STV: Cayars17 Ultimate STV (Release 17 - Jan 18)

[srothwell]

Carlo,

I've noticed another anomoly....

If you go to Upcoming Recordings to see what's going to be recorded later, and you have a favorite in the llist, just clicking on it (or selecting with remote) will no longer bring up the detail screen, it will turn it into a manual recording.

Also, the EPG looks funny now.... there's no show logos any more and it just looks different than it did under Cayars13.

Also, can you please tell me what the settings need to be for Comskip to automatically process every single show that's recorded without any intervention from a user -- complete in the background.

Thanks for all the work!

Stacy

[davephan]

I just started using the Cayers STV a few days ago. It is a big improvement over the orginal STV. Although I would like to make a couple of suggestions for enhancements.

Could a "Back" option to the "Program Information" and "Recording Details" screens? The "Back Arrow" at the top is a small 'target' to click on with the mouse.

Dave

[davephan]

The commerical skip feature is very nice, but it is a CPU gobbler. My Athlon 1500+ CPU stays at 100% consumption for long periods while the commerical skip is 'marking' the commericals. Perhaps the commerical skip feature could be set at a lower priority to reduce the CPU consumption.

I also noticed my memory consumption increased significantly when going from version 1.4 to 2.1. Frequently, the memory consumption would top out and remain at my 512 megs physical memory. Adding another 512 megs memory, for a total of 1 gig memory fixed that memory 'breathing room' problem (I am using Windows 2000 Pro). The memory consuption is now about 380 megs to almost 500 megs and never goes much above 500 megs. The computer's performance improved quite a bit. I would recommend anyone with less than 1 gig memory, increase the memory to 1 gig.

Does anyone have experience with boosting the CPU power (or multiple CPUs) to improve the commerical skip CPU consumption problem? Or, reducing the commerical skip's CPU priority?

Dave

[ToxMox]

Hey gang,

I'm posting a modified version by me of the Cayars14 STV that was most recently posted. I have greatly changed the code for the small icon bar in the Malore views and I think greatly improved it. Just download and extract to your SageTV program directory. Then choose Cayars14ToxMod3.stv in your advanced settings. Next thing I'll tackle is the larger icons. Please make sure you have installed the actual most recent Cayars14 before installing my mod.

I'm open to any feedback you may have

Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

ToxMox

http://www.dandyfine.com/Cayars14ToxMod3.zip

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Hey gang,

I'm posting a modified version by me of the Cayars14 STV that was most recently posted. I have greatly changed the code for the small icon bar in the Malore views and I think greatly improved it. Just download and extract to your SageTV program directory. Then choose Cayars14ToxMod3.stv in your advanced settings. Next thing I'll tackle is the larger icons. Please make sure you have installed the actual most recent Cayars14 before installing my mod.

I'm open to any feedback you may have

Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

ToxMox

http://www.dandyfine.com/Cayars14ToxMod3.zip

Is this a modification to the final version posted (per first thread) or one of the test versions?

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by davephan

The commerical skip feature is very nice, but it is a CPU gobbler. My Athlon 1500+ CPU stays at 100% consumption for long periods while the commerical skip is 'marking' the commericals. Perhaps the commerical skip feature could be set at a lower priority to reduce the CPU consumption.

I also noticed my memory consumption increased significantly when going from version 1.4 to 2.1. Frequently, the memory consumption would top out and remain at my 512 megs physical memory. Adding another 512 megs memory, for a total of 1 gig memory fixed that memory 'breathing room' problem (I am using Windows 2000 Pro). The memory consuption is now about 380 megs to almost 500 megs and never goes much above 500 megs. The computer's performance improved quite a bit. I would recommend anyone with less than 1 gig memory, increase the memory to 1 gig.

Does anyone have experience with boosting the CPU power (or multiple CPUs) to improve the commerical skip CPU consumption problem? Or, reducing the commerical skip's CPU priority?

Dave

ComSkip runs at the lowest priority that it can. It will however use all CPU cycles if other programs aren't using the CPU as it should. It will give up CPU cycles as other programs running at a higher priority need them.

Carlo

[nielm]

Originally Posted by davephan

The memory consuption is now about 380 megs to almost 500 megs and never goes much above 500 megs. The computer's performance improved quite a bit. I would recommend anyone with less than 1 gig memory, increase the memory to 1 gig.

The memory consumption of which process? (task manager ; view->select columns->memory usage)
for me also on W2K, SageTVService uses 45Mb, SageTV 110Mb, with 512Mb Ram, totalling 400Mb used by all processes (and this system runs tons of other stufF)

[Cayars]

When he added memory the computer probably used more ram for buffers. That will normally use more memory as he indicated and will generally improve performance.

For the typical SageTV computer I'm not sure you're going to see much difference going from 512MB to 1024MB. Going from 256MB to 512MB will show a much more dramatic difference.

[davephan]

SageTV consumes 95 meg, the SageTV service about 49 megs (after increasing my physical memory from 512 megs to 1024 megs). The total memory consumption is usually a bit higher than 400 megs.

Before I increased the memory, the memory consumption would build up to about 512 megs. It seemed that there wasn't enough breathing room for the memory, causing the nearly 100% sustained memory consumption.

After adding the memory, the total memory consumptiion seems to say around 400 megs (-20, +80).

If my memory consumption is out of line from the normal memory consumption, perhaps I need to check into it futher...

Dave

[JasonJoel]

If you specifically want to slow down COMSKIP and make it use less CPU, you can set the "play_nice" setting in the COMSKIP.INI.

For instance, I added the following two lines to my COMSKIP.INI file to make it use less CPU during my normal Sage viewing times. I did this because sometimes when using two Media MVP's at the same time while COMSKIP is running the MVP screen updates would get 'weird'.

