[XBMC addon] SageTV

[LehighBri]

Also, a good way to sanity check that you have the right addon version is by looking at the version # on the link below. This is a pull from the XBMC repo and thus is what is used to trigger auto-updating your addons.

If your version doesn't match this, then I would either reboot or uninstall/reinstall the addon to make sure all your files are in sync.

http://xbmcaddonbrowser.com/addons/e....video.sagetv/

[Naylia]

Excited to check this out! I've been trying to figure out a way to take advantage of cable card recording in SageTV and get a better interface for accessing streaming video sites, so this is super helpful.

Anyone had any issues or run into any nuances using this on Apple TV 2?

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Naylia

Excited to check this out! I've been trying to figure out a way to take advantage of cable card recording in SageTV and get a better interface for accessing streaming video sites, so this is super helpful.

Anyone had any issues or run into any nuances using this on Apple TV 2?

Apple TV 2 can't decode 1080p so I had some jerkiness there. I personally sold mine and am using all raspberry pi's (using this addon plus things like airplay) and absolutely love it. The pi is incredibly powerful and can easily decode 1080p. But try out on the ATV2... it should definitely work... it's just a matter of how high quality your recordings are.

[eric3a]

<insert my canned response here... >. need logs, etc etc. if you are having versioning issues, you can always sanity check what you have against the github and make sure you're using the latest version of each file (the main ones being default.py and xbmc.js). or better yet, remove the addon from your rpi and install it fresh/new from the addon repo so that you are guaranteed to have all the required files to make 1.4.2 work (which is the latest version in the repo as of earlier today).
__________________

Thanks.
Traveling this week.

I did de-install completely and re-install from the file on the github this week-end. Will try again when I get back. Not really sure where the logs are on the Pivos, but need to learn I guess!
Thanks your efforts.
Eric

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by eric3a

Thanks.
Traveling this week.

I did de-install completely and re-install from the file on the github this week-end. Will try again when I get back. Not really sure where the logs are on the Pivos, but need to learn I guess!
Thanks your efforts.
Eric

Not sure if this helps, but there's an Android location for the XBMC log files here: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Log_file#Location

And as you can see in this commit, I checked in 1.4.2 with the matching updated xbmc.js file to the github on Nov 30. Did you reinstall around that time?

https://github.com/kricker/plugin.vi...7deb0ab4ca365b

I'll continue to be very confused without a log file (which tells me what version you have of everything and what it's expecting and why it's showing you the xbmc.js message), but I highly recommend you stick to the official XBMC repo builds and just install from there. That way you will get the officially supported addon and it will autoupdate... anything outside of that will be developer builds and subject to issues like you're having!

[jm9843]

With PVR support officially a part of XBMC Frodo, has there been any talk of developing support for Sage as a PVR backend?

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by jm9843

With PVR support officially a part of XBMC Frodo, has there been any talk of developing support for Sage as a PVR backend?

There's been talk yes, and that's definitely the direction we want to go where we use XBMC's PVR API so that the integration is native within XBMC. We are not spending any work on it though given the way Frodo stands today (PVR support requires binary addons vs. python addons which is what this SageTV addon is and thus is something I'm not pursuing unless someone else wants to).

Kricker should probably comment more on this, but it sounds like there's growing talk inside XBMC to eventually in the future support python-based PVR addons in which case that would allow us to reuse an incredible amount of code and thinking from this addon. There is no date assigned to that so don't hold your breath, but that's where things stand from my perspective. And maybe by the time this finally comes out, maybe there will finally be another competitor out there that provides Sage-like functionality but is actually supported! (my biggest reason for being on Sage is Ceton support via SageDCT... if something else supported it, I'd probably jump ship at some point).

[ptaylor]

Hi,

If this is something I missed that's already been covered, please excuse me. Just let me know and I'll search more.

I just recently started using this Add-On and have a question involving Commercial Skip. Comskip doesn't always mark the commercials correctly, plus it often cuts off the previews for next weeks episode, even if everything else is perfect.

Well, the XBMC support for it is a bit odd, and I wondered how others get around this. It looks like if XBMC sees a .edl file matching the filename, it will automatically "cut" the commercials out. The timeline doesn't show the commercial breaks at all, and you can't rewind to go back into the skipped break. Further, instead of a 30 minute show being listed as 30 minutes, it shows up at around 22 minutes. There's no way to watch the "cut" content, so if the commercials aren't properly detected, you get parts of the show that are skipped.

Now, I've done a little reading on XBMC's support for .edl files (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Edit_decision_list). In the .edl file, there are three columns of numbers. The first two represent start and stop locations in the file for commercials, and the third column is an "action". It appears the SageTV ComSkip always sets the action to "0", which XBMC sees as "cut", hence the behavior I described above. If this is set to an action of "3", XBMC will see it as a commercial break and will skip it the first time it encounters it during playback, but if you rewind into a break, it will play the commercial. Further, a 30 minute show will show up as a 30 minute show...

Is there any way to change this behavior, so comskip will set these to "3" instead of "0"?

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by ptaylor

Hi,

If this is something I missed that's already been covered, please excuse me. Just let me know and I'll search more.

I just recently started using this Add-On and have a question involving Commercial Skip.

