Wish to see more than todays and tomorrows scheduled recordings??

[defilm]

After getting both MythDora and SageTV running on my dedicated PVR I decided to go with SageTV because the drivers for the Hauppauge HVR-1950 USB seem to work better than the linux based driver which is a PIA to compile up, link, etc. I have a perfectly working system, with only two issues. (Pretty good huh? Well I did spend about 20 hours total getting things working, which I consider light compared to some other projects)

This is an annoyance... I have about 10 favorites set up. In interleave mode I can only see todays and tomorrows. Is there any way (config file i can tweak) to increase the number of days of recordings I can see? The Guide has 2 weeks of programs. If I have say "American Idol" as a favorite, on Tuesday, I see Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but not the following weeks.
I want to increase the number of visible recordings scheduled to beyond "Today's and tomorrows". Anyone help?

System:
ITX system "Pandora MP945-DR" 7"x7"x3"
Dual Core Intel duo 2 - 1.8Ghz
1GB PC5400
1 SATA 500GB Drive
1 DVD+-RW
1 DVI-HDMI HD out
1 Component RGB Video out/S-Video out
1 SPDif Optical 5.1 Audo out
USB external Hauppauge WIN-TV HVR-1950

[HelenWeathers]

Exit Sage and stop service if applicable.

Open sage.properties (or sageclient.properties?) with notepad.
Find scheduling_lookahead= variable in properties file.
Set like this (for eight days) scheduling_lookahead=691200000
The value is 86400000 for one day so for 10 days it would be 864000000

Save the .properties file and restart Sage

[defilm]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

Exit Sage and stop service if applicable.

Open sage.properties (or sageclient.properties) with notepad.
Find scheduling_lookahead= variable in properties file.
Set like this (for eight days) scheduling_lookahead=691200000
The value is 86400000 for one day so for 10 days it would be 864000000

Save the .properties file and restart Sage

Fast & Excellent!!

Looks like the number of milliseconds!

8 Days * 24 Hours * 60 Mins/Hr * 60 Second/Min * 1000 ms/second

Got it Thanks!

[scat]

Is there a performance hit if you set this to 14-days?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by scat

Is there a performance hit if you set this to 14-days?

There can be. It will take longer to update the recording schedule, for one. If you modify the lookahead value & have performance issues, remember to restore the original lookahead value before contacting tech support.

BTW: was that a set-up question for me to post the standard caveat about this?

- Andy

[defilm]

Originally Posted by Opus4

There can be. It will take longer to update the recording schedule, for one. If you modify the lookahead value & have performance issues, remember to restore the original lookahead value before contacting tech support.

BTW: was that a set-up question for me to post the standard caveat about this?

- Andy

I suspect it was. I have been reading much by both of you. So thanks for asking Scat, I didn't think about that at all. I can't imagine it would be any worse than adding a new recording on the series 2 Tivo's (DTV Sony SAT-T60). Was a great box, but adding a new recording could take 2-3 mins! I am going to try a 7 day full week , 604800000. I figure I don't need 14 because most of the favorites will be duplicate entries.

Thanks to you both!
Mark

[defilm]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

Exit Sage and stop service if applicable.

Open sage.properties (or sageclient.properties) with notepad.
Find scheduling_lookahead= variable in properties file.
Set like this (for eight days) scheduling_lookahead=691200000
The value is 86400000 for one day so for 10 days it would be 864000000

Save the .properties file and restart Sage

Well, this don't work.

Followed exactly these instructions.

As soon as I restart the service and start Sage
I have the same 2 days. If I open the sage.properties file
sure enough the value has been reset to the default 3 days, 259200000.

I suspect clear ly the sage.properties file is being rewritten when the service
is restarted, but from where, I don't know...

[GKusnick]

Property changes not sticking is almost always a sign that the service was still running when you did your edit. Try it again, and make sure to wait for the service to finish shutting down before opening the file in Notepad. Then make sure Notepad has finished saving before restarting the service.

[defilm]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Property changes not sticking is almost always a sign that the service was still running when you did your edit. Try it again, and make sure to wait for the service to finish shutting down before opening the file in Notepad. Then make sure Notepad has finished saving before restarting the service.

OK, I don't know if this makes sense to anyone, but I did stop the process.
However, my process is running as a local user as required for one of the plugin's I loaded. Since I have a pure install and all I changed was the service to run as my user account and not localhost, I just did a uninstall and a reinstall. Service stopped running as localhost. Made the change to properties file. Restart service and works like a charm. I have 7 days.

I have changed the service to run as the user again, restart, and all is well.
(A nice test would be to now stop the service, change it yet again to 10 days
restart the service now a user process and see if it resets). Well, I did exactly that, and it works fine... 10 days. CHanged it back to the 7 I wanted.

