Noob searched & still has a few setup questions... :-)

[snarlyboy]

Hi all,

I'm new to SageTV and am trying to get things sorted in this 15day trial before I purchase it (but I certainly will - it looks light-years beyond other stuff out there and seems to have a nice community supporting it - also I think I will mention Sage to everyone as it really looks great so far).

Anyway, I originally thought that I could allocate an old computer of mine to be the PVR but I'm having second thoughts and wanted to ask a few questions about both Performance and Setup/Installation/Configuration. Hopefully someone can help me - I've searched these forums and the web and have found some answers but not all..

My current setup is:

• Win 2000 SP4
• AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz (Soltek motherboard with Via chipset, and latest bios)
• 1Gb RAM
• ATI Radeon 9550 Video Card with TVout to display SageTV on a TV (latest Catalyst drivers)
• Hauppauge PVR150MCE with card and MCE remote (not sure which driver it could be the pre-release ones or the 31.Ds it was a bit strange getting it to work at first - even though I did use HCWCLear..)

I'll ask the PERFORMANCE question first since I think the configuration things may be related??

I initially bought a PVR500 and couldn't get it to work, it randomly rebooted (no blue screen - just random reboots) and when it did work for a few seconds it was blocky stuttery playback of Live TV. I searched around and eventually found out that the PVR500 doesn't work well with VIA chipsets on your motherboard?? So, I returned it and got a PVR150 which has been MOSTLY painless and seems to work MUCH better so far.

Although it was working fine for a couple of days (I think I'm on day 7 of my trial - I'll buy it soon ). In trying to get the remaining issues sorted - i.e. the remote working etc, I have noticed an occasional HUGE slowdown in the GUI response every now and then and sometimes it apparently buffers the remote or mouse clicks and gives me that spinning Sage logo and takes FOREVER to set a setting or go back a menu or anything, basically making it unusable.

This is kind of weird as I was initially able to get the GUI to work flawlessly and also record fine with no performance issues. So I'm not sure why this happens every now and then. Btw the performance issue is with the GUI only not the video - so I think that means this can be fixed? If not I am inches away from trashing this computer and just getting a new motherboard and 3.4Ghz CPU and XP Home, and keeping the memory video, PVR card and hard drives to see if that fixes anything - but I thought I would post here first just in case someone can help me salvage this.

Do you think I need to upgrade for my media center PC or will my system's stats work for it??

Also, any ideas why the GUI locks up like this? I have tried VMR9 and Overlay with and without 3D accel (which should work on a ATI9550) so I have no idea. These problems sort of started occurring when I installed HIP to try and get the remote to work... is that related?


Here are my CONFIGURATION problems - any links to threads or webpages or answers would be massively appreciated!

1. Does the USB Hauppauge Remote work with SageTV innately? (See attached picture below to see which one I have) I couldn't seem to get it to work until I installed the HIP program but that seemed flaky and slowed things down. How can I get it to work? Perhaps it doesn't work in Win 2000 and I have to get XP? It initially complained about eHome drivers and I found some MCEIR.sys driver online which allowed device manager to recognize it eventually.

2. How do I get the Hauppauge IR blaster which plugs into the USB receiver to control my digital cable set top box? I'm assuming that I have to set up a SageTV channel for each of the channels on my set top box and then somehow have SageTV change the channel on the set top box via the IR blaster automatically whenever I change Sage channels? I've obviously plugged it all in and put the sensor near my set top box's sensor but since I'm not sure my remote is working properly (i.e. all the buttons don't seem to work - just some of them) so I don't think I am set up to configure the auto channel change thing now - which I assume is what to do??

3. Is anyone here successfully using the Intelligent programming and an EPG with Sky TV in New Zealand? My preliminary searches tell me that I have to install some SageTV plugin called XMLTV which downloads the EPG listings in a form Sage can use. Is this correct? Where do I find the listings feed online for Sky TV in New Zealand? Is somebody scraping the Sky TV website for the data? I had heard Sky doesn't allow their listings to be distributed - which doesn't make sense to me if it is posted on a public website? But any ideas on this side of things? And any clear links on how to set up this plugin with Sage? I have yet to install an .STV file if that is the process. This truly seems convoluted and I'm unclear how it all is BEST setup.

4. This question is a usability one-- how do I get SageTV to record a clip EXACTLY when I press the Record button and save the clip as soon as I press the Stop button? It seems that without an EPG driven recording things are a pain to record - so far I have to go into the Schedule Recordings menu and select a start and stop time, which is not accurate enough if I want to make the MPG2 clips "clean" enough at the beginning and ends for archival -- this is mainly because I also want to use Sage to record home movies off my old VHS tapes but only select bits that I don't know how long they are. Basically I want to be able to hit the record button exactly when I want the clip to start recording and stop when it stops and to later be able to rename it (from within SageTV)... How can this be done? I imagine it is asking to much to say be able to hit an "index" button or something during the record to be able to save chapter points for later archival to a DVD??

