SageTV always recording?

[fiveirondraw]

Hi guys,
I just bought a PVR150 and I am deciding on whether or not to keep it. I have installed SageTV and got it working ok, but when I choose to "watch now" from the Live TV Guide, it starts recording. Every show I "watch" does this. Any ideas???

[Opus4]

See this FAQ entry. Using hardware encoders, SageTV always records what you watch.

- Andy

[stanger89]

Yup, that's the way all PVRs work. They don't play anything live, even "Live" TV is a recording, that's so you can pause, rewind etc. The thing different about Sage is that instead of using a circular buffer (like all other PVRs AFAIK) it records each show to it's own file.

And Sage will clean up the LiveTV files on it's own.

-edit

I see Andy beat me to it.

Another though, and take this as my (and many other's) personal experience (some people take this a criticism)...
I think you'll find that as you get used to the PVR way of watching TV, you'll get to the point where you never watch "Live" TV. The statements like "Tivo changed the way I watched TV" and "Tivo changed my life" are very true. I almost never watch LiveTV anymore (aside from the weather channel) I let Sage take care of recording everything I want to see and watch it when I want. Even if something is on right now, and I'm around, I usually either watch it later or wait a while so I can skip past commercials.

[DRM2PVR]

While I'm new to SaveTV, I have used many other HTPC applications. This is the first one I have come accross which (by default) has time shifting enabled and no way to turn it off. I know this for fact because my lowest end system uses a Pentium 3 750 Mhz which stumbles Live TV if the TV tuner card tries to record at the same time. I find it quite annoying that I can not turn it off. Those people running lower end systems can benifit from looking around at other options until this gets fixed.

[mlbdude]

There is NO PVR application using a hardware encoder that does not record Live TV. The drivers for the cards themselves work this way.

There may be applications out there that record TV using a software encoder, but those are not serious PVR apps.

[DRM2PVR]

I think the problems people experience with this are the writing to the hard drive rather than strickly storing it in temporary memory. Once you start writing to the hard drive in older systems, it gets more intensive and visual perfomance can degrade.

[mlbdude]

Until the manufacturers of the hardware encdoers change their drivers to work that way, writing to the HD is how it will be.

There are applications that use software encoders you can try that can do this but if you are using SageTV you probably don't have one.

[DRM2PVR]

Perhaps we are speaking of different scenarios? My Hauppuage WinTV software with my PVR 250 as well as the LeadTek WinFast software with my PVR 2000 both view live broadcasts without hitting the hard drive at all - at least not unless you activate time shifting manually. The same is true for the other seven mainstream HTPC applications I'm evaluating which leverage the tuners in these two cards. Can you eloborate a little more so I can fully understand the difference with SageTV?

[stanger89]

It's been a very long time since I used WinTV 2000, but IIRC it uses an 8MB (or so) circular buffer.

The primary difference with Sage is that it is always timeshifting. Hardware encoders always output an MPEG stream and it has to go somewhere, that means either HDD or ram. And since we're talking upwards of 5.6GB/hour it's just not practical to go to ram.

Secondly, the 8Mbps (1MB/sec) or so of data shouldn't tax even the most lowly of systems, I know people here are running Sage on PIII and VIA Epia systems.

[DRM2PVR]

Hmmm, I see. While I'm not exactly sure of why my low end system glitches during hard drive access, it is by no means isolated to SageTV. I'm actually quite fond of the interface but have yet to get a smooth live playback from it as I have with others. I was hoping the timeshifting was somehow configurable through a reg hack but see now that this is a core architecture change. Thank you all for your input. I plan on making some motherboard changes to my low end system and running the tests again to be completely fair. My current configuration consists of the following for those interested:

Hardware:
Intel p3 750, 512MB ram, Three Ultra ATA/100 - 5400 RPM 20Gb drives
Leadtek WinFast PVR 2000 PCI
Hauppauge PVR250 PCI

Software:
Windows XP Professional sp2 - all patches
Direct-X 9c


PS - Everything runs great on my P4 3.2GHz with 1GB ram

[stanger89]

What's the chipset in the PIII system?

Oh, and one other thing, if you pause for a second or skip backward does it play smooth?

[Opus4]

Your HD glitches could be due to using a small cluster size on the partition -- 64K cluster size is recommended so that the drive can keep up with reading/writing the data chunks even when the drive is fragmented.

I'm one of the ones who used a p2-400 with 2 tuners -- recording 2 shows at once & playing 2 others all at the same time (played shows on the server & client)... hard drive usage was not an issue with an ATA/100 controller, 64K cluster size, and an ata/66 drive.

- Andy

[DRM2PVR]

Thank you Andy! Changing the NTFS partition over to a 64k cluster formatting solved the glitching problems entirely. So well, that I'm tempted to try running this on a P2 550 (theres nothing worse than having a stack of antiquated hardware begging to be used for something). Also, thanks for linking the Hauppauge remote help in your signature - it answered my next curiosity as well. Of all the HTPC forums I've posted to for product support, this is definately the most responsive and knowledgable!

[Opus4]

Just remember that a slower cpu like that p2-550 will need either hardware decoding or a low bit rate recording quality. The only reason my p2-400 was usable for playback was because I used hardware decoding. (Recording is no problem, since that is done in hardware anyway.)

