Stop live TV after a period of time?

[jgscott987]

I've found a number of discussions, but never a real solution to this...

My family (including two young children) has a tendency to watch live TV via Sage, and then just turn the TV off when they are finished watching. SageTV dutifully continues recording live TV forever, or until there is a demand for both available tuners. Programming a universal remote to turn off the extender when you turn off the TV is not a good answer. I actually prefer to leave the extenders (HD200) powered on all the time, as they consume about the same power whether they are on or off. Leaving them on eliminates the boot-up time and definitely increases the WAF.

I have (mild) nightmares about SageTV continuously recording for days on end because someone didn't press stop when they finished watching live TV. Is there some way to make Live TV stop automatically- either after a given length of time, or at a certain time every day?

The best solution I have dreamed up so far is to schedule two different recordings at 4 AM every day just to grab both tuners. This is clearly not an ideal solution, as it leaves two miscellaneous entries in the list of recorded programs (not to mention the fact that it is a wonky hack).

Does anyone have a better solution? Could I run a scheduled external program on the server to send a stop command to Sage every day at 4 AM? Would this stop a Live TV recording that is 'running' on an extender? I guess I could automatically quit and re-start the sage server every day?

I assume you could make this happen via Sage Job Queue, but I really don't want to have to add a bunch of complexity to my system just to add this simple feature.

Thanks for your thoughts!

[MitchSchaft]

Can you program your remote to hit stop twice when you turn it off?

[jgscott987]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

Can you program your remote to hit stop twice when you turn it off?

I can, and that will help the situation some. The problem is that they often turn the TV on and off without the remote.

[MitchSchaft]

Maybe set up a schedule in windows to restart the sage service sometimes?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jgscott987

Programming a universal remote to turn off the extender when you turn off the TV is not a good answer. I actually prefer to leave the extenders (HD200) powered on all the time, as they consume about the same power whether they are on or off. Leaving them on eliminates the boot-up time and definitely increases the WAF.

Pressing Home instead of Power does the same thing. My URC R50 is programmed to power on the TV and hit Home, and the extender is usually going within second or two of the TV being ready.

[jgscott987]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Pressing Home instead of Power does the same thing. My URC R50 is programmed to power on the TV and hit Home, and the extender is usually going within second or two of the TV being ready.

I assume the home button does not stop live TV recording- it just makes an extender boot up much faster?

[Fuzzy]

Look into the Auto-Sleep import. It should 'sleep' the UI process (which will stop playback, including live) after an inactivity timeout.

[jgscott987]

I'm leaning toward rebooting the server every day at 4 AM. Sounds like this might aid in stability a bit too. I'll then use SageExtCtrl.exe to reboot each of the extenders once the server is back up and online.

I'm still interested in any other ideas or solutions. Seems like an easy (and obvious) addition to the official SageTV user interface.

[jgscott987]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Look into the Auto-Sleep import. It should 'sleep' the UI process (which will stop playback, including live) after an inactivity timeout.

That looks very interesting. Now I just have to figure out how to add this program to each of my extenders. Doesn't look too complicated...

[Fuzzy]

just extract it into your server's sagetv folder, then add it from the Datailed Setup -> Advanced -> Manage STVi Plugins. The default time-out is 120 minutes, but can be changed if you like by editing each extender's properties file in the SageTV\clients folder with the Sage Service stopped. (look for plugins/df/auto_sleep_time)

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jgscott987

I assume the home button does not stop live TV recording- it just makes an extender boot up much faster?

The extender is off when you hit it, so there can't be any liveTV going on.

[toricred]

I know this is off topic, but it should be short. Stanger when did you get an R50? I've got one and felt like I cheaped out since I didn't think it was something you would settle for.

Back to your regularly scheduled topic.

[stanger89]

I got it for Christmas. I wouldn't want it for my HT, need more programability for that (and RF). But it works rather well for my living room setup, which is just my TV and my HD200.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by jgscott987

I'm leaning toward rebooting the server every day at 4 AM. Sounds like this might aid in stability a bit too.

I don't have HD, but Sage and two extenders run 24x7 here doing 8 or show recordings a day. In several years' use, Sage as a service crashed once or twice, but did no permanent damage to the database Wiz.bin (which I back up daily)
Reboot that PC every couple of weeks - due to other software that goes berzerk - usually in some windows XP DLL. A web server and homeseer.com run on that same PC, and lots of LAN backups using Second Copy and Acronis.

No users on that PC - no email, no web surfing. That makes a big difference.

I hang back a year or so in Windows, JRE and Sage version updates to keep the WAF good.

[jgscott987]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Look into the Auto-Sleep import. It should 'sleep' the UI process (which will stop playback, including live) after an inactivity timeout.

Just a quick followup, This add-in works perfectly. I set it up to sleep the extenders after 3 hours of inactivity (so it won't pop up during a movie, etc). This should be a standard option in Sage.

Thanks again for the help.

[bthurber]

Is there a way to stop live TV from another Sage client? I often find myself running downstairs and hitting stop so I can free up a tuner upstairs.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by jgscott987

I set it up to sleep the extenders after 3 hours of inactivity (so it won't pop up during a movie, etc). This should be a standard option in Sage.

Until you are hosting a football-watching party and your team has the ball on the 1 yard line with 3 seconds left, down by 5, and *pop*, the Sage shuts off...

[Fuzzy]

well, it DOES also popup a confirmation with a 60 second countdown, and an abort button.

[Skirge01]

Are you guys using a programmable remote with your setups? I have a Harmony 880 and wanted to solve a similar issue with guests not stopping what they're watching. Since they all know to hit OFF on the remote, I used EventGhost and the Logitech software to map an IR command to Sage's sleep function and I have that command sent to "turn off" the "computer" (i.e. sleep Sage). Not sure if this helps anyone, but thought I'd mention it.