Confessions of a BTV user - I want to switch

[gveres]

Hi there,

I have been a BTV user for 3 - 4 years. My last drink was 5 minutes ago..

As the person in this thread said:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&highlight=btv

I am very happy with BTV. The last time I looked at SageTV was when I bought BTV. At the time, Sage didn't have canadian listings, or commercial skipping and a few other things so I went with BTV. Last week I purchased an iMac and I looked at Sage again because it has a mac client.

But I have downloaded the trial and there are some BTV-isms that I just can't figure out how to duplicate and right now there is one in particular that is a show stopper. I thought about posting in the above mentioned thread, but the thread is off in a different direction.

I have a 6 year old daughter that knows how to use BTV really well. It turns out that a feature I thought would be useless when BTV added it, is the feature that is now the showstopper in moving to Sage. When you look at the recorded shows in BTV, you can view them grouped three different ways: all (seems like this all SageTV has), by series (show title), by folder. The group by series is the showstopper feature.

So here are my questions:

1) Is there a way to (extremely easily) see a list of show titles that have been recorded, select one and then see the list of episodes? Oh, I also need a way to see the ones that have been watched vs the new ones.

2) BTV allows you to create a number of directories where the recorded shows will be placed. Then when I create a favourite, I can specify which folder I want the recording to go into. (for instance, I have a kids folder and all the kids programs go into that folder - all the adult shows go into another folder, all my wife's shows go in her folder etc). Then I can tell BTV to only look at the kids show folder for deletion candidates when the harddrive fills up. I can see in SageTV that I can create all these directories, but I don't see how they get used.

3) Channel Tuning - I have a PVR250 connected through s-video to a StarChoice STB. I have been using a Tira transeiver and Girder. I have seen reference to a girder plugin that is not supported by Sage guys. Can somebody point me to it? I am guessing that it might be old and out dated. So I am assumming that I might have to buy a new IR blaster. Not crucial, just a pita.

4) commercial skip is crucial - I will go look at those threads.

5) showsqueeze is important as well with all the kids shows - I will look at the plugins.

I guess that's it. I really want to switch (mostly for the mac support).

Oh and here is one that BTV can't do, but PowerDVD and WinDVD can do with any recording that my wife loves: 1.5x and 2x speed playback with audio. This is fantastic for talk shows like the Daily Show or something like that. You can breeze through and still understand what they are saying. We drop out of BTV to do this right now. I would love to see this incorporated right into the PVR system.

And the last thing is that I too am confused about all the various options for the client. It is very simple with BTV. I buy one server and 3 - 4 Links and I am ready to go.

Thanks for your help.
Greg (hoping to be a SageTV user for the next 3 - 4 years)

[sainswor99]

Wow, you're gonna get swamped with replies, and I usuually type too slow to be the first. But I'll try....

Originally Posted by gveres

Hi there,
1) Is there a way to (extremely easily) see a list of show titles that have been recorded, select one and then see the list of episodes? Oh, I also need a way to see the ones that have been watched vs the new ones.

Yep, you want to view your recordings grouped by titles. In the default UI, click on the folder, and the list of titles appears. Watched shows have a blue W and the text is italicized.

Other UI's (such as the hidden extras and SageMC) handle this differently.

Originally Posted by gveres

2) BTV allows you to create a number of directories where the recorded shows will be placed. Then when I create a favourite, I can specify which folder I want the recording to go into. (for instance, I have a kids folder and all the kids programs go into that folder - all the adult shows go into another folder, all my wife's shows go in her folder etc). Then I can tell BTV to only look at the kids show folder for deletion candidates when the harddrive fills up. I can see in SageTV that I can create all these directories, but I don't see how they get used.

You can do the same thing in Sage, but the folders are managed differently. You can tell the Favorites to AutoDelete, but Sage doesn't record shows into separate subfolders. Rather, Sage asks you want your recordings to be stored, and it records shows to the drive with the most available space. It's a load-balancing mechanism.

