Record HD when available for favorites

[dinki]

I just added an HD tuner to my three SD tuner set up. I would like to have SageTV record any favorite listed if the show is being broadcast in HD if the HD tuner is available. Otherwise, record the show in SD on one of the other tuners. The HD channel and SD channel have different channel numbers and different guide data sources.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by dinki

I would like to have SageTV record any favorite listed if the show is being broadcast in HD if the HD tuner is available. Otherwise, record the show in SD on one of the other tuners.

Yes, that's what it should do.

- Andy

[dfitz43]

If you _only_ want the HD version, you can also delimit the favorites to specific channel, i.e., the 17-1 or whatever the HD version is.

cheers,
Dave

[bbwebb]

Depending on what HD tuner you have you might want to setup tuner priorities as well. If you have a tuner that can tune both SD and HD content (e.g. an HD-PVR) Sage will not automatically record non-HD shows on the analog only tuners unless you setup the priorities correctly for the various tuners in the sage.properties file. In my case I have 5 tuners which I have setup with the following merit values:

Analog 1 : merit 5
Analog 2 : merit 4
HDHR QAM 1: merit 3
HDHR QAM 2: merit 2
HD-PVR : merit 1

With this configuration Sage will always try to use the analog tuners first and would only use one of the other 3 tuners if the analogs were not available, the show was not available in the analog lineup, or if the program was available in HD (which Sage will by default record shows that are available in HD instead of the SD version).

This will ensure that you are not tying up your HD tuner while recording a show that is only available in SD that could have been recorded with your original tuners.

Bill

[dinki]

Thanks bbwebb! That's exactly what I wanted to ask but didn't

[benjamintm]

One thing I've done is remove all the SD channels on my analog tuners that have an HD equivalent on my OTA tuners. All my local channels are recorded in HD on the 4 OTA tuners and all my SD recordings are taken care of by the 3 analog tuners connected to cable.

Just a suggestion.

Ben

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by benjamintm

One thing I've done is remove all the SD channels on my analog tuners that have an HD equivalent on my OTA tuners. All my local channels are recorded in HD on the 4 OTA tuners and all my SD recordings are taken care of by the 3 analog tuners connected to cable.

Just a suggestion.

Ben

This is only a really good option if you have a large number of tuners to pull from. If you've only got 1 or 2 analog, and 1 HD-PVR, and you remove the SD channels from your HD-PVR lineup, you seriously cut down on the available tuner pool, raising the risk on conflicts. The Merit trick works well, and is what I would recommend, regardless of the number of tuers you have. Set the HD tuners to lower merit, and they will only be used if

1. The Favorite is available on an HD channel only
2. The Favorite is available in SD or HD, sage will prefer the HD, regardless of merit
3. The show is SD only, but all higher merit SD tuners are tied up.

[phelme]

Hmm, I set up my merits so the HD-PVR is last in the chain. I thought though, that if a show is flagged HD that the HD-PVR would always be used if available because it is capable of recording HD. I'm not seeing that. Shows are always going to my higher-merited PVR-USB2 regardless. Is there some other flag I need to set in the properties maybe?

I also tried a trick someone mentioned of setting the quality for a favorite to an H.264 so that HD-PVR would be used. That hasn't worked either.

Any ideas? Or am I misunderstanding this and need to limit the HD-PVR to ONLY record HD channels and remove those from the analog tuners as well?

[Fuzzy]

Do you have the HD channels in the lineup for the SD cards as well? If that is the case, seeker will see that and use the highest meritted tuner that has an HD version of the show. You have to remove the HD channels from the SD cards, otherwise sage will think it IS recording in HD for you.

[phelme]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Do you have the HD channels in the lineup for the SD cards as well? If that is the case, seeker will see that and use the highest meritted tuner that has an HD version of the show. You have to remove the HD channels from the SD cards, otherwise sage will think it IS recording in HD for you.

yeah, I do, because I'd rather have down-converted HD than nothing at all available from the backup analog tuner. I was just realizing my error in understanding this myself as I was re-reading other threads.

I guess I was hoping that Sage would special case the HD-PVR to have higher priority or have a special "this is true HD capable" flag available per-tuner. Because I'm sure a lot of people using DirecTV will have both an HD-PVR and older analog Hauppauge units that share the same lineups.

[Fuzzy]

Well, for openness, sage doens't specifically support any specific tuner, so it doesn't have tuner specific info. It basically just tells Windows BDA to tun this tuner to this station, and record it to this file. This saves them from having to keep a database of all different tuner types available on the market.

I did propose (years ago maybe?) that they split the merit system into a SD and HD merit tree. Granted, it was so I could have functionality like is currently available in sage, it was before the HD priority feature. However, if they DID ad an HD_Merit property, then you could put the SD tuners as highest on SD material, and lowest on HD, and vice versa for the HD tuners.

As for a solution to your current probem, what I suggest is, on the SD card channel lineups, remove the HD channels, and remap the SD's to the physical HD number. This will let them use the non-HD flagged guide info, so the prioritizing works, but still let them physically tune to the HD channel in the STB, so you get the higher quality downrezzed HD feed. Obviously, this will only work when the HD and SD are mirrors, which it seems most channels are currently doing (Mtv and MHD excluded)

[lazysean]

Originally Posted by dinki

I would like to have SageTV record any favorite listed if the show is being broadcast in HD if the HD tuner is available. Otherwise, record the show in SD on one of the other tuners.

Originally Posted by Opus4

Yes, that's what it should do.

Is there any way to do the opposite? I want to keep the clear QAM HD channels in my lineup because I do watch them sometimes, but they often stutter and my tv is still SD anyway, so favorites should ideally record from the SD channels when both are available. It's only a problem for my keyword-based favorites, like sports, where you never know what channel "college basketball" will air on.

Is there a way to give SD priority again? Or to specify channels *not* to record a favorite from? I tried changing the encoder merit, but "HD" seems to trump "use encoder 2".

[kamikaze2112]

I'm kinda in the same boat here. right now I have 2 pvr-150 cards, and will be replacing one with the HD-PVR i just bought. I assume that I can just create 2 seperate channel lineups, one with the HD & SD channels enabled and then one with just SD channels?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by kamikaze2112

I'm kinda in the same boat here. right now I have 2 pvr-150 cards, and will be replacing one with the HD-PVR i just bought. I assume that I can just create 2 seperate channel lineups, one with the HD & SD channels enabled and then one with just SD channels?

Yep.