10 things I do hate about SAGE

[chrysek]

Originally Posted by chrysek

even that I like very much STV's I can give it a try, does not hurt.. I think I did try it sometime ago, but I'll do that...

Thank you for your suggestion.

Chris

Yes, I did try it and the same thing happend, as soon as I added some recordings and brought down few times sage I lost any future recordings I've had... Why would that be happening? I just dont get it.. what do I have different than others dont? Would bringing down sage cause such? Just dont understand this...

[chrysek]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I have the exact same Gigabyte motherboard, but of course all the other hardware installed is different. So far, I haven't had SageTV crash or lose anything in wiz.bin. I think the only time I've had that PC crash is when I updated my backup program -- disabled that software & no crashes since. Is 3D enabled in SageTV? If so, try disabling it. Are the video drivers updated? Have you tried some program to stress out the memory to see if that is faulty? (I had my main system start crashing on Dungeon Siege a long time ago & it turned out to be faulty memory that didn't seem to bother any other program.) Just pointing out a few things just in case you hadn't tried them. Also, I have not yet updated java to the 06 version.

- Andy

Andy, my problems did not get introduced with java _06, I started with java version _04. I reinstalled sage countles times, I reinstalled java few times... I have drivers for my PVR-250 that are the latest from the site (they did introduce crashes to my PC, Iactually the earlier version prior to this one where my system would crash and it would be asking for new hardware, then I go to windows restore and everything is fine)

See this is why I was suggesting and did "hate" about sage that there is no section where it would suggest complete configuration so peopl would not have to experiment with...

I will try when I get home to find some test tools to stress my RAM... maybe that is trully giving me problems... I dont use 3d acceleration, I've heard that its causing problems, so I dont use that...

Another thing tha I did try was to start from fresh by installing windows and setting up my computer fresh, just incase if something was in there causing those problems and I had the same issue..

Or maybe I am an idiot and I dont know how to use sage.. but how dificult can it be... nee, I dont think that is a problem... maybe my sage configs have some bad components in there? Maybe I should try fresh to configure everything...

I dont know, it does drive me crazy at points, as I said especialy when my wife does complain that I did spend so much money on that and its not working...

Anyway thanks guys so much for all your help.

[silkshadow]

What do you mean by better? (note both Sage's and BTVs XML handling are user-developed and not supported by Frey/Snapstream)
There is an improved imported being developed...

First, I am in no way dispariging the excellent work done to add XMLTV functionality to Sage (big thanks!). Without that effort I would never have been a Sage customer to begin with.

I am like you nielm, I am in a country where existing epg data is rough and there is no alternatives (I know your pain ). So I am pulling data from Singapre's Star Hub EPG as well as local source. So I would like to be able to create a more cusomized import of data into Sage. For example:

1) my grabber for local channels dosen't have support the sub-name field (yet anyway). So I am dumping the show title (eg. "The Simpsons goto Rome") into the discription field. Since there is no other description given, I would like to be able to map one field to other fields (in this instance 'description' to 'sub-name'.)

2) I am running TV_cat to collate all the various xmls I am scrapping into one. I get errors sometimes and, since I am running a a bat file, I don't always catch this. I would be nice to have an importer that will collate the one EPG from different sources for me. It would be nice to have an importer with a GUI of any kind to be honest. Some way to control the import like BTV has.

3) The daily refresh that Sage does of my EPG dosen't seem to work right. Sometimes it does but I am finding that, once a week, I have to delete my sources in the 'setup wizard' and re-add them to get the epg to update (yes I have tried the adding/removing a channel and other means to force an EPG refresh). I think the problem is the plugin because when I re-add the sources, it takes a couple of tries. What I mean by that is I will choose XMLTV lineup and it will hang on 'importing' the epg. The tough thing is, I know it takes a bit to load all the data, so I have to let it wait for a couple hours before I know it has hung and close Sage and re-try the import.

