Media Center and Placeshifter trial not activated?

[blaander]

I have been happily using my 2 MediaMVPs now for a month or so. Unfortunately, I got the following error tonight and "Trial" on my video:



I have 5.0.4 installed and I used some magic "mvp.bin" file from random location X that I saw on a previous thread. Here's my system info:



Here's my "advanced" menu under "detailed setup"



Note that theres' nowhere for me to enable the "media extender" as the manual says to do on page 255:



I had at some point tried out the "SageMC_16x9" thing and then went back to the "Original" STV file, so this is possibly the source of all of my confusion?

Any idea how I get this option to show up? I tried reinstalling SageTV with the "repair" option to hopefully get things back to "factory defaults". The reinstall tonight luckily didn't hose up any of my configuration, so that was good. It did make the "Trial" notification go away on the MediaMVP. However, it still says that the trial has not been activated when I go to the "activate license" application on the server. I'm guessing 1 month from now it'll hose my video playback again.

Any help y'all can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

-Brian

[Opus4]

Try this: shut down SageTV completely on your server; service too, if you use that. Then unregister the extender licenses & reregister them. After that, restart SageTV.

The licenses might have been registered originally while SageTV was running & that can sometimes cause license registration problems for some reason.

- Andy

[blaander]

Thanks for the quick reply, Opus. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I unregistered them one at a time, and was confirmed that I had no licenses. However, registering them one at a time after that didn't clear up the confusion I was seeing (still says that my trial is not activated but I have 2 valid licenses)



Restarted the service and the playback works OK but the lack of activation of my "trial" leads me to think that it'll only last a month before i get "TRIAL" across my video again.

Any idea why I don't have the option of turning externder/placeshifter off/on in my advanced setup? Maybe I just need to get a clean install. How do I get a clean install without losing my videos and whatnot? I don't know, this is all so touchy. Last time I tried a "clean install" saving random bin and xml files I think it ate my whole video collection. Maybe I could clean out the STV portion. Does my "setup" look right up in my original post? What about the date on the system information there -- 2005? Seems pretty old...do I have something horked?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by blaander

Restarted the service and the playback works OK but the lack of activation of my "trial" leads me to think that it'll only last a month before i get "TRIAL" across my video again.

Did you ever actually use it in trial mode, or did you enter the licenses immediately when you started using SageTV? You could try rebooting after removing the licenses & before registering them again, if it continues to happen. But, if the problem keeps happening, I would contact support to see what they suggest.

Any idea why I don't have the option of turning externder/placeshifter off/on in my advanced setup?

You'll need to edit your properties file to use SageTV3.xml, not .stv. While SageTV is not running, look for the STV= property in sage.properties (or sageclient.properties if using a client or the service).

Go ahead and delete SageTV3.stv, since it is no longer used.

- Andy

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Go ahead and delete SageTV3.stv, since it is no longer used.

- Andy

Andy, any reason why SageTV3.stv is still included in the install then?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

Andy, any reason why SageTV3.stv is still included in the install then?

After weeks of research on this issue, a way was found to get it out of the next installer.

- Andy

[blaander]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Did you ever actually use it in trial mode, or did you enter the licenses immediately when you started using SageTV? You could try rebooting after removing the licenses & before registering them again, if it continues to happen. But, if the problem keeps happening, I would contact support to see what they suggest.

I had been running SageTV with no media center option up until about a month ago. I was running some hacked ch/streams sagetvmvp something-or-other for like 1.5-2 years. Finally I broke down and bought a second MVP, so about a month ago I upgraded to Sage 5.04 and real media extender support. It works great -- 2 mvps running at the same time, no issues other than wireless sux and I'm too lazy to run ethernet to the second room....but I digress. Anyway, so I was running some old version of sage -- like 2.2.7 with this hacked up mediamvp thingy until now. I didn't delete anything before upgrading. In fact, my sage.properties has lots of cayars stuff in it and whatnot probably from my old 2.2.7 install.

Anyway, right when I upgraded to 5.04 I bought a single client license and then I bought a second one a couple weeks later. I never used a sage media extender on any "trial" terms that I know about, I've always had at least one registered license. It works great right now but I'm sure in a month or whatever it'll do the same "trial" thing for me until I reinstall.

Is there any way for me to get a brand new install but keep my favorites and watched status and episodes and whatnot? I'm wondering if any of this "old" stuff is hosing me up.

