some general questions about sage TV software

[dc9mm]

Hi all first post here. Havent yet got sage TV have some questions first. My PC for this is a dedicated PC just for this. Windows XP pro P4 3.0 1 gig ram, 2 120 gig hard drives.

I have two HAUPPAUGE 1600 cards and one PVR150. The 1600 have dual tunners one analog and one digital. The 150 just one analog.
I understand sage TV can use all the tuners? In other words use the analog tuners for analog cable TV that i have plus ATSC over the air digitals that i get via an antenna.

Sage TV doesnt have an automated comercial skip. Is there an plugin of some sort that can do this like comskip? I dont consider having to hit the remote and jumping ahead 30 seconds commercial skip. I want something that automaticlly just skips the commercials. Is there something like that available??

I see there is a seperate forum for the EPG. I thought SageTV comes with an EPG?? Does it get both analog cable (Time Warner for me) and over the air HDTV for zip code 14150 ? If so why the seperate forum for EPG's ?

I have been trying to use GBPVR but am having so many problems with that software iam looking else were.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by dc9mm

I understand sage TV can use all the tuners? In other words use the analog tuners for analog cable TV that i have plus ATSC over the air digitals that i get via an antenna.

Yes

Sage TV doesnt have an automated comercial skip. Is there an plugin of some sort that can do this like comskip? I dont consider having to hit the remote and jumping ahead 30 seconds commercial skip. I want something that automaticlly just skips the commercials. Is there something like that available??

Yes, comskip and showanalyzer both do commercial detection and allow you to skip the commercials.

I see there is a seperate forum for the EPG. I thought SageTV comes with an EPG??

What? EPG is included in SageTV

Does it get both analog cable (Time Warner for me) and over the air HDTV for zip code 14150 ? If so why the seperate forum for EPG's ?

As long as zap2it.com has guide data for zip code 14150, then SageTV will have guide data for that zip code...
There is a separate forum for the EPG stuff to organize questions specific to issues or questions about EPG and guide data etc.

[davephan]

I haven't heard a lot about GBPVR, but I suspect that SageTV will simply blow away GBPVR with the vast feature set of SageTV.

Your computer should work OK with SageTV, although 1 gig RAM is a bit low. My computer constantly is using about 1 gig RAM. Two gigs RAM will increase performance quite a bit. I started off with 512K RAM, and the computer was choking, caching to disk continuously. Two 120 gig drives are way too small, unless you rarely record programs, or constantly delete programs. It's very easy to fill up several TB. I have about 3 TB, and I am running low on space again. Part of the problem is having the 'will' to delete programs that would probably never be watched, since there isn't enough time to watch all the recorded programs. Standard def files are about 2 gigs per hour and HD are about 9 gigs per hour with the quality level set to "DVD Standard Play". The file size is smaller or larger depending on the recording quality setting. The files can be compressed later. I use MPEG4 compression, the MPEG4 files are about 33% of the original MPEG2 file size after compression, while maintaining most of the quality. File compression is CPU intensive, and it takes about 18 minutes to compress one hour of MPEG2 into MPEG4-High Quality AVI with a fast 3.0 gig dual-core CPU. A slow CPU could take hours to compress the same file.

The electronic program guide is essential for SageTV to work without having to manually determine when programs are aired. The program guide is free and extended for two weeks in the future.

I have used both Comskip and Showanalyzer to 'mark' the commercials. I normally use Showanalyzer. I haven't tried Comskip in several years, so Comskip might have improved since I first tried it. The results of automatic commercial skipping are pretty good. Most of the time the commercials are skipped without skipping the program content. The results seem to vary with different programs. For example Lou Dobbs consistantly plays back perfectly, fades to black, then fading up from black skipping the whole commercial blocks. Some programs might not skip the first or second commercial, especially if the first commercial is spaced very tight to the program. Not often, but it can happen where the program content you don't want to skip, does skip. But the overall results of automatic commercial skipping is good. Manual skipping can also be done in combination with automatic commercial skipping.

There's also a program called DirMon2 that will monitor directories for when the program is done recording, then process the files automatically with ShowAnalyzer. I think the automatic processing will also work with Comskip. The commercial 'marking' process can take a lot of CPU processing power. A fast dual-core can process a one hour program in a couple minutes. An old Antlon XP 2800+ can take about 20 - 30 minutes. A really old Pentium 486 can take several hours to process the same one hour program. If the computer is too slow, then you will never be able to keep up with the new programs being recorded. I tried 'off-loading' the commercial processing to three old boat anchor computers, which had trouble keeping up with the newly recorded programs. File compression can also be "off loaded" to other computers. Both processes generally aren't worth "off-loading", unless the "off-loading" computer has a fast multi-core CPU. The faster CPU in my SageTV computer keeps up with the newly recorded programs, and is cheaper to operate in the long run since the old boat anchor computers aren't adding to the month electric bill anymore.

The free web server program really improves SageTV. You can search for programs to record, playback either on a web page or a media extender, compress, mark as 'don't like' in batches, etc. You can access the web server from anywhere if you configure your router to forward port traffic to your SageTV computer.

There are many other free programs that improve SageTV.

I would strongly recommend that you take a disk image of your computer before you install any trial software, including SageTV. If you decide to purchase SageTV, then you should periodically take images of your C drive, and store the image files on another hard drive. If your computer has problems, you can normally fix the problems in about 30 minutes by restoring the image. I use Ghost 9.0, but there are other disk imaging products that will do the job, some are free like PING, Partition Image is NOT Ghost http://ping.windowsdream.com/. After using SageTV awhile, you will become dependent on it, and you will need to be able to recover the SageTV compute quickly, especially if other family members are also dependent on it. SageTV drastically improves TV.

Feel free to ask more questions. One of the best features of SageTV is the forum. There are many people that are eager to help you if you run into problems or have questions.

Dave

[dc9mm]

Thanks for the detailed answers.
I just check zap2it and it has my tv listing so iam good there. The 2 120 gig hard drives for me are plenty. After i watch something i never watch it again so i always delete it.

As far as commercial skip goes from what you said comskip works with sagetv. In GBPVR there is a config program were it has a check box to run comskip. All you have to do is put the files for comskip in a certain folder and have GBPVR set to run comskip. It then runs comskip after the show is done recording. Usually only takes a few minutes to run on a 1 hour show. Iam assuming sageTV has something similar? In other words there is no tricks to get it to run its just an option of some sort in the SageTV software itself? Comskip worked well for me. GBPVR not so good. Alot of crashing driving me nuts.

[Brent]

For info on commercial detection in SageTV and setting up comskip you might be interested in this tutorial.