Can I even do all these things?

[TodPunk]

New SageTV user. Well, tester right now.

I've been looking at HTPCs for a while and have been reading these forums off and on for the last month. It's come down to being between MythTV in Linux and SageTV in Windows. Cost isn't the issue here, though Sage has the added benefit of being in Windows where I can run a game or something as well.

Here's what I want to know if SageTV can do. Keep in mind I'm not a traditional user. Suggestions are welcome =c)

- Record a show, either scheduled or at the press of a button, and automatically encode it to DivX or XviD (or Ogg Theora for bonus points) when it's done with that file. Bonus points go if it can edit out the commercials in there as well, but I don't mind manually editing the files I want to keep for a long time.

-Take a DVD, Rip it, Shrink it down, and put it in the menu so that I can just select it and it goes, no DVDs involved after the initial rip. (This is for my kids, actually, so they don't ruin more DVDs)

-Have an editable menu so I can tie SageTV into running various other programs I want to run often, like Snes9X or World of Warcraft

-Play any files I put into a given directory, like if I download an episode from a friend's PVR on a CD or what have you, and put it into that folder, just have it there automatically in my library.

Is this doable, let alone easy? MythTV would let me do it all, of course, being open source and all, but it could be kindof a pain, and it's already proven to be a bit unstable in its default setup for me, and I'm more of a linux guy than a windows guy. Obviously, I lean towards Sage. I just want to customize the heck out of it is all. (Theming it will come later, but that's not an issue for this post.)


Also keep in mind, eventually I just want to get rid of my cable for a while, so I actually won't be recording anything live for a good 8 months except for whatever I grab off friend's Tivos or what have you. So for that time it will be more of a fancy media player menu than an actual PVR

[big boi]

- Record a show, either scheduled or at the press of a button, and automatically encode it to DivX or XviD (or Ogg Theora for bonus points) when it's done with that file. Bonus points go if it can edit out the commercials in there as well, but I don't mind manually editing the files I want to keep for a long time.

at least the cayars STV (possibly others as well) include a compress function which i believe compresses your recordings to divx. i've never used it though.

comskip is a seperate program currently maintained by forum member jere jones. i think all of the custom STVs make use of it. you would set it to run in the background and it will work on the original recordings. then you pop the project file it creates into videoredo and cut the commercials. only after the commercials are cut would you run the compression function on the commerical-free file. IOW- i don't think comskip (or videredo for that matter) work on non-mpg files.

-Take a DVD, Rip it, Shrink it down, and put it in the menu so that I can just select it and it goes, no DVDs involved after the initial rip. (This is for my kids, actually, so they don't ruin more DVDs)

what do you mean by "put it in the menu"? you can do all of this with (again) a custom STV. i use cayars and it has this functionality. if you set the dvdrip.cmd file to rip to a dir that you have set as your video library import dir then the most you'd need to do is tell sage to refresh the media library.

-Have an editable menu so I can tie SageTV into running various other programs I want to run often, like Snes9X or World of Warcraft

i believe ALL of the custom STVs use an xml file for the menu structure so you can add menu items, change the menu structure to better reflect the way you use sage, and add menu items that actually open external programs. i open firefox, max payne, nero, and video redo from within sage.

-Play any files I put into a given directory, like if I download an episode from a friend's PVR on a CD or what have you, and put it into that folder, just have it there automatically in my library.

your question is basically "can you set sage to import files into it's media library from directories you specify?" the answer is yes.

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i have to say that the basics of what you want to do with a PVR are included in sage. the cool stuff that makes it the best gadget you own are included in the custom STVs. some people use the defualt sagetv installation and frankly i don't understand why.

[TodPunk]

That is the an awesome answer. Thank you! I'm going to have so much fun customizing this.

[big boi]

the 3 or 4 times i've updated sage and/or installed a new STV i've basically spent 4 or 5 straight hours getting the way i want. that time would be greatly reduced if i'd simply reuse my menu.xml file and weather_config.xml but usually i'm concerned i'm missing something new and should just start with the new menu and pare(sp?) it down to what i want.

in the end though you have a system that is going to do exactly what you want . . . and you even have what you want where you want it (in terms of where you place things in the menu). happy tweaking.

[Mike Young]

Yes, thanks to some of the wonderfull STV's people have created, you can do everything you want...provided youre willing to do some command file programming and tweeking !
One note about Myth... you being a linux guy, you might have different results, but a few of us spent months screwing around with that and ended up with nothing usefull to show for it.

[big boi]

there's an HTPC guide up on www.2cpu.com that covers the basic including an overview of different software (sagetv, mythtv, beyondtv, and windows mce).