Some general questions

[tbil99]

I am investigating using SageTV as a replacement for another product that I am having some technical difficulties with and wanted to get some info regarding some of the features availability and compatibility with my current hardware/software.
I would like to try it and see if the issues I have with the other product exist with this as well or if this is as stable as some of the forum contributers say.

First of all, is the Live TV Guide available for Canadian cities? Secondly, can anyone see any issues with my hardware that might cause a problem as far as compatibility?

Athlon 64 3200+
Asus K8V SE Deluxe Motherboard
1024M DDR400 Memory
ATI Radeon 9200SE 128M Video
160G SATA Hard Drive
1.44M Floppy Drive
Pioneer DVR-108 DVD burner
Firefly PC Remote
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
Windows XP Pro - SP2

Thanks,
Tim

[Lester Jacobs]

Originally Posted by tbil99

...
First of all, is the Live TV Guide available for Canadian cities? ...

There is a plugin for Canadian TV listings located here.

Cheers
Lester

[tbil99]

Originally Posted by Lester Jacobs

There is a plugin for Canadian TV listings located here.

Cheers
Lester

Thanks, I'll try it tonight. Just wondering though, why doesn't Sage support Canadian listings? Is it that difficult?

Thanks again,
Tim

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by tbil99

Thanks, I'll try it tonight. Just wondering though, why doesn't Sage support Canadian listings? Is it that difficult?

Thanks again,
Tim

Technically no and Sage does via the mentioned plugin. Sage itself really has nothing to do with listings. In the US the EPG is downloaded into Sage from an External provider, albeit Frey downloads from Zap2IT and pushes it out to US Sage Servers. (or rather pulled down by Sage Servers) Sage is a US based product, might be rather daunting to provide listings for ALL the Worlds Countries natively via Sage Server. All the other World Country's TV systems would need to provide the listings to Sage in order for Sage to make it available to respective users in said countries.

[Opus4]

There is also the cost issue: Frey has to pay for those US listings that it provides to the users. It wouldn't be free for them to provide listings in the rest of the world either.

- Andy

[tbil99]

Originally Posted by Opus4

There is also the cost issue: Frey has to pay for those US listings that it provides to the users. It wouldn't be free for them to provide listings in the rest of the world either.

- Andy

BeyondTV manages to supply the listing for both Canada and the U.S. I think this may fall under NAFTA. :^ )

Tim

[Opus4]

Yup, NAFTA: Not Available Freely To All. My point was that Frey has to pay the EPG info provider (Zap2It) for the US listings they provide. They would also have to pay for Canadian listings (or any other country) if those were to be provided. Could things change in the future such that Frey provides listings for other countries? Sure, lots of things are possible. Will it happen? I have no idea. I was just trying to respond to your question about why Canadian listings are not included at the moment: I believe it boils down to a cost issue, not a technical difficulty.

- Andy

[tbil99]

Originally Posted by Lester Jacobs

There is a plugin for Canadian TV listings located here.

Cheers
Lester

Well I finally got SageTV working but I'm having trouble with the plugin. I've installed it and signed up at Zap2it but I don't have the listings.
I've modified Sage.properites and an .xml files as per the instructions. The re-setting up of the Hauppauge card didn't really make sense because the pages were different than the instructions. At one point I was getting some satelite listings or something.
Is there something else I'm supposed to do in the settings of SageTV, to get it to work?
Does it download immediately or will it actually work if I wait a day to get the automatic refreshing?

Thanks,
Tim

[Wheemer]

You have to use 00000 as your zip code, and you should then see the respective lineups you've setup on zap2it's website.

[tbil99]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

You have to use 00000 as your zip code, and you should then see the respective lineups you've setup on zap2it's website.

I use 00000 but it says "Please select your cable or satellite provider."

Upon further experimentation, something is resetting the Sage.properties file. I changed it and a backup file. Noted the timestamp of when they were modified. Then I restarted the computer and watched as the timestamp changed.
Any idea of what setting I have changed or how to get around this?

Thanks,
Tim

[Wheemer]

Is it showing the cable/sat provider you've selected on zap2it? If so, follow it through. If not, then you've got something setup wrong.

[tbil99]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

Is it showing the cable/sat provider you've selected on zap2it? If so, follow it through. If not, then you've got something setup wrong.

Upon further experimentation, something is resetting the Sage.properties file and removing the plugin name. I changed it and a backup file. Noted the timestamp of when they were modified. Then I restarted the computer and watched as the timestamp changed.
Any idea of what setting I have changed that would cause this resetting of the files?

Thanks,
Tim

[Wheemer]

Are you running in service mode? If so you must exit that before changing the properties file.

[tbil99]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

Are you running in service mode? If so you must exit that before changing the properties file.

Looks like that did it. Thanks!


Tim

[tbil99]

Now that I've got that done. I seem to be having trouble setting the video library. I'm trying to set it to a folder on the E:\ drive. It's a logical partition on the same drive as the C:\ drive.

Also, does anyone know how compatible the Firefly remote is with SageTV? It says it is compatible but some of the most obvious functions (pause and play) don't seem to work.

Any ideas?

Thanks again,
Tim

[Wheemer]

I'm not sure about the firefly, as I understand it you must edit aml files for setup? My advice would be to use it with girder, it's pretty simple after you get the hang of it. I think there is a free version, maybe someone else can give you infomation on that.

Are you receiving an error when you try to setup your library? This is where you have files you'd like to view in Sage right? Did you set it up in "Library Import Directories"?

[tbil99]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

I'm not sure about the firefly, as I understand it you must edit aml files for setup? My advice would be to use it with girder, it's pretty simple after you get the hang of it. I think there is a free version, maybe someone else can give you infomation on that.

Are you receiving an error when you try to setup your library? This is where you have files you'd like to view in Sage right? Did you set it up in "Library Import Directories"?

I got the firefly working. I saw something in the snapstream support forum.
I guess SageTV keeps changing a class name or something.

I got the recording directory changed but now I have a question. Does it keep all of the "live" recordings it makes in separate files for each occurrance of each show. For instance, if I'm channel hopping and I stop on 10 channels for a few seconds each, I'm going to have 10 relatively small files? That is going to require a lot of cleaning up.

Tim

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by tbil99

I got the recording directory changed but now I have a question. Does it keep all of the "live" recordings it makes in separate files for each occurrance of each show. For instance, if I'm channel hopping and I stop on 10 channels for a few seconds each, I'm going to have 10 relatively small files? That is going to require a lot of cleaning up.

See "Appendix C: Managing Recording Files" in the PDF manual, found in your SageTV dir. (especially the last section of that appendix.) In short: yes, they are all recorded to separate files, but by default they are automatically deleted shortly after the show is over.

- Andy

[tbil99]

Another question.
I entered the Favourites Manager/New by Category and selected a category. There is a show that matches this category but it does not show up in the View Upcoming Recording Schedule. I have turned off Intelligent Recording.

Is this correct and if so, any reasons why the sports show that matches my category is not listed as going to be recorded?

Thanks,
Tim

[Opus4]

What show? What is the category for the fav & what is listed for the show you want?

In v2.1, I believe a subcategory wasn't checked all the time for shows -- so if you select a category for a fav, yet it is a subcategory for a show, that show wouldn't get seen by the fav. There was a change for this the v2.2.1 beta so that subcategoreis are matched also.

- Andy