dual source support on the PVR 250?

[geekgr]

Any plans to support both the tuner and the video inputs on the PVR250 as indepedent sources?

I have both cable and a SAT box that could be connected on the same PVR card, however there is no way to do that with the current software (1.2.8)

Thanks

[Narflex]

You can just add a source twice to that capture card, one for RF one for S-video.

[mogrinz]

Wait a minute - I just noticed this thread. Are you saying that the PVR-250 (and 350, I assume) can simultaneously support recording from the cable and s-video ins?

So, my 1 tuner system is actually a 2 tuner one (technically, my cable box being tuner #2)

[dkardatzke]

No, it can only record one source at a time. SageTV just allows you to set up two sources using one tuner card to accomodate different connections.

[CUTIGER91]

If I connect a cable directly to the tuner for non-digital channels and connect my cable box via the s-video, how will I be able to tell Sage which to use to record? If I tell it to record a non-digital channel, will it default to the tuner?

I would love to use this feature to record regular TV, but still be able to view digital channels on my TV (through a different input - not through Sage). Then, the only time I would not be able to watch digital TV is if I am recording a digital channel through Sage.

BTW, this is a GREAT product already and seems to get better every day. Thanks.

[dkardatzke]

The only way to specify would be to remove any non-digital channels from the Cable box source. Make sure you have unique channels on both sources so you'll always know which source is being used.

[mangriotis]

This setup is exactly what I have currently. I have DirecTV coming into PVR-250 via S-Video and cable signal coming through the rf connector (RG-6). This way I record everything that isn't digital (or HBO) via the cable signal and can still watch digital channels. It automatically changes channels if something is being recorded via the Satellite...

This setup works very well for me.

[lido]

With the Dish setup - do you do svid out to svid in on the 250 ?

What about the sound? Do you go in on the 250 for that ? or into the sound card on the machine? Or do you go straight from the Dish box to your reciver and bypass the htpc completely?

-L

[dkardatzke]

The sound needs to go in on the PVR250 because it gets encoded with the Video.

[mangriotis]

For the cable source, both sound and video come through RG-6. For dish, sound comes in on 1/8" stereo jack and video through S-Video....

[CUTIGER91]

I tried this, but every time I tried to "Add or Modify a Source" Sage seemed to only modify my existing source (PVR250 s-video). I was never able to get the same card recognized as a differebt source (tuner). I even had to delete the wiz.bin and wiz.bak files to get eveything working again.

How were you able to accomplish this? Thanks for all of the help.

[dkardatzke]

When you select "Add a source" and then select the PVR-250 card, does it allow you to specify a different input?

[Jakebucky]

I'm seeing this too [sorry to jump on your thread]. Have s-video from dish, rf from attenna, set up dual source no problem. But, when i look at the attenna channels, like Channel 3 [cbs], it shows the dish channel that the dish was left at.

[CUTIGER91]

I went into the setup wizard, selected "Add or modify a source", selected the Hauppage card, the xmltv epg, deleted the digital channels, and finally selected the tuner input. After completing the setup, the previous setup was gone (s-video w/ all channels) and had been REPLACED by the tuner input with non-digital channels.

I could not find a way to tell Sage that I wanted an additional source on the same card. It always assumes I want to modify the existing source. BTW, I am using beta 1.4.

[Colin]

I'm getting the same behavior.. I'd like to have it so that the TV tuner is used for all of the channels that it gets, and the S-Video is used for any of the other channels, or conflicts. Using 1.3 or 1.4.5 beta results in the same behavior, where it doesn't add annother entry, but replaces the old entry.

[Colin]

Bump. I still cannot fix this problem, even with the 1.4.8 RC1 release. It seems as if SageTV doesn't allow me to add two inputs off of the same card when using the XMLTV plugin.

Any ideas? Attempting to use different zip codes doesn't have any effect.

[Narflex]

They each need to have a different provider ID. So it depends upon how the developer of the plugin dealt with provider IDs. Hopefully they can shed some light on that. :)

[Colin]

Granted, I don't have a whole lot of expirence coding Java, but judging from the structure of the XMLTV Import plugin, plugins don't have the capability of working for multiple providers. In the updateGuide function, it sets the provider to be 867507149L along with the channel map, but as the sage.epg code isn't available or documented, it's kinda hard for me to tell for sure. Unless there's a way to set up multiple input plugins, there's no way for there to be different plugins existing at the same time.

[pawn]

Originally posted by Narflex
They each need to have a different provider ID. So it depends upon how the developer of the plugin dealt with provider IDs. Hopefully they can shed some light on that. :)

Is there anything new on this subject?

