Is this community dying already?

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

An alternative to the universal remote, if you own an Android phone/tablet or iDevice is to get the free app T*SageTVRemote from The Market or Apple app Store, respectively...

I was looking at that, but it seemed a little complicated to me, as lines-of-code and I don't seem to get along that well

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

I was looking at that, but it seemed a little complicated to me, as lines-of-code and I don't seem to get along that well

It maybe took me 3 minutes to set it up. No lines of code for me. It's easier than you think to set up.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

It maybe took me 3 minutes to set it up. No lines of code for me. It's easier than you think to set up.

Right, if you don't put enough stuff in a wiki, the same questions get asked over and over... If you put too much, that scares away people as it looks too complex...

[wayner]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

why? without one the extender is useless, no?

It is useless without a remote but not without the original Sage remote. It is very easy to get a universal remote that can perectly replicate the Sage remote. That is not true if the NIC breaks in your HD-X00. I have 7 extenders (one an unused spare right now) and I use Harmony remotes with all of them - you don't even need one Sage remote to "teach" the Harmony as it has the Sage IR codes in its database. All of the remotes could die and it wouldn't really affect me. In addition you could use an IP based remote like TiSageTV.

That is not the case with anything internal to the Sage extender like the aforementioned NIC, capacitors on the circuit board, the internal power supply, video output circuitry, etc.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by hoep

yeah fuzzy - you're absolute right - this was also a consideration - the only reason for going the shuttle ion route was the reason, that it is fanless, and i could'nt find a fanless i3 solution here in Europe...

Fanless, in my mind, is more important in a desktop than an HTPC. The desktop is usually withing 3 feet of my ears, on a hard surface. The HTPC is across the room carpeted room from me. I do not hear my HTPC when using it, and when I'm not using it, it is in standby, and completely silent. I have seen that argument so many times, and I have never understood why people waste so much money on it.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Fanless, in my mind, is more important in a desktop than an HTPC. The desktop is usually withing 3 feet of my ears, on a hard surface. The HTPC is across the room carpeted room from me. I do not hear my HTPC when using it, and when I'm not using it, it is in standby, and completely silent. I have seen that argument so many times, and I have never understood why people waste so much money on it.

regarding standby... how do you set that up on a sage server? would it significantly reduce electricity? do recordings wake the server up in time to not clip recordings? thanx

[hoep]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Fanless, in my mind, is more important in a desktop than an HTPC. The desktop is usually withing 3 feet of my ears, on a hard surface. The HTPC is across the room carpeted room from me. I do not hear my HTPC when using it, and when I'm not using it, it is in standby, and completely silent. I have seen that argument so many times, and I have never understood why people waste so much money on it.

ah this is not a price issue (the shuttle one cost nearly exact the same than the system with fans) - fans are silent in it's origin - then there is dust, extrem cheap bearings - after some months of usage you will hear the fans, because the frequency of the noise is really high - i do not like that - and i also tried to perfectly clone a hd300 extender - which has also no fans.

[panteragstk]

My client is in a closet. No noise issues to be found.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

My client is in a closet. No noise issues to be found.

don't ask, don't tell eh?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

regarding standby... how do you set that up on a sage server? would it significantly reduce electricity? do recordings wake the server up in time to not clip recordings? thanx

All you really have to do is set windows to go to sleep when idle. Sage is already configured to wake prior to a recording. The other steps required are that you can wake the system back up when YOU need it (to watch). From an HD300, it is configured out the box to send a magic packet wake-up to the last known server's MAC address (so you just have to support 'wake-on-lan'. For a PC Client, you'd have to do some other steps to send the packet. I was going to make a relatively simple plugin that would send the magic packet in the 'lost connection to server' screen on the client - but never did it, because I can't sleep my server (the R-5000HD doens't like sleeping).

Originally Posted by hoep

ah this is not a price issue (the shuttle one cost nearly exact the same than the system with fans) - fans are silent in it's origin - then there is dust, extrem cheap bearings - after some months of usage you will hear the fans, because the frequency of the noise is really high - i do not like that - and i also tried to perfectly clone a hd300 extender - which has also no fans.

Yes, the price was the same, but that is because you compromised in performance for that fanless setup, instead of spending more. As for getting older, mine is 1 1/2 year old, has never been cleaned, and is still silent (in fact, it used to reside in my master bedroom before I bought the HD300 for in there).

[SteveD]

You can create a bat file to run at startup on the client to send the wake up command to the server with a start delay for sagetvclient. Eventghost also has a wakeon lan command built in. I use evegthost and usb uirts to control power on tvs and receivers. Use sleep plugin timer to control shutdown of clients and tv by way of eventghost/uirts.

