A Few Things Beyond the FAQ & Manual

[Pumpkinhead]

Using Sage 2.1. I have 1 tuner and Intelligent Recording is disabled. Autocleanup is at the default. Using Cayers STV 2.1 D. More info in profile. Sage is pretty cool. I'm still trying to understand a few operational details and troubleshoot an intermittent jitter problem. I've read the manual, FAQs, and dozens of threads, but have some comments/questions I would like some feedback on:

1) When watching LiveTV, I sometimes change channel and return to the show I was watching while it is still airing within a minute. Sometime Sage has lost the entire timeshift and starts recording & playing beginning at the Live feed again. If I have been watching the timeshift very far behind the live feed, it a big loss! Othertimes, I can go back and watch from where I was or reverse. Is there a timed or action trigger on this or something? Once I changed channels inadvertantly and lost 20 minutes of something when I returned to the channel of my timeshift! It deleted an hour and a half of a football game today that I hadn't watched yet when I hit stop playback. I read in the manual that LiveTV recordings would be automatically deleted shortly AFTER the program "completed airing." But this certainly isn't the case in my testing.


2) "Don't like" would be very useful if it would remember I dont like a series instead of just a single episode. It's a lot of work to go through every week to manually mark "don't like" on these. Is'nt there a way I can set an entire series to "dont like?" For heaven's sake, this seems like such a basic feature. I just as well never have things like "will and grace" and "Ripley's" showing up in my custom guide (which I set to filter out "don't like.") Is there a way to do this for all future episodes in a series (in the coming months/years) of a series to set to don't like so they never show up in my custom guide and so that they will never be recorded with IR if I enable it?

3) Does Intelligent recording consider you to have "liked" a show if you watched just 2 minutes? I read that in another thread. Sounds unbelievable that 2 minutes would qualify it as a positive influence to IR. I have'nt enabled this yet as I've heard it keeps recording stuff people "don't like."

4) I tried to compress a show within the Cayers STV. But the next morning, it says it was still compressing. But it doesn't appear to have created a new file. So I chose to stop compressing for the show. Not sure if this is Cayers specific or not.

5) When there are interuptions in a program, it splits the show into multiple files. But I found compskip only checks the first file.

6) When selecting a favorite to use the 10PM to 10:59 timeslot, it is showing "10 AM." It always says am when choosing pm slots. I'm not sure if this is Cayers STV specific or not.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[Cayars]

1) If you had 2 tunes this would be a more of a moot point and one channel can be setup to record the show while you surf with the other. If you are watching a show and "know" you want to keep it you should hit the record button so it doesn't get wacked.

2) I've been asking for this feature for about a year now. IR and the system as a whole should be smart enough to flag these for you. I'd also love to be able to tell it never to IR record "sitcoms" for example. Channel Surfing is a bad thing if you EVER intend to use IR.

3) I experiece a negative effect channel surfing while having IR on a system. Not sure how it directly affects it but it sure seems too.

4) Did you install all the other software needed to be able to compress shows? This isn't included out of the box like the local weather, weather suite and commercial skipping are. This part does need additional setup on your part.

5) Never noticed this. Are you manually running com skip on the shows or is it in auto mode. In auto mode it just looks for file and does the skip on them. On the other hand a manual may in fact only do the first show. I'll check on this.

6) That was in the code as I originally "borrowed" it. I can surely fix this in the Cayars.stv however. It's on my ToDo list.

[Opus4]

6) The 'wrong code' was to work around a bug during the 2.1 beta. It is correct now in MalDude2.stv, since the core bug where am/pm were shown incorrectly has been fixed.

- Andy

[Pumpkinhead]

Cayers, thanks for the feedback. Like your STV by the way!

1) It looks like 2 tuners would give some more flexibility, I would probably need to make sure I hit record, or I would have the same problem. The software needs to be more tolerant of human errors and habits - such as changing channels. I'm having a difficult time though keeping up on what I've recorded with just 1 tuner. I can consistently reproduce the problem mentioned. The files disappear from the video folder. It's a real risk to change channels if you are timeshifting. Too bad those 'non-manual" recordings don't stick around until a while after the show stops airing. The manual's description of this function would be a lot better. All that said, it will be less of an issue as I shift more to watching previously recorded favorites, manual recordings, etc.

2) I will start requesting that feature also. It seems like a no-brainer, so you can also get that clutter off the screen that you KNOW you are never going to want to watch.

3) I figured I would enable IR down the road. That was one of Sage's unique features that made me decide to pony up the extra cash instead of going with something free or opensource. I probably won't do much channel surfing once I get everything situated with Sage setup. Still "testing" and such.

4) Oops, I had a feeling. I must have missed that thread, I'll do a search.

5) I noticed it doing a manual comskip using the menu. On my autoscanned ones, they were uninterupted single files.

6) I wouldn't have minded it saying 10AM, except that it doesn't appear that it's going to record the 10PM favorite, there was no white outline around it. It was a local news show without an specific episode ID. When I removed the timeslot setting, the white outline appeared.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Pumpkinhead

Cayers, thanks for the feedback. Like your STV by the way!

1) It looks like 2 tuners would give some more flexibility, I would probably need to make sure I hit record, or I would have the same problem. The software needs to be more tolerant of human errors and habits - such as changing channels. I'm having a difficult time though keeping up on what I've recorded with just 1 tuner. I can consistently reproduce the problem mentioned. The files disappear from the video folder. It's a real risk to change channels if you are timeshifting. Too bad those 'non-manual" recordings don't stick around until a while after the show stops airing. The manual's description of this function would be a lot better. All that said, it will be less of an issue as I shift more to watching previously recorded favorites, manual recordings, etc.