These lines would slow it down from 4PM to 11PM. You could obviously change them to whatever you want.

play_nice_start=1600
play_nice_end=2300

Jason Bottjen

Originally Posted by davephan

The commerical skip feature is very nice, but it is a CPU gobbler. My Athlon 1500+ CPU stays at 100% consumption for long periods while the commerical skip is 'marking' the commericals. Perhaps the commerical skip feature could be set at a lower priority to reduce the CPU consumption.

I also noticed my memory consumption increased significantly when going from version 1.4 to 2.1. Frequently, the memory consumption would top out and remain at my 512 megs physical memory. Adding another 512 megs memory, for a total of 1 gig memory fixed that memory 'breathing room' problem (I am using Windows 2000 Pro). The memory consuption is now about 380 megs to almost 500 megs and never goes much above 500 megs. The computer's performance improved quite a bit. I would recommend anyone with less than 1 gig memory, increase the memory to 1 gig.

Does anyone have experience with boosting the CPU power (or multiple CPUs) to improve the commerical skip CPU consumption problem? Or, reducing the commerical skip's CPU priority?

Dave

[cmaffia]

Originally Posted by rsagetv99

Can you explain more? Do you mean the IMDB search from the Program Information menu?

From DETAILED INFO screen... when you choose IMDB Search, once you go deep into that, backing out to the DETAILED INFO again screen is impossible unless I ARROW LEFT like a madman. It keeps reloading the IMDB info for that movie.

[ToxMox]

posting from cell phone. I downloaded cayars14 this morning around 9am from your website and modded that one

Originally Posted by Cayars

Is this a modification to the final version posted (per first thread) or one of the test versions?

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Hey gang,

I'm posting a modified version by me of the Cayars14 STV that was most recently posted. I have greatly changed the code for the small icon bar in the Malore views and I think greatly improved it. Just download and extract to your SageTV program directory. Then choose Cayars14ToxMod3.stv in your advanced settings. Next thing I'll tackle is the larger icons. Please make sure you have installed the actual most recent Cayars14 before installing my mod.

I'm open to any feedback you may have

Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

ToxMox

http://www.dandyfine.com/Cayars14ToxMod3.zip

Just a heads up. The change you made for the Malore modules is also used in the LiveTV guide modules. In those modules the icons are now very tiny. Also in the small icon view code you missed/left out the code to check for the .smi file used by the older CC support which is still needed by many users. Other then that everythings seems to be fine.

I'm trying to use the malore modules so I give the new look of the icons a chance. I'm not sure I like the new look or not. I like the channel logo on the left (I'm planning on adding the channel number/name text if no logo is present). I think I like the "tighter" looker where the icons are next to each other instead of a lot of space between them.

What I'm not sure of yet is if I like the icons showing up transparent if they aren't active. I guess this is a personal thing, but normally I like to try and conserve space so it might be usable for something else. I also played a couple of tricks in the original code to conserve space. For example, I used the same space allotment for multiple icons like the watched and rec icons to conserve space since it's impossible to have watched a show that is still recording (unless you've previously recorded and watched it).

I'm keeping an open mind but I think I'm going to stick with the original implementation for now.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by cmaffia

From DETAILED INFO screen... when you choose IMDB Search, once you go deep into that, backing out to the DETAILED INFO again screen is impossible unless I ARROW LEFT like a madman. It keeps reloading the IMDB info for that movie.

I think you'll have the same problem in the weather suite too. It's the way the "back" command is implented. Best to hit the home key or use the left arrow up top.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by Cayars

I think you'll have the same problem in the weather suite too. It's the way the "back" command is implented. Best to hit the home key or use the left arrow up top.

This is actually a bug in my IMDB search module... There is an itermediate page between the search 'keyboard' page and the search results -- this is the page which actually performs the search and which redirects you on to the search results... I will need to mod that slightly so that it is not shown when going 'back'.

[Cayars]

I know I started to look at the code that handles this and quickly said to myself "I'll just use the home key"

[Cayars]

Quick question for everyone. I'm curious, how many of you guys using my STV are ALSO using Niel's new Web Stuff? I'll bet at least 70% are since you're all more geared to being power users then the typical SageTV user.

Question for Niel: I don't remember so I'll ask. Besided the one line in the properties file that loads the webserver classes are there any addition property settings?

[srothwell]

Cayars,

Any chance to look at these.... ?

Stacy

Originally Posted by srothwell

Carlo,

I've noticed another anomoly....

If you go to Upcoming Recordings to see what's going to be recorded later, and you have a favorite in the llist, just clicking on it (or selecting with remote) will no longer bring up the detail screen, it will turn it into a manual recording.

Also, the EPG looks funny now.... there's no show logos any more and it just looks different than it did under Cayars13.

Also, can you please tell me what the settings need to be for Comskip to automatically process every single show that's recorded without any intervention from a user -- complete in the background.

Thanks for all the work!

Stacy

[krutaw]

Originally Posted by Cayars

Quick question for everyone. I'm curious, how many of you guys using my STV are ALSO using Niel's new Web Stuff? I'll bet at least 70% are since you're all more geared to being power users then the typical SageTV user.

Question for Niel: I don't remember so I'll ask. Besided the one line in the properties file that loads the webserver classes are there any addition property settings?

I'm happy to say that I'm successfully using nielm's web mod, your STV as well as the MVP Client. I gotta say, this is really starting to get interesting.

[ekiwi]

Not sure where i should ask this as it fits in several theards, I love the IMDB search thing as here in new zealand (probably the same everywhere else except the US and canada) the data we get via xml is rather limited.

the IMDB is great for movies but for series it is not so hot, Is anyone looking at other sources tvtome is one of the ones i use having it built into sage would be great.

the other thing i would love would be an imbeded browser

-e