Workaround for changing channels when clients are active?

[YourNameHere]

Hello,

Just purchased SageTV and love it. Have it running as a server with about 5 clients in my house (we have a family of 6). Using 2 tuners on the server. My thinking was that if I have multiple clients watching the same tuner, if one changes the channel, it would affect all clients watching that tuner (which is fine). You know what comes next.....you can't change channels if there arent any free tuners available! So, I have to go around the house and shut down all the clients just to change the stinking channel.

Is there really no workaround for this?

[GKusnick]

Well, the standard answer is that clients don't watch tuners, they watch recordings. Live TV is just a recording that hasn't finished recording yet. As long as any client is watching that recording, Sage will keep a tuner assigned to it in order to finish recording the program. That's a design feature, not a bug. The assumption is that the people watching those other clients probably don't want you killing their programs without warning just because you feel like watching a different channel.

But if that's really what you want to be able to do, then your best solution is probably going to be some sort of customization that lets you issue a Stop command to remote clients over the LAN. This is not hard to do in principle, but I don't know of an off-the-shelf plugin that does it.

Or you could just add more tuners.

[YourNameHere]

I understand this is by design but it would be really nice to have a setup option of "allow channel change when other clients are active" or something to that effect. Just make it an option.

[GKusnick]

I don't think it's as simple as just adding an option. Let's walk through a few examples.

Say Mom is watching "All My Children" in the kitchen, while Junior watches "Sesame Street" in his bedroom. Meanwhile Sis sits down in the rec room and turns on "Sesame Street", watches for a few minutes, gets bored, and changes the channel to "Power Puff Girls". You're saying that upstairs, Junior should get switched willy-nilly to "Power Puff Girls" simply because Sis happened to look in on "Sesame Street" for a few minutes first? On the other hand, if Sis passes through "All My Children" on her way from "Sesame Street" to "Power Puff Girls", then it should be Mom in the kitchen who gets her program yanked instead?

Now suppose Junior hits Pause to take a phone call during the few minutes that Sis is watching "Sesame Street". 45 minutes later, after "Power Puff Girls" has finished and Sis has turned off the tube and gone outside, Junior hangs up the phone and hits Play. What should happen? Does he get to watch the few minutes of "Sesame Street" that were recorded before Sis pre-empted him? Does he see the last half of "Power Puff Girls"? Does he get whatever happens to follow "Power Puff Girls" on that channel? Or does he just get a "sorry, you lose" error message, long after it's too late to argue with Sis about it?

I just don't think there is a simple rule for allowing you to change channels when all tuners are otherwise engaged. The simplest rule is the one Sage implements, namely first come, first served. If you have some other rule in mind that you think can be made to work sensibly in all situations, it's probably possible to implement it, but you're getting into customization territory there.

Now if your problem is simply that you have clients playing (and tying up tuners) in rooms where nobody's watching, then the solution to that is to train everybody to hit Stop before leaving the room.

[YourNameHere]

I understand the implications of an option like this, that is why I think having it as an option, not as default behavior, would be a good idea.

I have 4 young children. They are always bouncing between cartoon type channels and never turn off a tv let alone close a client before leaving the room. So, I might have 5 clients watching the same show/tuner and not a single one can perform the simple task of changing a channel. I am not saying change the default, just make this an option for scenarios where the end user prefers it. If one of my kids changes a channel that one of the others was watching, they can settle it between themselves but at least allow them the ability to change channels. The other day they all came running to me because one of their shows was starting, one they all wanted to watch but none of them could figure out how to change the channel.

I for one love SageTV but am pulling my hair out running around the house closing clients all day just to change a channel. There have been other posts with the same concerns so I know others would appreciate this as an option as well.

[GKusnick]

Fine, but while you're waiting for Sage to implement such an option you might want to consider adding more tuners. If it's normal in your house to have five clients going at once, then two tuners aren't really enough. You might find that spending $150 on a dual-tuner Hauppauge card is the simplest and quickest solution to your problem.