dipping my toe into the SageTV pond......

[cat6man]

i'm a very satisfied user of both the Sage hd200 media player (stand alone mode) and BTV (2x hdhr, 2x hdpvr)............however, i'm intrigued by the possibility of live TV with sageTV and the hd200

so.................i want to dip my toe into the water

i'd like to know:

1) can i run sagetv and btv on the same machine without conflicts, assuming they have completely orthogonal use of tuners (no overlaps)?

i'm thinking of starting with an unused pvr-usb2 with svideo out of one
of my fios STBs and no channel change control at all to keep things simple..........just use the pvr-usb2 to capture whatever happens to be on the STB (which is hooked up to hdpvr)...........i don't want to mess with my current system (at least not yet) and hope the hd-pvr gods don't get mad at me (my 2 hd-pvr units have been totally reliable for months now..........don't want to temp fate too much)

so, can i install sagetv on the same machine as btv without conflicts?

thanks in advance

[tmiranda]

Yes, you can run both as long as there is no tuner overlap.

[cat6man]

thanks.............hope the water is warm

[Fuzzy]

I really don't see anything that would keep you on BTV if you've already GOT an HD200... seems strange to me...

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by cat6man

thanks.............hope the water is warm

Don't know how the water will be - but the people are warm... and friendly.

I don't envy what you are probably going to go through for the next few weeks. I ran BTV and SageTV concurrently for two months back in July-September last year on my one PC. Trying to determine which worked best with the HD PVRs.

The two are just so different in their approach.

I had recordings that I had made in one that I wanted to watch while I had the other up and vise versa. I almost drove myself nuts (maybe I did??).

If you have the equipment to do so, it might be easier to set up a second PC with SageTV just to get the feel of it.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I really don't see anything that would keep you on BTV if you've already GOT an HD200... seems strange to me...

many years of reliable btv recordings going back to analog tuners and media mvp playback........if it ain't broke........on the other hand, life evolves

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

Don't know how the water will be - but the people are warm... and friendly.

I don't envy what you are probably going to go through for the next few weeks. I ran BTV and SageTV concurrently for two months back in July-September last year on my one PC. Trying to determine which worked best with the HD PVRs.

The two are just so different in their approach.

I had recordings that I had made in one that I wanted to watch while I had the other up and vise versa. I almost drove myself nuts (maybe I did??).

If you have the equipment to do so, it might be easier to set up a second PC with SageTV just to get the feel of it.

agreed! forum folks and the powers that be in sage development are great.........not that the folks at btv aren't also "warm".........sage forum folks though are clearly more technically sophisticated though (probably related to the more open development environment).......i was the first instigator/user behind firewire recording and the hdhr on btv and both of those were introduced to me first by the sage forum! (you folks are clearly
on the (b)leading edge, which i like)

as for confusion, i plan to keep tuners and recordings orthogonal until i get more comfortable.................i have one hdhr unused these days so i have 2 tuners for either clearQAM or OTA plus a couple of pvr-usb2 analog tuners sitting on a shelf somewhere.

time to play...............

edit: to clarify, i plan to
1. have both up simultaneously, not switch between them
2. all playback is via network media players (never on pc) so all recordings should always be available (and no codec nonsense to deal with)
3. liveTV to hd200 is probably the only feature differentiator i see going in.......i expect both will reliably make all recordings
all the time
4. i assume sagetv client is what i use from my laptop to remotely set up recordings, etc from within my home network (equivalent function to btv web admin)

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by cat6man

4. i assume sagetv client is what i use from my laptop to remotely set up recordings, etc from within my home network (equivalent function to btv web admin)

You may be better off using placeshifter. The placeshifter license is SERVER based so once you buy a license you can run placeshifter from any computer (on your network or remote). Client license is PC based so you'd need one per PC.

The placeshifter does not support DVD playback, but other than that they are comparable.

Also, neilm's web plugin is a must for most people. I highly recommend it.

PS. The MVP you sold me is still going strong although relegated to the guest room.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by cat6man

4. i assume sagetv client is what i use from my laptop to remotely set up recordings, etc from within my home network (equivalent function to btv web admin)

Except for the SageTV install, I do all of my setup from my HD200s in extender mode. Tuners, Favorites, EPG, etc.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

Except for the SageTV install, I do all of my setup from my HD200s in extender mode. Tuners, Favorites, EPG, etc.

oooooooo.......hadn't thought of that...............make that 2 features

thx

[Brent]

I just posted a little (okay its kinda long) article on "How to Switch from BeyondTV to SageTV." Hopefully you and others going through this process will find it useful. Its basically a combination of the many forum posts I've made asking the same questions about how to switch from BTV to SageTV, what are the differences etc. I meant to post something like this a long time ago but never got around to it. So this is for those remaining BTV folks who are curious... Hope I don't tick off my friends at Snapstream with this post

If anyone notices anything missing or incorrect please let me know. Thanks!

[cat6man]

ok........here is one i just ran into.........note i am running sagetv on a different pc than btv (for now at least) but on the same home lan network.

i had 2x hdhr (4 tuners total) on btv..........2 qam, 2 ota.
i don't use the ota any more so i deleted one pair of tuners from btv

after upgrading to latest hdhr f/w today, i set the 2 orphan tuners to OTA and did a channel scan.............hdhr's quick tv shows the channels nicely.

when i try to add the ota hdhr tuners as sources in sage, they don't show up........i only see the 2 qam tuners being used by btv.

how do i get those hdhr tuners to show up in sage? (and not mess with the other 2 at all..............rule: 'first do no harm')............i must be missing something........is there an hdhr setup FAQ?

thx

think i'll try sageMC plugin next

[tmiranda]

Look in the .properties files for a line "ignore_encoders=" and make sure the HDHRs did not end up there.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Look in the .properties files for a line "ignore_encoders=" and make sure the HDHRs did not end up there.

no problem there...........also, sage does see the 2 hdhr tuners assigned to QAM and being used by BTV.............it just doesn't see the 2 ota tuners that i want to setup in sage.........and HDhomerun Config GUI sees all 4 tuners

edit:

for the 2 tuners i do see

mmc/encoders/-2098737061/video_capture_device_name=Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 10100DD4-1
and
mmc/encoders/-2098737061/video_capture_device_name=Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner 10100DD4-0

[Brent]

Hmm. I can't help on that one - all of my HDHRs are using QAM. Anyone else have any ideas?

In the meantime - do submit a trouble ticket with SageTV in case you don't get a response on the forums

[cat6man]

d'oh.......................tried shutting down and restarting sage and it now sees the ota tuners

edit: then no epg data, same solution, shut down and restart sage.........probably an important
lesson there

[cat6man]

is placeshifter installed on client machine(s) or on server?
not clear from sage 'more info' page

[Brent]

You install placeshifter on the machine you're placeshifting to. So if you want to placeshift to a laptop, install it on that laptop.

The license is applied on the server though

[cat6man]

just installed SRE (and jetty) to play with...................this sounds WAY COOL for catching the real length of ballgames instead of putting in default extra hour or so

[cat6man]

just watched SRE extend a baseball game by 10 minutes beyond the normal recording time, so i didn't miss the end of the game.........yesterday it stopped a game 5 minutes early as the game had ended in less than the allotted 3 hours.......

that gets my vote for best plugin i've seen in years!!!!!

kudos to Slugger