So since the re-install, I can not reproduce this with the service running as a user process to make some sense, sorry. Happy it worked, but always like to have a finite, short, exact steps to break it. I would often chalk this up to user error myself having seen it so often as an engineer, but I really only did an initial install of SageTv and changed the process to run as a user other than localhost. It clearly isn't worth anyone wasting their time on.

[ChaosFreak]

Originally Posted by defilm

Fast & Excellent!!

Looks like the number of milliseconds!

8 Days * 24 Hours * 60 Mins/Hr * 60 Second/Min * 1000 ms/second

Got it Thanks!

This isn't working for me... I tried 14 days as follows:
scheduling_lookahead=1209600000

Is there some kind of upper limit?

[defilm]

When you say it isn't working for you. When you change it and start up the front end SageTV, if you go back and check the parameter is it back to the default 2 days??

if it is, the problem is that you need to disable the SageTV service if you
installed the background service. (Easiest way to do this is via Start>programs>SageTv>SageTV Service manager. Disable the service.
Then modify the parameter to 14 days (14x24x60x60x100) as you correctly stated. Save the file and restart the service. Then the front end. Should get 14 days now.
(BTW, I am running 14 days. On start-up it pauses a 2-3 seconds first time going to the recording schedule while it loads. After that it comes right up.
A small price to pay for the ability to see what is upcoming over the next two weeks IMHO.)

Hope that helps.
Mark

[ChaosFreak]

Believe it or not, I did read this whole post and I did know to stop the service first. I even went so far as to check task manager to make sure all Sage related processes had stopped. Then I updated sage.properties (had to add the line "scheduling_lookahead=1209600000" since that parameter is not in the file to begin with). Then restart service and start SageTV. I notice that the recording schedule hasn't changed. When I re-open sage.properties, the entire line with "scheduling_lookahead=1209600000" is gone.

What is happening here? I'm not doing anything wrong. All Sage processes are definitely stopped when I make the change...

[Opus4]

There's a FAQ to check: How do I edit the properties file? The settings don't change when I change them.

And, you should note that the 14-day EPG covers the last 2 days + 12 in the future.

- Andy

[voorhees]

Originally Posted by Opus4

And, you should note that the 14-day EPG covers the last 2 days + 12 in the future.

Andy,

Is that always true, or just for 14? Say if is set to 12, is that 2 + 10, or just 12 in the future? Just wanted to know. Thanks.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by voorhees

Is that always true, or just for 14? Say if is set to 12, is that 2 + 10, or just 12 in the future? Just wanted to know. Thanks.

I think you misunderstood me -- I was talking about the EPG data, not the scheduling lookahead. If you are going to increase the lookahead value, there's probably no point in setting it too high if there are no listings to be scheduled.

- Andy

[defilm]

Originally Posted by ChaosFreak

Believe it or not, I did read this whole post and I did know to stop the service first. I even went so far as to check task manager to make sure all Sage related processes had stopped. Then I updated sage.properties (had to add the line "scheduling_lookahead=1209600000" since that parameter is not in the file to begin with). Then restart service and start SageTV. I notice that the recording schedule hasn't changed. When I re-open sage.properties, the entire line with "scheduling_lookahead=1209600000" is gone.

What is happening here? I'm not doing anything wrong. All Sage processes are definitely stopped when I make the change...

Yes, i have confirmed this as well. I am running Vista, and I do not have UAC enabled, so SageTv.properties IS the proper file. I stopped the service
and even rebooted with the service disabled. I changed the lookahead variable to 14 days. Restarted and it did not work.

Test2: Change the variable back to 3 days 259200000. This correctly worked and only showed 3 days. The malore menu's stated "You have X recordings scheduled in the next 72 hours. Great.

If you look back at the original posts, it was mentioned "If 1 day is 86400000 than 10 days is 864000000. That is the value I have been runnign
with all along. So I went through the proper processes again and changed back to 10 days thinking perhaps it is size. In these cases note we have n x 1x10^6. or N,000,000. For 10 we have 864,000,000. 14 N is 1,209 . So
I thought it best to keep N under 1000 if it was some kind of limit. (Worth a shot).

Well in going back to 10 days I noticed I could not see shows in the guide, in my favorites out 8 days??? And on top of my malore menu it says "You have 4 shows scheduled in the next 168 hours. Hum... 168 Hours is 7 days??? I tried it again... I went back and set the lookahead variable to 2 days. Indeed I saw 2 days and the malore menu reported 1 program in the next 48 hours. I set it back to 10 days, I could only see 7 days out and malore menu reported 4 recordings in next 168 hours. This confirms SageTV is actually using the value in that properties file as well.

