Different channel setup with multiple tuners?

[pjpjpjpj]

Don't let the length of this post scare you away, it's really a pretty straight-forward question (I think), it just takes a lot to describe it properly....

I have 2 HDHomerun units, each with two tuners, for a total of four tuners.

Because of antenna-in-the-attic considerations, I have a separate antenna for each HDHR. One antenna (hence two of the tuners, one HDHR) gets about 40 channels, between two different cities, all fairly strong. The other antenna (other HDHR, two tuners) gets one city very strongly and the other city hardly at all (for discussions' sake, let's say 20 stations each).

In other words, tuners A and B get 40 stations, and tuners C and D get only 20 of those 40 stations.

Is there a way to tell the Sage channel setup that tuners C and D can not get those 20 stations, so that it should not try to record anything on them? Right now, Sage sees four tuners and seems to assign recordings in order listed (most-recently-installed tuner first?). This could (and will?) result in Sage trying to record a show from the distant city through one of the tuners (C or D) that can not receive the station, when there (likely) would be two tuners (A and B) available, doing nothing, that do receive the channel.

I would love for someone to tell me that Sage can tell whether there is reception on a tuner or not, and automatically switches a recording to a tuner that does get the station... but I doubt that is the case. It would be nice if, on the "channel setup" list where you can enable/disable channels in the guide, that the disabling worked individually for each tuner. Then I could go into channel setup for tuners C and D and disable the 20 stations that it does not get, and this would force Sage to always record shows on those stations from tuners A and B.

Help? Answers?

[carlgar]

To do what you want to do currently requires the use of two different epgs. If you are lucky the stations you want to get would be in 2 different cities that Sage has listings for. If you are not lucky you may be able to use a local cable digital lineup. I think you would have to remap the physical channel number to match the OTA channel number. If you are able to get 2 different EPGs that work for you, you can then use the encoder merit to determine the preferred EPG.

[pjpjpjpj]

How do you set up multiple EPGs? And when you do, do you get a separate "channel setup" for each, so that you just disable the channels that you don't get on one tuner/EPG... and get separate recording schedules, etc., etc.?

To be clearer about my example above... I'm just north of Cincinnati, and I get Cincinnati well, and Dayton stations are the ones that are sketchy on my second antenna. The Cincinnati EPG in Sage also picks up all the Dayton stations that my HDHR can grab in a channel scan. There is a Dayton local guide that I can choose as a setting if I wanted to do so.... is this required in order to pull off the "two EPG" thing? Could I not have them both on the Cincinnati feed since all the stations show up there?

Seems like it wouldn't have been too hard, within the Sage software, to just allow separate "enable/disable" listings per tuner, and have the “tuner chosen to record a certain program” be limited by which channels are enabled on the particular tuner.

[carlgar]

When you configure the tuners you select the EPG you want. You are probably using the same city for both now. You will need to dedicate 1 tuner for Cincinnati and the other for Dayton. You will not be able to switch back and forth like you want to. Actually, if you find a station in both guides that have the same schedule you probably could remap the physical channel to the other station channel, but that is getting complex. What dayton stations are you trying to get that are not available in Cincinnati?

[pjpjpjpj]

The advantage of getting the Dayton stations is that you can avoid weather warnings, news interruptions, etc., that either interrupt shows, or else (in the case of most Cincinnati stations) make the broadcast jump back to 4:3 480i. The other benefit is that Dayton is a different market for sports; for example, when Cincinnati network shows are preempted by University of Cincinnati basketball, you can catch the show on the Dayton station; and very often Dayton's Fox and CBS, which the NFL does not lock into the Cincinnati market, show different games on Sundays, or just plain avoid the NFL blackout rules, allowing you to catch another (or different) game.

Honestly, this is not that big of a deal - probably the only shows that we would set to record ahead of time (where figuring out the tuner being used would be an issue) would be a PBS program. All the other cases (that I listed above) would probably be a "watching live" situation where I could manually force it to a certain tuner.

So, with all of that said, can you explain to me (or point me to another post or FAQ) how Sage chooses the tuner it will use? At this point (with only a little testing), it appears to go in order of "first tuner installed" first, working down through "most recently installed" last. Is this right?

I actually had a chance tonight to need it; I turned on my local CBS to watch NCAA games, and the reception was having problems (don't know why, possibly weather). This was on my older omnidirectional antenna, the oldest (first-installed) tuner. As I watched, it was auto recording on that tuner, so I changed channels and hit the "record" button, then changed channels again. Now I was watching the other tuner on that older HDHR, but still through the same antenna, which was not getting good reception. So I changed that to yet another channel, hit "record' again, and began recording whatever was on there. Then, finally, I was able to change back to local CBS, since that was now on tuner #3 and hence on the other antenna. Sure enough, that one was getting great CBS reception. So I left it there... and went and cancelled the other two random recordings. A bit of a pain, but it worked.

[carlgar]

For turners using the same EPG the choice of tuners is internal to Sage and I have no idea how it works. If the same station appears on 2 or more different EPGs then the encoder merit is used to determine which is the preferred tuner.

[pjpjpjpj]

By “preset”, I just meant that it was a show scheduled to be recorded that had not started yet. I don’t know whether it was a favorite or a manual (would that make a difference in my above situation?).

I was just clarifying that I saw Sage change the “planned” tuner for that future recording as I began manually recording shows (an hour or so earlier, all of which would end before the scheduled show began). But that I do not know if, when those shows ended, it switched the “planned” tuner for that later show back to where it was originally “planned” to be, or whether that scheduled show stayed on the tuner where it got moved.

