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SageTV EPG Service Discussion related to the SageTV EPG Service used within SageTV. Questions about service area coverage, channel lineups, EPG listings, XMLTV, or anything else related to the service or programming guide data for SageTV should be posted here. |
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#1
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Program Guide Listings with two sources?
I'm temporarily running Spectrum with an HDPVR and Google Fiber TV with an HDPVR2.
The program guide is interleaving the channels from both sources. In some cases, I see two instances of a given channel in the listing. For example 297 on one source listed right above 297 on the other. In other cases, only one instance of the channel is in the guide. For example, channel 300 is only showing for Spectrum, and not Google. However in the channel setup for the Google source, channel 300 is showing as enabled. But it does not appear in the guide, and shows on that channel are not found by favorites or future airings searches. I thought there were people who had multiple cable boxes and multiple sources and it worked OK? But perhaps the issue is having multiple sources with multiple providers and thus lineups that is causing issues? Has anyone else succeeded with a multi-source setup. This is a temporary situation - we will cancel Spectrum once Google is working reliably. But in the interim, I'd like to be able to access all the channels.
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HD300 extender with (2020 New Build) SageTV 64 bit V9.2.2.903 (service mode), Running on Windows 10 (64 bit), Intel Core i7-10700K CPU, 16G RAM, GIGABYTE Z490 UD motherboard. NVidia GTX1650 Super; Viewsonic LCD on one output and Mitsubishi WD57734 HDTV via DVI/HDMI on other output. HDHomeRun HDHR5-4US tuner, Hauppauge "Siena" 1512 HD-PVR2 connected to Cisco Cable modem from Spectrum, tuned with USB-UIRT. |
#2
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Home Network: https://karylstein.com/technology.html |
#3
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This wreaks havoc with recording conflicts, when we theoretically have enough tuners, but Sage won't schedule. It can also cause headaches when a lineup silently adds a new channel, that happens to correspond to one already existing in another lineup, and suddenly the recordings are switched to a different source. That also wreaks unnecessary havoc. Is there any reason why the EPG can't simply display all the channels for each lineup, even if some of them have duplicate channel IDs? |
#4
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It might be helpful to post several screen-grabs from Setup -> Setup Video Sources -> (select your device) -> Channel Setup -> (scroll down to select a channel at issue) so that others can have a look at the station details (right-hand side of screen). Do this for one or two channels on each tuner/capture device that's causing you grief.
Either PlaceShifter or the Sage Client can be used to capture what needs to be inspected.
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System #1: Win7-64, I7-920, 8 GB mem, 4TB HD. Java-64 1.8.0_141. Sage-64 v9.2.1 ATSC: 2x HDHR-US (1st gen white) tuners. HD-200. System #2: Win7-64, I7-920, 8 GB mem, 4TB HD. Java 1.8.0_131. Sage v9.1.6.747. ClearQAM: 2x HDHR3-US tuners. HD-200. System #3: Win7-64, I7-920, 12 GB mem, 4TB HD. Java-64 1.8.0_141. Sage-64 v9.2.1 ATSC: 2x HVR2250; Spectrum Cable via HDPVR & USB-UIRT. 3x HD-200. |
#5
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Dish Network Lineup: 200, CNNHD, 58646 Shaw Direct Advanced Lineup: 595, CNNHD, 58646 (remapped to logical channel 1595) If I enable both of these, only one shows up in the guide, which in this case is the Dish Network channel. But if I setup a recording on the Dish Network channel, the recording will actually be done on a Shaw Direct tuner. |
#6
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So no matter what you do, CNNHD will only show up once in the EPG. By remapping, you can choose what channel number it will be. So for example, you could go to each lineup and remap it to channel 400, and then it would definitely show up in the guide as 400. But you can't really force Sage to use a specific tuner, so when you tune to 400 in this example you won't know if Sage will pick channel 200 from tuner 1 or channel 595 from tuner 2.
