What should I know before converting from MCE?

[wayner]

I have had an HTPC running MCE2005 for over 18 months. Attached to this are 5 Linksys V1 extenders (you can buy them on eBay for about $75). This setup works good for most things but the extenders don't work for HD and since I am in Canada the CableCard option does not exist for me. Therefore the HD-PVR is the answer to my problems and since MS is unlikely to be supporting this tuner in the short term and maybe never I will be trying out SageTV. For the most part the extenders are used to play back childrens shows throughout the house.

I am buying an HD-PVR and I will set it up on my office PC to test it out. This is a new PC running Vista HP. It is plenty powerful as it has an E8400 processor, 3GB of RAM and an ATI 3650HD video card. In this PC I also have a Hauppauge PVR-150 tuner card and a Kworld ATSC-110 OTA tuner. The cable box that I am using is a SA3250HD. I have the tuner cards set up in VMC but I don't really use this box to record TV - I do all of that from my main HTPC which is a slightly older PC running MCE 2005 with an E6600 and 2GB of RAM.

If I like this setup then I assume that I would have MCE and SageTV coexist for a period of time but eventually I would move SageTV to my main HTPC or to my WHS box and have extenders.

Is there anything in general I should think about before setting up SageTV? ( I will likely be using the SageMC UI)

Now for my questions:
Some of my video files have been converted to Divx files - can this be seemless integrated into SageTV Recordings or will they have to be in another part of the UI like Media Center?
What will I have to do to convert my existing MCE dvr-ms files to be playable into SageTV? Is there any converter that can easily read the metadata so that I don't have to manually enter this?
Is there any point in hooking up my PVR-150 card since it would have to be connected to the same STB or does it still make sense to have an SD tuner for SD content? (I guess I could use a splitter and hook this up to analog cable)
Or are file sizes even smaller with the HD-PVR than they would be with the PVR-150?
Can I have 3 tuners connected with Sage - HD-PVR, PVR-150 and Kworld OTA card?
Does Sage have OTA-HD guide data for Canadians? If not can I map it to channels that it would have?
I have a USB-UIRT connected to this PC - can I use this with Sage?
Or can I use my MCE remote with Sage?
Any shortcomings of the Sage HD extenders vs. a full HTPC?
Do the Sage extenders handle Divx files better than MCE extenders?

[Brent]

Aren't you a former BTV user? username seems familiar to me for some reason.

Originally Posted by wayner

Some of my video files have been converted to Divx files - can this be seemless integrated into SageTV Recordings or will they have to be in another part of the UI like Media Center?

Divx files work in SageTV recordings and videos just fine. No need for them to be separated differently than any other video file type.

What will I have to do to convert my existing MCE dvr-ms files to be playable into SageTV? Is there any converter that can easily read the metadata so that I don't have to manually enter this?

Babgvant is working on a more automated way, but currently you just install the SageTV Web Interface (you'll want this anyway) and import each recording into recorded TV.

Can I have 3 tuners connected with Sage - HD-PVR, PVR-150 and Kworld OTA card?

You can have however many you want. SageTV supports multiple tuners without any hacks.

Does Sage have OTA-HD guide data for Canadians? If not can I map it to channels that it would have?

It does support OTA-HD guide data for Canada. And if you couldn't you can map to channels just fine.

I have a USB-UIRT connected to this PC - can I use this with Sage?

Yep. USBUIRT support is built in to SageTV

Or can I use my MCE remote with Sage?

You can use your MCE remote with Sage - check out the LMRemote addon. And the "green button" can now be set to run SageTV with this add-on

Any shortcomings of the Sage HD extenders vs. a full HTPC?

No active USB at the moment. No optical drive. Can't currently use the Netflix or Pandora Plugins without a hack. Other than that, the HD100 Extender is awesome - I highly recommend it!

Do the Sage extenders handle Divx files better than MCE extenders?

Yes it handles Divx very well in my experience.

[wayner]

Thanks for the info Brent - love your blog! Yes, am a former BTV user, I still own a license, although I never really used it that much. That was why I bought the USB-UIRT which I haven't really used.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

Thanks for the info Brent - love your blog! Yes, am a former BTV user, I still own a license, although I never really used it that much. That was why I bought the USB-UIRT which I haven't really used.