Bascially, Sage needs to offer full internal support for XMLTV data. A good number of their customers are like us now (not living in the US) and depend on XMLTV data. It makes no sense not to support us directly. Not to mention, this would be a key selling point for Sage: "We are the only company that offers a PVR product that is world compatible". It seems a bit off that every PVR product refuses to support non-US residents. We make up most of the world and it seems pretty simple for a PVR product to support XMLTV data natively (re: MythTV). Especially since XMLTV is now an established world standard for guide data. I am tired of having to: "hack this, install this, mess with this and convert this" to get it working (sorry just went through the MCE procedure to get XMLTV data and its a huge pain). Don't get me wrong, its a huge step from Tivo where I had to reimage the drive, do all sorts of funky things and be denied entry to Tivo Canada which would've made things easier. So I am extremely grateful its not that difficult. Anyway, hope that answers your question .

Edit:

Actually MCE 2005 has single tuner OTA HDTV support using the ATI HDTV Wonder and Fusion cards. This is the main reason I have put Sage on the back burner in lieu of MCE for now.

Thanks for the heads up! Will be ordering an HDTV card today. Hopefully, one of my visiting relatives will carry it to me when they come to visit for Christmas .

[mlbdude]

If Sage were to officially support XMLTV data they could be sued. There was a nasty email setn around by Zap2It warning any of the applications that do support XMLTV natively that they better not be charging for their product.

[matterw]

I kinda of understand where you are coming from chrysek ... I have at least 2-3 lockups a week on my clients -- the server is running near flawless... So, it seems that there is something going on with the Client... I plan on running the diagnostic DOS window, but it's kinda a pain in the a$$ to set up -- I wish there was a diagnostic or debug log that ran behind the scenes and in fact just sent it to Frey!

[nielm]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

If Sage were to officially support XMLTV data they could be sued. There was a nasty email setn around by Zap2It warning any of the applications that do support XMLTV natively that they better not be charging for their product.

you mean this one -- the situation was more complicated than that... Vendors were selling multiple complete systems with a single Zap2It account -- the T+C's of Zap2Its XMLTV service is that any system can use it (paid or free), but the end user must have their own account with Zap2It to access the data...

[chrysek]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

If Sage were to officially support XMLTV data they could be sued. There was a nasty email setn around by Zap2It warning any of the applications that do support XMLTV natively that they better not be charging for their product.

How about plugin for such? See if Zap2It does care about such issue then Sage itself might not need to support it but someone else coupld probably write plugin for it that Sage could use it? Does it sould resonable? Zap2It would then never have any complains to Sage since its not Sage who is releasing it but community... The same way as STV's are released right?

[chrysek]

Originally Posted by matterw

I kinda of understand where you are coming from chrysek ... I have at least 2-3 lockups a week on my clients -- the server is running near flawless... So, it seems that there is something going on with the Client... I plan on running the diagnostic DOS window, but it's kinda a pain in the a$$ to set up -- I wish there was a diagnostic or debug log that ran behind the scenes and in fact just sent it to Frey!

Yes, actually you can enable debugging in config files... Thats what I was told by tech support when I described my problem, so I've sent them my logs. Logs tend to grow big so only enable them if you need them, otherwise if you do they can seriously grow big.

[chrysek]

Originally Posted by nielm

you mean this one -- the situation was more complicated than that... Vendors were selling multiple complete systems with a single Zap2It account -- the T+C's of Zap2Its XMLTV service is that any system can use it (paid or free), but the end user must have their own account with Zap2It to access the data...

That is probably it...

[silkshadow]

Seems the issue is more about creating individual accounts at zap2it? Anyway, I think this is a seperate issue, as XMLTV has nothing directly to so with Zap2It. For example, I do not use Zap2it for my grabber. I use starhub, click the city and Astro.

I do not see how Sage supporting XMLTV imports directly would put Sage in any kind of hotseat with Zap2it. If its an importer, then Sage would be completely hands off in terms of where users got their guidedata. This is a bulletproof legal shield from zap2it. I mean if Kazaa isn't held liable for copyright infringement, then there is no way Zap2it would have any kind of case against Frey.