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Server: Ryzen 2400G with integrated graphics, ASRock X470 Taichi Motherboard, HDMI output to Vizio 1080p LCD, Win10-64Bit (Professional), 16GB RAM Capture Devices (7 tuners): Colossus (x1), HDHR Prime (x2),USBUIRT (multi-zone) Source: Comcast/Xfinity X1 Cable Primary Client: Server Other Clients: (1) HD200, (1) HD300 Retired Equipment: MediaMVP, PVR150 (x2), PVR150MCE, HDHR, HVR-2250, HD-PVR |
#7
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It isn't necessarily bad to have it show up twice as two different channels as it can give you more control over which source you record from. The main other way to control that is with tuner merit which you can now change in the UI but the changes may not take effect until you restart.
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New Server - Sage9 on unRAID 2xHD-PVR, HDHR for OTA Old Server - Sage7 on Win7Pro-i660CPU with 4.6TB, HD-PVR, HDHR OTA, HVR-1850 OTA Clients - 2xHD-300, 8xHD-200 Extenders, Client+2xPlaceshifter and a WHS which acts as a backup Sage server |
#8
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Example: Assume CNN is channel 200 on tuner 1 and 300 on tuner2. Now, tuner 1 is already recording a favorite on some channel. You go to the guide and want to watch CNN on channel 200. The way Sage currently works, it knows that channel 300 on tuner 2 is the same thing, so it use tuner2. But if they were separate the way you suggest, Sage would have to throw a conflict (can't tune channel 200 on tuner 1 unless we cancel the favorite that tuner1 is already recording). There are probably other ways this could be handled, but it would be complicated and probably a major overhaul of the Sage scheduling engine.
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Server: Ryzen 2400G with integrated graphics, ASRock X470 Taichi Motherboard, HDMI output to Vizio 1080p LCD, Win10-64Bit (Professional), 16GB RAM Capture Devices (7 tuners): Colossus (x1), HDHR Prime (x2),USBUIRT (multi-zone) Source: Comcast/Xfinity X1 Cable Primary Client: Server Other Clients: (1) HD200, (1) HD300 Retired Equipment: MediaMVP, PVR150 (x2), PVR150MCE, HDHR, HVR-2250, HD-PVR |
#9
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Yeah, you are probably right. SageTV treats this differently than MCE did and it took me a while to get used to it. MCE mapped the same channels on different tuners to different channels in the guide - if I remember it correctly it added 1000 to the channel numbers for OTA.
I don't do a ton of recording so conflicts are rarely an issue for me. But I have had instances where some channels can be flakey on some OTA tuners so I may want to force them to use the cable version of that channel instead, whereas I generally want to record from OTA channels first and leave the cable boxes for OTA only.
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New Server - Sage9 on unRAID 2xHD-PVR, HDHR for OTA Old Server - Sage7 on Win7Pro-i660CPU with 4.6TB, HD-PVR, HDHR OTA, HVR-1850 OTA Clients - 2xHD-300, 8xHD-200 Extenders, Client+2xPlaceshifter and a WHS which acts as a backup Sage server |
#10
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If you want to eliminate the duplicates in the guide, you can go in and remap the station to a different station ID Quote:
If you've got CNN on all 5 tuners, and it's 3 different station ID's that will cause a lot of problems for the scheduler, you want them all to have the same station ID so that Sage knows it's the same station on all 5 tuners. Quote:
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#11
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I disable the flaky channels on OTA and enable them on QAM for this. Then set merrit on the OTA tuners higher. Then I get OTA wherever possible and only use the QAM channels for overflow or those channels that don't come in well on OTA.
