Converted from BTV - Need some Basic Advice

[kobekatt]

I have been using BTV for about 2 years and I was *almost* happy with the program. The main 2 issues I have had are no support for DVB (I live in Australia) and non-integration (really did not like Beyond Media).

In any event, I am looking to get STV up and running and would really like some basic advice. I am not a real techy as many of you are but know enought to be dangerous.

The big issue I need to solve is WAF. She loves the easy BTV interface (as do I) and the Snapstream FireFly RF Remote is fantastic (imo).

SO, can some of you experts provide some basic tips for what I would need to do to get STV up and running fairly simply. Are there any "gotchas" that I need to avoid.

Also, what addons are "must have", especially to replicate BTV?

For clarity, I currently run a BTV Server and have 2 BTV Link Machines throughout the house. I was probably going to buy 2 HD Media Extenders to replace the BTV Link Machines at some stage also.

Thanks in advance!

[mistergq]

First, my WAF is completely on board with the conversion, more than I am...for what its worth. My problem is the like of controlling setting with Web Admin. Beyond that, I am pretty down with Sage. Things are working pretty well for me now.

Second, SageMC and web plugin are two musts.

I am also using Firefly remote with StephaneM's firefly program. http://www.lmgestion.net/@en-us/4/22/60/article.asp this program is well worth the cost.

[Khristopher]

When I switched to Sage, I completely dumped my old FF remotes and bought some new MCE remotes (which work OOTB with Sage).

I tried to get the FF remotes to work properly but got frustrated with it and went with the MCE remotes instead. I'm MUCH happier! I forgot how much easier an IR remote was to use than an RF one. Yes an RF remote can work from room to room, but I have yet to experience a reception problem no matter where I point my MCE remote while watching TV.

[gveres]

Hi kobekatt

I have not converted yet. I am waiting for the next round of HD extenders to be available. However, I am anticipating the exact same issue.

I posted a couple of months ago asking if there was a way to do the same sort of "easy to use" interface of BTV and there is not. There are some people that claim it is just as easier or easier, but I suspect most of them are won over by the integration and / or haven't used BTV for years.

I personally like the hierarchical view of recordings that I just can't seem to duplicate on Sage. I also like the New flag of BTV vs the Watched flag of Sage.

Like I said, I will convert but I expect grief in the house when I do. I have looked at SageMC and I think it makes things worse for BTV people rather than better. The best I came up with was using the hidden UI features and enabling the Malore menus.

Good Luck on increasing the WAF. Please report back and let us know what you try.

Greg

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by gveres

Hi kobekatt

I have not converted yet. I am waiting for the next round of HD extenders to be available. However, I am anticipating the exact same issue.

I posted a couple of months ago asking if there was a way to do the same sort of "easy to use" interface of BTV and there is not. There are some people that claim it is just as easier or easier, but I suspect most of them are won over by the integration and / or haven't used BTV for years.

I personally like the hierarchical view of recordings that I just can't seem to duplicate on Sage. I also like the New flag of BTV vs the Watched flag of Sage.

Like I said, I will convert but I expect grief in the house when I do. I have looked at SageMC and I think it makes things worse for BTV people rather than better. The best I came up with was using the hidden UI features and enabling the Malore menus.

Good Luck on increasing the WAF. Please report back and let us know what you try.

Greg

It's been a long time since I've used BTV; what do you mean by the hierarchical view of recordings?

[unkyjoe]

Save yourself a bunch of headaches.

Build a dedicated sage server, not very expensive.

Buy either the SD media extender or the HD extender "My Recommendation" and forgo using a PC as a client. They are a pain to setup and keep running.

If WAF is a big issue go with the extenders, they are worth every penny compared to the time spent getting the right mix of equipment in a pc, and much less expensive.

Good Luck,

P.S We love Sage, 1+ year now and running great

[mickp]

Originally Posted by kobekatt

I have been using BTV for about 2 years and I was *almost* happy with the program. The main 2 issues I have had are no support for DVB (I live in Australia) and non-integration (really did not like Beyond Media).

In any event, I am looking to get STV up and running and would really like some basic advice. I am not a real techy as many of you are but know enought to be dangerous.

