Need a Lot of Support (please)

[Cyberrico]

I have a lot of problems with my system. I wholeheartedly appreciate any guidance that any of you have, however, please note that I am a novice at this and many of the answers that some of you have given in the past to others have been unbelievably technical for the simplest of questions. So please keep it at a two year old level for me

I recently put together the following:

-New cheap PC used exclusively for Sage
-Hauppage 1600
-SageTV
-HD200

I'll spare you all the long painful drama of how much of a nightmare this has been. On to my questions/problems.

1) First off, is there a manual? Maybe I am going crosseyed, but I can't seem to find one and I didn't get anything more than a simple quick start guide for either of my Sage products.

2) Adding a show as a favorite is extremely inaccurate. I instruct it to record all new episodes of Reno 911 and it does, but it might record it at 2:00 am on Sunday when it comes out at 8pm on a Thursday (or whatever). Even more annoying is that it will record something multiple times and will intermittently record repeats. For example, the show Supernatural doesn't start again until next fall but I have a couple of episodes that have been recorded. "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester" is one of those episodes and Sage even knows that it's original airdate was October 30th 2008.

3) The timing is off on recordings. Some start late and end early. I haven't put this under the microscope to determine whether it is the networks who are running off screwy times (I know they do like American Idol overlapping purposely into Fringe) or if this could possibly be an error on my end. On my Tivo this happened once in a hundred recordings. With Sage it happens to 50% of my recordings. I know I can offset my recordings before and after. But this will not save me on Thursdays this fall when I am recording two shows on two channels from 8-10.

4) The program guide is a little quirky. One example is a channel that I had to force feed to Sage. It's there, I can watch the channel, but in the program guide I get "no data".

5) My Sage server can't seem to see my Vista box on the network. It used to see it and I could attempt to play the file but would give me an error but now it doesn't see my network at all. I posted this question before and someone insisted that it was a switch and that I should go out and get a better one. I have to assume this is Windows first. Anyone have any suggestions on this? This entire media center is close to worthless without networking. Right now I am dragging files back and forth via TeamViewer (remote access) which works in both directions btw.

6) I bought a Hauppague 1600 as my tuner card because the guy at Fry's swore up and down it was a dual tuner card. I guess this is not the case. I need another tuner card but I don't want to have to go through the hassle of pulling the 1600 out of my machine, boxing it up all nice and pretty only to have the clerk at Fry's tell me I can't return it. Is there a USB device that will work well in tandem with the 1600? I don't have an extra PCI slot, so it has to be something else. If I have to replace the card, can someone recommend a non-Hauppague card? I found the 1600 to be poorly constructed and the support guys are rude.

7) The HD200 crashes sometimes. It was happening a lot and now not so much. It crashes when I lose my internet connection for even a moment. Is there a fix for this and also is there a way for me to connect the HD200 directly to my Sage server via USB or something so I can bypass the internet issue?

Should I be taking this many issues up with support rather than coming to the forums?

Thanks in advance.

[Yalbik]

I can't answer everything, but here are a few items (I'll keep it simple )

1. Yes, there is a manual. I believe it is put in the SageTV directory on install (typically C:\Program Files\Sage TV\Sage TV). It's also available here: http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_Manual.pdf

2. Are you sure you have your favorites set as "First Run", not "First Runs and Reruns"? The only time I've had reruns recorded as first runs is when the guide data was just wrong (i.e. it showed as a first run in the guide, but it actually wasn't). Sage can't help in that case...its a problem with the guide data or the station.

3. Check the time on your Sage PC. Is it possible the clock is running 5 minutes fast? I've found the guide data to be reasonably accurate on most channels, but I also run a 5 minute buffer on all favorites just in case. With 3 tuners I never have a conflict, even with a 4 people in the family maintaining their own favorites.

4. Weird. You seem to be having a LOT of guide issues...where are you located / which cable provider?

5. Can you see the Vista box from windows on the Sage box? If so, it may be a network security issue. Are you running sage in service mode?

6. I believe the 1600 is a dual tuner card...one digital tuner, one analog. Depending on your provider, the analog tuner may be of no use to you (i.e. if the provider has switched to all digital).

7. The HD200 should really have nothing to do with your internet connection. If you unplug the internet connection (but leave your Sage box & hd200 connected to the switch), does it work then? Is it possible that your switch is faulty & causing the HD 200 to lose connection to the Sage server?

