Fall Back to Analog if no QAM?

[dgeezer]

My local cable company recently moved most of the QAM channels to new locations and eliminated several stations. This is at least what appears to have happened. A new scan from my HDHomeRun found only about 5 usable stations where I used to have about 12. My digital TV finds the same stations so I'm sure this isn't a problem with SageTV or the HDHomerun.

Is there a way in Sage to have a "fail safe" setting to record the analog cable station (same programming) if the HD QAM station reports no signal? Would this also work if I go to over the air and some atmospheric glitch etc results in no or too weak signals?

My wife was starting to have a little faith in me......

[Fuzzy]

It would take an analog tuner to do so. The HDHomeRun does not have an Analog tuner, so by itself, it cannot be done. Since there is now the notification system, and a no signal obviously retires a high number of times, it might be a decent addition to have it do some sort of temporary disabling of a channel if it gets a number of recording halts on that channel. Then, if you have an analog tuner as well that has the same program, it would use it.

This goes along with the need for context specific actions for system messages. Messages should have some sort of default action when they are viewed. When a new station is added to the line-up, you get a system message for it. You really should be able to click on that message and have some options (preview station, enable, disable, etc). On a recording halt, you should have the option to disable the channel, disable the tuner, etc.

[dgeezer]

Yes, I do have 2 Hauppauge PVR-150 tuners in my server. However, last night SageTV recorded 2 hours of nothing and then deleted the listing as if nothing had ever happened.

[Opus4]

If you know you do not get the channels (or do not get them reliably), then disable them in Channel Setup so that SageTV doesn't try to record from them.

- Andy

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Opus4

If you know you do not get the channels (or do not get them reliably), then disable them in Channel Setup so that SageTV doesn't try to record from them.

- Andy

I think he was asking/suggesting that since sage KNEW it wasn't getting anything (based on the no signal) that it attempt a backup encoder. It really isn't that bad of a feature suggestion, and, in his case, would have saved himself a few missed recordings.

[dgeezer]

Fuzzy,

Thanks, that's exactly what I mean. I wasn't sure if maybe this was already possible and was simply a setting that I had missed.

Here are some specifics. My server consists of a single pc running XP with 2 pvr-150 tuners which are tuning analog cable. I also have a HDhomerun which tunes digital QAM cable. This gives me 4 sources for the major networks which are carried by my local cable co. on QAM. We do all our viewing via extenders and hardly ever watch anything live.

As I understand it, Sage defaults to recording a show in HD if it is available in HD and there is a tuner available. This normally works for me.

However, sometime early this week my local cable company moved the QAM stations around, deleting some and assigning some of them to new frequencies.
I figured this out from a post on AVSforums this morning. Anyway, my wife's series "So you think you can Dance" didn't get recorded since FOX is no longer available over QAM. I have rescanned the HDHomeRun and fixed the problem by for the new channels. This would also have been a problem if I were using OTA since our local FOX affiliate switched from digital (uhf) 35 to digital (vhf) 8.1 on June 12th. Reception was so bad that after a week they got permission from the FCC to turn 35 back on.

I was hoping that there would be a way for Sage to have detected that there was no signal when tuning to 113.6, or whatever FOX used to be, and switch to an analogue station. This may not be possible since the software might try to switch every time there is a commercial break.

[Opus4]

I understood what was asked, so maybe my reply was a bit on the short side... your best bet at the moment is to simply disable channels you don't receive at all or don't receive very well.

The current beta provides system messaging to tell you recordings were missed so you can look into the reason why. Regardless of how the messages may be handled in the future, right now disabling the channels or tuner is done by the user.

- Andy

[dgeezer]

Fair enough. That's what I thought, but I was hoping there might be an easy fix.
The system reporting will be a help since I probably still wouldn't know what had happened except my wife tried to watch the show from the beginning when it was still recording the last 5 minutes. Once the scheduled time was up the recording disappeared from the recordings screen.

[Wirenut]

The automatic fallback from QAM to an analog tuner if available... would be great! Even if it misses the first part of a show, to make a determination that the recording has failed...

Like IF in two minutes the file size is less than 5Meg THEN try to use an available analog tuner.

Seems like a great idea, as my cable company has moved around the QAM tunings from time to time on me. I have a PVR500 [dual analog tuner] and a HDHomerun [QAM tuner]

Seems do-able, as an option from the System messages flags. ie:If Sage can determine there was a recording problem, why not allow it to make an automated decision to grab an alternate tuner to correct the lost signal?

I'd like to have that as a failsafe option to QAM.

Wirenut

[Fuzzy]

It should not be limited to QAM, but any time it is unable to record on a particular device, it should failover to another, instead of simply retrying the non-functioning device repeatedly. (had one 30 minute recroding that had "halt dewtected (x33)". Sage is a stubborn beast, isn't it...

[VCRUser]

Another vote for something like this. When channels move and we find out about it, we can adjust settings, but monitoring all available channels on all available tuners becomes a full time job. I'm still trying to get channel 6 Philadlephia reliably OTA: sometimes it works & sometimes it doesn't, but it's been reliable on my QAM and analog cable tuners. I wouldn't mind having the option to use an available ATSC tuner when it's behaving, but I've turned 6 off on those tuners for now.