Looking to switch to Sage from BTV

[Darik]

I'm unhappy with the lack of evolution of BTV and have decided to start looking at what else is out there.

Here's my current setup:

T2700 Intel CPU core duo
Abit IL90-MV Mobo w/ Intel 945 chipset
onboard graphics
Hauppage 1800 dual tuner ATSC / NTSC
Hauppage 150 analog tuner card
Hitachi 250 Gb HD
Hitachi 500 Gb HD

Samsung 46" LCD connected via HDMI to Abit Mobo
Analog cable to Hauppage 150
Digital cable box to Hauppage 1800
OTA antenna to Hauppage 1800
Hauppage 150 standard remote w/ IR blaster

I like the commercial skip marker in BTV as well as the programming guide. For analog TV, it does most of what I need to do, but does not have media support for DVD's, photo's and music (which I believe Sage offers).

For HD, my current setup with onboard graphics does OK. But, I would like to record QAM channels with my Hauppage 1800. Does Sage support QAM with this card?

[spltngheadache]

I am looking to switch from Beyond TV as well.. however, one thing to note SageTV does not seem to support commercial skipping out of the box. I could not find the feature to enable it like BeyondTV has built in. It seems the only way to accomplish this is with 3rd party addons like ComSkip (I think that's the correct name).

SageTV says "skip commercials with the blink of an eye" on their features page.. perhaps I am missing something but it seems they shouldn't advertise this when they're not the ones writing the code that does it.. just my opinion.

[raoul]

I did recently switch from BTV and also was confused about the commercial marking/skipping features not being included right out of the box. Read a few posts about why it would not be ever included (legalities) and simply accepted it. There are a few step-by-step posts on how to get this up and running that seemed a bit confusing at first. In reality, it was trivial to get this up and going and I had it all done in 5 minutes. It turns out that the hardest part is really deciding which one of the two options do you want to try... freeware commskip or the reasonably priced showanalyzer. I went for the freeware one initially and have zero complaints. However, I have been gearing up to try showanalyzer soon as well... however, there is just so many things to try with sage that it all takes time.

Best thing I ever did was dump BTV and switch to Sage... and I have only been on the dark side for a month now.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Darik

I would like to record QAM channels with my Hauppage 1800. Does Sage support QAM with this card?

Yes -- unless there is a specific version of the card that doesn't support QAM in the drivers, it should work. Check this hardware section of the forum for more comments about the 1800.

Originally Posted by spltngheadache

SageTV says "skip commercials with the blink of an eye" on their features page.. perhaps I am missing something but it seems they shouldn't advertise this when they're not the ones writing the code that does it.. just my opinion.

This has been brought up before: it doesn't say it automatically skips or marks commercials for you & it isn't referring to any plugins; it lists a features saying that you can skip through commercials. Example: I've never used comskip & just use FF2 to skip 2.5 minutes ahead, skipping most commercials.

- Andy

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by spltngheadache

SageTV says "skip commercials with the blink of an eye" on their features page.. perhaps I am missing something but it seems they shouldn't advertise this when they're not the ones writing the code that does it.. just my opinion.

What they are referring to is the ability to press the skip forward2 or skip forward remote commands to advance the video by a defined amount. Skip forward defaults to 10 sec and Skip forward2 defaults to 2 minutes and 30 seconds but are adjustable. And one of the FAQ's from the main support page says this:

"Is there a way to automatically skip commercials?
No there is isn't. You can set the interval of how much time it skips when you skip forward. It can be 10, 30, or 120 seconds. The default is 10 seconds. Please see Configuration information."

He beat me to it

[mikejaner]

Correct, SageTV does not officially support commercial skip. This is only a minor issue, as the community has taken advantage of the ability to add to SageTV to instert this functionality to the various themes. You can find all of these additions, along with others here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7953

There are themes including the original SageTV theme which have the Comskip recognition built in:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21515

SageMC Theme with Comskip recognition built in:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17979



As for Detection and Processing of Commercials, there are a few options:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16237
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20358

Along with the ability to run monitoring programs for file changes, new files etc.....
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16318

Yes, this is a manual setup, and more trouble than BeyondTV which sets it up for you, but it only takes five minutes to set up and works just as well, if not better....

[Spartan]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Correct, SageTV does not officially support commercial skip. This is only a minor issue, as the community has taken advantage of the ability to add to SageTV to instert this functionality to the various themes. You can find all of these additions, along with others here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7953

There are themes including the original SageTV theme which have the Comskip recognition built in:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21515

SageMC Theme with Comskip recognition built in:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17979



As for Detection and Processing of Commercials, there are a few options:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16237
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20358

Along with the ability to run monitoring programs for file changes, new files etc.....
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16318

Yes, this is a manual setup, and more trouble than BeyondTV which sets it up for you, but it only takes five minutes to set up and works just as well, if not better....

That all sounds really neat and I hope to do it someday (I miss auto-skipping of commercials from my gb-pvr days), but the 2 skip buttons on the remote work quite well in the meantime....

[Polypro]

I tried out commercial skip early on...I just didn't want to have to "tune" it all the time, it skipped parts of the program. I have Rew2 set to 60 seconds, FF2 set to 180 seconds, Rew set to 10 seconds, and FF set to 30 seconds. Those timings give me almost perfect skip ability.

P

[rajczi]

I have DirMon2 and run up to 4 simultaneous ShowAnalyzer sessions in live mode and have 95% or better commercial tagging. On the one show in twenty that has any problems, the problem will generally be a couple of the commercials will jump 3-5 seconds early and return to the show right on time. I did get the paid version of ShowAnalyzer. I don't think it's any more accurate, just uses less resources while scanning. All of this is configured at defaults for detection and just has some from the base config about priority and which files to generate (edl and vprj in my case).

I have never even needed to open the tuning area of ShowAnalyzer.

Chris