Well, the support for it is odd. It looks like if XBMC sees a .edl file matching the filename, it will automatically "cut" the commercials out. The timeline doesn't show the commercial breaks at all, and you can't rewind to go back into the skipped break. Further, instead of a 30 minute show being listed as 30 minutes, it shows up at around 22 minutes.

Now, I've done a little reading on XBMC's support for .edl files. In the .edl file, there are three columns of numbers. The first two represent start and stop locations in the file for commercials, and the third column is an "action". It appears the SageTV ComSkip always sets the action to "0", which XBMC sees as "cut", hence the behavior I described above. If this is set to an action of "3", XBMC will see it as a commercial break and will skip it the first time it encounters it during playback, but if you rewind into a break, it will play the commercial. Further, a 30 minute show will show up as a 30 minute show...

Is there any way to change this behavior, so comskip will set these to "3" instead of "0"?

Why would you want to move back into the commercial break? Not sure I understand that as that's the whole point of commercial skipping, but I don't know of any way to do it within SageTV.

Assuming you're using comskip, I would recommend you look around on comskip's site/forums to see if there's a way to change the action (it might be as simple as tweaking the comskip.ini file, but not sure).

http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip

[kricker]

He wants to be able to skip back due to an improper marking, or as he stated to be able to view next weeks previews which would be inside of one of the marked breaks. I encounter this myself and just turned off comskip. I never investigated to the extent ptaylor did.

ptaylor,
As LehighBri stated, check into comskips options as well as the addon in SageTV to see about switching it to using 3. Also you may want to hand edit a .edl file to see if what you found actually works.

To make Sage a full PVR addon, I will have to check the status of PYTHON<->XBMC PVR code. I've not heard anymore on it lately, but I have also been very busy with other things. I will try to investigate further today. Of course if someone wants to help write the binary parts we could get one sooner.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by kricker

He wants to be able to skip back due to an improper marking, or as he stated to be able to view next weeks previews which would be inside of one of the marked breaks. I encounter this myself and just turned off comskip. I never investigated to the extent ptaylor did.

This helps me understand the problems and am hearing a couple things. IF your only issue is you want to view next weeks previews and comskip treats that as a commercial, I have the same problem but came up with a simple solution.

Simple solution is to add the following property to your comskip.ini which will work for all comskip runs going forward. The setting I use is below which treats the final 2 minutes (120 seconds) of a show as a show and no commercial (even if there really is a commercial there) so that I can see the previews. Helpful?

always_keep_last_seconds=120

[ptaylor]

That would help, but I pretty regularly have parts of shows that are marked as part of commercials. This would eliminate the missed preview problem, at least.

I have validated that if the commercials are marked as "3" instead of "0", XBMC does skip it, but if you rewind, you find yourself viewing the skipped content. The shows are also listed with their proper durations, not the "cut" duration.

Unfortunately the Confluence XBMC skin doesn't mark off commercial breaks the way SageTV does in the timeline. Perhaps there is another skin with that support, but I find it useful on my HD200.

I have put in a post on the forum as suggested:
http://www.kaashoek.com/comskip/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1368

[ptaylor]

Originally Posted by Naylia

Excited to check this out! I've been trying to figure out a way to take advantage of cable card recording in SageTV and get a better interface for accessing streaming video sites, so this is super helpful.

Anyone had any issues or run into any nuances using this on Apple TV 2?

Just to chime in here, I'm running this on my Apple TV 2 box. It works pretty well if you are converting your recordings in SageTV to MP4. If not, HD shows that are 1080p are not going to be watchable.

[kricker]

ptaylor,
If you get a response to that post, can you report back and let us know?

[ptaylor]

Originally Posted by kricker

ptaylor,
If you get a response to that post, can you report back and let us know?

Sure thing

[Naylia]

Originally Posted by ptaylor

Just to chime in here, I'm running this on my Apple TV 2 box. It works pretty well if you are converting your recordings in SageTV to MP4. If not, HD shows that are 1080p are not going to be watchable.

Sigh....there's always a catch. Are cable co's actually broadcasting in proper 1080p? Never really thought to check what I was getting via my Ceton tuner.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Naylia

Sigh....there's always a catch. Are cable co's actually broadcasting in proper 1080p? Never really thought to check what I was getting via my Ceton tuner.

No. Broadcasts are either 1080i or 720p. It doesn't hurt to try and like the above said, try to convert some of your shows into lower quality.

[Naylia]

Originally Posted by Naylia

Sigh....there's always a catch. Are cable co's actually broadcasting in proper 1080p? Never really thought to check what I was getting via my Ceton tuner.

Ughh....and I can't playback Blu-ray either. This project is going downhill fast.

[Naylia]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

No. Broadcasts are either 1080i or 720p. It doesn't hurt to try and like the above said, try to convert some of your shows into lower quality.

Yeah, TV I'd be willing to re-encode too so I can work around that. But now the lack of Blu-ray support is another kink to work out. Not sure I want to re-encode everything, I wonder if I have enough storage space to start duplicating movies into multiple formats.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Naylia

Yeah, TV I'd be willing to re-encode too so I can work around that. But now the lack of Blu-ray support is another kink to work out. Not sure I want to re-encode everything, I wonder if I have enough storage space to start duplicating movies into multiple formats.

Yikes. Probably not a long-term answer unless you want to look to other solutions that aren't Apple TV.