I'm not clear on what the xmltv plugin has to do with this.

What if I don't need guide support for the alternate input on one of my PVR-250's?

For example, I would like to share a security camera's output throughout the house using SageTV and the SageTV client. I don't need a guide for this single channel input source.

Is there some way to manually enable the (for example) composite input on one of my PVR-250's in the sage.properties file?

Thanks.

[andrewswright]

There is now a version of the XMLTV plugin that supports multiple sources. The thread is here...

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1706

Andrew

[pawn]

Originally posted by andrewswright
There is now a version of the XMLTV plugin that supports multiple sources. The thread is here...

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1706

Andrew

Interesting, but not what this thread is about. I'm trying to use two different inputs on the same PVR-250, not different guide data for different PVR-250's.

Thanks either way though, the effort's appreciated.

[jmeeks]

Yes, you can do dual source on the same 250 card.

Just set up the 2nd composite input in the Setup Wizard.

You just won't be able to record both of the sources on the same card at the same time.

[pawn]

Originally posted by jmeeks
Yes, you can do dual source on the same 250 card.

Just set up the 2nd composite input in the Setup Wizard.

You just won't be able to record both of the sources on the same card at the same time.


Not to be a prick, but you have to read this thread to understand that, for whatever reason, people using the XMLTV plugin can't set separate sources on the same card.

Thanks.

[Colin]

pawn, My problem was that I was using XMLTV for my EPG source, and because it only inputs under one provider ID it was preventing me from adding the second source with the same EPG source.. Why SageTV requires different provider IDs for each input is beyond me, maybe Narflex can explain it. I agree that it's a stupid limitation, but perhaps the functionality is only useful for a few people, and therefore not a priority.

Unforunately, I haven't found a decent IR blaster that is generally supported and uses USB. This means I haven't even tried the dual-provider plugin, so I don't even know if it works for the 250/350..

[pawn]

Colin:

1. I wouldn't say "stupid" ;^) I'm sure there's a good reason.

2. Yeah, I tried the altered plugin, it will allow you to have separate guide info for separate cards (which I'm sure is very useful for a lot of people), but it doesn't address the issue we're talking about.

Thanks.

[andrewswright]

Originally posted by pawn
Yeah, I tried the altered plugin, it will allow you to have separate guide info for separate cards (which I'm sure is very useful for a lot of people), but it doesn't address the issue we're talking about.

Actually it does. I currently have 1 PVR250 in my system using the modified XMLTV plugin. I prefer to watch basic cable via the tuner input of the PVR 250, as it has much faster channel changing. Obviously I have to watch digital cable from my motorola DCT2000 set top box through the composite input (my cable box doesn't have a s-video output or I would use that).

Using the same card I have 2 sources set up. The first uses the RF input for basic channels, while the second uses the composite input with the serial control plugin developed by Beezelbub.

With one tuner this works seamlessly. When I switch from Basic to Digital cable the only lag is the time it takes to change the channel on the digital cable box.

I do have 2 copies of the xmltv data, stored as 1.xml and 2.xml. In my case both of these have exactly the same data. If so inclined you could probably populate them with different data sets to allow, for example, basic cable and a satellite tv system.

As noted by jmeeks above, you can't record off both sources at the same time, but thats ok with me. I am looking at getting a second tuner to get around that limitation, mostly so that I can watch one program and record another.

If you are having trouble with this, try the modified XMLTV plugin and make 2 copies of the xmltv data as described. Add 2 sources for the same card using the setup wizard using different inputs. You may need to select a different set of channels for each input (I haven't tested this, but I didn't allow any overlap between channels for my 2 inputs, as I wanted to avoid any confusion).

Good Luck,
Andrew

[pawn]

This works. So, hmmm, I wonder....what does this make me? ???

[White94Cobra]

I have three tuners. Is it possible to use two of the tuners to record from basic cable, and the third to record from my DirecTV receiver? Can I combine using XLMTV for the cable, and the Sage service for DirecTV? Also, how does it handle channels that have the same number (my locals for DirecTV map to below 100 - they are from a different city so the Sage service has those channels, but not my local cable ones). Hope that makes sense.

[dkardatzke]

Cobra,

Yes, you can use two tuners for basic cable and one for DirecTV. I think there is a new XMLTV plugin available that supports multiple lineups.

If two different channels have the same channel number, they will both appear in the Guide.

[White94Cobra]

Thanks... is it possible to use XMLTV for the basic cable, and the SageTV service for the DirecTV?

[pawn]

Originally posted by White94Cobra
Thanks... is it possible to use XMLTV for the basic cable, and the SageTV service for the DirecTV?


