STV: Cayars17 Ultimate STV (Release 17 - Jan 18)

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by pciccone

Also should note. If you enable "xcard plugin" say - by accident but dont have an xcard its a very bad idea. Since ---- You cannot disable it even if you select "disable"

I have to restore my old sageclient.properties file as I could not find every occurance of change. Fonts got all weird and I lost the ability to go full screen. - Just FYI

This worked just fine on my machine when I tested for this (no Xcard in my test machine). It just ignored the plugin settings.

BTW, there are only two items added to the properties file for this. A simple search should find them.

I'm going to test this again. I wonder if there's an easy way to determine if an Xcard is present in the system, anyone know?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Cayars

I wonder if there's an easy way to determine if an Xcard is present in the system, anyone know?

The easiest way I know of is to look at the back of the box, or perhaps even open the case & look.

- Andy

[Crashless]

Originally Posted by Cayars

I'm going to test this again. I wonder if there's an easy way to determine if an Xcard is present in the system, anyone know?

I wonder if there's a file/folder that you could look for on the system. Maybe a 'C:\Program Files\xcard' or something.

[mattress]

is there a way to bring up the old "LiveTV Guide" when I press the guide shortcut (ctrl+X) instead of the new one which looks like just a description at the bottom of the screen?

[kny3twalker]

BTW, in message 2380 "cause currently I am not using your STV".

well not using an STV currently unless you consider the original an "STV"

I have been keeping them as update to date as possible except that weird one made by that company

mostly I really found I like malores the best but still only switch to it for the advanced features right now

I am waiting to see what is going to happen with playback

I get smooth playback for quite a while then weird little pauses and such
and if I let SageTV play for a long time
then call up the OSD
it acts like it is going to crash
all freezing up for a sec

and forget about 1080i
stutter, microstutter, microstutter, microstutter, stutter

I need something a little more stable before playing with the big toys

if you want to encourage me over
get a nice set of display icons
all the same format and same style
all the STVs are still so plain
even with all the great features
just setup is not secure

[tabletsage]

Hi Cayars,

First thanks for the great STV.
Quick question, in the earlier version 17 beta release notes you said that the PVR 350 EOF problem is fixed, however I noticed that it's not in the final release notes for 17.
I tested it after updating and still had the hard crash. The delete menu popped up, the machine slowed to a crawl and when I chose Delete, Watched, Like, the computer restarted. Is this actually fixed and I didn't do something right, or is it not fixed in this version?

Thanks for any help.

[bebanovich]

Originally Posted by robert griffin

I programed the blue button on my remote to shut down SageTv and then restart it. Every now and then I start having videos lock up. REstarting SageTV fixes the problem. But since I don't have a keyboard or mouse hooked to the PC, it forced me to do a complete reboot. By reprogramming the blue button, I can easily shut down SageTV and restart it without having to get off of the couch. It has been a real time saver. But if ComSkip is running, SageTV won't start back up.

As a suggestion, is there a way that ComSkip can be closed if SageTV is closed. If you grab the Window Handle of ComSkip when it is started, You can use the Window Handle to find ComSkip and you can easily close ComSkip when SageTV is being closed. Just a suggestion.

Thanks.

Robert.

Nice idea, Robert. I'm now about 3 STV features and 1 divorce attorney away from never leaving my couch

I don't know what you programmed your remote to do, exactly, but your post inspired me to write a little batch file to handle this job. I added it to my Information/Other menu in Cayars.

The file "restart.bat" contains the following:

TASKKILL /F /IM SageTVClient.exe /T
TASKKILL /F /IM comskip.exe /T
START C:\StartMVPClient.lnk
exit

If you are not using a client, (obviously) use "TASKKILL /F /IM SageTV.exe /T" instead. "C:\StartMVPClient.lnk" refers to the shortcut I put on my C: drive to start SageClient w/ MVP support - substitute your shortcut path here. The command to taskkill comskip will generate an error in the console window if comskip is not running, but it seems to function just fine (and exit will simply close the console window). I am not much of a programmer/coder . . . does anyone know if I might face any problems causing Sage and Comskip to end using Taskkill?