5. Is there a definitive list of plugins for SageTV? I.e. the ones that are regularly developed and work cleanly? It's hard to wade through the forums (despite the amazing generosity of the developers of the plugins) to find everything. I would be happy to donate webspace to such a page if someone creates an accurate page and wants me to host it if that is the problem..?
For example what plugin is the right one to get for using FM Radio off the PVR150? Can it be recorded too?


thanks very much for any help with these questions! This will help me greatly in getting this to work.
sam

[snarlyboy]

one more thing, Can SageTV playback any video files in the Media Center? I've gotten it to playback DivX and MPG2 files, but it would be nice if it could playback Quicktime MOVs and FLVs. I'd prefer if it could play any file of any codec I have installed...

ok two more things... Is there a SageTV customization that allows you to surf in a browser via your remote?

thanks again!

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by snarlyboy

1. Does the USB Hauppauge Remote work with SageTV innately?

That is essentially an MCE remote. If the drivers for it load on your version of Windows, then you can use it by choosing the MCE Remote option in Detailed Setup -> Remote Control Configuration.

2. How do I get the Hauppauge IR blaster which plugs into the USB receiver to control my digital cable set top box?

SageTV doesn't use the MCE blaster directly, so you would need some other utility for that, such as Girder. I don't know if HIP controls the blaster too.

5. Is there a definitive list of plugins for SageTV?

There is a List of available customizations and the SageTV Community Development Wiki you could check out.

- Andy

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by snarlyboy

1. Does the USB Hauppauge Remote work with SageTV innately? (See attached picture below to see which one I have) I couldn't seem to get it to work until I installed the HIP program but that seemed flaky and slowed things down. How can I get it to work? Perhaps it doesn't work in Win 2000 and I have to get XP? It initially complained about eHome drivers and I found some MCEIR.sys driver online which allowed device manager to recognize it eventually.

The remote you pictured below looks like an MCE remote so SageTV probably sees it as such. If so then just pick the MCE remote in SageTV setup.

2. How do I get the Hauppauge IR blaster which plugs into the USB receiver to control my digital cable set top box? I'm assuming that I have to set up a SageTV channel for each of the channels on my set top box and then somehow have SageTV change the channel on the set top box via the IR blaster automatically whenever I change Sage channels? I've obviously plugged it all in and put the sensor near my set top box's sensor but since I'm not sure my remote is working properly (i.e. all the buttons don't seem to work - just some of them) so I don't think I am set up to configure the auto channel change thing now - which I assume is what to do??

If I'm right about 1 then you would need either HIP or Girder to use the blasting function - at least currently. I don't know if SageTV plans to implement the blasting function on an MCE remote or not.

4. This question is a usability one-- how do I get SageTV to record a clip EXACTLY when I press the Record button and save the clip as soon as I press the Stop button? It seems that without an EPG driven recording things are a pain to record - so far I have to go into the Schedule Recordings menu and select a start and stop time, which is not accurate enough if I want to make the MPG2 clips "clean" enough at the beginning and ends for archival -- this is mainly because I also want to use Sage to record home movies off my old VHS tapes but only select bits that I don't know how long they are. Basically I want to be able to hit the record button exactly when I want the clip to start recording and stop when it stops and to later be able to rename it (from within SageTV)... How can this be done? I imagine it is asking to much to say be able to hit an "index" button or something during the record to be able to save chapter points for later archival to a DVD??

See the discussion in this thread but basically you Can't. But what you could do is record the extra with SageTV and then use VideoRedo to edit the files and remove what you don't want.

5. Is there a definitive list of plugins for SageTV? I.e. the ones that are regularly developed and work cleanly? It's hard to wade through the forums (despite the amazing generosity of the developers of the plugins) to find everything. I would be happy to donate webspace to such a page if someone creates an accurate page and wants me to host it if that is the problem..?
For example what plugin is the right one to get for using FM Radio off the PVR150? Can it be recorded too?

See this thread for a list of customizations.

Further info will have to come from others that might know more.

BobP.

Edit: opps I see Opus beat me to it.

[UgaData]

I didn't read the entire thread but I did read the part about the PVR500 not working. It is possible the reason the PVR500 didn't work is due to the VIA chipset in the motherboard. (D'oh! I really should've read the entire post)

When I started with SageTV a couple of years ago, I bought a SageTV and PVR500 package. At the time I had 2 computers setup. 1 was a 2 GHz Intel and the other was an AMD Athlon 2000+. After trying to install the PVR500 and SageTV on both computers and couldn't get the PVR500 to show up, I started looking into why. What I found was that some VIA chipsets and some tuners don't play well together. Both motheboards had the same VIA chipset in them. And of course that was the chipset that didn't play well with the PVR500 and other tuner cards I had tried in the past.