If it is the former (where the ending of recording, and “freeing up” of other tuners would cause a future show to move “back” to one of those tuners), then the only way I could schedule a show to record on a specific tuner would be to manually schedule other shows (that had priority) simultaneously, so that they force the show I want to a “later installed” tuner – perhaps manually schedule the other shows to start a minute or two ahead of the show I want, so that they “take” the first few tuners and move the intended show to a “later installed” tuner. Does that make sense?

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

By “preset”, I just meant that it was a show scheduled to be recorded that had not started yet. I don’t know whether it was a favorite or a manual (would that make a difference in my above situation?).

I was just clarifying that I saw Sage change the “planned” tuner for that future recording as I began manually recording shows (an hour or so earlier, all of which would end before the scheduled show began). But that I do not know if, when those shows ended, it switched the “planned” tuner for that later show back to where it was originally “planned” to be, or whether that scheduled show stayed on the tuner where it got moved.

If it is the former (where the ending of recording, and “freeing up” of other tuners would cause a future show to move “back” to one of those tuners), then the only way I could schedule a show to record on a specific tuner would be to manually schedule other shows (that had priority) simultaneously, so that they force the show I want to a “later installed” tuner – perhaps manually schedule the other shows to start a minute or two ahead of the show I want, so that they “take” the first few tuners and move the intended show to a “later installed” tuner. Does that make sense?

For your test since all the shows were favorites it probably would not make any difference. However, if your goal is to insure that certain shows get recorded using a specific tuner, you should use manually recordings. Sage has much too flexability with favorites to know where it will be recorded. Sage could see another airing of a favorite and decide to use it. As I already stated, a new manual recording can cause the favorites to be shifted to new tuners. Manual recordings are not moved.

[pjpjpjpj]

Last night there was a show scheduled to record at 8 pm, and I turned on the TV a little after 6 pm. I switched the recording schedule to "side by side" so I could see the four tuners. The preset show was scheduled to record on the "oldest" (first installed) tuner. Then I started watching a show (and recorded it, as I mentioned above), and the preset show moved to the next-oldest tuner (still on the first HDHR). Then when I changed channels again (and started recording), the preset show moved to the third tuner, now on the new HDHR (and different antenna). Finally, when I switched live TV to the third station (to watch CBS on the second antenna, as described above), the preset show moved to the fourth tuner.

My assumption is that the preset show, even though it was not yet recording, moves because there is a chance that the three tuners I was "currently using" could potentially keep recording those three stations all the way through the time frame of the preset show, so Sage just moved it to the unused tuner at the time.

What I should have done (experimentally) was start recording a fourth show (thus using all my tuners), to see if Sage moved the preset future show back to tuner #1, or if, at that point, it just "gave up" and left the preset show on tuner #4, figuring it would resolve a conflict when the time came.

The other thing I did not get to check - and this is a key in how Sage chooses tuners - is whether, once I cancelled the temporarily-recording shows on tuners 1 and 2 (though I was still watching on tuner 3), if Sage switched the preset (future) scheduled show back to tuner 1 (since it then became available), or if it stayed on tuner 4, since I had forced it there.

If it stays at the "most recently forced tuner", then that would be a tool I could use ahead of time to set the occasional show to a desired tuner.

Hope this all makes sense!

[carlgar]

I am not sure what you mean be "preset"? A manual (red border) recording is always moved to the first available tuner. I have used that to determine which tuners Sage will use first. I would use that to determine if I have encoder merit when I was using that.

[activa]

This is without a doubt the most annoying (missing) feature of SageTV for me. It has been a problem in every version, and the exact same "feature request" has reappeared on this forum every now and then. For years. (just read through the EPG section on this forum: every 3 or 4 questions is exactly about this problem. It keeps coming back, and back, and back ...)

But we're screwed, because the SageTV developers don't seem to care, although it shouldn't be too hard to implement. What we actually need is something extremely simple:

Allow some channels to be disabled for specific tuners. Now if you enable a channel (the green ball appears), it is enabled for all tuners using that lineup. Why can't we just decide that we want a certain channel on a specific tuner?
PLEASE???

In the sage.properties file, there seems to be a hint of this feature:

mmc/encoders/xxxxxx/100/0/available_channels=

Which brings me to another annoyance: the properties file seems to be undocumented on purpose. Only after people experience serious problems, some settings are revealed in this forum. The other gazillion settings are a big secret.

-Philippe

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by activa

But we're screwed, because the SageTV developers don't seem to care, although it shouldn't be too hard to implement. What we actually need is something extremely simple:

Allow some channels to be disabled for specific tuners. Now if you enable a channel (the green ball appears), it is enabled for all tuners using that lineup. Why can't we just decide that we want a certain channel on a specific tuner?
PLEASE???

It may be possible that they don't care, I doubt if that is the case. I would think that it is a matter of scheduling the work. Have you or anyone else submitted an enhancement request to support for this feature? Posting a request here is a hit or miss type request. They may or may not see it.

Which brings me to another annoyance: the properties file seems to be undocumented on purpose. Only after people experience serious problems, some settings are revealed in this forum. The other gazillion settings are a big secret.

At one time there was some out of date documentation on the support pages. It appears to have been removed so you may be correct that it is undocumented on pupose. I suspect they got to many request to have it updated. It now appears that any lines they want to user to change on their own are now documented in the Sage manual in Appendix A.