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

[cat6man]

actually, there are so few clearQAM channels anymore the hdhr setup will be much easier than it used to be in the days when my cable co had all digital channels in the clear

i plan to install licensed version of sage tomorrow (too many shows being recorded tonight.........) and have 2 questions left (i think)

1.
can i still use timmmoore's firewire channel changer(s)? i have a 'channel' and a 'channel2' in registry which are already mapped to the correct firewire addresses.
will sage find these tuners automatically or do i have to edit something somewhere? or does hdpvr find them automatically in hdpvr setup?

2.
setting up as service, should i create a new user (e.g. sageuser/pw) with administrator privileges and use that? or must it be the main administrator login so that if it power cycles due to ac failure, things will start up again automatically? (i'm very inexpert about these windows types of things......)

thanks

[Fuzzy]

1. Firewire channel changing setup is discussed here.

2. You can create a special user for sage if you want, or just use the default user. It doesn't really matter. The service can be set to start up as any user you choose (configured in the SageTVServiceControl app). One caveat is that the user is required to have a password. The service will start up automatically regardless of what user it is set to use. I've always just had a single user account on my Sage Server and used that.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

1. Firewire channel changing setup is discussed here.

2. You can create a special user for sage if you want, or just use the default user. It doesn't really matter. The service can be set to start up as any user you choose (configured in the SageTVServiceControl app). One caveat is that the user is required to have a password. The service will start up automatically regardless of what user it is set to use. I've always just had a single user account on my Sage Server and used that.

thanks, #2 is clear now.

as for #1, your link helped as i was never going to get through that 75 page thread myself............however, is the EXEMultiTuner really needed or can i use the already installed timmmoore channel.exe?

[HelenWeathers]

There's some info in this thread on channel.exe and channelw.exe:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=41639

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

There's some info in this thread on channel.exe and channelw.exe:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=41639

thanks, but that is about getting the stb to switch channels faster when there are leading zeros (and not wait/timeout if the channel number isn't 4 digits)

i still am looking for how to set up sage to use channel.exe or channew.exe, assuming those have already been set up and tested and work properly.

do i have to move the channel.dll files to sage/common directory or edit something in properties? i've already run timmmoore's installation programs, registry settings are in place etc...................link to sage is my unknown

edit: i noticed brent has announced a work in progress for using firewire for channel change, but nothing is up there yet

[HelenWeathers]

I was thinking that you might PM someone in that thread that is using channel.exe.

Or, post in that thread asking someone who uses it to PM you.

[Brent]

What is the cable box you want to use firewire channel changing on?

[cat6man]

i have a couple of MOT7100 (fios) that use timmmoore's channel.dll

i made a 2nd version renamed channel2.dll so i can control both of my boxes.

timmmoore drivers are installed and registry settings are fine for both boxes, one on channel.dll, one called by channel2.dll

i'm hoping i just need to put those 2 dll files somewhere where sage will recognize and use them and then i'm done.................yes? wishful thinking?
(with btv, i put them in the 'tuner' directory and in setup they just show up as options
for channel changing my hdpvr units)

[JerryB]

Originally Posted by cat6man

...however, is the EXEMultiTuner really needed or can i use the already installed timmmoore channel.exe?

Tuner control is one of the items you setup when you add a video source in SageTV. As far as I know, there is no way to select or directly use channel.exe as the tuner control. Currently there are 2 options that I'm aware of: EXEMultiTuner or FWChannelProxy. As far as I know, both act as a proxy between SageTV and channel.exe. Since I setup my system before FWChannelProxy became available, I'm using EXEMultiTuner and it works great. However, from what I've read, FWChannelProxy may be easier to initially setup.

[Brent]

I'll post a little how-to over the weekend.

Another nice option is the one Andy "babgvant" has created.

[reggie14]

FWIW, I just set up firewire channel changing with a DCT6200 STB using the FWChannelProxy utility (babgvant's tool), and I'm a big fan. It was very easy to set up. My only complaint is that you can't set it up using the firewire device's unique id, which potentially creates problems if you add additional firewire boxes in the future.

[cat6man]

well, i have 2 boxes already so a one box solution is a non-starter here.

and actually, i use channel.dll, not a call to channel.exe, if i understand my
btv setup correctly (did it a long long time ago)

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by Brent

I'll post a little how-to over the weekend.

