This is my first post and I've only been using SageTV for a few weeks, but here are my experiences with DVB-S and (currently) Sage 6.0.16.
My server has three TechnoTrend Budget S1500 cards, two of which have CI cards. I haven't really used Sage's channel scanning facilities because there have been several posts that it isn't working yet. I therefore just edit the .frq files directly with the channel information that is readily available at Lyngsat. To be honest this is easier for me and enables me to tie the channels to XMLTV more easily. I'm hoping that DiSEqC support is on the way, but in the mean time I have two of the S1500s/LNBs pointing at Astra2 and one at Astra1. I can successfully receive FTA channels on Astra2, but have not yet managed to get any FTV channels using a valid Sky NDS card in a T-REX CAM. I haven't looked into this in detail yet, and I suspect the problem is not with Sage as I cannot get a picture using the TT MediaCenter application either. The latter combination has worked in the past so it's probably a configuration problem. On Astra1, I am however successfully using a valid Canal Digitaal Seca2 card in a Matrix Reloaded CAM to view encoded Dutch channels.
A couple of minor problems I've noticed are:
- If you make a mistake in the .frq file and consequently fail to tune a channel, more often than not, you will not be able to sucessfully tune even a valid channel without restarting Sage
- If you view a channel in Channel Setup and then try and look at a different one, it will only show you the original channel.
- First viewing of an encrypted channel can take 15-20 seconds to appear. I guess this is probably the CAM though.
In general I am very impressed with Sage, and am confident that these few bugs will be sorted. I really do wish you could edit/delete the channel information (presumably in wiz.bin) though.