Why does SageTV change the channel every hour

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by sportera

I found a fix to many of my problems. The "TURN UAC OFF" is one that needs to be put in bold print somewhere. Sometimes you just have to sit down and read the SageTV Manual.

Well based on your suggestion, I've added that *Warning* to my "How To" thread and gave you credit for the suggestion.

[korben_dallas]

My SageTV server (see my sig) has no more than about $1000 invested in it, including the cost of SageTV software, and that has been stretched over 5 years at least.

I run the server on a copy of XP Pro that I purchased in 2003.

I run stock vanilla SageTV server, no plugins.

I have one tuner, an HD PVR.

And I still bother Andy about stuff that is available in the manual.

Point is, I am hardly a power user. This non-power user does not watch Live TV. This non-power user doesn't have enough time even on the weekends to watch all the movies SageTV has been recording, let alone all the favorites during the week.

Losing the last 30 seconds of shows, which happened to me plenty of times long before the HD PVR, can be solved by padding. If I were terribly concerned about or already missing back-to-back favorites due to padding conflict, I could always purchase another tuner, which would be cheaper than renting a DVR STB from the provider. But so far, one tuner records too much for me to watch, and SageTV handles conflicts / rescheduling 99% of the time without me ever noticing.

From my perspective, I simply cannot see how one would get the urge to implement a PC-based SageTV system, if they are not going to use its core strength: recording.

[sportera]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

From my perspective, I simply cannot see how one would get the urge to implement a PC-based SageTV system, if they are not going to use its core strength: recording.

I hear you, and agree with you, korben. If your post was in reply to my earlier post expressing my "opinion" that more Sage users watch LiveTV vs recording "everything", let me clarify.

I too use SageTV mainly for it's intuitive recording ability plus the added ability to incorporate commercial skip in my recorded video. My point was simply that my family's viewing habits would have me needing 3 to 4 DTV receivers and HDPVR's if we wanted to pre-record everything we "might watch" on any given day, as my wife and I both like to surf the guide and prioritize what we watch, not based on the name of the show, but the programming content for that particular airing, (Food Network, HGTV, 60 minutes, Dateline, sports, etc.). And we watch the news live everyday. We do record certain TV series and movies that are our favorites and enjoy watching them at a later time without sitting through the commercials.

Based on the above, I would say our habits are probably watching 30% pre-recorded television and 70% live television. We don't subscribe to HBO, Showtime, or the other movie channels which, if we did, might change those percentages a bit.

I guess, in the end, to each his own. In my case, my wife's favorites are totally different than mine. We use "recording" to make sure we get what we can't afford to miss. We use LiveTV to watch everything else, but also as a means to "take turns" watching what we each want to watch at any given time on any given day. My (2) receiver setups would simply not support recording everything we might call a favorite.

[stanger89]

Why do you even go through Sage for Live TV if you record so little?

[Fuzzy]

The thing is sportera, I'm betting your 2 tuners WOULD do just fine with 'all the shows you like to watch' if they were set up as favorites. The nice thing about those shows (Food network, HGTV, etc) is that they re-air the same episode 5 or 6 times. This means that if you DID set up each of the shows as a favorite, you'd probably not miss anything. Just set them up, and then when you sit down to watch tv, you go straight to sagetv recordings, and browse for what you WANT to watch, instead of choosing from what is on right now from the guide.

[sportera]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Why do you even go through Sage for Live TV if you record so little?

Because I don't record a little. Between my wife and I we record alot, because I'm a couch potato and we both watch alot of TV. Typically we record many movies plus these series; (Oprah, DrPhil, Ellen, American Idol, Celeb Apprentice, Survivor, Dancing w/Stars, and a few more of the new shows). And as I stated I like the benefit of commercial skip. Plus I like the idea of Server/Client installation. I'm only using one client right now because my wife doesn't trust the stability of Sage enough to replace our bedroom 3rd DTV receiver with an HD200. If I can ever get this system fully functional, and stable, as it was at one time before going to HDPVR's, I'd probably be able to convince her to let me add that 3rd DTV receiver to the other 2 connected to the WHS and add an HD200 to the 42" LCD in the bedroom.

Thanks Fuzzy. I might just try your idea for a week or two and see how we fair. I just need to read up on how to prioritize the shows we really don't want to miss if they happen to air the same time as one of these new favorites.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by bastafidli

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.

As pointed out by bastafidli, Narflex himself has said this side effect is undesirable and needs to be fixed. That clearly indicates to me it's somewhere on the "To Do" list. What we don't know and can speculate about is how high a priority is it and thus WHEN this will be changed.

[ytulpan]

Hello people,

I have followed this thread with much interest. I have a quite large Sage whole house installation with multiple hardware and software clients. I have over 5 TB of recorded TV and perhaps another 10TB of imported media.

I can't remember the last time I have watched a show or a movie "live". We record many times over what we can watch (rings a bell ?), but with hard disk cost being in free fall, I just keep adding disk space.

However one has to make the distinction between 2 types of TV. Most is not time dependent and is thought of as "shows". The other is very time dependent, really live and can be seen as channels. This category includes at least news and sports. One usually would not record "live" TV for keeps, but only for pausing, rewinding and perhaps for skipping commercials.

Sage supports the "show" concept very well, and the "live" not so well, since it is artificially being considered as a "show".

Now, the HD-PVR amplifies this distinction a lot, since a pseudo-show boundary usually means over 5 seconds missed. With other tuners (I have DVB-S2 tuners) it is more like 1-2 seconds. This is a big difference.

I cannot see much that Sage can do at this point, since the core design decisions of Sage, coupled with the HD-PVR faults are not easily correctable. Of course, in hindsight Sage could have been designed differently, but it was not.

In any case I can suggest a workaround for "live" TV. Duplicate the smalish number of channels you might be interested as "live" in a separate lineup. Give them different logical channel numbers (for example, add a "-" after the usual channel number), and do not associate an EPG source with them. These duplicate channels will appear having "no data" in the EPG. If you want to watch live TV, just tune to such a channel duplicate.

The downside is that if you want to simultaneously keep a copy of the show from the beginning to the end, you have to throw another tuner at it. If you just want to keep what you have watched live, you can use the MultiFunctionStop STVi and cut the recording at the points you press "stop".