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by bebanovich

Nice idea, Robert. I'm now about 3 STV features and 1 divorce attorney away from never leaving my couch

I don't know what you programmed your remote to do, exactly, but your post inspired me to write a little batch file to handle this job. I added it to my Information/Other menu in Cayars.

The file "restart.bat" contains the following:

TASKKILL /F /IM SageTVClient.exe /T
TASKKILL /F /IM comskip.exe /T
START C:\StartMVPClient.lnk
exit

If you are not using a client, (obviously) use "TASKKILL /F /IM SageTV.exe /T" instead. "C:\StartMVPClient.lnk" refers to the shortcut I put on my C: drive to start SageClient w/ MVP support - substitute your shortcut path here. The command to taskkill comskip will generate an error in the console window if comskip is not running, but it seems to function just fine (and exit will simply close the console window). I am not much of a programmer/coder . . . does anyone know if I might face any problems causing Sage and Comskip to end using Taskkill?

The only issue killing the Client & comskip I can think of is if comskip is processing program it'll leave the partially processed files in the video directory. (I've manually killed comskip more than once ) Simple to view video dir sorted by date/time to find & del them, they'd be the last created. Also v18TestA has deleting partial comskips added to the maint menu BTW. I've seen it there but haven't tested it yet. Personally I'm much more hesitant to force Kill SageTV on Server... but then I don't screw around with it, Clients yes, Server no!

[Cayars]

Actually this option is in the released version of 17 also, so it's allready available to the masses.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by mattress

is there a way to bring up the old "LiveTV Guide" when I press the guide shortcut (ctrl+X) instead of the new one which looks like just a description at the bottom of the screen?

Yes, check out the options for Mini-Guide in Detailed setup->Interface-OSD Options.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by tabletsage

Hi Cayars,

First thanks for the great STV.
Quick question, in the earlier version 17 beta release notes you said that the PVR 350 EOF problem is fixed, however I noticed that it's not in the final release notes for 17.
I tested it after updating and still had the hard crash. The delete menu popped up, the machine slowed to a crawl and when I chose Delete, Watched, Like, the computer restarted. Is this actually fixed and I didn't do something right, or is it not fixed in this version?

Thanks for any help.

I think it was more of a false sense that it was fixed. I don't have a 350 so this is very hard to "fix/workaround" for me.

However, ToxMox has an extra 350 that he is loaning me to do some testing. So very soon, I will have a 350 to do some playing/testing and hopefully find a good solution/work around for it.

[Jkimmell]

Cayars,

Is there a way to add a resume feature to the DVD player? I know TheaterTek has this and a lot of the consumer DVD players have it too.

I had partially watched a DVD and closed it to watch something else. Later I wanted to resume watching where I left off. It would be nice to have the option to Play from the beginning or resume from the last point.

Would this be possible?

[Cayars]

Good question Jkimmell. I don't know if this is possible or not but I'll look into it. My gut says it's not possible using native SageTV info.

[pciccone]

Originally Posted by Cayars

This worked just fine on my machine when I tested for this (no Xcard in my test machine). It just ignored the plugin settings.

BTW, there are only two items added to the properties file for this. A simple search should find them.

I'm going to test this again. I wonder if there's an easy way to determine if an Xcard is present in the system, anyone know?

Curious, it was the only change I made. As soon as I enabled it the fonts got super small on the screen, color changed a bit and I was not able to go full screen any longer.

I found the two java class references and changed them back, the font went back to normal but full screen still did not work. I could have checked my backup config line-by-line but it was easier for me to just restore the properties file back.

[broderp]

Old issue from v16, still in v17:

* When using the OEM style TV guide (or bringing up any menu that has transparency) AND while using "video background" option, the transparency shading changes from a semi-transparent color to a bunch of what appears to be tiny vertical lines filling the boxed area. In fact the entire "overlay" looks rather crappy and not as clear to read. I back to v16 same thing. Back to 14...problem fixed. ??? I tried adjusting the size and position of the menu as well as reset to factory defaults and still the same thing.

New issues with V17:

*I was looking through the detailed setup menu and saw that my "3D" option was set to DISABLE. I tried to "enable" it, and it will not switch over, in fact it locked my PC for a bit. I thought I should be able to enable this (I think I have in the past, my video card should be adequet. (ATI AIW 9600XT) I rebooted and checked again, same thing.