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"Keep your goals away from the trolls" |
#12
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I appreciate why some believe Sage's scheduling strategy makes sense (only one instance of a station ID is shown in the guide, but all will be used for scheduling). But there is a lot about scheduling Sage does not understand. Today I might choose the FTA version of a channel because the quality is far better than from any other source, while tomorrow I may choose to record a lower bit rate version of the same channel to save disk space. It might be raining cats and dogs, rendering Ku-band services (Dish and Shaw) useless, but I can watch the network feed fine on C-band or OTA. But tomorrow football will be encrypted on C-band. I could go on, but I'd prefer to make these decisions rather than fighting Sage each time. Having to change Sage's configuration each time is not a sane solution. My whole family is diehard Sage and can't imagine living with another solution. But the scheduling code is weak and buggy, or at least with the number of distributors (lineups) and tuners we have. For example, tuner 1 on lineup A is scheduled to record channel 100 from 5:00-6:00 pm. Nothing else is scheduled for the whole day on any lineup. I want to record a show on lineup A, channel 200 from 5:00-5:30 pm and there are two free tuners. Sage declares a conflict. So I delete the channel 100 recording, schedule the channel 200 recording, and then schedule the channel 100 recording. Works fine. Or another classic howler we often see: tuner 1 on lineup A is scheduled to record channel 100 from 5:00-6:00 pm. Nothing else is scheduled for the whole day on any lineup. I try to record a show on lineup B, channel 1000 from 7:00-8:00 pm. No time overlap, no lineup overlap. Four tuners available for lineup B. Sage declares a conflict. Same basic solution as above. Works fine. This is just a sample of what we live with. There is nothing magic or holy about the Sage scheduling algorithm that I wouldn't throw away in a heartbeat if I had the time to rewrite it. I'm happy for those for whom it just works. |
#13
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I created an updated copy of the scheduler myself for a new feature I haven't submitted yet and I can say while a re-write might be welcome, writing a good scheduler when all of the tuners cover some of the same and a few different stations is not trivial. Then if you add in any form of prioritization, it only gets worse when you have a very busy schedule.
Some of the things I see being mentioned here are actually not a function of the Scheduler at all. For example, if you have only one tuner scheduled to record a show and you know that show is available on other tuners that are definitely available, but on a different station and you try to watch a different show live on the tuner that was scheduled, it's going to show a conflict. The reason is because Seeker doesn't actually schedule recordings. It looks at the available tuners for the live channel you want, sees that the station is only available on one tuner and that tuner has a show already scheduled, so it checks if it's ok to override the schedule. There could be some additional mechanisms added to see if the schedule can be re-arranged and those are used when you schedule a manual recording. Scheduler handles everything between near now and the future. Seeker handles everything that needs to happen right now. If I were to re-write how it all works, I would reduce Seeker to only handle executing the schedule. Live tuning requests would be routed through Scheduler in a "what if" mode to see if they can be accommodated in a more thorough manner. This would be slower, but today's computers are so fast, the performance difference would likely be negligible.
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SageTV v9 Server: ASRock Z97 Extreme4, Intel i7-4790K @ 4.4Ghz, 32GB RAM, 6x 3TB 7200rpm HD, 2x 5TB 7200rpm HD, 2x 6TB 7200rpm HD, 4x 256GB SSD, 4x 500GB SSD, unRAID Pro 6.7.2 (Dual Parity + SSD Cache). Capture: 1x Ceton InfiniTV 4 (ClearQAM), 2x Ceton InfiniTV 6, 1x BM1000-HDMI, 1x BM3500-HDMI. Clients: 1x HD300 (Living Room), 1x HD200 (Master Bedroom). Software: OpenDCT :: WMC Live TV Tuner :: Schedules Direct EPG |
#14
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I agree resource scheduling with constraints and priorities is never a trivial problem, and in the general case, efficient and optimal algorithms do not exist. However the algorithm spectrum runs from marginal to decent, and Sage's rates on the mediocre side.