Depends on how you want to do it. It looks like you CAN'T with the new plugin (won't let me choose anything but XML listings, which won't give the wizard to set up remote control for the sat receiver).

However, you CAN use the older plugin, which you can use to setup two different sources, although only using seperate tuner cards.

[mikbro]

Actually I use 3 tuners, and have the following setup:

Tuner 1: Cable connected to RF (as Lineup 1.xml), Starchoice Satellite connected to S-Video (as Lineup 2.xml)

Tuner 2: Cable connected to RF (as Lineup 1.xml)

Tuner 3: Cable connected to RF (as Lineup 1.xml), C-Band Satellite connected to Composite (as Lineup 3.xml).

Of course the guide data contained in the xml files is up to you and can be any source available with XMLTV (including Directv, Dishnetwork, etc). I allowed for five xml sources in the modification I made to the XMLTV plugin (even though in the example above I am only using 3).

Yes, there are duplicate channel numbers in the guide, they appear next to each other in the guide and Sage tunes to the appropriate one when you select it from the guide, or channel up/down in live tv.

[pawn]

Originally posted by mikbro
Actually I use 3 tuners, and have the following setup:

Tuner 1: Cable connected to RF (as Lineup 1.xml), Starchoice Satellite connected to S-Video (as Lineup 2.xml)

Tuner 2: Cable connected to RF (as Lineup 1.xml)

Tuner 3: Cable connected to RF (as Lineup 1.xml), C-Band Satellite connected to Composite (as Lineup 3.xml).

Of course the guide data contained in the xml files is up to you and can be any source available with XMLTV (including Directv, Dishnetwork, etc). I allowed for five xml sources in the modification I made to the XMLTV plugin (even though in the example above I am only using 3).

Yes, there are duplicate channel numbers in the guide, they appear next to each other in the guide and Sage tunes to the appropriate one when you select it from the guide, or channel up/down in live tv.

But do you have control over your sat receivers using SageTV?

[mikbro]

Yes, for for the satellite input on tuners 1 and 3 I specified Directv serial control. Sage sends the appropriate command to these serial ports and I have a separate app the listens on these ports and direct the dishes as need in response.


I see no reason why you couldn't connect 2 , 3, or 4 (there seems to be a limit to 4 comm ports in Sage) 'real' directv receivers or other external boxes via the IR control method.

[DFA]

I am a new Sage / 250 user. With regard to this thread, I understand but don't understand. I have basic analog cable hooked into the tuner and am using XMLTV with imported EPG data for the lineup. I want to put the svideo out from the digital cable box into the 250 svideo input. But the Scientific Atlantic has no ability to be controlled by an external communicated source. So why do I need a lineup for the svideo input under that circumstance? I have to change the channel of the STB by remote control and Sage is clueless about what channel it is on. It seems it would be best to be able to just set up a single "dummy" channel in the lineup that will take it to the svideo source? That would also be a solution for the post above who only wanted to put a camera input into the svideo input. But as stated above, once you implement XMLTV, you lose the ability to make / create a second source. I will try the modified plugin referenced here, but still a single "dummy" channel is all I need to toggle to the svideo source. All the channel info and channel menu is already there onscreen from the STB.

DFA

[DFA]

Excellent. Big thanks to Mikbro for the modified plugin! Don't know what I would have done without that.

Read my previous post if not already in order to understand the following:

When I configured XMLTV for the second line up (BrightHouse digital this time), I selected only ONE channel (the first one) and said "none" to the rest. Then I created the 2.xml with that configuration. I then configured Sage for the second lineup with the svideo input. I then edited the one and only svideo channel which was "2" to be channel 1 (unique).

This accomplishes what I want: by choosing channel 1, the input changes from the tuner to the svideo input. I can then change the channels of the digital STB and view / record anything I want from the STB (I do ofcourse have to preset the channel on the STB for recording and can not change channels automatically but that is no fault of Sage but limitation of STB provided by BrightHouse). Also no need to ever update the svideo channel because it's irrelevant; just an input toggle (digital channel 2 is just promotional stuff anyway).

This would also work for the poster that wanted to put a camera into the svideo input.

Not sure how I'm going to work this out with Girder yet. But I know Girder well enough that just cause I can't figure it out does not mean Girder can't do it. It seems for the more talented, Girder can do anything and then some.

DFA

P.S.: When going through the Sage configuration and choosing "svideo", the next step requires you choose a method to control the Sat or Cable STB; IR Plugin, Serial link, or "Skip this Step". "Skip this Step" does not respond for me. I chose "serial link", COM4 even though it is non existent in order to complete the configuration. Is this a minor bug?