*This one scared the pee-pee out of me, and I can't seem to find the cause. (but it's only on v17) I installed V17, as I always have. (Just the stv and the corefiles). and as long as I'm using a MENU, example the LIVE TV GUIDE, or have the MAIN MENU on screen or even the OSD, I have video. As soon as I select a channel or the OSD times out, my video BLACKS OUT!!! I still get sound. I re-start the OSD or MENU and the video re-appears BUT it only appears WITHIN THE AREA OF THE OSD OR MENU, NO WHERE ELSE! Example, if I press the pause button and the OSD pops up, the video will be located only in the area occupied by the OSD, the center part is still BLACK.
It still does it once in while, but not every time.

I hope this makes sense, and if these are issues, I hope you can address them.

COMMENTS:

Also...below the selection of STV, there is a 'REMOVE" selection. What is this for and how does it work?

How do I make the colors on the Live TV GUIDE less transparent? Seems like I recall the sports was green, movies were aa redish color, etc.....what are the new colors and how come they are so transparent I can barely see them? It this something that can be changed or addressed?

FINALLY, I read in post 2394 you were going to remove COMM SKIP in a future STV!!!!!!! WHY???????? When it works, it makes watching TV so much better! (works 75% of the time, and on background mode. It fails 90% of the time if I enable it while watching the video to be processed.)

[mbrown3]

Originally Posted by broderp

FINALLY, I read in post 2394 you were going to remove COMM SKIP in a future STV!!!!!!! WHY???????? When it works, it makes watching TV so much better! (works 75% of the time, and on background mode. It fails 90% of the time if I enable it while watching the video to be processed.)

I didn't read it that way...I thought it just meant moving to an "out-board" process, but maybe I've got the wrong of it. I agree, it's one of the most useful features ever on a PVR (along with basic RW/FF/Pause).

[Cayars]

ComSkip isn't going anywhere any time soon. What I meant was this.

Instead of the STV managing the process it would be moved outside the SageTV process and managed by there (maybe a service). This would allow me to do several things including:
1) Letting you have every machine on your network processing mpgs regardless if they have SageTV installed on not. (distributed processing)
2) Allowing SageTV itself to run faster and not have to monitor ComSkip via an interpreted language with spawn processes.
3) Allows Sage to be shutdown and restarted without care if Comskip is running or not (this is a problem now).
4) Allows better/more reliable checking of the comskip process.
5) The service could monitor the file system for new files and immediately start processing them for much closer to TRUE ComSkip detection. Especially nice if you have a few capture cards AND other computers on your network. You could probably keep up in real time.
6) With an outside process doing the ComSkip work I could have the STV "talk" to it and have much better "throttling" control over the ComSkip process. For example ComSkip could be working full bore but as soon as you start to view a movie (CPU intensive) it could "freeze" the state of ComSkip so it would take 0% of the CPU and then immediately let ComSkip go back to full bore processing as soon as you are done viewing a movie. This would work really well on under powered machines.
watch things like CPU
7) Similare to the above, I could have the "service" watch CPU and HDD IO and throttle back or stop ComSkip processing when certain thresholds are exceeded. This would be nice for "other" computers on your network.
8) etc, etc

I just pulled these ideas off the top of my head but hopefully it gives you an idea or two why I'd like to move the process outside SageTV.

[mbrown3]

Great! That's what I thought/hoped. I read it exactly that way, and am glad that that's what you meant! Great, great stuff here Carlo...keep up the good work.

[broderp]

Originally Posted by Cayars

ComSkip isn't going anywhere any time soon. What I meant was this......

I just pulled these ideas off the top of my head but hopefully it gives you an idea or two why I'd like to move the process outside SageTV.

[Stuntman]

Maybe this is obvious.. but I want to be certain I understand this..

1) Comskip can use CC to help it determine when commercials are being played.. Right?
2) CC can only be embedded into the capture if the CCinDVD registry entry is modified.. Right?
3) CC can then only be captured within the video if the "Default" recording quality is one of the "DVD" types... Right?

Since I have not done anything to my registry and I record in "Great" quality mode... Am I correct to assume I am not getting the CC benefit for my Comskipping?

Thanks!