Anyway, as I understand it, Sage is already paying Zap2it for US guide data (which BTW many of us do not bennifit at all from). Why would anyone in the US use XMLTV with Zap2it if they are already getting native support in Sage? This would only be an issue for Canadian Sage users AFAIK.

[bbroerman]

As for the problems mentioned above, I have the following:

a) If the PC crashes during a record, the SageTVServer will spin at 100% CPU until both parts of the file (the one recorded before the crash, and the part Sage started recording after the crash) are deleted and the server is restarted.

b) If you click on the jump buttons "too quickly", Sage client hangs.

So far, those are the only problems I am having... I like it a lot...BUT:

a) I would like to have the fast forward functionality as described above VERY MUCH

b) It would be nice if the client could use a local tuner for Live TV only, and used a SageTV server for all scheduled recording... This is my big one! If I have multiple clients, I don't want to waste network bandwidth straming live TV around if I don't have to... I already have RG6 in every room for a TV, and I can easily dump a tuner in each set-top box...

[AndyS]

Chrysek,

I also have the Gigabyte GA8-IPE 1000 Pro-G and haven't had any problems with it at all.

Maybe there's some other software that you have loaded that's causing the issues you're seeing?

Andy.

[psychedup]

I've been using SageTV for several months and so far I have no complaints... I tried the trial version of Beyond TV and it crashed everytime I tried to set it up. I upgraded my PC, my tuner card, my video card, BTV still crashed.. I never even got to see what it looked like.

With SageTV, I just clicked Setup, kept hitting Next and it auto-detected my capture card, autoconfigured all my channels and I've never, ever had a problem with it.

As for the FF/REW thing... I have a remote that came with my Hauppauge card - it's the newer version of their remote with all kinds of buttons. I got an irremote.ini file from somebody here, and I can use the >> button to skip a little or the >| button to skip a lot. Usually when a commercial comes on I just hit >| >> once and I'm just about past them.

I will say this too... I don't have such an impressive machine. It's a P-III 866MHz with just under 500MB RAM, I only have about 30 GB of space to keep recordings on. SageTV service runs 24/7 and my CPU usage is always very low - I can't even tell that it's running.

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by chrysek

10 things I do hate about SAGE

1) unstable - crashes
2) GUI gets 100% cpu utilization when wiz.bin has problems.
3) configurations are not in sync when running service mode. sage.properties and SageClient.properties
4) cannot fast forward rewind the same as in tivo (press once it then increases speed by x2, press second time it then increases speed to x4 etc.)
5) when returning from fast forward/rewind it should put you back few seconds/frames back to the recording since human reaction will always be slower than what the actual frame will show.
6) uneasy installation (check Beyond TV, its amazing and simple)
7) sometimes I do loose recording schedule (need to recover wiz.bin again)
8) no HDTV support
9) no strong recommendation on most stable hardware configuration which would prevent any crashes or weird behavior.
10) studio not out and it was promised.

Only a few things I can agree with, a REAL Fast Forward/Rewind instead of jumping frames, I DO NOT want it jumping back a few frames, that's one of the features I hated about my old now retired Tivo! If that is ever added, I would hope that it would be an option. Studio or some other customization method would be the only other thing I can agree with.

Problems with crashing? Sage has been rock solid in that aspect, where BTV pretty much crashed every few minutes right after installing. I don't know how they can possibly dumb the installation down any further? I can care less about HDTV support until I can get HD from Directv later this year. I would think that you can take the hardware they sell as a pretty good recommendation.

I've tried pretty much all of the PVR apps out there and find Sage to easily be the most stable and best that runs on Winblows. The only thing I'd really complain about is Xcard support, I'm using the plugin right now and it's working fine, but Tvedia actually auto detects the xcard and manages to run very smootly with it. Picture from my Xcard blows away the picture from my Radeon 9700Pro.

[technazz]

I must agree about the ff and rew buttons not responding that well. I am too a tivo user and find there buttons very responsive and easy to use.

I am alos havin Sage problems posted in another thread about sage going black and the end of a XVID and Dage.exe is running at 95%. It hapens 15-20% of the time but I have to CTRL-ALT DEL to fix it.

Other than that I love sagetv

Technazz