Originally Posted by gveres

3) Channel Tuning - I have a PVR250 connected through s-video to a StarChoice STB. I have been using a Tira transeiver and Girder. I have seen reference to a girder plugin that is not supported by Sage guys. Can somebody point me to it? I am guessing that it might be old and out dated. So I am assumming that I might have to buy a new IR blaster. Not crucial, just a pita.

Sorry, can't help here

Originally Posted by gveres

4) commercial skip is crucial - I will go look at those threads.

5) showsqueeze is important as well with all the kids shows - I will look at the plugins.

One of the benefits to Sage is the variety of user plugins that are available.

Originally Posted by gveres

And the last thing is that I too am confused about all the various options for the client. It is very simple with BTV. I buy one server and 3 - 4 Links and I am ready to go.

Thanks for your help.
Greg (hoping to be a SageTV user for the next 3 - 4 years)

Sage's licensing schema is pretty simple, but it's marketed in a funny way. Like BTV, you have a server license, and client licenses (note the little c). Licenses for clients come in two varieties: per-machine, and concurrent usage.

Where it gets confusing is that the licenses for the clients (again, little c) are sold with the purchase of software; you have three software clients from Sage you can purchase:

Sage Client (big C)
Sage Placeshifter
Sage Media Extender

The Sage Client uses the per-machine license; Sage Client is a fully featured application that allows you to tweak decoders, among other advanced options. If you want the best picture available from a client (little c) machine, Sage Client is for you.

Sage Placeshifter and the current Media Extender both use concurrent usage licensing. If you want to view SageTV from the Internet, and your LAN usage doesn't require a lot of picture tweaking, a Placeshifter license is what you want. The Media Extender is a thin-client hardware extender (currently build by Hauppauge; the Media MVP) which lets you output your Sage to a TV in a very simple process. The nice thing about Placeshifter and the Media Extender are that they use the same license; if you buy one license, you can use either Placeshifter or the Media Extender (just not at the same time). You probably don't need as many Placeshifter licenses as you needed with BTV Link.

Hope that helps,
Stu

[gveres]

Originally Posted by sainswor99

Yep, you want to view your recordings grouped by titles. In the default UI, click on the folder, and the list of titles appears. Watched shows have a blue W and the text is italicized.

Other UI's (such as the hidden extras and SageMC) handle this differently.

I found this and tried it with the few recordings that I had. I couldn't tell what difference it was making because I didn't have enough recordings. But i can say that it wasn't doing what I expected - being a BTV user.

What I expected / am looking for is to see a list of series names - sort of like a list of directory names. Then I select one of them and it filters the list to only show me the recordings of that series.

I haven't seen group by title do that for me.

I am still reading through the forum and it looks like I should give SageMC a shot.

Originally Posted by sainswor99

You can do the same thing in Sage, but the folders are managed differently. You can tell the Favorites to AutoDelete, but Sage doesn't record shows into separate subfolders. Rather, Sage asks you want your recordings to be stored, and it records shows to the drive with the most available space. It's a load-balancing mechanism.

Hmmm, that makes it much more difficult to deal with outside of Sage - ie, when I want to use powerDVD to watch something. But ok, I guess I can live with that pain.

Originally Posted by sainswor99

Sage's licensing schema is pretty simple, but it's marketed in a funny way. Like BTV, you have a server license, and client licenses (note the little c). Licenses for clients come in two varieties: per-machine, and concurrent usage.

Where it gets confusing is that the licenses for the clients (again, little c) are sold with the purchase of software; you have three software clients from Sage you can purchase:

Sage Client (big C)
Sage Placeshifter
Sage Media Extender

The Sage Client uses the per-machine license; Sage Client is a fully featured application that allows you to tweak decoders, among other advanced options. If you want the best picture available from a client (little c) machine, Sage Client is for you.

