Same settings for multiple playback devices

[CarlR]

My setup for playback includes 2 HD extenders, 1 MVP, and 1 PC running SageTV Client. I also use Placeshifter from time to time on another PC.

Is there an easy way, other than editing .properties files, that I can force a configuration change to take affect on all of these devices? I'm not talking about something that would be specific to the playback device (like aspect ratio), but something generic like a change to the display filters or menu items in the recordings menu.

I know the default .properties file will be updated if I make a change from the SageTV instance on the server when it is running in non-service mode, but that really isn't an option as it is headless (and usually runs in service mode).

If this is not possible through the GUI, has anyone come up with a good system for keeping these settings constant across multiple devices? It's a hassle to have to make the same change in 5 different places.

[GKusnick]

There's a command-line option in Placeshifter to spoof the MAC address and thereby determined which .properties file will be selected. I use this to share .properties files among different machines that I frequently Placeshift from (but not simultaneously, obviously). Unfortunately it doesn't generalize to extender clients, or simultaneous clients.

Property settings can be read from the default .properties file if they're not specified in the client's own .properties file. But as far as I know, client property settings are never written back to the default file, only to the client's own file. So once you've changed a property setting on a client, nothing you do in the default file will override that client setting (even if you set it back to the default). It would seem to follow that, short of writing a custom plugin for the purpose, editing .properties files is the only reliable way to propagate changes to all clients.