[BobPhoenix]

Here is a java class I found on the internet and modified to work better for me to send a WOL packet to another network device:

import java.net.DatagramPacket;
import java.net.DatagramSocket;
import java.net.InetAddress;

public class WakeOnLan {
    public static final int PORT = 9;
    private static byte[] getMacBytes(String macStr)
            throws IllegalArgumentException {
        byte[] bytes = new byte[6];
        String[] hex = macStr.split("(\\:|\\-)");
        if (hex.length != 6) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid MAC address.");
        }
        try {
            for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
                bytes[i] = (byte) Integer.parseInt(hex[i], 16);
            }
        } catch (NumberFormatException e) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid hex digit in MAC address.");
        }
        return bytes;
    }
    public static void wol(String ipStr, String macStr) {
        try {
            byte[] macBytes = getMacBytes(macStr);
            byte[] bytes = new byte[6 + 16 * macBytes.length];
            for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
                bytes[i] = (byte) 0xff;
            }
            for (int i = 6; i < bytes.length; i += macBytes.length) {
                System.arraycopy(macBytes, 0, bytes, i, macBytes.length);
            }

            int index = ipStr.lastIndexOf('.');
            String broadcast = ipStr.substring(0, index);
            InetAddress address = InetAddress.getByName(broadcast + ".255");
            DatagramPacket packet = new DatagramPacket(bytes, bytes.length,
                    address, PORT);
            DatagramSocket socket = new DatagramSocket();
            socket.send(packet);
            socket.close();

            System.out.println("Wake-on-LAN packet sent to " + macStr);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println("Failed to send Wake-on-LAN packet: + e");
            System.exit(1);
        }
    }
    private WakeOnLan() {
    }
}

The ip address is the broadcast address on your network so if your router is at address 192.168.1.1 for instance the broadcast address is 192.168.1.255. Note the code will substitute the .255 so you can just pass the address of your router and it will change the passed in ip address to the broadcast address of your network. I just added code to the Sage GUI and called it with a menu entry from the Sage menus. I use it to wake my other servers from one that is always on.

Just call wol("192.168.1.1", "AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF") for instance.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by SteveD

You can create a bat file to run at startup on the client to send the wake up command to the server with a start delay for sagetvclient. Eventghost also has a wakeon lan command built in. I use evegthost and usb uirts to control power on tvs and receivers. Use sleep plugin timer to control shutdown of clients and tv by way of eventghost/uirts.

Except my client never starts up... it just wakes up...

[SteveD]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Except my client never starts up... it just wakes up...

With eventghost, set the green button on the MCE remote to launch sagetvclient. Create a bat file that calls wake on lan, create a delay to allow the server come from sleep, then launch the client. This is how a non programmer/developer accomplishes things.

[hoep]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Check to see if the connection is half duplex or full duplex. Also check the network throttling setting.



Also


Gerry

don't want to hijack this thread, but I said, that i'll report back. Thanks to the hint from Gerry i could improve network performance a little bit, but the symptomps stay. I cannot get 1080i to playback stable (no combination of codec/renderer etc...), no 1080p, bdmv rips - no chance.
i DO get stable 1080i, 1080p and BDMV-rip playback with XBMC on the same machine though.. (no stutter, no issues...) - so for me it's a clear client issue not a performance issue. So I give up with the client setup and look for a different client/backend strategy. Will keep SageTV as backend..

[darcilicious]

Still sounds like hardware might be your issue. I have no issues playing 1080i recorded content on two different client PCs -- both are pretty hefty and not small form-factor boxes though, and both with nvidia GPUs. (I'll test 1080p when I get home).

[hoep]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Still sounds like hardware might be your issue. I have no issues playing 1080i recorded content on two different client PCs -- both are pretty hefty and not small form-factor boxes though, and both with nvidia GPUs. (I'll test 1080p when I get home).

As i stated - xbmc has absolutely no issue with 1080p on the same machine... Don't believe in a hardware issue. xbmc installed on the same win7/64 os than sage client - one works great - one does'nt

[darcilicious]

Yes and the SageTV client might need more horsepower to do the same thing that the XBMC does. I see this happen with Boxee vs XBMC too -- Boxee is a resource hog and if the hardware is just managing to play the content via XBMC, it will most likely no play back smoothly in Boxee.

So just because media playback works in one (software) media player, doesn't mean the hardware is sufficient to play it in another (software) media player.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by hoep

As i stated - xbmc has absolutely no issue with 1080p on the same machine... Don't believe in a hardware issue. xbmc installed on the same win7/64 os than sage client - one works great - one does'nt

May or may not be a hardware issue, but just because something works in another player doesn't mean it will work with sage. Other players use dshow splitters while sage uses it's own internal splitters. Sometimes certain files or decoders don't get along with the sage splitter. If you want to test to see if it is a decoder splitter incompatibility you should get graph studio and manually make the same graph sage is using to play the file. If it works there it will most likely work in sage.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

Maybe it is just a summertime lull, but it seems to me that traffic is way down on this forum. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that anyone has released a new plugin in quite a while now. (Although there have been some upgrades to Phoenix I believe)

Many of the developers are now focussing on how to maintain the status quo in the future for stuff like EPG and/or using Boxee as a an extender. I really appreciate these efforts but it is kind of depressing that we aren't getting any new functionality and are unlikely to do so ever again.

Bummer man!

According to Jeff's Google+ post, the community has 'died' by about 10%...