Why does SageTV change the channel every hour

[d2tw4all]

I believe I have almost everything in sage up and running, however I'm noticing while using it that if I leave it on livetv on a particular channel, every hour after the show ends it changes the channel to the same channel it is on. This is not a showstopper but is definitely affecting the Wife Acceptance Factor...

Tom

[trini0]

You can change that in Sage's settings.
I'm not in front of the TV at the moment, but I believe in Advanced settings, there is an option to "Always tune channel" (Rough verbage). Its on by default. I have mine turned off, and it will only change the channel only if the channel changes, and not at program guide boundaries...
Hope that helps

[d2tw4all]

Ok I'll take a look and find the setting, so odd that it would be on by default! Thanks for replying so quickly!

Tom

[Fuzzy]

Understand though, that there will still be a hiccup on the hour (actually, on the program change) as it starts a new recording. This is just a function of how sage treats tv (everything is broken down by program). Once the wife gets some favorites set up, she won't be watching live tv anyways.

[d2tw4all]

It's funny, I was about to post that I found the setting and noticed the glitch, I almost think I prefer the channel change as the glitch is very goofy. Now I have to think about it. I have to say, this is not ideal and this is the first DVR setup I've seen that does this... As far as wife is concerned, we've used DVR's since way back in the replaytv days, so she's very familiar with time shifting our tv watching, however we've been home a lot lately since we had a baby last year and our recordings run out pretty quickly...

Tom

[Fuzzy]

It's been discussed at length, and basically, to change it would be a major overhaul in the way Sage's system works. Most users of Sage have moved almost entirely away from livetv, and so it seems to have been decided that it isn't worth the potential problems at this point to change it.

[49studebaker]

If you want the pause between shows to be eliminated then vote here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43017

[sic0048]

Sage handles the buffering of LiveTV differently than most other DVRs. Sage buffers the entire current show into the buffer. It deletes this buffer when you A) change channels or B) another show comes on. Most other DVRs only buffer a set time - like the last 30 minutes.

To be honest, I love the way SageTV buffers. I can be at the end of a 3 hour movie and press the record button and Sage will save the recording all the way back to when I started to watch the show, not just the last 30 minutes.

Of course then we have the pause at the end of each live show as the system changes from one buffer to the next. So basically there is a 3-5 second pause because that amount is being buffered into memory. It restarts the buffer at each show because unless you pressed record (or have SageTV set to save liveTV) it deletes the old buffer and has to rebuffer the new show.

You are not actually loosing 3-5 seconds of the show, it is just "paused" while the system rebuffers.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by sic0048

You are not actually loosing 3-5 seconds of the show, it is just "paused" while the system rebuffers.

That's not true. You lose a little bit of time as Sage tears down the old recording graph and builds a new one. It's sort of hard to figure out exactly how much is lost, but I think its about 2 seconds on my system.

[bastafidli]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

It's been discussed at length, and basically, to change it would be a major overhaul in the way Sage's system works. Most users of Sage have moved almost entirely away from livetv, and so it seems to have been decided that it isn't worth the potential problems at this point to change it.

This is actually very inaccurate summary of the thread. The discussion ended with SageTVs own Narflex agreeing with his vote that this behavior has to change and that was it.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by d2tw4all

I believe I have almost everything in sage up and running, however I'm noticing while using it that if I leave it on livetv on a particular channel, every hour after the show ends it changes the channel to the same channel it is on. This is not a showstopper but is definitely affecting the Wife Acceptance Factor...

Tom

The "Always Tune Channel" is a very useful safeguard. If something goes wrong with tuning, it may have recorded an hour's worth of the wrong channel. But at the new show mark, it will tune the channel again. It's frustrating to lose a show due to one tuning error, but it's even more frustrating to lose 2 or 3 back-to-back shows due to one tuning error.

[d2tw4all]

Point taken, I'll have to add it back. Overall poor architecture in my opinion, I'm not really buying the "once you use a DVR you shouldn't need to watch livetv anyway" justification for why this works like this...