I also disabled the unsupported extensions. I couldn't see the number of hours, but the scheduled reportings out to 7 days did not change. So
It does not appear to be the malore or dynamic menu's STVI. In fact the number of hours they are reporting as scheduled appears to be correct when compared against the default upcoming schedule menu list.

So it appears if you set the schedule_lookahead value above 7 days, it will only go to 7 days. Any insight Andy? Many thanks. If you need anything,
please do not hesitate to ask. Don't mind doing some leg work here....

Mark

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by defilm

Well in going back to 10 days I noticed I could not see shows in the guide, in my favorites out 8 days??? And on top of my malore menu it says "You have 4 shows scheduled in the next 168 hours. Hum... 168 Hours is 7 days??? I tried it again... I went back and set the lookahead variable to 2 days. Indeed I saw 2 days and the malore menu reported 1 program in the next 48 hours. I set it back to 10 days, I could only see 7 days out and malore menu reported 4 recordings in next 168 hours. This confirms SageTV is actually using the value in that properties file as well.

The scheduling_lookahead property doesn't affect how many hours the disk space bar says, if that is what you meant. If you changed a property & the disk bar changed how many hours it says it is looking ahead, then you changed the wrong property. Look at the Recording Schedule menu to see how many days into the future have scheduled recordings, not the disk bar.

Also, you can set the scheduling_lookahead value to more than 7 days (I got all 12 upcoming days scheduled when I tried it), though I don't recommend doing so. I suggest seeing the property-editing FAQ I posted above.

Oh -- is your EPG data configured properly? How many days of EPG data are being shown in the Program Guide?

- Andy

[defilm]

Originally Posted by Opus4

The scheduling_lookahead property doesn't affect how many hours the disk space bar says, if that is what you meant. If you changed a property & the disk bar changed how many hours it says it is looking ahead, then you changed the wrong property. Look at the Recording Schedule menu to see how many days into the future have scheduled recordings, not the disk bar.

Also, you can set the scheduling_lookahead value to more than 7 days (I got all 12 upcoming days scheduled when I tried it), though I don't recommend doing so. I suggest seeing the property-editing FAQ I posted above.

Oh -- is your EPG data configured properly? How many days of EPG data are being shown in the Program Guide?

- Andy

I understand, the disk space bar reports "You have 4 recordings scheduled taking 20.8GB of disk space in the next 168 hours". So I wasn't sure if the lookahead value reported there has any relationship the the "schedule lookahead" so I thought I would mention it.

If I close down the variable to 2 days, indeed in the schedule I can only see 2 days. If I open it up to 10days I now see 10 days. (Previous reason I didn't see 10 days was (Duh!) there was nothing scheduled for day 8,9 or 10. Now there is. So I can see 10 days out.

However I went in to my program guide, and skipped 14 days ahead (yes, all the EPG data was there, so it is working just fine.). I added a movie yesterday 5/16 on the 29th (which was only 13 days out but I didn't want to do something stupid like hit a "edge condition" because the movie is at 2pm, and I was working on it at 11am, so it was 14 days 2 hours out.????
I then increased the lookahead to 14 days, and I could see the movie scheduled. That is the good news. The bad news is that on the same day one of my scheduled favorites has a new first run episode, and that did NOT show up in the scheduled recordings.

Could it be that the standalone items was shown, but the recurring first run scheduled favorite didn't show up for some reason?? I am sorry, I don't mean to make matters worse.

i will try a few more tests, and if needed, set up some new favorites to see if I can repeat this with multiple shows/favorites to see if it may be related to possibly not showing favorites in the EPG 14 days out....

Regards,
Mark

[GKusnick]

Manually scheduled recordings always show up in the schedule, because there's nothing to calculate: you already told it what to record when on which channel.

Scheduling lookahead applies only to automatically scheduled recordings (Favorites and IR).

[defilm]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Manually scheduled recordings always show up in the schedule, because there's nothing to calculate: you already told it what to record when on which channel.

Scheduling lookahead applies only to automatically scheduled recordings (Favorites and IR).

That explains why we see the scheduled recording for the movie.

It does not explain why when I set schedule_lookahead to 14 days
I can see this weeks scheduled episode from a favorite listed in scheduled recordings but can not see next weeks episode from the favorite that is 12 days out. Yet I can see both episodes in the EPG.

There is an issue with setting the schedule_lookahead to 14 days. You can set it, but episodes in my favorites 12-14 days out WILL NOT show up in the recording schedule until they get inside the 12 days away point.

I wish it worked. I find no joy in this.