Dunno how much the above helps, but it's a start!

[Opus4]

To try answering a few questions...

Originally Posted by Cyberrico

1) First off, is there a manual? Maybe I am going crosseyed, but I can't seem to find one and I didn't get anything more than a simple quick start guide for either of my Sage products.

Actually, if you are installing on Windows, it is pretty easy to find the manual: the installer asks if you want to view it after the installation is complete. It even defaults to checking the box for that option, so if you didn't see the manual, you told the installer not to open the manual for you.

Now that it is already installed, though, you can find the PDF manual in the SageTV install directory or download it from one of the links on the forum, such as in my sig lines.

2) Adding a show as a favorite is extremely inaccurate. I instruct it to record all new episodes of Reno 911 and it does, but it might record it at 2:00 am on Sunday when it comes out at 8pm on a Thursday (or whatever). Even more annoying is that it will record something multiple times and will intermittently record repeats. For example, the show Supernatural doesn't start again until next fall but I have a couple of episodes that have been recorded. "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester" is one of those episodes and Sage even knows that it's original airdate was October 30th 2008.

The scheduler for Favorites is pretty good. In fact, it tries to arrange the schedule such that if you have a conflict trying to record all the Favs on their first airings, it will try to schedule a later airing in order to resolve conflicts and record as many of your shows as can be recorded. And, it will record Favorite episodes that have not yet been marked as Watched. But, it can only detect repeats if each airing has a unique show ID; if that is not the case, then it pretty much has no choice but to record all airings to make sure none are missed.

There are FAQs on the forum with more details about Favorite scheduling, or see similar info starting on p. 59 of the v6.5 PDF manual.

3) The timing is off on recordings. Some start late and end early. I haven't put this under the microscope to determine whether it is the networks who are running off screwy times (I know they do like American Idol overlapping purposely into Fringe) or if this could possibly be an error on my end. On my Tivo this happened once in a hundred recordings. With Sage it happens to 50% of my recordings. I know I can offset my recordings before and after. But this will not save me on Thursdays this fall when I am recording two shows on two channels from 8-10.

Unless a) you are having tuner issues & thus failing recordings, b) your PC clock is way off, or c) the stations are airing things way out of their scheduled times, then SageTV should start & stop the recording on time. To account for stations & clocks being slightly off, you can add padding.

I'm not sure where you are located, but I've heard that in some parts of the world, stations don't pay much attention to their own scheduled airing times.

4) The program guide is a little quirky. One example is a channel that I had to force feed to Sage. It's there, I can watch the channel, but in the program guide I get "no data".

Maybe the channel isn't mapped to a correct station for SageTV to be able to download EPG data, or else SageTV has no access to the station's EPG data een if it is mapped correctly. If you had to manually add the station & its ID, there is a good chance SageTV doesn't have access to the EPG data because it is OTA-only. In that case, give it a non-Zap2it ID and let it get EPG data from the digital stream - if it is a digital tuner.

- Andy

[hockeyfan]

I can second the favorites being a bit out of sorts. I set a "first run" of a show starting this thursday, and it's conflicted with itself by trying to set multiple recordings off of only 2 standard def tuners. Sigh, I keep hearing it from my wife how it's doing that, my solution to her is to tell it to record off a single channel.

Although this is not typical, rather the exception.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by hockeyfan

I can second the favorites being a bit out of sorts. I set a "first run" of a show starting this thursday, and it's conflicted with itself by trying to set multiple recordings off of only 2 standard def tuners.

Look at the detailed info screen for the airings of those shows -- usually what you describe is caused by the airings having SH prefixed show IDs, which are generic IDs for the series rather than unique EP prefixed IDs for each separate episode. Example: "Warehouse 13" is a new show on the SyFy channel, with each airing having EP style IDs. It is also listed as airing on several other channels, some of which have EP IDs while at least one is using SH IDs... so it gets scheduled to record again for the SH ID airings.

- Andy

[freedml]

Let me address the switch/HD200 issue. Since you might indeed have a networking issue I would test the switch and cables to see how well they are working. But I had HD200 problems and it turned out to be a problem in the HD200 network hardware which caused problems on the whole network. So, disconnect the HD200 from the network, reboot everything and then see if your server can then see your Vista system, etc.

