.

It is not easy to set up XMLTV, (made worse because the Belgian grabber is not fully integrated - yet) but it is worth it...
The Belgium XMLTV grabber is Python script (see link in the XMLTV main page)and you will need a Pythin interpreter to run it (from http://www.python.org) Send me your email via PM and I will forward you an updated version, abd am email I sent to another sage user...

> So, how do I connect what channel is what preset in my sageTV tuner ?

It is explained in the HOWTO I linked to above: you need to download the EPG plugin, configure it in Sage, import the information from the XML files and tell Sage which channel is on which channel number.

[johandm]

Hi Nielm,

I installed python 2.3.3, and tried to install the files:

"pytvgrab-lib-0.2.0-rc1.tar.gz" and "pytvgrab-be_tvb-0.2.0-rc1.tar.gz"


However, when I try to install the grabber library, I get:

Traceback
... (blablabla) ...
File "c:\...\unittest.py", line 173, in test raise UnitTestException(e.__doc__, e.args)
lib.unittest.UnitTestException: No module named fcntl



I have been searching what this means, and according to: http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-fcntl.html
fcntl is only available to unix...

duh ?

Any advise is greatly appreciated...

Thanks again,
Johan.

[carlgar]

Have you considered the Sage Recorder? I think it might be much more suited to your needs at least until an EPG is available. Sage Recorder is more like a VCR and does not use an EPG.

[johandm]

Hi carlgar,

Thanks for the hint. When I was first looking at these products, I thought sagerecorder was more of a tool to convert VCR etc to harddisk. I looked again, and you're right: it offers multiple tuner support and sheduled recordings from TV. I will check that tool out once my 10 day eval on Sage TV is over...


After some struggling I actually got the grabber library to work on Windows OS, and with some help from Niel I am now able to successfully grab the program guide; but the first test already resulted in recordings that chopped off like over 3 minutes! because apparently the TV station's shedule is not so accurate...

The discussion is outside the scope of this forum but I kind of feel the EPG approach is not reliable enough, and therefore: a simple, VCR like approach would work much better for me...

Anyways, thanks & talk to you later.
Johan.