Copy Channel Lineups From sage.properties

[jprine01]

I have 4 channel lineups on 8 tuners and I really don't want to redo the channel lineups after a reinstall/upgrade. Yes OTA EPG is very fast with only 15 channels but... 2 of the EPG are satellite with almost 10,000 channels with one channel set getting some tuners, and remaining channels going to different tuner... And you have to take half the channels out of each that you don't subscribe to.

Anyway sorry if this is a broken record question, I did search and found a few people ask with no real specific answer and they end up just redoing their list.

[Conejo]

It may be because I don't have a Sat STB, but what is your question?

Choosing a Sat EPG lineup gives you two things:
1. Ability to select the subset of channels broadcast and receive EPG data.
2. Updates to channel lineup changes for hassle-free remote tuning.

Maybe if you describe you per tuner EPG Lineup scenario?

Even though the latest version of SageTV allows you to copy lineups or leave them blank and hand-assign station identifications from a working master EPG lineup I don't think you want to use this if your Sat Provider changes the channel lineup on you.

[jprine01]

I'm saying if you have 0-9999 channels and you have 500 of them, you need to go in and disable the rest, then if you want your numbering to be customized go in and mess wth 500 channel numbers.
If I ad another tuner and pick the same channel lnieup all my work is already done for me snice they share the EPG set.
But..
Then you go and reinstall, recover the wiz.bin with favorite settings, all recording details, and watched data. But you go add the tuner and your messing with 500 channels again. I want to know how to recover my EPG settings from backup sage.properties.

[Conejo]

Most minor upgrades allow you to keep your current settings, including the tuner mappings stored in sage.properties. Granted, some upgrades break user customizations or introduce version-conflict issues that drive everyone nuts so most of us elect to do clean installs. It's just easier to troubleshoot.

We recently had an upgrade to 6.4.6rc. One of the improvements dealt with channel setup, specifically with SiliconDust's HDHR ATSC/QAM tuner product. Users can use that products setup application to scan for channels, fetch area-specific lineups from their online database, pre-specify their channel selections, match Call Letter assignments and specify Lineup # placement; SAVE the data, then have SageTV import all that data. Very little is left to be done in Sage. And the import is repeatable if you want to blow away Sage with a fresh install.

For Sat users, there is no area-specific database one can query to narrow the active channels available. Each user must repeat the steps of his neighbor. It wouldn't be bad enough doing it once, but if you need to blow away Sage then you have to begin again from scratch; there's no save and import process.

How do you envision your setup process working, if you could change it?

[jprine01]

I ended up doing the channel listings last night. I but probably missed something, if somebody else picks a channel that doesn't exsist the STB has to be manually taken off that channel it seems to stick on the order channel screen. Thats the main reason I hate redoing it. Really it can stay in the sage.properties file it just needs to be easy to copy and paste to your new sage.properties. Using a seperate file like the wiz.bin for channel lineups would be nice for clean installs though.

[Conejo]

Originally Posted by jprine01

if somebody else picks a channel that doesn't exist the STB seems to stick on the order channel screen [and] has to be manually taken off that channel. That's the main reason I hate redoing it.

Ouch. That's a trap. Especially if one runs their Sat STB headless from a closet.

Really it can stay in the sage.properties file it just needs to be easy to copy and paste to your new sage.properties. Using a seperate file like the wiz.bin for channel lineups would be nice for clean installs though.

Yea, I can see where this is a huge hassle. The HDHR users, like I described previously, have the pre-setup *for that tuner* stored in a database file than can be reapplied anytime. But if Sage, or a Sage user (hint, hint), could create a tuner Save/Export/Import setup process it might help. Although I believe the tuner setup really should be a seperate process, interactive with the EPG database, that can be saved and recovered.

You may want to propose something for the SageTV 7.0 wishlist.