Major Issues need help please

[nerys]

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then you can burn it
other wise you are just backing up the file on a DVD
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Exactly happily many many dvd players can access and play these backed up mpeg1's just fine :-)

while tv captures are not as high a quality dvd conversions to mpeg1 are high enough a quality that even on a 45" or so TV it looks fine.

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I said you can adjust this
just change it in the properties file from 6 to 12 and 10 to 20
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I will have to hunt for that thanks I had assumed 6x10 was the highest

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no idea what you are talking about here
SageTV runs at my desktop resolution just fine
currently 720p (using DVI to HDMI)
over svideo it will take the desktop resolution and scale it to 480i
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that is not your desktop that is your TV ok now that makes sense

I am NOT viewing sage on a TV I am viewing on a regular old normal monitor at 1880x1400

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I think you are thinking of capture quality
and it can be adjusted, mpeg1 and mpeg2 are different resolutions
mpeg1 is 320x240 (I think) and mpeg2 is 480x480 for SVCD and 720x480 for DVD and program streams
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Negative well aware of what those are I am talking the SAGE TV program the interface on the actual PC doing the recording connected to a normal monitor NO television set involved at any step in the process for me.

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will you be able to see it if it is smaller than that
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Right now its so big I can read it from 10 feet away (as intended I might add) I am INCHES away a 12pt font would be nice for me :-)

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if so make a request to add more lines to the grid
I am sure there is a limit at some point
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I plan to hopefully they will consider it since it should be easy enough to permit but I also need font control.

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if you make the resolution higher
it will make everything smaller
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Negative sage "scaled" all the components so they stayed the same relative size when I upped it to 800x600 so in reality it made everything "bigger" I want to UP the resolution WITHOUT doing any scaling so I can fit a larger grid :-)

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so you can fit more on the screen, correct?
so you can add more lines in the TV guide grid, right?

well then make your desktop resolution higher then?
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hehe my desktop resolution is 1880x1400 whats yours :-) seriously when I make sagr work bigger it auto scaled all its stuff so relatively speaking nothing changes.

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SageTV does display simply the desktop resolution

I can definitely tell the difference when running my TV at 480p (720x480) and 720p(1280x720p)
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480p and 720p in my world do not exist :-) those are TELEVISION resolutions. I am working on a pc and pc monitor with no television. I apologize for that I did not realize that is the angle you were speaking from.

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most guides do not have 10 channels and 3 hours of listing so I am not sure why you are complainning
and what is the big deal with having to page down or to the right anyways???
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because its annoying slow a waist of time and space. I have all this amazing resolution and no way to utilize it.

the larger the grid the more programming I can see at a single glance to determine what I want. I might see something I want and pick it missing something I might want more etc... etc.. etc...

I would love to be able to see 12 hours by the full 65 channels I have on a single screen. that would be heaven :-) I am HOPING I might be able to make something like that with the web server plug in. I figure on a 1024x768 (that is the severs dedicated screen native resolution) 6 hours by 20 channels is easily practical with the proper fonts etc..

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if you do not believe me about any of things I have said in this reply
just ask in the other topic you started "major issues..."
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Was that intended as an insult or cut ?

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cause I am not lying to you and I also have had problems with SageTV so am not saying it is perfect either[/QUOTE]
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Never said you were lying I just did not realize we were talking about 2 different things. I should have realized you were talking Television access but your use of the word desktop confused me but makes sense if you have a computer plugged INTO a television.

but here let me show you what I mean

http://www.nerys.com/stuff/sage/

one is sage in 640x480 mode and the other is the new mode I added 800x600

note relatively speaking nothing changed everything just scaled up to 800x600

I want the sized to remain UNCHANGED so when I scale up sage I end up with space for a LARGER grid density :-)

I apologize for the confusion I should have realized that since sage is targeted at people like you (you being people making HTPC kind of rugs on televisions)

I want sage for the multi tuner support and favorites conflict resolution ability. everything else is fluff to me :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[Opus4]

nerys: the TV resolution kny3twalker is talking about is the same thing as the desktop res; the only difference is the physical type of 'monitor' the UI is displayed on. It was also mentioned earlier that you can use more than 640x480 and 320x240. They just happen to be the 2 res choices you see when you right click on the window title bar. Want it sized to something else? You can resize the window as you would for any other program, you can add res options to the properties file, or you can simply use the Full Screen command to make it use the entire monitor. Want it wide & short? Simply stretch the width farther out. That might help when displaying more EPG grid columns.

