SageTV on Server 2008 w/HDHomeRun?

[Diego Garcia]

Does anyone have experience running Sage against an HDHomeRun tuner under Windows Server 2008? I'm looking to consolidate servers by moving Sage off of its dedicated box to run on my Server 2008 box.

[Motofreak75]

search for 2008 server on on this forum and you see many posts about installing the bda drivers and once that is done, just install the Homerun software/drivers & you'll have it up and running.

[nethead]

seems we have some 'searching' to do, because I'm going to do the same setup

[nethead]

My plan:

Location: Basement 'server' room
Windows Server 2008 i7/12GB ram
SageTv 6.6
with input from 2 HdHomeRun devices (4 total inputs)

TV Room
hd200

Master bedroom
hd200

Will have a busy coming weekend.

[FreshOne]

I have this running successfully....

As everyone mentioned, you have to manually install a BDA driver set (you can either build one using a Vista CD or download premade ones). Even after doing this, I kept having problem during tuner setup.

After reviewing the Sage DEBUG log, I was able to figure out that Server 2008 wanted some DLLs from the "Desktop Experience" feature (which I had not installed). Once I installed this, I was able to configure the tuners with no issues and everything worked after that.

My post about the "Desktop Experience" issue is here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...erver+2008+bda

[nethead]

Great!

Starting this process today, after some google searches found the same as you said.

Will check out your post.

Good to know it works.

Thx!

[nethead]

No go with SageTV seeing HDhomerun channels.

Setup:

Windows Server 2008 SP2 x64

Clean install of SageTV.
Note: Setup SageTV service to interact with desktop to get the
SageTv service running.

Installed latest HDHomerun (20090930)
http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2484

Used(with some edits) this BDA install:
BDA (TV Tuner) support for Server 2008 x86 and x64
http://www.win2008workstation.com/fo....php?f=6&t=513

When setting up the QAM channels with HDHomerun, scan/channel find worked. I used VLC to view and worked great; using the buildin viewer, no video.

The HDHomerun software would not save the .scn files, so I run the same on my current setup to create new channel .scn files(some new stations showed up) and copied the 4 channel .scn files to my new SageTV install on 2008.

Running the SageTV setup; it displays the HDHomerun tuners; allows me to select as Digital tuner/select cable system; But, SageTV is not seeing the .scn file, the .scn channels are not loading. And if then Preview this Channel, I get 0 signal strength.

Wondering if I get SageTV to see the .scn files, if I'll then get signal strength and have a working system?

Been trying for the past 3hours to figure out how to get SageTV see the .scn files.

[nethead]

As a last try before calling it a day:

I copied a large number of lines from the Sage.properties files on my working system(XP) to my new system(w2k8 x64), I also copied the .frq files.

Started up SageTv on the W2K8 x64 system and bam..I got video (doh).

This confirms everything is setup right, but something is screwed in SageTV's setup process and it's not seeing the .scn files. (I seem to remember the same thing happening last month even on the XP system, took me 5 hours to get it working again).

Now to test out the HD200 and see it works with the W2K8 x64 SageTV setup.

[nethead]

Tested HD200, it Passed! Live College Football in HD looked Great.

I had to redo the standard setup on the HD200, as it's now connecting to a new server.

I setup recording 4 diff channels on the SageTv server using the HD200, seems to be working. (I have 2 HDHomeruns)

Now to finish setting up to the SageTV server; Hope I can get commerical skipping, auto compressing files, tweeting and sage web app working again.


Why did I do this?

I have the W2K8 server running 24/7; figured better to shutdown my HTPC & save some money on electric service. After testing the HD200/HDMI/BigScreen, it seemed time to do this before the new tv season starts up.

I can RDC to the W2K8 in the basement, if I need to do anything 'local' to the Sage software.

Last; Wish I could figure out how to get the SageTV software to see the .scn files

Hope all these post may help someone in the future.

[nethead]

Blog post putting all together:

SageTV/Sage HD200 and Windows Server 2008
http://nethead.blogspot.com/2009/09/...rver-2008.html

[shill]

Great timing... just ordered my HDHR today to add to my brand new Sage server running W2K8 x64. I'll certainly be looking to see what happens with the .scn files. Any chance it was a permission issue? I don't know how that all works yet since I'm new to this whole thing.

[jmv]

When I installed on Windows Server 2008 SP1, I had to copy the .scn files manually...they were being generated but running as a service didn't "see them"...I can't remember if I had to copy them from the "virtual store" to the SageTV directory and the other way around. It seems that it wasn't finding the .scn files where it was making them. I run SageTV as a service with a local user name as the owner of the service. .frq files weren't needed in my case. There were ***many quirks*** to get Sage to work (it was my first foray into a vista based install). I don't have my notes with me, but if you want more detail let me know and I'll find the paper work...I did this in march so it isn't fresh...

[Diego Garcia]

In my experience on Vista 32 bit, when running Sage as a service you have to copy the HDHomeRun scn files from the Virtual Store (located at %%sysdrive%%:\Users\[user running sage]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\SageTV...) to the Sage Program Files folder.

[nethead]

Originally Posted by shill

Great timing... just ordered my HDHR today to add to my brand new Sage server running W2K8 x64. I'll certainly be looking to see what happens with the .scn files. Any chance it was a permission issue? I don't know how that all works yet since I'm new to this whole thing.

Still not figured out to make the .scn files show up. So I'm keeping my old WinXP PC around to turn on and create as needed.

Saw the post about running as a local user, will try that the next time I need new .scn files. (about every 2wks, thank you comcast for changing your QAM channel info so often (doh))