Thanks to the SageTV community!!!

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

It turned out to be 2 HD-PVRs and I'm counting testing time, monitoring the forum looking for tidbits time, trying every suggestion time, diagnostic time, finding the hot chips and putting heat sinks on them time, modifying the boxes for fans that worked time, conflict resolution time, replacing some of my other tuners time (conflicts again), and most of all brain time spent mulling over what to try next time.

You would have to have been there.

You put heatsinks on the chips in the HD-PVR? Care to elaborate?

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Peter_h

You put heatsinks on the chips in the HD-PVR? Care to elaborate?

The first HD-PVR I received from Hauppauge had no heat sinks inside. I bought these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835108071

I put one on the chip that Haup now puts one on, the Ambarella chip I believe. The other chip (Analog Devices I believe) that ran really hot is the same size as the Ambarella and if you are looking at the box with the lid off and from the front, is just a bit to the right of the Ambarella and a little closer to the front and measures about 1/2" by 1/2".

The second (and third) box came with a heat sink on the Ambarella chip, so I just added one to the Analog Devices chips.

[bastafidli]

You guys have too much free time on your hands :-D

[limiter]

To respond to the original post... If you have an analog tuner or two and a non-hd tv and you are just playing back recorded TV everything works amazingly well. It is essentially install and go. Some pretty low end hardware can support this setup and it will probably work great.

The problems start when you get into the world of HDTV tuners, various codecs for your media library, 1080p, surround sound, IR blasters, etc. Essentially all the HTPC software on the market tacked on the support for those onto a product that never was designed to have so much complexity.

It is sort of like deciding your coupe needs two more doors, a moon roof, a new radio, bigger wheels, turbo, and then you try to add four wheel drive and a jet engine. What you end up with is a ugly car with leaking roof, shorted electrics, tires scrape the wheel hubs, engine that sputters, your 4-wheel drive ended up twisting the frame, and the jet engine... well lets just say firey explosion covers that.

This is by no means directed exclusively at SageTV. I setup MythTV which took more time than I'm willing to admit and that was just for SD content and playback. I tried Media Portal which at the time was a mess. It took all of two minutes to realize I wanted nothing to do with MCE, BeyondTV which, aside from not having a media center that worked, had bugs that kept me from picking it. I ended up with GBPVR for the price (free) and ran it for a while but if you think debugging SageTV is hard I dare you to run some of the early versions of GBPVR that just added HD support and not have it end with you beating your HTPC with a baseball bat.

SageTV was by far the easiest to setup, has the features I want, and is the most reliable system, but it is far from perfect. The Sage developers have it tough because they have to support an impossibly diverse set of hardware and software, deal with new products being released constantly, and try to add stability to hardware and software they have no control over. All this while competing with Microsoft who bundles HTPC capability with their operating system, at least three free HTPC packages, commercial competitors, and lets not forget appliance DVRs and cable provider DVRs.

All that said, I'm glad they are around. I believe SageTV does the best job of meeting the needs of the tweakers, builders, and the insane.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

It turned out to be 2 HD-PVRs and I'm counting testing time, monitoring the forum looking for tidbits time, trying every suggestion time, diagnostic time, finding the hot chips and putting heat sinks on them time, modifying the boxes for fans that worked time, conflict resolution time, replacing some of my other tuners time (conflicts again), and most of all brain time spent mulling over what to try next time.

You would have to have been there.

Oh no, i am not doubting you, just astonished - and can understand why, given your experience, it would be extremely frustrating.


way back when, i bought sagetv v. 4 for its (newly added) HDTV capabilities. I plugged in a pair of AverMedia A180's and was off and running. It is sad to me that a device that has such a corner on the market (HD PVR) has such issues, if i had any encrypted HD to record, i would order Dell's on-sale $150 HD PVR just for the experience...

[jack_leach]

Originally Posted by limiter

It is sort of like deciding your coupe needs two more doors, a moon roof, a new radio, bigger wheels, turbo, and then you try to add four wheel drive and a jet engine. What you end up with is a ugly car with leaking roof, shorted electrics, tires scrape the wheel hubs, engine that sputters, your 4-wheel drive ended up twisting the frame, and the jet engine... well lets just say firey explosion covers that.

Thanks for the laugh! That's a great analogy! (and your other comments are also excellent!)

Jack

[Skacey]

I would add that my downfall is in trying to separate the posts into meaningful categories. I see four predominant areas:

1. Post asking for help.
2. Posts offering help.
3. Posts talking about a part of Sage that I don't use/need
4. Posts talking about the latest tweak, adjustment, shiny add on, or widget that will make you life better, clearer, easier, or gets out stubborn stains.

Often, my problems start when I read the fourth kind.

I believe the base installation of SageTV is fairly stable and easy to use. But that's not why I chose Sage, I picked it because it's got tons of useful tweaks, adjustment, shiny add ons and widgets that make my life better, clearer, and easier (I'm still working on the stubborn stain STV )

I do wish that the Wiki was more updated and that I didn't have to search the forums for six hours to find the step that I skipped resulting in yet another lost weekend. But, I know what I signed on for and I accept my fate willingly.

-Skacey

Originally Posted by jack_leach

Thank you for expressing this so well! I read this forum daily for two months before making my first post because I didn't want to annoy anybody with my newbie questions that were probably already answered "somewhere" in the forum. There is no "blame" to assign here; it's just the nature of a large forum that you end up with LOTS of scattered info and it can take a long time to ferret out what you're looking forward.