The two properties you can change for the LiveTV Grid size have already been mentioned. You can also change the font size -- again: look in the properties file or in the manual. There are several "ui/<some font type>_size" entries. I think the one used for the grid is "ui/base_font_size", but I didn't test it just now to double check. But, most of those fonts are used in multiple places, so changing it will affect more than a single screen. The fact that they are used on many screens is why the documentation doesn't list what screens they affect.

- Andy

[kny3twalker]

Was that intended as an insult or cut ?

no and thats why I said specificly I have had problems as well

Exactly happily many many dvd players can access and play these backed up mpeg1's just fine :-)

wow, what DVD players? I thought you always had to do a .VOB burn so a stand alone DVD player can see the content

I will have to hunt for that thanks I had assumed 6x10 was the highest

this setting I think is for the original STV but may work in Cayars but there also could be a limit never tried a huge grid like that

that is not your desktop that is your TV ok now that makes sense

should be the same thing
HDTVs are really close to PC monitors generally
basically a HD monitor and PC monitor are about the same thing
well without the NTSC tuner(s) and video scalers etc...
and they display resolution very similiar

Right now its so big I can read it from 10 feet away (as intended I might add) I am INCHES away a 12pt font would be nice for me :-)

ok thats tiny
all you really need to do is increase the amount of lines in the grid

hehe my desktop resolution is 1880x1400 whats yours :-) seriously when I make sagr work bigger it auto scaled all its stuff so relatively speaking nothing changes.

how big is your monitor that you can read desktop (not sage) text at that resolution
thats huge
mine are 1280x720, 1024x768 and 1680x1050

ok now I understand (clicked the link)
yes sageTV will only scale everything to the window
I use only fullscreen thats the difference here (and why I was confused)

but SageTV does use your desktop resolution (and you can make the window as large or small as you want)
if you use 1600x1200 as desktop and make the 640x480 window with SageTV it will be bigger than at the 1880x1440 resolution you currently use

you are not going to be able to change that
you are only going to be able to increase the rows and columns
hopefully you can get a STV maker to make an unlimited lined grid for you
since it sounds like you want a huge grid if this is not already available

while tv captures are not as high a quality dvd conversions to mpeg1 are high enough a quality that even on a 45" or so TV it looks fine.

alot of it depends on the source
but I found that VCD tended to be very blocky on high resolution displays (aka HDTVs and pc monitors) that was what I meant by poor quality
but every one sees thing differently
(as we just saw though this conversation)

ui/epg_num_cols=3
ui/epg_num_rows=5

those are the settings you want to adjust
I am not sure if you can pass the 10/6 limit
but you can try
as you can see I do not have that many columns or rows

you will need to close down SageTV all the way including the service if using it
and then edit the properties file
if you using the service
it will the client properties file

you can open it with notepad


you can click edit then choose find then type row
at it will be like the third find next to get the properties you need to change

and sorry did not realise you were running in windowed mode

[nerys]

WOW I can not believe I did not even THINK to try that (grab it and manhandle resize it on the fly) instinct says when there is no "defined" border like sage uses that its a FIXED window size so I just assumed I could not simply grab it and change it

YES on DIGITAL pixel defined high res tv I can imagine MPEG1 would not be so nice. example my mpeg1's look a billion times better on ANY CRT television than they do on a computer screen.

the computer resolution punctuates the compression artifacts (like what you are seeing) while a normal television HIDES them quite effectively :-)

since a HD screen is more like a computer screen you need a more compatible resolution video :-) so yes for that mpeg2 makes sense

as for my resolution I have a trinitron based 21" monitor and I REALLy like high resolutions :-)

my laptop is 1280x1024 and I was really annoyed cause a month later they updated to a new lcd that could do 1600x1200 which I REALLY wanted :-)

HEY it let me do 8x12 for the grid !! started to get too crowded with the huge font so nw to twiggle the font and see how much I can squeeze

I guess there is no way to make the grid consume more of the screen ? ie make the live description area smaller ?

ok font is 15 so I changed it to 9

it was bold which I do not want not sure how to get Normal so I tried actually putting in NORMAL and that worked :-)

set the grid to 10x20 and it worked !! so OI got 5 hours 20 channels

20 is a wee too high since it starts to squish things

I need to find a way to utilize more of the screen for the actual grid and less for description designed properly I could easily get a 10x30 grid on this thing !!