Sage Placeshifter and the current Media Extender both use concurrent usage licensing. If you want to view SageTV from the Internet, and your LAN usage doesn't require a lot of picture tweaking, a Placeshifter license is what you want. The Media Extender is a thin-client hardware extender (currently build by Hauppauge; the Media MVP) which lets you output your Sage to a TV in a very simple process. The nice thing about Placeshifter and the Media Extender are that they use the same license; if you buy one license, you can use either Placeshifter or the Media Extender (just not at the same time). You probably don't need as many Placeshifter licenses as you needed with BTV Link.

Hope that helps,
Stu

Thanks for that explaination Stu!

Greg

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by gveres

I found this and tried it with the few recordings that I had. I couldn't tell what difference it was making because I didn't have enough recordings. But i can say that it wasn't doing what I expected - being a BTV user.

What I expected / am looking for is to see a list of series names - sort of like a list of directory names. Then I select one of them and it filters the list to only show me the recordings of that series.

I haven't seen group by title do that for me.

For title grouping: if there is only a single recording for a title, there will be no subgroup; when there are more, you will be able to navigate into the group. If there is only 1 recording, there isn't much sense in having to navigate to another screen to see it.

For a "folders" view of the recordings, consider something a little different: you can modify any of the 4 recording views to filter certain categories into or out of the list that gets shown. I put all my "childrens" categories into a separate view so they see all their shows & then filtered those out of our recordings. (If the categories overlap between kids & adults, this may not work as well.)

The hidden extras has a 2 pane view (malore version of the recordings menu) where you could have the titles listed on the left & then each group's recordings will be listed on the right when a title is highlighted.

For more info on how the recording directories are handled, see Appendix C in the SageTV PDF manual.

- Andy

[gveres]

Thanks Andy. This is starting to sound feasible.

I am assuming I will have to give up my existing IR blaster, which is fine since I can use it as a receiver on one of my HTPCs instead of the server. So this leads me to my last question for now:

What is the best IR Blaster to get for Sage?

Thanks
Greg

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by gveres

What is the best IR Blaster to get for Sage?

I think the USB-UIRT is generally accepted as the best IR receiver/blaster for sage. You can independently control up to 3 separate devices with one USB-UIRT unit (1 via the USB-UIRT head's built-in emitter and 2 via plug-in IR emitters). HTH

Aloha,
Mike

[gveres]

Ok, I tried to setup the "folders" view. Here was what I thought would work based on what you said.

I thought I could create a category named Greg and another category named Sandra (my wife). Currently I have folders with these names.

I was hoping that I could tag a favourite with a category (on the details screen). But I can't seem to do that. I assume that it gets the category from the EPG data (well and the system generates the HDTV category).

I looked through the manual but I didn't see any indication of assigning a category manually so I am assuming that this isn't an option.

Did I misunderstand how you were suggesting to implement a folder view? BTW, I think that if STV provided me the ability to assign my own category to it, I would have exactly what I have in BTV with folders and I would be a happy camper.

Greg

[gveres]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I think the USB-UIRT is generally accepted as the best IR receiver/blaster for sage. You can independently control up to 3 separate devices with one USB-UIRT unit (1 via the USB-UIRT head's built-in emitter and 2 via plug-in IR emitters). HTH

Aloha,
Mike

Thanks Mike. I just found this thread here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17261

The last post pointed me at this program:

http://www.eventghost.org/wiki/EventGhost:About

and it says it supports the Tira. So I may not even need a new transceiver after all! I'll give it a go and report back.

Greg

[jsonnabend]

Originally Posted by gveres

Ok, I tried to setup the "folders" view. Here was what I thought would work based on what you said.

I thought I could create a category named Greg and another category named Sandra (my wife). Currently I have folders with these names.

I was hoping that I could tag a favourite with a category (on the details screen). But I can't seem to do that. I assume that it gets the category from the EPG data (well and the system generates the HDTV category).

