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

[Opus4]

It is some model from GE -- I'm not home at the moment, so I'll have to try to remember to look at it when I return in a few days. I like it because I can assign how it will respond to different caller IDs & give different messages to some numbers. I don't think they make it anymore, though.

- Andy

[silkshadow]

I don't know if anyone will find this useful but I spent some time yesterday customizing Cayar's menu. Bascically, I use Meedio for all the advanced things so I've been wanting a simple menu for just PVR use. Also, I use XMLTV so alot of the guide options are usless to me (not many categories in my guide data). However, Cayars has lots of Sage specific bells and whistles that I wanted. Anyway, maybe it might save someone some time. All the stuff I stripped out can be found in the "Junk Drawer" submenu of "Settings".

[Grey_Goose]

does anyone else find live tv's timebar buggy w/ large amounts of padding?

for example, in live tv, if i stop watching, then resume (sports games), it's as if the watched bar is recalculated minus the padding. so i can't catch up to live tv. waf has plummeted during these nba playoffs when we watch 1/2 the game downstairs then go up to bed & can't finish it or miss chunks as we go to "real" tv...

[davey_fl]

Opus4 love to hear what model of GE that is, I can think of a few people where that would come in handy!

davey

[Opus4]

I continued the answering machine topic here: Caller ID answering machine. (I was going to split the posts from here, but I guess this thread is too large to get that done now.)

- Andy

[vigor]

Is it wise to use / install latest Cayars Test release - Cayars18TestE. In message 2821 he mentions it will timeout eventually requiring you to upgrade.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...postcount=2821

Those who have STV editors perhaps can tell us if the STV can be modified to remove this unfortunate feature or if .stv is compiled and reverse engineering it is not trivial?

[ToxMox]

He was referring to his external commercial detection manager. The STV itself will never time out. So go ahead and use it

[dougrob]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Just a note. The internal does not work fine. It will eventually stop running comskip. For me it was usually within a day or two. Then you have to restart Sage to get it going again. Maybe I'll put the old code from 17 back in there and post a patch to 18E.

Tox,

Have you had a chance to look into a possible patch?

Thanks,

dougrob

[ToxMox]

Patch for what? The CDM? CDM is an external program written by Cayars and nothing can be done to it. AFAIK it will continue to function after it says it expires. Personally I think CDM was not very good. The internal comskip detection stuff is still in the STV but is also a little buggy compared to the internal comskip in v17. I am currently using DirMon to process my Mpegs.

[ddman]

Just a strange note in version 18e. Even if I am watching nothing (using PVR500), I go into LiveTV Guide, click a program and select "WATCH NOW" nothing happens. The only way i can watch a program live is to go back to the main menu, hit liveTV and then manually enter the channel, OR go to the guide and start recording a show, even then, the only way i can switch channels is manually. I could have sworn it was working perfectly yesterday!

Any thoughts??

[cumak]

I apologize if this is covered elsewhere in this thread, but I searched last night and couldn't find what I was looking for.

Can I run CommercialDetect as a stand-alone app on a computer that is not running STV? I have a computer on my network that is idle most of the time so I thought I could use it to run CommercialDetect. I edited the config file to point to my Sage recording directory (using a mapped network drive). When I run "CDRun.bat", CommrecialDetect sees the mpegs but skips over them because it thinks they have been processed.

How does it determine if an mpeg has been processed? Does it just look for the presence of the txt file, or is there more to it than that. Any ideas why it thinks these files have been processed already?

Thanks for your help.

[Crashless]

I would recommend that you use the standard comskip. CommercialDetect was never completely finished, and a number of users reported issues while using it - mainly related to stability.

That said, if you REALLY want to use it, you can use it as you described, and yes, it tells if a file is being processed by another system by checking for that txt file.

If you want an alternative solution, that works similarly on other non-sage systems, look for DirMon. I can't remember the thread off hand, but it is still being supported and developed, while CommercialDetect is not.

edit:

found it:

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ghlight=dirmon

[aberson]

Is it possible that CommercialDetect can cause Sage to crash? I have had no problems with Sage an Cayars18E at all (except being slow) for the past few months, until last week.

I added some RAM, which some some reason caused the EOF bug to start [why I have no clue]. I think during one of those EOF crashes, an mpeg or the wiz.bin became corrupt, and the only way I could get Sage to start up again was to get rid of that mpeg. Now, aside from the EOF problem, Sage seems to be crashing every so often (I'm trying to figure out when/why), and usually I can't restart it again until I delete the partial mpeg file that was left when it crashed... this leads me to believe that it is only crashing during recording, and that maybe it has to do with commercialdetect. Except that somebody mentioned that ComercialDetect doesn't start on a file until it's done being recorded?

I'd rather it be ComercialDetect than a corrupt wiz.bin, because I really don't want to lose all the file data in my current wiz.bin with a completely fresh install...

Adam

[Crashless]

I would take CommercialDetect out of your loop and see if you still get those issues. It's possible that CD is jumping on the file right after sage is done and causing crashes, it's also possible CD is running on the file before you're finished.

Either way, when troubleshooting, always work backwards and remove the last thing you added - have you tried removing the RAM to see if your EOF problems go away? If so, it might be a bad stick of ram.

My system got into a fit of bad mpegs a while back, but it was due to a beta problem with corrupt win.biz files. That issue has since been mitigated - I assume you're running 2.2.8, and not a beta right?

Eitherway, I still recommend DirMon over CD for the reasons I outlined above.

[cumak]

[QUOTE=Crashless]If you want an alternative solution, that works similarly on other non-sage systems, look for DirMon.

I gave DirMon a try and that seems to do the trick. Thanks for the tip.

One more question - in Cayers STV does it read the Comskip txt file only when the mpeg is opened, or does it update occasionally? I was wondering, if I run Comskip on an in-progress recording (an option in DirMon) and I am watching the show time-delayed by 10 minutes or so, will STV update with the most recent commercials and skip them?

Thanks.

[Crashless]

I believe the STV updates it as the file is updated. So if DirMon is running on a file as you watch it, you _should_ see the commercials show up as they are detected. I have not tested this, but I believe that is how it works.

I know some other STVs support this, so it might just need a tweak. The problem is that no one is currently developing this STV, so new feature requests are only being addressed by a couple of people, and even then - they aren't 'official' adds. The latest revision that I'm hosting on my site is 18E. I believe there's another version that was tweaked to allow imports again, but I haven't been given that file to host, so I don't know much about it.

[ddman]

Are there any plans to release the Studio program to allow user development?

[Crashless]

I don't know. Sage hasn't announced their plans for the Studio product.

[ddman]

It seems to me that so many of these projects keep getting abandoned and there is no one to take over.

[Crashless]

I have taken over the Meekell STV and am working on my first release that will include the DVD burning KJake has created. We're really close and should be releasing it very soon.

So there is action 'behind the scenes' so to speak. Stay tuned.