[wrems]

I would definitely get familiar with the settings available for favorites. You can get pretty specific about how and when you want Sage to schedule your recordings. There are advanced options too don’t forget to look in there. The way I resolve multiple airings of the same show across the same or different channels is to add a channel constraint, and even a time of day that it runs. Some news shows are problems altogether the same show may run 3 times throughout the day… In a situation like this you need to choose which timeslot the episode runs that is most convenient, otherwise it will likely record all 3 airings and cause conflicts with other shows. Make sure you’re setting any recordings that come through as watched before you delete them too, this will prevent that show from being recorded again.

The unreliability of Comcast internet in no way affects your HD200 unless you’re streaming content over the internet (google/youtube vids) which it doesn’t sound like you’re doing. If you’re playing back a previously recorded TV show, or previously downloaded video, or even watching live TV in Sage you could technically go to your cable modem and smash it to bits and pieces with a hammer totally annihilating your internet connection and it will in no way interrupt the playback of that video on your HD200. Something else is flakey on your network, NIC’s, router, switch, or even possibly HD200…

As far as tuners go I would look at an HDHR, little more money but IMO worth it. You get 2 digital tuners with this device and you can hook it up anywhere on your network via cat5. It does not capture analog only OTA and or QAM. This way you won’t have to worry about consuming a PCI slot. The HDHR’s are pretty rock solid too, provided your switch isn’t the pre-existing problem.

It sounds like you’re doing something strange in regards to your vista machine, and your sage server. While its possible to have recordings and content scattered all over various computers/hard drives on your network the easiest and least prone to problems in your situation would be to centralize all of your content on the server. Even if that is hanging an external USB hard drive off of the server. It’s best to leave it alone and for you to add hard drives as necessary. If you download content with your vista machine transfer those files to the server and leave them there to be accesses via the HD200. Sage runs fine on XP as well.

[Cyberrico]

I have Comcast digital cable. I tried running a second line into the analog. I guess that it won't work.

No my clock is fine. It is right in line with actual time.

I honestly wish that I could go back in time before I started this project. Sage makes it sound so simple and turnkey but they don't really offer support until after I come in here and ask you nice folks. But the truth is I haven't seen any solutions, just explanations for why I should accept a less than mediocre DVR.

If I end up having to work directly with support with they speak with me on the phone or will it be via email?

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Cyberrico

But the truth is I haven't seen any solutions, just explanations for why I should accept a less than mediocre DVR.

To be fair, it works great for many of us... for me, it's "more than above average". And I'm no computer expert, at all.

[Cyberrico]

I am closer on the networking issue. I upgraded from XP to Vista and the two machines can talk to each other in every way. I can send files back and forth, you name it. Well, except streaming video from my computer to my Sage server.

I also dumped my Dlink router for a Linksys. I know this doesn't completely rule out the switch issue that someone else had mentioned but it may as well have. Still no difference.

I don't want to have to do this but what if I put my external HDD on my Sage server or even my HD200? Any recommendations there?

[carlgar]

Since you are using Vista, you should read this http://techblissonline.com/improve-w...rottlingindex/. I have the networkthrottlingindex disabled on my vista setup. You can find a lot of other articles about this by seaching on networkthrottlingindex.

[ruwackd]

Not sure if you've resolved your guide issue but was the channel you manually added a digital channel? If so, check your guide setup. I have comcast as well and in my area there are channel lineups for both Comcast and Comcast (Digital) when setting up the video source. If you selected the regular lineup instead of the digital lineup, Sage will still tune the channel but it will report NO DATA in the guide. Just check your video sources confgiuration to make sure you've selected the correct channel lineup.

[bluenote]

Originally Posted by Cyberrico

I have Comcast digital cable. I tried running a second line into the analog. I guess that it won't work.

No my clock is fine. It is right in line with actual time.

I honestly wish that I could go back in time before I started this project. Sage makes it sound so simple and turnkey but they don't really offer support until after I come in here and ask you nice folks. But the truth is I haven't seen any solutions, just explanations for why I should accept a less than mediocre DVR.

If I end up having to work directly with support with they speak with me on the phone or will it be via email?

Sage "doesn't offer support", but you haven't even looked up how to contact them? And I've seen a lot of good constructive suggestions here. Hardly "reasons to accept a mediocre DVR".