Originally Posted by Opus4

You'll need to edit your properties file to use SageTV3.xml, not .stv. While SageTV is not running, look for the STV= property in sage.properties (or sageclient.properties if using a client or the service).

Go ahead and delete SageTV3.stv, since it is no longer used.

I deleted the stv file and modified my sageclient.properties to say xml instead. I now have the media extender option available in the menu. It hasn't helped. I think, like I said above, a fresh install would be best. How do I do this but not lose any favorites or episode info (what has been watched, etc)

Thanks for the help Andy,

-Brian

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by blaander

Is there any way for me to get a brand new install but keep my favorites and watched status and episodes and whatnot? I'm wondering if any of this "old" stuff is hosing me up.

All the viewing history, favorites, current recordings, etc., are stored in wiz.bin, so that is the file to keep & backup. If you really want to try a complete reinstall, I would just make a backup copy of your entire SageTV directory before uninstalling. That way, you'll have access to all the old file for reference, if needed. And, it will keep any channel logos.

To do a clean install, you reall ought to delete the entire SageTV install dir after uninstalling -- see this FAQ.

I deleted the stv file and modified my sageclient.properties to say xml instead. I now have the media extender option available in the menu. It hasn't helped.

I must be missing something above... what still isn't working, if this hasn't helped?

- Andy

[blaander]

Originally Posted by Opus4

All the viewing history, favorites, current recordings, etc., are stored in wiz.bin, so that is the file to keep & backup. If you really want to try a complete reinstall, I would just make a backup copy of your entire SageTV directory before uninstalling. That way, you'll have access to all the old file for reference, if needed. And, it will keep any channel logos.

To do a clean install, you reall ought to delete the entire SageTV install dir after uninstalling -- see this FAQ.

I must be missing something above... what still isn't working, if this hasn't helped?

- Andy

The problem is that even though I now see the option for the extender in advanced setup, and I have it enabled, I have "trial" things jumping across my screen on my mediamvps and warnings about a 15 day trial and my "register license" screen says:



I've tried unregistering keys, rebooting, then registering again, with sage off the whole time while doing this (including the service). This warning never goes away. Not only that, but last night the "TRIAL" jumpies were back on my mvp playback video. I thought I'd have a whole month or something to dink with it, but apparently not.

I think a clean install is the way to go. I'll research it. If all I have to do is save wiz.bin and plop that into my new directory after install, I'll be all set. WIth this new 5.0.4 I haven't done any customization so the base install with a 10 minute setup is fine for me. I just want it to work. I thought I read somewhere that sage.properties was importatnt too, but that could just be for setup, configuration, customization, etc. I'm mainly interested in having it not re-record the same episodes of south park that I've seen before I think the sage.properties is what's hosing me somehow. Who knows. As I said, it's an old one from like 2.2.7 that had cayars customizations in it and whatnot. Perhaps when I went to 5.0.4 I should have just gone clean again.

Thanks Andy
-Brian

[Opus4]

I don't really think the properties file has anything to do with it, but you can check that by simple making a backup copy of it & your wiz.bin in some other directory, then deleting all your properties files & the autobackup versions that SageTV creates. When you restart, it will create a new properties file.

Are you using service mode? If so, make sure you are stopping the service too, before registering the extender keys.

Otherwise, contact support, since it shouldn't be doing this.

- Andy

[blaander]

Well, I did a complete fresh install. I copied my wiz.bin file over and that's it. Set up my sources again, etc. Interestingly, after a fresh install and deleting the old folder and everything in between uninstall and reinstall, I went to register my media extender licenses and they were both still registered! (although I still have the pesky "Trial mode" indication on the registration screen). I unregistered them, rebooted, re-registered, etc. Still have the screen that says it's a trial mode, but it doesn't seem to be affecting anything at this point. I don't have "TRIAL" jumping around my video at all at this point.

So anyway, I'm currently operational. I was looking around when I did this fresh install for some type of registration key for sagetv itself, but I could only find the keys for media extenders. So I installed my original 1.4.10 before installing 5.0.4. I hope it doesn't say that it's a trial after another week or whatever. That would suck.

Thanks for the help Opus. I'm hoping that the "TRIAL" jumpies don't come back. If they do I'll open up a ticket with support.

-Brian