NICE !!!!! you guys rock ! I would never have found these settings on my own also found out that it will let me add BLANK lines in the sage.properties files so I padded these parts to make them easy to find for tweaking :-)

wow with a few tweaks to the STV once they make studio available this could turn out REALLY well in fact it might work to set up a client JUST to take advantage of the 1880x1400 resolution of my main machinemonitor I could easily get my 6 or even 8 hours grid by 40 channels 50+ if I can make the grid use more space !! drool drool drool

is there anyone I can contact to make a slightly modified STV ? there are just a few parts of the Live guide screen I would like modified.

right now the first column is way bigger than it needs to be. make it 1/3 its current width and make the channel info 2 KYW instead of the KYW below the 2

right now it looks like a vertical 3 section split

top part guessing 10% heigt is for the sage title and date/time if that can be made smaller say 5% great

then you have live updated part with show description of whatever your hovering over. that seems to be taking about 30% of the heigth shrink that to 10% tops

then I will have a lot more space for the grid to be expanded !!!

who would I contact about this ie the possibility of someone modding this for me since I can not gain access to the studio ? thats it just the STOCK stv with the live guide modified as such. there are many other things I want modded but they are less important :-)

you guys have been VERY helpful pointing this stuff out to me !! I am SO much happier with a more populated grid now !!! can not wait till my mce500 comes in :-) no more conflcits and having to pick one over the other :-) I placed the order last night !

over 24 hours now not a singe crash not a single missed recording not a single missed minute. this is gonna be Nice !!!!

I still can not believe I never tried to just grab the window and resize it Grrr DUMB DUMB DUMB

to get an idea of what I mean go here again
http://www.nerys.com/stuff/sage/
get the ideal.jpg

that would be pretty close to what I want.

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[nerys]

Oh forgot YES many DVD players will read raw mpeg's right off a disc (never tried OTHER mpg's just mpg1's

Cyberhome does MOST Apex players

AMW portables as well as Polaroid portables play them

most PRIMARY brand players like sony,toshiba,panasonic ect.. do NOT play them.

my favorite is thr cyberhome players. they are crap (break often I get 1-2 years out of a machine) but they are cheap ($30-$40) and they will play almost anything you can shove into them

I am interested in this new DL media since I could fit 8-10 FULL movies on such a disc but I am NOT yet willing to experiment at $10 a disc !!! holly crap is that expensive :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by nerys

right now the first column is way bigger than it needs to be. make it 1/3 its current width and make the channel info 2 KYW instead of the KYW below the 2

right now it looks like a vertical 3 section split

I don' tknow if Cayars changed it back in his STV, but I thought I already pointed you to my MalDude2 STV, where the channel # + name is put on a single line in the LiveTV Guide, instead of 2. I did that so I could have 9-10 rows of channels in the grid. (I think I limit the setting in Detailed Setup -> Custom -> Channel Rows to 10, but as you saw, you can edit the properties file directly to get around that.)

- Andy

[nerys]

hmm I have been staying away from other STV's since they appears to make my system very unstable !! not sure why.

Hmm loaded up your maldud 2 and its not doing anything goofy like it was with the others

will leave it run for a bit and see what happens.

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[nerys]

hey opus would this be possible as an option ?

http://www.nerys.com/stuff/sage/ideal2.jpg

its a really quick and dirty photoshop but I think its good enough to get the idea across.

also when things are enlarged keep that top half the same physical size (height wise) soo all the increase becomes available for the grid. if thats even possible :-)

same thing for upcoming recordings

http://www.nerys.com/stuff/sage/ideal3.jpg

that is roughly how I would design it if I were able to.