You are causing your own problems by way of your methods, and you need to decide what you want to fix in priority sequence. Then, you can get help methodically from here or support. Jumping around from issue to issue without finishing anything is only going to frustrate you and the people trying to help you. And being ungrateful (which is how I read your above quote) doesn't help any either.

I was ready to go through the whole list but others in this thread have done a pretty good job, and frankly your later posts put me off caring too much but I did note a couple things that stand out in my mind --

1) If you are able to map a drive from your sage machine in windows to your other windows box that hosts some files, but not able to do "see" these things in sage, you are likely in service mode. As a beginning, accessing UNC's requires that the service is configured with a proper user id and password which is not the default configuration. As well, in service mode, if I recall correctly, mapped drives on the windows session, DO NOT show up in sage because its in a different "context". This is all windows stuff, not related to sage at all.

2) You haven't examined the guide data in relation to your timing issues. Sage is only as good as the guide data it is fed, and that would be the first place to start. By this, I mean, confirm that Sage is doing something its NOT supposed to do, rather than it's doing exactly what it is supposed to do -- which is record XXX show at YYY time listed in the guide. If it turns out sage is doing what its supposed to do, then you can stop changing things willy nilly and work on sorting out or working around the guide data.

3) You dont have a switch issue, put that out of your mind. Your extender shouldn't crash based on internet access unless you have really bungled up your setup and its actually sitting outside of your router or something. More details are required here to help you.

There might have been one more point but its slipped my mind so I'll call it quits for now. Good luck

Cory

[mickp]

Originally Posted by Cyberrico

7) The HD200 crashes sometimes. It was happening a lot and now not so much. It crashes when I lose my internet connection for even a moment. Is there a fix for this and also is there a way for me to connect the HD200 directly to my Sage server via USB or something so I can bypass the internet issue?

As stated above, there's no obvious reason why you would lose connection when your internet connection dies. Could you perhaps be running the extender in placeshifter mode which is intended for accessing your Sage server from remote locations? No internet connection should be required for this to operate.

Mick.

[stlbearboy]

Originally Posted by Cyberrico

I am closer on the networking issue. I upgraded from XP to Vista and the two machines can talk to each other in every way. I can send files back and forth, you name it. Well, except streaming video from my computer to my Sage server.

I also dumped my Dlink router for a Linksys. I know this doesn't completely rule out the switch issue that someone else had mentioned but it may as well have. Still no difference.

I don't want to have to do this but what if I put my external HDD on my Sage server or even my HD200? Any recommendations there?

Are you running Sage on the server in application or service mode? If in service mode you need to have the service start using an account that can read from your network share.

That supernatural recording was listed as a first run in the guide even though it had an original recording date. This will happen from time to time. My system recorded it too. You said that you have digital cable so I assume you are using QAM for recording. QAM channels can come down with names that are slightly different from the name in the guide (usually a - added or removed). That is why you are getting the no data in the guide. I solved this by matching them up with my OTA tuner channel names. If you don't have an OTA tuner I am not sure how to fix this, but I am sure someone else here does.

The second input on the 1600 is analog only as stated before. If you cable provider is still sending an analog signal, you can use it to tune, but it needs to be a different lineup than the digital tuner.

[heffneil]

This is now becoming a debate about the support available for the product. I have to say that the original poster is correct. The support is lack luster at best. I have attempted support and I get emails at 10pm at night with no response even if I instantly reply until the following night at 10pm. Do I love SageTV? Yes. Am I frustrated? A bigger yes! I think its a great product that suffers from support. The people on this forum are extremely familiar with the product and are extremely intelligent. This is not the correct means for support. Newbies are not able to ask simple questions. This forum is so vast and has so much information that it is like throwing a phone book at someone to get the answer. It isn't truly fair nor is it plug and play. Isn't it evident when the Sage TV people are talking about creating a simpler easier to install version. I do not want to burn any bridges here but I have been up to my neck in frustration and still have a lot of questions that are left unanswered. My feelings is you can get about 60% of your questions answered and can't press on for the other 40% because people aren't interested any longer. Anyway bridge probably burned but I sympathize with the original posted and I think a newbie forum or better support is required. My true belief is that if SageTV is going to continue to grow, make good money on their hardware, and remain competitive in the changing HTPC market they are going to need to build a support organization that is available often and if I dare 24x7 however I don't want to sound greedy.

Thanks,

Neil