SageTV & DVB-S: man, this is difficult!

[jeroen020]

I'm coming from an MCE background and moved to SageTV especially for its extenders and wide codec support.

However the TV part has never worked well for me and I decided to dedicated a weekend to it to see if I could get it to work, but frustratingly, no!

I've made a list of my experience so far. Any help is much appreciated and I'd be glad to share my success (if that's achievable) with some instructions for DVB-S usage in SageTV.

Here's my set-up:
Satellite via DVB-S with 4xLNB, switching via Disecq, aimed at Astra 1, 2 and 3 as well as Hotbird
DigitalAnywhere FloppyDTV DVB-S2 with CAM
SageTV for WHS
2 x HD200

What does work: if I set up the FireDTV tuner in the regular fashion, it scans the channels on the 1st LNB (Astra) and returns hundreds of channels available for manual sorting. Not very user friendly, but at least it proofs that I can watch these channels on the HD200 so drivers and signals are OK.

What doesn't work: I've tried many ways to get SageTV to find my additional LNB's, but to no avail. Also, so far I have not been able to get a decent EPG experience, but that's of later concern.

What I'm trying to understand:
First of all, I'd like to know how SageTV handles its TV tuning/configuration for DVB-S. This seems to be scattered around the following files:

SageTV UI: here I can add a Source, with LOF1, TOS1 settings etcetera. Not very user friendly, but I figured out how to set this. You can select your satellites in DVB-S Providers, but Astra 3 is not included, so I guess I have to include that manually in the sage.properties and .lnb file below

sage.properties: this reflects the settings as done via the SageTV UI, including the tuner settings, satellite providers, channelscan info, and EPG. BTW, the channelscan part of this file becomes a big mess if you have hundreds of channels a typical Astra1 scan delivers, wouldn't it be better if this was isolated from the main properties file?

<receivername>.frq: this contains info on channels and the frequency/modulation etc info for all channels tuned in the UI

<receivername>.lnb: this contains the LNB setup as created by the sat setup selected in the SageTV UI

But here it gets muddy: can I/should I manually edit the different files above to suit my needs? E.g. add channels afterwards that the scan did not find (because they're on other satellites)? It's a lot of work, but on the KingofSat site all the info is there and I'd already be happy if I could get the 30 most important channels, rather than the 900 random ones it finds on Astra 1 alone. But then, if I add my personal selection of channels to the .freq file, will the channel line-up be updated? Because from what I read here, as soon as I scan in the SageTV UI, the freq file is overwritten (!).

Also, although I configured Sage to use Disecq for different satellites via Tos1 and Tos2 parameters, all channels in the scan are on 'sat 0' in the .freq file, which matches the first satellite in the Disecq configuration (Tos1=A Tos2=A). Can I add lines to the .freq file and use sat 1, 2 and 3 (for Disecq/Tos AB, BA and BB) to the other LNB's to work?

Another question - by default, SageTV offers a list of pre-defined DVB-S providers. Astra 1 (19.2) and 2 (28.2) are included, but Astra 3 (23.5) is not. I have found how to manually add the data in the sage.properties and .lnb file, but it made me wonder where this list of default DVB-S providers is stored? Perhaps Sage can add the specs to the Astra 3 satellite in an update?

If I may suggest to SageTV, please clean up/simplify the way DVB-S (which probably counts for DVB-T and -C users as well). Europe is rapidly switching to digital but SageTV is a pain to get working and even a pain for a rather experienced enthusiast like myself. Ideal would be to make the SageTV app itself more user friendly and flexible, but if that's not possible on the short term, at least make the confusing situation of dealing with 3 different configuration files that may or may not be overwritten as soon as you change anything in the UI. Why not one <receivername>.properties which is generated from the Sage app when you configure, but which also allows for manual editing LNB setup, channel/frequency issues and EPG details? That way sage.properties stays more manageable and it'll be easier to debug the DVB part.

[Bibi]

Hi Jeroen,

I am now using SageTV in Belgium withe TVVlaanderen already two years. I almost got everything working. I use TVTV.nl as tv guide and there I can not get a few channels to work. Now I also have big problems adding eenHD and Ned 1 HD to the sagetv list. It works in my FireDTV viewer.
So my setup is SageTV, two HD200, 1 HD100, two FireDTV S2 and TVVlaanderen CAM.
Anyway, maybe you got a little further in figuring out how to exactly put a frequency in the list...

Regards,
Birger

[jeroen020]

Hi Birger,

Thanks for your response. As I didn't have the feeling SageTV was going anywhere with DVB-S I've now moved to Windows 7 Media Center on Ion nettops, which works well so far, and DVBLink is soon adding networked drivers so I can pool tuners on my Windows Home Server and access them virtually in any media center.

On paper, having dedicated, affordable extenders like Sage HD 200 is fine, but (out of the box) the user interface feels like 1999 and I got tired of all the tinkering in just getting TV and EPG in my living room, and the overall feeling that European customers are 2nd class citizens in SageTV's world.

[Bibi]

Hi Jeroen,

I fully agree with you! I first was a m$ media center user, I used xbox360's as extenders, but I got fed up with the lack of support for divx (in the beginning), DVD folder support, and now HD support. so I moved to SageTV.

The UI is indeed very 1999's, but with the SageMC, I find it quite OK. And I do think that we are second class public, if SageTV would just make a built in TV guide for Europe, I would become a reseller here in Belgium. The job is just tooo hard for a normal non-technical person to do !

The best of luck with the win7 sollution!

Regards,
Birger