The big issue I need to solve is WAF. She loves the easy BTV interface (as do I) and the Snapstream FireFly RF Remote is fantastic (imo).

SO, can some of you experts provide some basic tips for what I would need to do to get STV up and running fairly simply. Are there any "gotchas" that I need to avoid.

Also, what addons are "must have", especially to replicate BTV?

For clarity, I currently run a BTV Server and have 2 BTV Link Machines throughout the house. I was probably going to buy 2 HD Media Extenders to replace the BTV Link Machines at some stage also.

Thanks in advance!

Hey Kobekatt,

First up, getting xml guide data into SAGE is fairly similar to btv. If you've been using Stephane's excellent importer in btv then you'll be right at home with the SAGE version. I'm using icetv as my guide source at the moment however a recent announcement from the Aust tv networks indicates that they are planning on including decent program data in with the dvb broadcast. SAGE can automagically update it's guide from the ota data, so soon (I haven't checked to see if it's there yet) it should be possible to do away with the ice/xml process altogether. This is meant to have started 1 Jan so it's worth checking this out first up.

I'm using two Nova-T 500 tuners which have been working without a problem (though I did need to get the TV man in to install a masthead amp). There's a thread here that discussed dvb and guide config that might be of interest.

With regard to WAF, I strongly recommend checking out SAGEMC. Despite what has been said above, I reckon it provides a much better path for the BTV adopter. Many features that still require individual plugins in the stock stv such as the miniguide (being able to press the up/dn button while watching live or recorded tv to see what's on other channels like you can in btv) and vcr style ff/rew are already part of sagemc. That said, there's a pretty good comparison of BTV/SAGE interfaces here.

Originally Posted by gveres

I personally like the hierarchical view of recordings that I just can't seem to duplicate on Sage. I also like the New flag of BTV vs the Watched flag of Sage.

I'm not exactly sure what a "hierarchical view of recordings" is but will take a punt that gveres is referring to being able to hit the left right remote buttons while in the recording list screen thinger and changing to the view that shows a list of shows where a group of multiple episodes are listed once and selecting that item will show all of the episodes (forgive me if I'm way off. I haven't used BTV for quite a while now). If this is correct then sagemc allows this to be done by selecting grouped from the tv recordings list (see pic below)


(if not then sorry for the misunderstanding)

Re: the firefly remote, I think you should be able to get it running using Girder or similar. A search of the forums for 'firefly' is probably in order. Failing that the mce remotes are very affordable. I got mine from AusPCMarket here for $70 aud. They just work out of the box and are well designed imho.

Re: must have plugins I'd have to say;

• Bob's amazing editor stvi
  
• Comskip monitor for managing commercial detection with Comskip (there are many other options including just having sagemc take care of it)
  
• E.P.'s video tools for sagemc for creating dvd's and ultimate control when compressing recordings (the dvd burning's been broken recently and is a work in progress)
  
• The incredible mouse/waf enabling toolbar for sagemc by Mike

There's also an excellent thread on importing all of your btv shows along with metadata here. I wish this had been around when I migrated from btv.

Mick.

[kobekatt]

Originally Posted by mickp

Hey Kobekatt,

...

Mick.

Hi Mick,

Thanks a LOT for the detailed response. This was exactly what I am looking for.

Do you happen to have SageTV working with Austar also? I was hoping to get that combination going as well.

I just want to know if it's even possible..

Thanks again

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by mickp

Re: the firefly remote, I think you should be able to get it running using Girder or similar. A search of the forums for 'firefly' is probably in order.

You can use the Firefly remote just using the standard Firefly software.

John

[mickp]

Originally Posted by kobekatt

Hi Mick,

Thanks a LOT for the detailed response. This was exactly what I am looking for.

Do you happen to have SageTV working with Austar also? I was hoping to get that combination going as well.

I just want to know if it's even possible..

Thanks again

Key Kobekatt,

No worries. I don't have austar but there are a couple of ways that you could go about it.

The normal way is to run an analog output from your Austar set top box into an analog capture device (such as a pvr150) and use an usb-uirt to change channels via ir on the stb. I've not done this for Austar but used to run a couple of standard def dvb set top boxes this way without a problem. It's fairly simple to setup and the instructions in the sage manual should probably be sufficient to get you going with this.