What WOULD be helpful would be for the moderators and/or sage experts to create a "sticky" posting that contains links to exceptional threads (a Top 40 list if you will). And I wouldn't be surprised if it already exists and I just haven't found it yet (do you realize that this forum now has more than 342,000 posts as of today!)

Jack

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by Skacey

I do wish that the Wiki was more updated and that I didn't have to search the forums for six hours to find the step that I skipped resulting in yet another lost weekend. But, I know what I signed on for and I accept my fate willingly.

-Skacey

What wiki are you talking about?

It would be helpful if they give an alternative search engine such as google built into the forum, but like any forum, all the info is so scattered everywhere and it would require lots of man-power to organize it.

The good news is the members here are extremely active. I've seen so many posts from newcomers and the veterans here all reply with helpful answers within hours if not minutes. And sometime you don't even see the original poster reply or return to check the thread. You don't get that kind of activities on other forums, even forum that are 10 times bigger with 100 times more members.

As for hours spent on maintaining SageTV, my SageTV system is working extremely well. I don't have to do anything in terms of maintenance. It runs 24/7 and does its thing without a hitch. My only struggle was finding the right system motherboard. I went through many motherboards until I found one that runs 24/7 without any issues. You can see my system hardware below in my signature. Once a while in a rare occasion, the HD100 locks up, and I have to flip the switch on the back and it works again. HD200 doesn't have this problem, not that I've experienced.

It is partially true that most posts are from people with problems. The ones like me who have a stable system don't need to come in to post. So it is not accurate to assume that problems posted on this forum represent the majority. I'm pretty sure it is not. Personally, the main reason I check this forum everyday is to answer questions to hopefully help solve problems users have, just to pay back to the community that helped me out when I first got started.

[limiter]

You could do this in google's search field:

site:forums.sagetv.com HDTV

Replacing "HDTV" with whatever you want to search for

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

It would be helpful if they give an alternative search engine such as google built into the forum, but like any forum, all the info is so scattered everywhere and it would require lots of man-power to organize it.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by limiter

You could do this in google's search field:

site:forums.sagetv.com HDTV

Replacing "HDTV" with whatever you want to search for

I knew someone would say that, thats why I said "built into the forum"

[pjpjpjpj]

Had I never discovered the "Customizations" section of this forum, I would have pretty much not touched my Sage server since I installed everything and hooked it up, a year ago. And I can't even think of a reason that I would have had to read this forum at all, or post.

But, like Sandor, those of us in the "100% OTA via HDHRs" world have it easy.

In sum:
-I don't have any tuners requiring IR blasters, USB-UIRT, mods, etc., or any HD-PVRs (and associated issues). The HDHRs, for OTA, just work, straight through their network connections.
-I don't use QAM so I don't have any channel remapping issues.
-I don't have any funky media types to watch (just recorded shows and ripped DVDs in TS format), so I don't have any issues with codecs and such.
-I don't use comskip so I don't have any issues with that.
-I watch everything via HD extenders, so I don't have any client/placeshifter issues.
-Knock on wood, I have not had any hardware issues, save for the bad power supplies on the early HDHRs (replaced by SiliconDust almost painlessly).

(Again, I know my setup is not for everyone. Frankly, it's for very few around here. )

Basically, any small issues I have are all related to customizations that I have installed. And I have no one to blame for that but myself. If the time and effort required to get it working (via reading and posting here) gets too much, I could just remove that particular customization. Not that I would do that.

[Skacey]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

What wiki are you talking about?

This Wiki:

http://sagetv.wikia.com/wiki/SageTV_...re_PC_Software

With a high level of participation, we would have a much easier resource for finding answers than searching hundreds of posts.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Had I never discovered the "Customizations" section of this forum, I would have pretty much not touched my Sage server since I installed everything and hooked it up, a year ago. And I can't even think of a reason that I would have had to read this forum at all, or post.

But, like Sandor, those of us in the "100% OTA via HDHRs" world have it easy.

In sum:
-I don't have any tuners requiring IR blasters, USB-UIRT, mods, etc., or any HD-PVRs (and associated issues). The HDHRs, for OTA, just work, straight through their network connections.
-I don't use QAM so I don't have any channel remapping issues.
-I don't have any funky media types to watch (just recorded shows and ripped DVDs in TS format), so I don't have any issues with codecs and such.
-I don't use comskip so I don't have any issues with that.
-I watch everything via HD extenders, so I don't have any client/placeshifter issues.
-Knock on wood, I have not had any hardware issues, save for the bad power supplies on the early HDHRs (replaced by SiliconDust almost painlessly).

(Again, I know my setup is not for everyone. Frankly, it's for very few around here. )

Basically, any small issues I have are all related to customizations that I have installed. And I have no one to blame for that but myself. If the time and effort required to get it working (via reading and posting here) gets too much, I could just remove that particular customization. Not that I would do that.

I feel we need to push this point. OTA is free and unencrypted. The HD PVR and R5000 and like devices are basically hacks and workarounds for bypassing DRM.

If broadcaster's and content distributors (and content creators) weren't pushing for more and more lock down on television, we would have very little problems (in my view).

[jack_leach]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Personally, the main reason I check this forum everyday is to answer questions to hopefully help solve problems users have, just to pay back to the community that helped me out when I first got started.

And I thank you for that!!