Noob Setup Help

[albany]

I'm new to Sage and have not had a good look at the forums yet but thought I would ask basic stuff before I look further. Will all this work:

Sage TV
PVR350
Power DVD
NTL Pace Cable Digibox (scart--->s-video, and audio connection to card)
USB UIRT
Creative Audigy Card feeding 5.1 speaker set

Concerns:

1. There is a known issue referred to on the Hauppauge site between their cards and playback software such as Power DVD. Will this work in Sage without messing around?

2. Is the USB UIRT easy to setup for the non-programming minded.

3. I'm in the UK so can Digiguide be used as an EPG or is something else suggested.

Thanks for any help.

[krutaw]

Originally posted by albany
I'm new to Sage and have not had a good look at the forums yet but thought I would ask basic stuff before I look further. Will all this work:

Sage TV
PVR350
Power DVD
NTL Pace Cable Digibox (scart--->s-video, and audio connection to card)
USB UIRT
Creative Audigy Card feeding 5.1 speaker set

Concerns:

1. There is a known issue referred to on the Hauppauge site between their cards and playback software such as Power DVD. Will this work in Sage without messing around?

2. Is the USB UIRT easy to setup for the non-programming minded.

3. I'm in the UK so can Digiguide be used as an EPG or is something else suggested.

Thanks for any help.

The answer to your first question is about all I can give, as I'm not in the UK, and I don't have the USB UIRT.

The short answer is that there is no configuration in any PVR software that won't require some "messing around" to get it working right.

The longer answer is that you've picked one of the heavy hitters as far as hardware problem-children (PVR-350) and unfortunately, there's not quite enough information here to determine whether it's going to work.

Okay, so there are known incompatibilities with the PVR-350 not working with some motherboard chipsets (not just SAGETV, I've had problems with others as well.) The real question about the PVR-350 is, what chipset are you using? People have had some success with the intel 815 and alot more success with the nForce2.

[albany]

Thanks for the response. I heard there were some problems with PVR350 and the odd VIA chipset but I am on the NForce3 chipset on an AMD754 board.

Have not bought the card yet. Researching to see if it is worthit.

[dadams]

Just thought I would let you know that I have a Chaintech Nforce3 board with a PVR-350 and I don't have any problems. I don't know about using the USB UIRT.

[albany]

Originally posted by albany
Thanks for the response. I heard there were some problems with PVR350 and the odd VIA chipset but I am on the NForce3 chipset on an AMD754 board.

Have not bought the card yet. Researching to see if it is worthit.

thx that's reassuring

[kny3twalker]

I would look into Sonic Cineplayer or TheaterTek just because the decoders support VMR9 which powerDVD does not

both programs use the same decoders(cineplayer and TheaterTek)

you will have to use XMLTV to set up the Guide in SageTV

unless you plan on playing video games the M audio cards seem to much more popular for music and DVDs

also the USB UIRT should be fairly easy to setup in sageTV as a IR blaster for it is natively supported

finally you cannot use the pvr 350 very easily for DVDs

you will need to use the svideo on the graphics card for the easiest setup

[turak]

Originally posted by kny3twalker


also the USB UIRT should be fairly easy to setup in sageTV as a IR blaster for it is natively supported

Just remember that you have to teach the uirt the IR codes with the remote for your cable box to use it as an IR blaster. The built in codes are for the actisys. I would recomend getting an IR emitter from smarthome.com ($12) to plug into the uirt. This will allow you to position the uirt for receiving signals from your remote to control sagetv.

IR blaster - http://www.smarthome.com/8170.HTML

[nielm]

Originally posted by albany
3. I'm in the UK so can Digiguide be used as an EPG or is something else suggested.

No, Digiguide cannot be used with Sage.

It's xmltv only for a data source I am afraid (www.xmltv.org) which, for the UK, is fast-ish, but with too little information, or very slow with full information and the listings info is never perfect, but it does work...

More info is in the UK forum.. see this post for example
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=6191

(recent digiguide discussion here: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=6991 )
(XMLTV howto for US listings in 1.4.10, which needs some minor modifications for UK listings in 2.0.20 here: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...=9277#post9277 )
(more XMLTV information linked in these posts by me:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...1592#post41592 )

[albany]

Originally posted by nielm
No, Digiguide cannot be used with Sage.

It's xmltv only for a data source I am afraid (www.xmltv.org) which, for the UK, is fast-ish, but with too little information, or very slow with full information and the listings info is never perfect, but it does work...

More info is in the UK forum.. see this post for example
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=6191

(recent digiguide discussion here: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=6991 )
(XMLTV howto for US listings in 1.4.10, which needs some minor modifications for UK listings in 2.0.20 here: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...=9277#post9277 )
(more XMLTV information linked in these posts by me:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...1592#post41592 )

Thanks for your help. Unfortunately for UK users there does not seem to be an ideal software package. They all seem to have their pros and cons.