Thought so. Welcome to the SageTV forums by the way.

Hold on to that USBUIRT even if you don't end up using it for receiving your remote control, you might use it to control a cable box at some point. The Hauppauge HD-PVR IR blaster is a bit weak so I just used a spare USB-UIRT I had sitting around.

[Ryokurin]

This probably applies more to Vista MCE, but be careful about what services you kill if you decide to do more than prevent etray.exe from running at startup. I never figured out which service I dropped, but it prevented me from picking up digital channels. Luckily I ran a system restore before I did it all and like clockwork it works fine now.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Ryokurin

This probably applies more to Vista MCE, but be careful about what services you kill if you decide to do more than prevent etray.exe from running at startup. I never figured out which service I dropped, but it prevented me from picking up digital channels. Luckily I ran a system restore before I did it all and like clockwork it works fine now.

Thanks - I have WHS backing up all of my PCs every night so I should be ok. The PC that I will be testing Sage on is running Vista HP and I do have VMC setup but I don't really use it as an HTPC. My main HTPC will remain without Sage, at least for now.

Are you saying that Sage wouldn't play nice with VMC? ehtray does appear to be running on my PC will this interfere with Sage?

Is there any reason why I couldn't use the SageTV client on my main HTPC to, in effect, just use the PC as an extender when it comes to Sage? I use a Harmony 880 with this remote - could I set Sage up to use the MCE IR receiver and I have Sage coexist with XP MCE?

Could I even have the SageTV client from within MCE as one of the "Other Programs" in MCE? I think I did once have BeyondTV setup to run like this.

[Ryokurin]

No, they both can exist at the same time, especially since you are using it as a client its just a matter of annoyance. If you dont disable etray.exe, then when you hit something like the green button, or the guide button on the mce remote, then VMC will start taking over the screen. You can remedy that by running the LM Remote Keymap program and mapping those keys to keyboard commands (a thread can be found via a search) I just screwed something up at some point because I tried to completely disable VMC from running by killing services as my system is solely setup to run SageTV. I was just saying to leave services alone, or you may inadvertantly break something else. I thought I had a bad antenna cable for a bit until I retraced my steps.

[soul_stalker]

I'm very very very close to making the switch from VMC to Sage. I've been a dedicated MCE user since 2004 but I cant justify waiting any longer for the functionality sage already offers.

Ive been exploring the sage forms for quite a while and I'm impressed with what I'm reading.... but I'm not %100 clear on a few things.

1. How well does live tv work over firewire (non 5c withstanding of course). Is this reliable? Im using firestb with VMC on 2 boxes right now and it works seamlessley. I never ever miss a recording. The main reason I would switch would be the live TV capablility. If it can be done so that it is stable and reliable I will switch. I am comp savy and I do know what I'm doing so a little work and tinkering is not a problem.

2.How many fire wire tuners are possible. I have 2 right stb's now but I am thinking about adding a 3rd.

3. Can the sage fire wire app work without anologe tuners? With firestb I still have 2 pver 150's installed that I'd like to ditch.

If anyone can let me know that would be awsome! Like I said I explored the forms but on some issues you really never get a clear answer.

Thanks,

-Chris

[autoboy]

If you don't get an answer here you might try starting a fresh thread. I'm pretty sure you can do all of the above with SageTV but I don't have any experience with Firewire. I am assuming it works like any other tuner in SageTV.

Welcome to SageTV. The "Yes we can" of PVRs.

Disclaimer: Not voting for Obama because of his "No We Can't" attitude despite his catchy slogan.

[3rob3]

soul_stalker,
I can answer 1 and 3. SageTV works pretty well with firewire, even live. Live tv can be a bit finnicky to get working right though. I need to hit Stop twice before changing channels, or the firewire app will lock up.

No, you do not need analog tuners to set this up, although you can still use them seperately if you'd like. That's the beauty of Sage, multiple lineups from different sources.

[soul_stalker]

Thanks guys..... good to know

[iwanthtpc]

Originally Posted by Brent

Babgvant is working on a more automated way, but currently you just install the SageTV Web Interface (you'll want this anyway) and import each recording into recorded TV.

It looks like he has released a tool to convert your MCE recordings information to the XML format that Sage can use.

http://babgvant.com/files/folders/sa...entry9734.aspx