Two Questions

[RageFury]

Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I'm trying to find a way to make Sage TV start playing live TV when it's started? How do you do it? You start Sage TV and it just goes to the main menu every time.....I'm trying to make an HTPC for my mom, but she isn't savvy - she is still going to use the regular remote with the digital cable box for most stuff, and only a remote with the PC for recording and such.

Also.....I just bought a Hauppauge PVR 250MCE - if I run my cable through it, there is a 2+ second delay whenever I change a channel, bring up the menu, anything like that. (not in Sage TV, but the actual cable TV menu) Is that normal? Hauppauge support says all hardware encoders do that....sounds like BS to me.....

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by RageFury

Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I'm trying to find a way to make Sage TV start playing live TV when it's started? How do you do it? You start Sage TV and it just goes to the main menu every time.....I'm trying to make an HTPC for my mom, but she isn't savvy - she is still going to use the regular remote with the digital cable box for most stuff, and only a remote with the PC for recording and such.

It always starts at the Main Menu. You could assign the "Live TV" or "TV" command to a button on teh remote -- just press the button & live tv will start. Better yet, teach her how to do scheduled recordings & Favorites, then she can just go to SageTV Recordings and watch her favorite shows whenever she wants to & skip live TV.

Also.....I just bought a Hauppauge PVR 250MCE - if I run my cable through it, there is a 2+ second delay whenever I change a channel, bring up the menu, anything like that. (not in Sage TV, but the actual cable TV menu) Is that normal? Hauppauge support says all hardware encoders do that....sounds like BS to me.....

See another thread on the same topic here .

- Andy

[RageFury]

I looked at that other topic......so what you're telling me is, all the TV Tuner manufacturers out there that make hardware-encoding tuners have idiots working for them? They can't figure out how to make on-the-fly encoding? What the hell kind of crap is this!

[ruel]

re: the 2-second delay. this is called channel changing latency. you may also see this effect with digital cable when changing channels -- even without a dvr. i also always thought that the sagetv 2-second delay was long when changing channels but you can get used to it and i don't notice it anymore. the other message thread seems to indicate you can shorten it to 1 second -- so i may want to try that. when i was only using the creative software that came with my creative videoblaster digital vcr card, the delay was only 1 second and wasn't really noticeable. with snapstream beyondtv 3.4.4, you can adjust the channel changing latency down to 0.50 seconds but only down to 0.75 in beyondtv 3.5. you have the delay if you have a pvr/dvr because it is apparently needed, or is a side effect, for being able to do rewind and pause when watching "live" tv. if you are only watching recorded tv and not changing channels watching live tv, then you won't care about the delay because recorded tv is delayed for your "personal viewing time zone" anyways. you will notice the delay also if you put a regular tv set next to your system and turn each to the same channel to watch "live" tv and you can time the echo effect you'll hear because of the delay. you may even want to try this the next time when you go to an electronics store and watch a tivo-connected tv and another tv set side by side on the same channel watching "live" tv. you should get your menus right away i would think and not see this delay when changing regular menus. if you want real-time channel changing without the latency delay, but still want a pvr of sorts, then there's always the showshifter software but when you record then their software is more like a vcr without the pause-and-rewind that you can do with "live tv" on a pvr.

ruel