- Andy

[Abev107]

Why does Sage *have* to record everything? I can find any reason why it *has* too. I guess it's possible that it wont work if this feature isnt enabled, but programatically speaking how could that be possible?

This guy's a little agitated with Sage, so much so that I got it a bag of coal for Christmas.

First off, if it's a choice between recording live tv and not, well let me choose if I want that. If it doesnt record all the time then then user cant pause live tv. But if I am pausing live TV 45 mins into an hour show, why do I need to record minutes 1 thru 44??? How hard is that to write? Could it be more than a simple If...Then somewhere in the code?

Yeah I agree it's my fault for having only a 60gb HD. And yes its my fault for filling up the HD. I am quite angry tho that while watching a 2hr 20 min movie that the HD ran out of space at 2:05...then Sage froze...then Sagecrashed...then lost all my favorites...blah blah blah

[mlbdude]

It is technically possible for Sage to cache as little as a few MB's when watching TV. It is a design decision to do it the way they do. It ends up giving their product more flexability and more features. It also bothers a few people. Just the path they have gone down really - can't please everyone.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Abev107

Yeah I agree it's my fault for having only a 60gb HD. And yes its my fault for filling up the HD. I am quite angry tho that while watching a 2hr 20 min movie that the HD ran out of space at 2:05...then Sage froze...then Sagecrashed...then lost all my favorites...blah blah blah

If you are using a single drive with a single partition, I would suggest changing how SageTV is set to make use of disk space -- perhaps set it to something like Diskapace Rule: "Leave Free", Diskspace (GB): "5GB" or some such number. If it is allowed to use all the space on the drive, yet other processes may also be using that space, SageTV may start a recording thinking that it had enough space & then run out due to some being used by some other program.

It will cycle through shows, automatically deleting old/lower priority recordings to make space for new shows: see Appendix C in the v2.1 manual, starting on p. 187. It shouldn't run out of space unless it is told to use more space than is actually available.

- Andy

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by Abev107

... I am quite angry tho that while watching a 2hr 20 min movie that the HD ran out of space at 2:05...then Sage froze...then Sagecrashed...then lost all my favorites...blah blah blah

I'm not sure how that can happen unless you are filling the harddrive by other means than SageTV at the same time SageTV is recording. I think SageTV checks for available space before it starts recording, and if more space is needed, then it will delete a low priority show to make room for the new show. I'm not sure what SageTV wold do if you set all shows to never delete though. That would be intersting to find out.

As for the timeshifting thing, I agree that they should've designed it so that it is an option to turn timeshifting on or off. Or, have the option to add a second tuner as LiveTV only, meaning this tuner will not be doing any recording when it is set as LiveTV only, which is basically timeshifting off. Why have this option, I'll explain below this quote.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Another though, and take this as my (and many other's) personal experience (some people take this a criticism)...
I think you'll find that as you get used to the PVR way of watching TV, you'll get to the point where you never watch "Live" TV. The statements like "Tivo changed the way I watched TV" and "Tivo changed my life" are very true. I almost never watch LiveTV anymore (aside from the weather channel) I let Sage take care of recording everything I want to see and watch it when I want. Even if something is on right now, and I'm around, I usually either watch it later or wait a while so I can skip past commercials.

This is true for most TV shows, but not true for live events that are on TV such as a football or basketball game. Most people who watch these sort of events DO NOT want to watch it later on a recording, they want to see it as it happens. So again, a LiveTV Only option would be great. And it is an option, thats what it's all about, giving user the option. Like my web browser, it has a pop up blocker, but it can be turn on or off, it is an option. I hardly ever turn it off, maybe once in a long while when it blocks something it should'nt have, but the point is I CAN turn it off if i want to, it is my option.

[kny3twalker]

live sporting events are not a good example though because of their length
you most likely to pause to get a drink or whatever

and they buffer a entire show so you can record it at anytime during the show as long it has been watched from the beginning

you would want to mess with turning timeshifting off and then turning it on just incase you want to record an entire show

harddrive space is getting really cheap
I see small 80 GB drives for 20-30 dollars after MIR
and 200 GB many times for 50 after MIR

I use to post them every Sunday
I can do this again if it will help

[ih574]

I just upgraded from 2.0 to 2.1. In 2.0, I could right-click on the screen of something that was "Watch Now." I got the option "Close File." Choosing "Close File" stopped the program, returned me to the menu, and stopped recording. Going back to "LiveTV Guide," there were no colored borders around the show I was watching. Also, the file size in Windows Explorer stopped incrementing. This behavior was especially useful to stop recording when I was finished viewing live TV and didn't want to record anymore. It was also useful when I wanted to be sure the Sage Server was not using my single tuner. Therefore, I was free to use a remote client without the concern that the tuner was in use by some recording on the sever.

With 2.1, the "Close File" Option is still there but it never stops recording. The best I can do is wait out the recording on whatever I chose to "Watch Now" or turn off and restart Sage. Why doesn't 2.1 just work like 2.0 did? 2.0 seemed to be the most intuitive way.

Tom C.