Multiple versions of a channes and Sage

[wayner]

I have two tuners set up in Sage currently - a PVR 150 connected to an HD cable box and an OTA card. (I will be adding an HD-PVR shortly but that should be irrelevant to this discussion)

My cable provider maps some channels to multiple channel numbers. For example CBC-HD shows up under the 128 (where regular networks are located) and it shows up under the 500s (where HD channels are) at 513. This same channel is available OTA at channel 5-1. I had to manually map the OTA channel to use the program guide from this channel (CBLT-DT) as it did not pick up the Canadian OTA channels by default. When I go into the Tuner setup I see all three of versions of this one channel.

But when I go to the Program Guide in Sage this channel only shows up once, under 5-1. Therefore I cannot select the channel to watch live from the cable tuner, only from the OTA tuner.

Is this the way things are supposed to work? Does Sage not let you have the same channel show up in multiple channel numbers?

Can someone please explain to me how Sage handles multiple channels? How can I get the channel to show up multiple times and still have guide data?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by wayner

Can someone please explain to me how Sage handles multiple channels?

Sure -- just read the note starting at the bottom of p. 46 or on p. 148 in the SageTV PDF manual.

- Andy

[wayner]

OK so it says "if multiple sources use the same lineup, changing which channels are enabled in a particular lineup will affect all sources using that lineup."

I have three tuners right now each using different lineups:
Kworld OTA tuner: Buffalo Digital
PVR-150 : Rogers Cable Inc. Digital Toronto(Metro)
Firewire : Rogers Cable Inc. Digital Toronto(Scarborough)

But it seems to only show a channel once in the guide, even though that channel may be available and enabled in all 3 sources, is that correct?

For example WIVBDT is available via OTA on 4-1. It is available on my PVR-150 on channels 146 and 528. In the Channel setup for the PVR-150 source it shows [146] indicating, I assume, that this channel can be tuned by using 146. However, it does not show up in the guide under 146, it only shows up
in the guide under 4-1. Should it now show up under 146, or at least show [4-1] in the channel setup?

Sorry for the confusion - I am moving over from MCE where things worked differently and the same channel would show up in the guide multiple times.

One other thing - I want to force live TV to tune into the channels using the firewire source only(in order to see what channels are available with a good signal - some have breakups with green blobs, some have 5C issues). How do I do that? Should I just backup sage.properties, nuke the other sources and play around and then restore the old sage.properties and all other sources will return?

[Opus4]

Channels are only shown once in the guide.

SageTV doesn't really operate along the lines of 'choose a tuner & record from it'; instead, you choose to record a show & SageTV picks a tuner to do the job. You can affect the tuner choice via the mmc/encoders/<###>/encoder_merit property, but that is used when all other considerations are equal.

To test channels on a specific tuner, you can use the "View" button in Channel Setup. Or, you could, as you said, make a backup of all the config files & then test with only that 1 tuner configured.

- Andy

[Conejo]

Originally Posted by wayner

OK so it says "if multiple sources use the same lineup, changing which channels are enabled in a particular lineup will affect all sources using that lineup."

Here's an example of when this applies: say you have THREE the SAME TUNERS connected to the SAME SOURCE. When they use the *same named lineup*, making a change to one makes the change to three. They're locking into the same lineup.

This function doesn't apply if the lineup was copied.

But it seems to only show a channel once in the guide, even though that channel may be available and enabled in all 3 sources, is that correct?

Explanation plagiarized from another post:

Originally Posted by ke6guj
OK. What Sage will do is take all the EPG data and combine it into 1 list. Each channel name will be listed once, where in the list will vary. But Sage would have access to it from all sources that have it, even if it doesn't show up in the "proper" channel range.