Is that doable ?

there are plenty of other place where compression would be nice but these 2 are the "important" places this is where I will be spending most of my "time" in sage.

some other things that would be nice for that upcoming recordings screen.

where the start time is listed move that left and add a STOP time so instead of

Sunday 2/6 1:00PM
have
Sunday 2/6 1:00PM - 2:00PM

also have the Episode title after the show name ? (got the space now) instead of below it !!

also if sage can do this a CANCEL button where if its clicked a confirmation button will appear to verify and you can terminate that ONE single recording without affecting any other or affecting the favorite this is especially important for favorites where I have found no way to get it to skip just one recording that I know I do not want.

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by nerys

hey opus would this be possible as an option ?

http://www.nerys.com/stuff/sage/ideal2.jpg

same thing for upcoming recordings

http://www.nerys.com/stuff/sage/ideal3.jpg

I wouldn't mind customizing those screens a bit, but at the moment I have too much other work to do, so I don't really have the time to do that. BTW: if you are using my STV, you may want to go to Main Menu -> Custom Menus (from malore), where you can get to a much better/more configurable display of upcoming recordings in Recording Schedule... once there, use the Options command to get a dialog where you can customize it. (There are also 3 guides you can customize to see the EPG in a non-grid format, but I don't know if you would like that idea.)

also if sage can do this a CANCEL button where if its clicked a confirmation button will appear to verify and you can terminate that ONE single recording without affecting any other or affecting the favorite this is especially important for favorites where I have found no way to get it to skip just one recording that I know I do not want.

You can already cancel the recording of an individual fav episode by using either the Watched or Don't Like commands on that episode.

- Andy

[nerys]

hey !!! that upcoming recordings set to order by date and 15 rows is REALLY nice !!! I actually do not need it smaller since it seperates by day and I never have more in one day than can fit on the screen. NICE

is there a way to "move" menu items around ? ie create my own main menu so I do not have to drill down menus to get to what I want ? like I would like that custom menu on the main menu , I do not need music jukebox or media library etc...

also something titan did that was nice was allow me to make multiple live guides where the custom ones only had channels I wanted which was nice.

Can I do this with Sage ?

Any idea when the studio will be available to the public ?

this is SOO much nicer now that I have a more populated grid !! its amazing the difference it makes !!

Can not wait till my mce500 comes in (scheduled to be delivered monday !!! :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[nerys]

thanks for the watched tip I did not realize I could do that. I knew it would work but I thought watched would have other consequences I was not aware of (otherwise why not call it cancel :-) either way multiple tuners will resolve 99% of my problems with that kind of thing since conflicts will essentially be a thing of the past :-)

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[nerys]

got and installed the MCE 500 today.

WOW is it NICE !!! installed (added another hard drive while I was in there) booted up windows detected installed the drivers sage saw it went through the add new source really quickly no problem whatsoever no glitches etc.. works like a DREAM !!! 3 Tuners is going to rock. so NICE going to the conflict screen and ..... its empty :-) hehehe

My PVR PCI is giving me grief so I might later when I can afford it put another mce500 into the server and stick the pvr250 in the desktop if I can not get my pvr pci working

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

[salsbst]

You can already cancel the recording of an individual fav episode by using either the Watched or Don't Like commands on that episode.

thanks for the watched tip I did not realize I could do that. I knew it would work but I thought watched would have other consequences I was not aware of (otherwise why not call it cancel :-)

The reason not to call it "Cancel" is because "Watched" is very different from "Cancel". Watched means, "I've seen this already". SageTV will thus not record it. However, if you were to enable intelligent recording, all of those "watched" shows would contribute to SageTV's opinion of you.

I realize that you are not using Intelligent Recording, but I wanted to set the record straight since others who aren't aware of the nuances will read this thread, too.

[nerys]

well I have other issues with watched first it stops recording ALL instances of a program if I make one watched example scifi shows battlestar 3 times twiec friday and then monday when I cancel or set watched MONDAYS episode it also wacks fridays which I DO want :-)

also I need a way for it to auto watch ie to automatically set a program watched all by itself as soon as its done recording. this is because I never VIEW the program from withing sage so it never gets marked as watched and never on the do not record again in the future list :-)

also favorites in the live tv guide anyway to make sage distinguish between favorites that are and are not to be recorded ? it just makes them all white even if they are not to be recorded ?

suggestions?

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/