Sage Web admin tool and other SDK stuff

[jominor]

I have a question. I write Java web-based tools for a living. It seems to me that it would be trivial the have a tomcat based web administrative tool for sage.

Are all the settings control via detailed setup stored in the properties file? If so, It would be straightforward to have a web-based front-end to modify that file.

Also, I am extremely interested in plug-in integration. For example, ever since reading about Studio and the potential the exposing of a Sage API, I've had a couple of things I've been thinking about. For example, notifications. I would like to receive email when certain events have occured like conflicts, or a confirmation that a particular show has been recorded.

There has also been talk of a very small, very trivial utility to monitor Sage and perhaps restart it if it fails. I've worked on systems that were supposed to run 24/7. Such a monitor could definitely work with Sage. In addition, if a convention could be agreed upon, for example, Sage writes to a sage.uptime file every min, then the monitor could check the last time the file was written to and bounce Sage if necessary. This would detect crashes and freezes(non-gui anyway) and would work with the new service.

Is anyone else interested in any of this?

[mls]

I'd suggest e-mailing Frey for info about developer support.

As for the restart on a freeze or lock up, the current version in testing has an option to run as a service and supposedly will continue recording and restart the GUI part if it pukes. There are some mixed results with that at this point, but might be fixed for the final release of v2.1.

[remmy925]

Myth TV has the ability to set recordings via a web page. I think this would be a great feature for Sage TV. If it exists, I am completely unaware of it. I would however be excited to see it. Would be great if I was at work, logged onto my own little Sage web server and got a program guide I could use to select my future recordings. Would be also nice for people who have a pvr box but dont want to hook up a monitor and dont have hdtv. Could use the web interface to make changes to your PVR. If it exists...someone point me to it. If it doesnt....someone work on it!

[mls]

I know several people would like this feature, but for some reason I just can't see when/where/why anyone would need it. After all, once SageTV is set up there is very little reason to have to change any settings.

And, with most of the recordings being set up as Favorites and an EPG that let's you program other recordings 2 weeks ahead... Well, only time one I could imagine anyone needing to make a change is it was announced that some program that you wanted to record got changed to a different time/channel so quick you didn't have time to get back home to the main machine.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's a nice idea, it's just I myself can't see where anyone would actually have need to use it. Not to mention I have this thing about not allowing anything to connect into my computers from the outside (not even myself). Any such feature would require opening up a hole in my security settings (which I'm not about to do).

[walts81]

Originally Posted by mls

I...I just can't see when/where/why anyone would need it.

Well, I've been using Beyond TV for a while and I must say that I have used their web scheduling feature quite a bit. Yes, 2 weeks of EPG data is there at home but I don't just sit in front of the tv searching for everything that's going to be on in the next 2 weeks. It's much easier to browse a website. You can see more channels at once. And there have been many times that someone at work has mentioned something being on that I wasn't aware of. So I simply go to my office and schedule it. It's a VERY nice feature. Probably one of those things like PVR'ing in general. Not many people realize how great it is until you start using it. Then you don't know how you could've lived without it.

- Josh

[nielm]

Originally Posted by jominor

There has also been talk of a very small, very trivial utility to monitor Sage and perhaps restart it if it fails.

You get this for 'free' with Win2k and Xp when running as a service... 'Enable service recovery' means that when the service dies, windows will restart it... (restart delays configurable, and possible system reboot configurable via the control panel->admin->services)