Have you tried this:
seeker/clear_partials_and_unwanted_when_ir_off=false
Remember to completely exit Sage, and stop the service to make properties file changes

[nielm]

Originally Posted by Pumpkinhead

2) "Don't like" would be very useful if it would remember I dont like a series instead of just a single episode. It's a lot of work to go through every week to manually mark "don't like" on these. Is'nt there a way I can set an entire series to "dont like?"

no there is not... But Malores' viewing history (I think) menu allows you to set don't like on all airings of a show both in the past and in the future, which pushes the IR profile of the show name low enough to minimise the possibility of it being selected by IR

[Pumpkinhead]

Have you tried this:
seeker/clear partials_and_unwanted_when_ir_off=false

No, but I considered it. Autocleanup is at default as per my first post. I might be enabling IR down the road anyway.

But Malores' viewing history (I think) menu allows you to set don't like on all airings of a show both in the past and in the future

Hmmmm. Not sure how that's going to set "dont like" on "future" episodes that haven't even been listed yet. But it would be a great new feature to be able to eliminate the "clutter" from the guides so it never shows up again. I only have 10 channels enabled, and it's still a too much to look through. So even if it was'nt a "don't like" setting, it would be nice just to be able to "ban" certain shows from ever being displayed in guides.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by Pumpkinhead

No, but I considered it. Autocleanup is at default as per my first post. I might be enabling IR down the road anyway.
.

Go for the IR. For me, it has gotten better and better. It takes a while for it to learn your habits, but I'm pretty pleased with the results.

And I have three tuners.

[mostlyfodder]

jominor,
do you have multiple tuners working with multiple set top boxes? or is everyone using multiple tuners using the (analog, i think) tuning capability of their tv card? i think that would only allow access to something like 125 channels? i'd love to add more tuners but i've got this damn ir-blaster/set top cable box setup.
-fodder

[mls]

If you're not ready to take the plunge into IR you could just change the line in the SageTV properties file to output a text file that you can look at to get an idea of what IR "thinks" you might like based on what you've been watching/recording so far.

scheduler_export_file=schedule.txt

The file will also list everything that it will (or might) record up as far as SageTV has thought things out. So, it's a mix of what you set it to record, plus what it would also record if using IR.

Although I don't use IR, after a few months of running SageTV I looked at that file it it was almost spot on for all the other shows I would also like to see.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by mostlyfodder

jominor,
do you have multiple tuners working with multiple set top boxes? or is everyone using multiple tuners using the (analog, i think) tuning capability of their tv card? i think that would only allow access to something like 125 channels? i'd love to add more tuners but i've got this damn ir-blaster/set top cable box setup.
-fodder

I normally have 4 tuners online using a set top box with IR blasters. Works the same as without the STB assuming you have your IR blasters setup and working well which can be a pain!

[jominor]

Originally Posted by mostlyfodder

jominor,
do you have multiple tuners working with multiple set top boxes? or is everyone using multiple tuners using the (analog, i think) tuning capability of their tv card? i think that would only allow access to something like 125 channels? i'd love to add more tuners but i've got this damn ir-blaster/set top cable box setup.
-fodder

I have analog cable, sorry.

[mostlyfodder]

Originally Posted by Cayars

I normally have 4 tuners online using a set top box with IR blasters. Works the same as without the STB assuming you have your IR blasters setup and working well which can be a pain!

cayars-

does that mean you've got 4 STB's to go along with those 4 IR blasters? i wonder if it costs much to get a 2nd or 3rd STB from my local cable company.

even though it's not been an issue for me, the first question people ask me about my PVR setup is, "oh that's neat! can you record multiple things at once?" doh!

-fodder

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by mostlyfodder

cayars-

does that mean you've got 4 STB's to go along with those 4 IR blasters? i wonder if it costs much to get a 2nd or 3rd STB from my local cable company.

even though it's not been an issue for me, the first question people ask me about my PVR setup is, "oh that's neat! can you record multiple things at once?" doh!

-fodder

I have 4 cable boxes myself it costs me $5 each for the boxes without buttons and no channel display and $8 each for the 2 with buttons and channel display - per month.

BobP.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by mostlyfodder

cayars-

does that mean you've got 4 STB's to go along with those 4 IR blasters? i wonder if it costs much to get a 2nd or 3rd STB from my local cable company.

even though it's not been an issue for me, the first question people ask me about my PVR setup is, "oh that's neat! can you record multiple things at once?" doh!

-fodder

I think mine runs $3/4 per box and $0.75 for the remote if I want it which of course I didn't since i don't need it. I can't remember the exact cost because I think I have a discount since I have over 10 STBs.

[briands]

Originally Posted by mostlyfodder

jominor,
do you have multiple tuners working with multiple set top boxes? or is everyone using multiple tuners using the (analog, i think) tuning capability of their tv card? i think that would only allow access to something like 125 channels? i'd love to add more tuners but i've got this damn ir-blaster/set top cable box setup.
-fodder

On my cable, even with Digital, All of the channels up to 100 are actually available analog. Hook a cable up to your tv's cable input and see what it will tune. All of those channels should be available without a cable box.