I looked through the manual but I didn't see any indication of assigning a category manually so I am assuming that this isn't an option.

Did I misunderstand how you were suggesting to implement a folder view? BTW, I think that if STV provided me the ability to assign my own category to it, I would have exactly what I have in BTV with folders and I would be a happy camper.

Greg

SageTV has no concept of users, so everyone sees every recording and can play whatever's available. Also, if one person watches a show, it's marked "watched" universally, not per user.

The UI is SageTV's weakest point, IMHO. I use the three pane view from the hidden extras, which I think is the best option.

- Jeff

[gveres]

Hi Jason,

I am not really looking for the software to have a concept of users. BTV doesn't have this either.

What I am looking for is more of a way to organize the recordings. Having a massive list of recordings (I think I have 400 - 500 recordings in BTV right now) is not managable without good organization.

But having said all that, it is looking like there is something there I can work with. I was playing around with the hidden extras last night and that seems to work. I need to look into SageMC too.

I'm almost ready to break out my visa card.

Greg

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by gveres

Ok, I tried to setup the "folders" view. Here was what I thought would work based on what you said.

I thought I could create a category named Greg and another category named Sandra (my wife). Currently I have folders with these names.

I was hoping that I could tag a favourite with a category (on the details screen). But I can't seem to do that. I assume that it gets the category from the EPG data (well and the system generates the HDTV category).

What I meant for the category filter was to filter by the EPG-assigned categories, as a possible option. This works OK for me since nearly all my kids' shows have 'children' as part of the cateogry name, so I just check all those to include in their lists & check them to filter out of my list.

If the recordings have overlapping categories, this probably wouldn't work as well.

- Andy

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by gveres

5) showsqueeze is important as well with all the kids shows - I will look at the plugins.

I didn't see any else mention anything about this, but Sage has built-in support for compression with many different profiles to choose from. You can also setup auto-compression for favorites, no plugins required...

-Dan

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by CyRex

You can also setup auto-compression for favorites, no plugins required...

The SageMC STV may have this built-in, but the defualt STV would have to use a customization to have it automatically compress Favorites after they are recorded.

- Andy

[CyRex]

Ahh good point Andy, I've been using SageMC for so long I forgot all about that. Guess I need to do some fact checking next time...

[davephan]

Originally Posted by gveres

4) commercial skip is crucial - I will go look at those threads.

5) showsqueeze is important as well with all the kids shows - I will look at the plugins.

Greg,

I only record standard definition. Here's my answers for commercial skip and showsqueeze.

I use ShowAnalyzer and DirMon2 for skipping commercials. ShowAnalyzer detects and eliminates most, but not all commercials. Some shows are nearly perfect detection. DirMon2 monitors directories for new video recordings to be processed. An alternative to ShowAnalyzer is Comskip.

I use the Roxy99 scripts/programs for video transcoding compression. MPEG2 files are compressed into high quality Xvid AVI files using a two-pass process. The quality is very good. Comskip can be incorporated with the Roxy99 scripts/programs. Approximately five times the AVI files can be stored compared to MPEG2 files. The transcoding process is very CPU intensive. A slow computer would need to transcode video off hours. A fast dual-core can transcode videos at any time. If you playback AVI files with a MVP, an Athlon XP 2800+ has barely enough processing power. A fast dual-core never has any trouble playing back AVI files to an MVP. It takes 30 - 40 minutes to transcode one hour of MPEG2 into Xvid AVI with my fast dual-core. My old Althlon XP 2800+ took about 1 hour to transcode 1 hour. A Pentium 3 - 900 meg takes 4 - 6 hours to transcode 1 hour. The transcoding process can be offloaded to secondary computer(s).

Since SageTV adds so much value to television, make sure you take periodic disk images of your boot drive. You'll never want to spend days rebuilding a system by hand while your family is asking you why it is taking so long to fix your SageTV computer!

Dave