My biggest complaint is it often chokes with conflicts only in its imagination. Most of my family's recording scheduling is for shows weeks into the future, so this is almost never a Scheduler vs. Seeker issue. I'm speculating when Sage looks at adding a recording in the distant future, bugs or strategy errors may accumulate in probability along the way and generate a nonsensical result. Even when Sage succeeds, I'm also confused how it can miss the most trivial, yet optimal solution. While I was never more than peripherally involved in the designs, I have worked on projects where scheduling was done against resource pools that were much larger and where the constraints could be bizarre. The number of choices was often unbounded, but good minds arrived at techniques with results very close to optimal. Sage's situation should be simpler, because its choices are always finite in number and never grow more than geometrically. |
#15
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This kind of thing is certainly not my specialty, but I can see some value in re-writing it. My biggest reason for re-writing it is so that we can add more seams for testing. That would allow us to be more intrepid with improvements because we can have higher confidence that we didn't create new issues. You've got me thinking about re-writing the scheduler and relationship with Seeker. ![]()
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SageTV v9 Server: ASRock Z97 Extreme4, Intel i7-4790K @ 4.4Ghz, 32GB RAM, 6x 3TB 7200rpm HD, 2x 5TB 7200rpm HD, 2x 6TB 7200rpm HD, 4x 256GB SSD, 4x 500GB SSD, unRAID Pro 6.7.2 (Dual Parity + SSD Cache). Capture: 1x Ceton InfiniTV 4 (ClearQAM), 2x Ceton InfiniTV 6, 1x BM1000-HDMI, 1x BM3500-HDMI. Clients: 1x HD300 (Living Room), 1x HD200 (Master Bedroom). Software: OpenDCT :: WMC Live TV Tuner :: Schedules Direct EPG |
#16
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My whole family is diehard Sage and can't imagine living with another solution. But the scheduling code is weak and buggy, or at least with the number of distributors (lineups) and tuners we have. Quote:
Beyond that we'd need to know more details about that situation. You say there are two free tuners, is 200 enabled on those tuners? 100? Quote:
Your second issue should never happen (assuming you have no padding added), but I have a vague recollection of seeing brief conflicts immediately after scheduling a new manual recording until Sage reshuffles the schedule. Back to my knee-jerk reaction, you have a complicated tuning setup, lots of tuners, lots of lineups, and I wonder if what you're seeing is just a case of it taking longer than you're expecting for Sage to reshuffle the recording schedule to account for the new recording request. |
#17
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I have yet to see one of these conflicts come to fruition though. It appears (though I haven't thoroughly investigated) that at least a few networks just stick placeholders out in the future for shows, probably with show IDs in the guide. Since these are not unique, Sage tries to schedule them all, and ends up driving conflicts. However when those airings get closer, the networks seem to update their info, I assume adding specific episode info and switching them over to Episode IDs, at which time Sage knows which ones it needs to record, and the conflicts magically disappear. I know us technical types have a predilection for trying to make sure everything works now and fix everything as soon as possible, but especially with the distant EPG data available and the amount of flux with it, in a way I think expanding Sage's scheduling out to 3 weeks is almost a bad thing. It causes it to try and schedule a bunch of garbage which will end up resolving itself as the guide data is fleshed out as airings get closer. I don't know if this is for everybody, but for me, I check my conflicts to see if they're soon, and if not, I just ignore them and have yet to see one not disappear. |
#18
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My historical practice for dealing with station IDs appearing in more than one lineup has been to disable the duplicating channels so only one can be recorded. For the last few days I have been experimenting with enabling the duplicated station IDs and setting tuner merits to handle our general recording preference. I really dislike the idea of having to change Sage's configuration to force it to choose the channel from the lineup I want, but I'll see whether this is better or worse than what we've been doing for the past decade. Quote:
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While I have a lot of lineups and tuners, my configuration is actually pretty simple from a scheduling point of view. We deliberately avoid any favorites and all shows are manually recorded. The lineups are mutually exclusive. Thus each lineup has a unique set of station IDs, of which none is found in any of the other lineups, and each lineup has an exclusive pool of tuners. All tuners in each pool share exactly the same lineup (no copies or derivatives), and all tuners in each pool can tune all of the channels in the associated lineup. Thus a recording in lineup A should never cause a conflict in any other lineup. But it happens. Quote:
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What is obvious with my configuration is that each lineup can be scheduled independently from the others. That is not how Sage approaches scheduling, but the result should be the same. What is also obvious is that any time interval of the recording schedule separated before and after by non-recording gaps (even if of zero duration), can be scheduled independently from any other time intervals. The apparent Sage "bugs" fall for both of these traps sufficiently often that these do not appear to be flukes. This makes me doubt whether Sage even tries to partition its scheduling into independent pieces that would prevent the examples I offered from ever happening, and obviate the need to completely reschedule everything when a non-interfering recording is added. |
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