How can I replace the default "Main Menu" of the STV with another Menu?

[mkanet]

What is the easiest way to replace "Main Menu" menu with another Menu? Basically, I want to start SageTV in "LiveTV" mode when I turn it on. It might take a little change in Studio.. I'm just not sure where.

Thanks in advance,
Michael

[GKusnick]

The simplest way to start in Live TV mode is probably to use a batch file or Windows shell script that launches Sage, waits a bit, and then sends it a Live TV command via command line (Appendix D of the manual) or SendMessage (Chapter 5).

Changing which menu is considered the Main Menu is fairly trivial in Studio -- just rename it to "Main Menu" (and rename the stock Main Menu to something else) -- but that's almost certainly not what you want because it would make the stock Main Menu very hard to access. I don't think you want the Home key, for instance, to take you to Live TV.

What you want (if I understand you right) is for the Main Menu to function normally in all cases except initial startup. One way to achieve that is to add code to the Main Menu's BeforeMenuLoad hook to (a) check a flag to see if this is the first time it's being loaded, (b) set the flag to indicate that the next time won't be the first, and (c) jump to some other menu if the flag was previously in the "first load" state. This is not a difficult change (for someone reasonably familiar with Studio), but again, it's probably simpler just to script it through the Windows shell.

[mkanet]

I think there might be a less complex way to do it via studio...

Add it to the ApplicationStarted hook; that way I dont need to add any extra logic for sageTV starting the first time.

However, I ran into another issue. It seems that the Live TV / TV functions are not actual menus, they are internal sageTV commands. I only know how to put references to menus. I tried simply adding a copy of the "Live TV" command under the ApplicationStarted hook, but I think that's a completely wrong approach since its not a reference.

Do you, or anyone know what I can put under that hook to start the command for Live TV?

I'd prefer to do it this way than external scripting so I can get a little more familiar with Studio.

[GKusnick]

SageCommand("Live TV") is the equivalent of pressing the Live TV button on your remote. However it probably won't work in ApplicationStarted because no listeners have been set up yet. So that might be a reason for putting the logic in the Main Menu's Before/AfterMenuLoad hooks, so that it's actually ready to accept commands.

Also note that ApplicationStarted doesn't fire when you load a new STV in mid-session. That may not matter in this particular case, but in general it's better to do your one-time initialization in BeforeMenuLoad of the Main Menu (with a flag to make sure it happens just once) to make sure it actually happens in all cases when your STV is loaded.