HD channels merged with SD channels

[ericscottf]

Hi all

I am new to sage, attempting to migrate from two replaytvs.
I've got a hauppauge USB PVR that is working more or less at this point.

I've set it up as a source, and told it my location/service (queens ny, verizon fios digital)

I have just discovered that when a channel is broadcast in more than one way (for instance: channel 190 is SD comedy central and 1644 HD), sage merges both together and only counts 1644.
I don't currently have high def, so this isn't going to work well for me. What's more, i don't have a guide to look to to tell me what channels are combined in this unpleasant way, so i have to manually paw through everything looking to see if the channel is different from the "physical channel" in sage.

is there a better way to do this? Some kind of "don't merge similar channels" or "turn off the higher number of a channel when there is more than one instance of it" (because HD are all high numbers, this would work for me)?

edit: I just re-downloaded the guide and didn't click "enable all channels" and it seems to know that when there are two channels with the same content to ignore the higher one and keep the lower one, which is good for me, but my question remains somewhat: what's the best way to manage this? What if i had HD and i wanted to ignore the SD channels in favor of the HD ones?
Another thing to note is that one of these problem channels is 4 digits, 1644. i didn't think my cable box even went that high... is it just weird/bad guide data that sage knows to ignore automatically?

thanks!

[Fuzzy]

Sage will combine the channels when they are listed as the exact same channel (by ChannelID). If you only want the SD version, in the channel setup, you simple disable the HD version... Vice Versa if you only wanted the HD channel. If you don't like the HD channel being displayed on your guide as 1644, and would prefer 190, then you can use the Remap feature to change the 'logical number' assigned to the channel to any number you choose.

[ericscottf]

Yeah, i went through and did it all manually. somewhat annoying (but better than replay)
I was hoping for a "disable all hd" or "disable all above this number" easter egg/secret feature.

I've also seen a lot of posts about channel guide data changing frequently, and if that is true, does it change enough to require me to go through and remove more HD channels often, or when channels move, does SAGE track disabled channels and keep them disabled? (seems like that would be hard to do)

[Fuzzy]

The frequency of lineup changes would depends entirely on your provider. Some move channels quite often, some rarely ever.

[ericscottf]

Of course i'm not blaming Sage for lineup changes, i'm simply wondering if things are handled creatively when they occur. for instance, if a channel is moved, does it retain its status, or get reenabled no matter what? If one channel is added in two ways (hd and non hd), are they both enabled, disabled, or what have you?

that kind of stuff. My guess would be that the system makes no attempts to guess as to what the user wants, and as such, it would be necessary to check ones channel lineups regularly if the user's provider moves things around often.

[polen]

I do know that SageTV will add newly added channels and it only makes sense that if a channel is deleted from the lineup then it is gone too.

There's a setting under details settings/customize which allows you to tell SageTV to not add newly added channels.

[CollinR]

I think it's pretty smart, I basically have the AE pack from dish and I have new channels NOT added. I never have any issues although I must manually add any new channels. Channels already present never seem to have any issues and I know Dish changes their lineup and having most english channels I would expect an issue at some point.

But this is really 2 seperate issues.

NONE of those channels are manually remapped. When you remap I'm thinking it might be able to handle a loss then recover but can't recover from a channel removed and then readded to a different logical number. There is no way to know which number it changed to.

Those higher numbers are often the actual channel numbers and the smaller number channel is a placeholder mapped down in it's place. It kinda has to do that as you have service providers like comcast/cox/dish/direct whatnot that all have the same 1-50 channels but everyone's locals are different coast to coast. So really neither the SD or HD is channel 2 it's being remapped inside the box. Zap2it is providing that data to SageTV and it gives you the option of which channel you wish to use. by leaving the higher numbered channel you can build favorites that are forced to record from only that channel insuring an HD capture every time.

The problem comes when you mapdown the HD channel on an SD system as now your meta data will mark everything as HD when it's not. This isn't a big problem at first. Once you have been around a while you will start filtering your recordings and HD will probably be one of those filters. Also once that experienced you will probably setup favorites and never watch live TV. Hence never care what channel number or guide number it recorded from so long as you have it to watch.