ICETV don't do program data for cable but you could try http://www.epgstream.net/ as they seem to have Austar guide data.

The alternative aproach that might work with Austar would be to acquire a dvb-s card and the appropriate irdeto cam. There is an old discussion thread that I found here which seems to suggest that it could work.

http://www.digitalnow.com.au/dvbscards.html sells a couple of cards. It looks like the one that they have in stock atm is $199 (aud) with a cam.

Sage has support for dvb-s so theoretically it should work.

hth

Mick.

[Khristopher]

Originally Posted by JREkiwi

You can use the Firefly remote just using the standard Firefly software.

John

I tried that.....got frustrated and eventually bought two new MCE remotes (which allow you to learn IR codes for Power and Volume) for $35 each. Cheap and saved me the hassle.

[gveres]

Originally Posted by sainswor99

It's been a long time since I've used BTV; what do you mean by the hierarchical view of recordings?

There are three different views of your recordings:

1) ALL - this is just like Sage - a flat list of all the recordings in the system organized chronologically. Only good to see what was just taped, IMHO.
2) By Series - this gives you a list of all the series at the top level (for instance, the list contains: Lost, 24, Movies, Barney, .... ). Then when I select one of these, it replaces the list with a list of episodes for that show. So if I select Lost, I see all the episodes of Lost in chronological order.
3) By Folder - BTV allows you to specify any number of disk directories to record to (a way of organizing your recordings outside the program). In this mode, the original list shows you the list of folders. When you select one, it shows the list of recordings in that folder. This is great start for a multi-user system. Each member of my family has their own directory and we have a couple of others for organizational purposes.

It is like how Sage displays the Imported Media. I have set up Sage to show the folder view of the Imported Media and this works well.

Greg

[gveres]

Originally Posted by mickp

I'm not exactly sure what a "hierarchical view of recordings" is but will take a punt that gveres is referring to being able to hit the left right remote buttons while in the recording list screen thinger and changing to the view that shows a list of shows where a group of multiple episodes are listed once and selecting that item will show all of the episodes (forgive me if I'm way off. I haven't used BTV for quite a while now). If this is correct then sagemc allows this to be done by selecting grouped from the tv recordings list (see pic below)


(if not then sorry for the misunderstanding)

No need to be sorry - I guess I need to choose better descriptive words.

This looks promising. Other than it still being sorted chronologically, but maybe that is configurable. I still have some time left on the demo on a new machine so I will see about installing all the plugins again and give it a go.

Thanks for pointing this out. I really hope it fits the bill.

Greg

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by gveres

There are three different views of your recordings:

1) ALL - this is just like Sage - a flat list of all the recordings in the system organized chronologically. Only good to see what was just taped, IMHO.
2) By Series - this gives you a list of all the series at the top level (for instance, the list contains: Lost, 24, Movies, Barney, .... ). Then when I select one of these, it replaces the list with a list of episodes for that show. So if I select Lost, I see all the episodes of Lost in chronological order.
3) By Folder - BTV allows you to specify any number of disk directories to record to (a way of organizing your recordings outside the program). In this mode, the original list shows you the list of folders. When you select one, it shows the list of recordings in that folder. This is great start for a multi-user system. Each member of my family has their own directory and we have a couple of others for organizational purposes.

It is like how Sage displays the Imported Media. I have set up Sage to show the folder view of the Imported Media and this works well.

Greg

In the default UI, you can set GROUPING options, which will accomplish #2. If you Group by title, and Sort Chronologically, you should get what you want. As for #3, Sage just doesn't work like that; there's no hierarchy of folder, and there's certainly no real way to implement a multi-user system.

Stu

[mickp]

Originally Posted by gveres

No need to be sorry - I guess I need to choose better descriptive words.

This looks promising. Other than it still being sorted chronologically, but maybe that is configurable. I still have some time left on the demo on a new machine so I will see about installing all the plugins again and give it a go.

Thanks for pointing this out. I really hope it fits the bill.

Greg

Rather than grouping you can also select 'Sort by Title' which also groups shows with multiple entries but lists in alpa order rather than date.

Mick.