Newly switched from BeyondTV

[teststrips]

I have been contemplating the switch from BeyondTV to Sage for quite a long time now, and finally made a purchase of the software + one of the new HD extenders. I've been using BTV since 2004, so I'm VERY used to its interface + I hit keys based on instict/habit of using a BTV for 5 years, and its causing me some frustration in Sage.

So far, I've loaded the SageMC plugin, comskip, and webserver and like them. Also found threads specific to BTV migrators on how to remap "back" to the escape key.

I do have three annoyances I'd like to talk about to see what options I have.

1 - upcoming recordings... It seems to only look out 3 days - I'm so used to seeing 2 weeks, that this is very annoying/frustrating. I've seen people talk about a "scheduling lookahead" option, but I'm unable to actually find it.. I probably just spent 30 minutes + didn't see it.... help?

2 - Actions of directional keys + enter button while watching recorded shows. Here's what I"m used to in BTV (and have come accustomed to)/ vs Sage's behavior

Enter - BTV brings up/closes information on what show I"m watching (the show timeline on the bottom of the sreen + a short descripton - also useful to see what time it is - ie clock) - In sage this seems to bring up an options menu - not sure why??

Up/Down - BTV uses this to skip to detected commercial spots. Sage - shows me TV channel information of what's currently on... i rarely if ever watch live TV. If I go by intinct, I hit enter to get rid of the menu + wind up switching out of my recorded show and into live TV... this is quite annoying

left/right - BTV uses these as FF/Rewind buttons. Sage (with comskip plugins) uses these as skip to detected commercial marks....

Any chance I can change some of these behaviours while watching TV content?

3 - I used Sage to play a DVD last night... it worked, but for some reason, the "back" button does not close out of the DVD player. The only way I could figure out how to get out of DVD was to go to my keyboard and hit the "home" key which took me to the main menu... my remote control doesn't have a home button, and it'd be very annoying to have to go to my keyboard every time I want to exit the DVD section in Sage.

Thanks in advance for the help - Joel

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by teststrips

1 - upcoming recordings... It seems to only look out 3 days - I'm so used to seeing 2 weeks, that this is very annoying/frustrating. I've seen people talk about a "scheduling lookahead" option, but I'm unable to actually find it.. I probably just spent 30 minutes + didn't see it.... help? - Joel

Here's help for #1: In your properties file set scheduling_lookahead=691200000 for 8 days. (The default is set at 259200000, which ends up being 72 hours. (259200000 / 1000 / 60 / 60 = 72))

The file to edit is sage.properties in Program Files\SageTV\SageTV.

There is a way to remap your remote buttons to SageTV commands, I'll try to find a reference for you and post it here when I find it.

EDIT: Welcome!! I'm a former BTV and MCE refugee. It took me a while to work thru some of these things, but I'm now really happy with SageTV.

Another EDIT: See page 181 of the SageTV manual for the section on Link Infrared/Keystroke to SageTV Command

[Brent]

Welcome to SageTV!

Originally Posted by teststrips

...I'm VERY used to its interface + I hit keys based on instict/habit of using a BTV for 5 years, and its causing me some frustration in Sage.

Note that you can remap any keystroke or button press to do anything you want it to. If it doesn't behave the way you want it to, you can easily remap its behaviour.

1 - upcoming recordings... It seems to only look out 3 days - I'm so used to seeing 2 weeks, that this is very annoying/frustrating. I've seen people talk about a "scheduling lookahead" option, but I'm unable to actually find it.. I probably just spent 30 minutes + didn't see it.... help?

Two possibilities to consider for this:
1. Since you use SageMC, go to SageMC Options>Main>Screen Specific Options>MyTV>Premieres Lookahead
This allows you to change "the number of days for which the schedule should be searched for series and season premieres on the schedules premieres menu"
2. sort of a repeat of what HelenWeathers said above:
Disclaimer to make Opus happy

The default look-ahead time for the scheduler is 3 days. Extending it out further can adversely affect performance. And, if there are conflicts, the scheduler will look at the whole EPG time to try to resolve the conflict automatically, not just the next 3 days. I set my lookahead to 5 days, but using the whole 14 days just seems like it wastes more cpu cycles for little benefit.

You can adjust the number of days of scheduling from 3 days up to 14 by doing the following:If you want to make the EPG include 14 days of data instead of the default 7 (not supported or recommended by SageTV, but I do it with no issues)
Follow these steps:

• Shut down sage tv
• Go to C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV
• edit sage.properties
• search for “scheduling_lookahead=”
• change it to: “scheduling_lookahead=1209600000”
• Restart Sage,

Now you be able to view the upcoming recordings for 14 days. Note this "1209600000" is in milliseconds for 14 days so change that if you want a different number of days. Note that this isn't recommended or supported by SageTV officially, but it's been working just fine for me without any issues.


7 days (604800000)

2 - Actions of directional keys + enter button while watching recorded shows. Here's what I"m used to in BTV (and have come accustomed to)/ vs Sage's behavior
Any chance I can change some of these behaviours while watching TV content?

Again, as HelenWeathers mentioned above, read 181 of the SageTV manual which explains how to remap keys/buttonpresses.

3 - I used Sage to play a DVD last night... it worked, but for some reason, the "back" button does not close out of the DVD player. The only way I could figure out how to get out of DVD was to go to my keyboard and hit the "home" key which took me to the main menu... my remote control doesn't have a home button, and it'd be very annoying to have to go to my keyboard every time I want to exit the DVD section in Sage.

Alt>Back behaves more like exit. I'd remap your remote to do that instead of "left"

[teststrips]

#1 - upcoming recordings - fixed - thanks!
#3 - sort of fixed... I was hitting my esc key (remapped to do the same thing as alt+Left arrow), as I said before doesn't let me out of the DVD program... it flashes, but goes right back in. I did find that if I hit back rapidly many times it eventually lets me out - but gives me a weird error "There is no DVD loaded into the drive. Please check the DVD Drive".. weird because there IS a DVD in the drive + I was just watching it..... in any case.. I can deal with that a lot better than having to go (physically) to my keyboard.

#2 - I understand I can remap keys to do other things, however I want it to only affect actions while watching shows... I see that I can remap the left/right keys to do something else, but wouldn't that make navigating through menus impossible? I haven't tried it yet, but I'm assuming it'd be very hard to change if i screw it up (since my navigational keys are then kaput)

New issue - Sage keeps starting in the background. I don't have a dedicated PC for watching TV, so I'm in and out of the program all of the time... its quite annoying to have sage start in the background when I run my batch file that turns on my projector, switches monitor profiles to switch to it, dims my lights, and opens sage... I often have to go to my PC and click on Sage to be able to control it.

Thanks for your help thus far!