Another nice option is the one Andy "babgvant" has created.

thanks man!
i won't be starting until tomorrow as there are too many recordings scheduled for
tonight for me to start messing around.........i've been using a separate machine
to test sage so far, now i'll put the licensed version on my real media machine setup
in the basement

(1pc, 2x hdhr, 2x hdpvr, 4x NAS for about 2.5GB, 2x STB with 2 firewire channel controllers
and lots of netgear gigabit switches, coaxial splitters, usb cables, amplifiers, fios router all on
UPS ---basement room could probably heat the house)

when we get a power outage, all the ups boxes around the house go into beeping mode simultaneously.........

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by cat6man

well, i have 2 boxes already so a one box solution is a non-starter here.

I'm not sure if this post was in reference to mine, but FWChannelProxy works fine with multiple STBs. The only problem is that if you add an STB in the future you might need to tweak the configuration. The way you identify STBs with FWChannelProxy changes when you add a box. A box previously numbered 2 might become number 3, for example.

[JerryB]

Originally Posted by cat6man

well, i have 2 boxes already so a one box solution is a non-starter here.

For what it's worth, babvgant's FWChannelProxy is not a one box solution and seems to be most similar to your current setup, i.e. you create a copy of the FWChannelProxy#.dll for each of your boxs in the ...\SageTV\Common folder with the # replaced with the panel device number for the box you want to control.

[cat6man]

thanks, i misinterpreted that one.

[cat6man]

question:
many customizations say to shut down stv, services, etc before installing or editing the properties file..........however, the service automatically restarts
when it detects that it has been shut down.

if i edit the properties file, and services has restarted, can i just shut it down again and it will pick up the changed properties at restart, or must i seriously
change services configuration to not self-restart, shut it down, edit properties/etc, change services config back to auto-restart, etc??


so far, i've got my system set up with hdhr/ota, added neilm's web plugin and sre.

observation 1: after adding hdhr tuner, i got errors trying to scan and had to restart sage, then scan worked fine...........happened also a couple of weeks ago when i first played around with trial install on different pc........XPpro in both cases

observation 2: using same folder for BTV and sageTV to write new recording into............not sure if this is related or not, but with BTV running i could not get hdhr tuner to work (got no signal message on live tv)..........turned off BTV and it worked.........turned btv back on to record baseball game last night and liveTV on hdhr w/ sage is not working again...........perhaps we don't want sage and btv managing recording folder at the same time? i can change sage to different folder if anyone thinks that might be the cause.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by cat6man

question:
many customizations say to shut down stv, services, etc before installing or editing the properties file..........however, the service automatically restarts
when it detects that it has been shut down.

if i edit the properties file, and services has restarted, can i just shut it down again and it will pick up the changed properties at restart, or must i seriously
change services configuration to not self-restart, shut it down, edit properties/etc, change services config back to auto-restart, etc??

You need to run sagetvservicecontrol.exe from start menu - stop the service then disable the service. After editing, enable the service and then start the service. EDIT: You need to exit the SageTV app first it's running.

I'll leave the HDHR/folder questions to someone else.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

You need to run sagetvservicecontrol.exe from start menu - stop the service then disable the service. After editing, enable the service and then start the service. EDIT: You need to exit the SageTV app first it's running.

I'll leave the HDHR/folder questions to someone else.

that is what i thought regarding services........thanks.........looks like a good opportunity for a plugin/macro/script to do this automatically

as for folders, i just change the sage recording directory and now btv and sage seem to coexist.............can't have them both trying to manage/control the same files as 'their' recordings.........

onward to hdhr/clearQAM!!!

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by cat6man

however, the service automatically restarts when it detects that it has been shut down.

How are you shutting down your service? I have service recovery turned on too, but the service doesn't start back up automatically if I shut down the service using Sage's service control utility.

if i edit the properties file, and services has restarted, can i just shut it down again and it will pick up the changed properties at restart, or must i seriously
change services configuration to not self-restart, shut it down, edit properties/etc, change services config back to auto-restart, etc??

I've tried making changes to the properties file while Sage was still running and the modified settings didn't settings didn't stick. Your mileage may vary, but I think its a very, very good idea to shut down the service when you make changes.