Tom

[Fuzzy]

It's not a matter of not using livetv anymore, it's more a matter of not watching sequential shows on live tv. Sure, livetv is still useful for sports and such, but those aren't going across program boundaries, and thus this doesn't crop up. About the only other thing i can think of where this might interupt a program is music videos, but i don't think anyone plays those anymore.

[d2tw4all]

Unfortunately with the inherent delays of the HD PVR it's actually quite a nuisance, my wife watches HGTVHD all day, just leaves it on while she does other things, and basically the last 20 seconds of each show is missed because of the glitch/channel change issue. I think a lot of people will just leave a channel up but maybe I'm wrong... Either way it results in an annoying situation...

Tom

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by d2tw4all

Unfortunately with the inherent delays of the HD PVR it's actually quite a nuisance, my wife watches HGTVHD all day, just leaves it on while she does other things, and basically the last 20 seconds of each show is missed because of the glitch/channel change issue. I think a lot of people will just leave a channel up but maybe I'm wrong... Either way it results in an annoying situation...

Tom

While I agree the pause can be annoying if you do watch a lot of live TV, it really shouldn't be 20 seconds. Is the server's clock "dead on" as far as time? Do you tend to catch the last 10 seconds of the previous show when you watch a recorded show (ie the recording playback starts - you see the last 10 seconds of the previous show before the desired show starts playing).

If so, you might want to tweak your server time by 5, 10 or 15 seconds and see if that helps. If the server doesn't have the exact time correct then the "transition" between shows will also be off too. A slight time/clock error is more noticable on certain networks (like HGTV) because they tend to go directly from one show into another without any commercial gap.

I agree that there is nothing worse than loosing the last 20 seconds of show.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by d2tw4all

Overall poor architecture in my opinion

You are of course entitled to your opinion, and don't ever be afraid to share it here. A "live TV only" tuner has been a point of heated discussion around these parts for a while. It would solve this issue, but it would also cause some other functionality to break or not work as expected.

I think if your household watches a large amount of live TV, then the few remaining benefits of SageTV probably don't outweigh the disadvantages.

There's not much to be done to speed up the HD PVR. It takes a finite amount of time to tear down the recording, tune the channel, and start a new recording. But it shouldn't be taking 20 seconds. I'd say 10 tops, otherwise you've likely got a bottleneck somewhere else in your hardware or OS.

You could always just setup a recurring 8 hour manual recording. It'll be a massive size single file, but won't have the boundary issues.

[nick_l]

The way to minimize the "lost" show time would be to have more than one tuner. Sage should be starting the next show as it is ending the current show. with only one tuner, obviously that's not possible. As someone else suggested, you could also just set up a large block of recording time each day. Then your wife could just watch the show of the day before. The dis-advantage would be that she would loose individual show information and watched history.

Nick

[HelenWeathers]

I minimize the pause by setting the always tune channel to NO. When I'm away for the weekend or off on vacation I set always tune to YES just in case.

[hockeyfan]

The always tune option is golden for me. My satellite receivers would go into power save. I have the channel change option hit the 'OK' button first so it wakes them up. So disappointed before I changed this and my recorded show was all black.

[ryesman]

I haven't jumped on the Sage bandwagon yet. I'm still doing a bit of research, so bear with me. I too am coming from the ReplayTV camp.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Sure, livetv is still useful for sports and such, but those aren't going across program boundaries, and thus this doesn't crop up...

In my experience sports programs rarely fit in the scheduled slot. Even without overtime or delays in the game, the scheduled time is often at least 30 minutes too short. Is there a feature on SageTV that allows you tack on 60 minutes to the end of a scheduled recording? And if I'm just watching a game live without having scheduled it to record you're saying there's going to be a few seconds missing at around the time the game is "scheduled" to end?

Similarly, certain channels, NBC in particular, often start programs up to a full minute early. Is SageTV capable of recording one or two minutes before the schedule?

And while I'm here, I have a completely unrelated question. I'm leaning toward putting a simple desktop PC in near the TV with Sage Media Center Software installed on it and then using an HD Extender and possibly a Hauppauge HD PVR. If I want to schedule recordings to that PC from my laptop what software to I have to install on it, keeping in mind that I will pretty much never use that for viewing recorded shows?