Setting up SageTV on the new build

[Jackal]

Ok. I've got both Avermedia cards installed, downloaded the Win7 drivers from the Avermedia site and the cards are up and running.

Win7 see all 4 tuners and I have them setup in SageTV too. I'll have to go through some channel setup in Win7 and deal with a few issues of channel setup in SageTV. Then I have to do a few recording test because I don't know what tuner gets chosen of the 4 to record a show.

In SageTV I can choose to setup each tuner with its own channel listing which I think will help when it comes to tuner choice when recording. Right now all 4 tuners are set to pick up all of the same channels, even though there are still channels showing up that have been unselected. But I could do something like this for recording.

Tuner 1 - Channels 2,32
Tuner 2 - Channels 5,26
Tuner 3 - Channels 7,50
Tuner 4 - Channels 9,11

This way I can set shows to record under my "Favorites" and the tuners will have specific channels to record since I'm suppose to be able to record 4 shows at once now. Of course this will depend on the Fall TV schedule from the networks. But this way I have the 4 channels that I record most from (5,7,9,32) on it's own tuner for recording.There are a few shows that I watch on Channel 2 but they normally conflict with shows on channels 5,7 and 9 which is why I put 32 is with 2. This still needs to be setup and tested.

Then I have to find out why .vob files aren't playing int SageTV. I think it's a codec thing. And then I have to get the whole H.264 things going for recording my shows.So now that all of the hardware is in place it's all software setup now. I'll take screenshots when I can when I need help.

Last thing, my build was really hot yesterday. Way hotter than normal and I'm talking the entire case. I'm talking egg cooking temps. Even the volume knob was warm! I think it may have had something to do with the scorching heat and high heat indexes we're having right now but I'm going to check that all to fans are working when I get home tonight.

[Fuzzy]

Why are you not putting all available channels on every card? You don't have to split teh channels up to individual cards, sage will handle the card arbitration just fine.

As for the .vob files, do you have them still in the DVD's VIDEO_TS folder structure? sage isn't really designed to play vob's directly? This is the preferred method for playing back ripped DVD's, with full menu and chapter support.

[Jackal]

Right now all cards are setup for all channels. But since i've never had more than one tuner before I wasn't sure how to set things up. But now I see there is no need to change anything with that part.

As for the .vob files, they are just .vob files in a folder. I thought that I had used this before in STV but I guess I was mistaken. I rarely keep .vob files around but I have a few on there for setup purposes in various softwares right now (PowerDVD8, Win7 Media Center, etc). So if I want to play rips in STV I need to use the folder format. Got it.

Music and Pictures are fine so next I'll want to try some of the customizations that' I've seen with the Netflix and some other things. Then I need to get that h.264 codec for recording my shows. I was considering getting the full version PowerDVD or just the HD264 for WMP portion that I read about in the topic concerning h.264 codecs.

Netflix
TV Info Screen
Movie Info Screen
H.264 Decoders

I guess once I can get those things stup i'll be pretty much done.

[freedml]

Sage works BETTER if you have the same channel lineup for all tuners. If there's a channel you don't want to record, you pick any tuner with that lineup, turn the channel off, and it turns that channel off for all the tuners on that lineup. If a tuner fails for some reason, you just remove it and Sage will go on recording as much as it can on the remaining tuners according to your priorities (here the order of entries in the Favorites list cam be important).

[heffe2001]

I don't think having the x264 codecs are going to help you with your recordings, I'm pretty sure your tuner cards just record the transport streams as they are from the cableco, not in x264 format. The only tuners I'm aware of that do x264 are the Hauppauge HD-PVR's, and the R5000 modded boxes.

[Jackal]

Seems like a lot has changed since the old days of my VBox.

So then the only reason I would need an H.264 decoder now is to playback movies/files that have been encoded in that format. Ok. But according to the Avermedia info I should be able to record TV in the H.264 format. But that may be with their software. I have to check to be sure more into it.

Avermedia Duet Info

[heffe2001]

According to that flyer, H.264 is only available in their software:

*** Using Aver MediaCenter application, available at the AVerMedia eStore: http://www.avermedia-usa.com/AVerTV/estore/estore.html

You may also be better off making your server a dedicated system, and use a HD200 connected directly to the TV. Then you don't have to worry about decoders, filters, or anything.

[Jackal]

$14.99 for the software. $13.24 for shipping. I'll just record in whatever format it already can record in.

[Jackal]

I tried a test recording of 4 channels at once and it failed. In the end only 1 channel recorded.
All 4 tuners are seen and are setup in Sage.
Avermedia AVerHDTV Duet tuners

Recording Test

Test Failed Error

I went back and looked at the settings and it sas that Live TV = False and some other things.

Dead?

I know that those settings should say "True" but I don't know why they don't or how to get them to. Can anyone help?

[Fuzzy]

How is your signal strength? Also, the Currently being used for LiveTV is just that.. if you are recording, that is not necessarily 'LiveTV'... as such, it will not show true there... the important display there is the Functioning being true, which means sage is able to talk to the cards drivers just fine... if you are getting recording halt messages, it means the drivers aren't sending the signal to sage.. this is usually caused by either the line-up being incorrect (so it tunes to the wrong channel) or by weak/non-existant signal. Have you done a channel scan and only enabled the channels that it finds?

[maninblack_30]

Did you let sage do a full chanell scan for each of the 4 tuners?
It made a difference to my setup.

Fraser

[Jackal]

Thanks for the replies. I know I did a full channel scan for the first tuner but I think I just chose the "Same Line up" for the other 3 tuners. I'll do a full scan for the other 3 tuners and give it another try.

[maninblack_30]

Cheers,
Let me know how you get on.

[Jackal]

Success!

I did the channel scan for the other 3 tuners and setup a few shows for testing. Everything is going fine. Thanks you guys very much. I can now record 4 channels at once. Now to move on to customization.

I'm using the latest beta build. Can I expect the plug-ins that are out there to work with it? I guess I can try it out. But don't I need to do something first to enable being able to install these files? Or was that just in the older versions of STV?

[Jackal]

Well, I guess this project is done, hardware wise anyway. I have installed the 2 dual HDTV cards and I now have them working. I've ripped a few disc to try some setups in Windows 7 Media Center and Sage TV.



Here, both dual tuner cards are installed. All hardware is in the case now.




Due to the way that his case is made, I had to get a little creative with cooling. The case is made for 3 40mm fans to be mounted in the rear but I opted to mount some slim fan underneath the hard drives themselves. The case still gets a bit warm and actually hot when the outside temps are high and we have a lot of humdity like we did here in Chicago a few weeks ago. But all is running fine.




Ripped DVDs and a couple of Blu Ray movies and pre-recorded HDTV shows in Windows 7 MC



For Sage TV, I have all tuners setup. I had to scan for each tuner separatedly in order to get them to record.


Recording 4 shows at the same time. This initially failed because I had only scanned channels for 1 tuners.



And then of course in imported movies and TV shows in Sage TV.



Music management via Media Monkey. And wifi via a Netgear adaptor placed behind the TV. It's the small grey thing in the bottom right corner.



Since 7MC doesn't have the Netflix plugin like VMC, so I have to use the web browser to stream the movies. Hulu work just fine too. So that's it for the hradware. I would try some additional plugins and software but I might just wait until the full Windows 7 is released.

Critics, comments and suggestions are always welcome. Thanks for your patience everyone.

[Fuzzy]

my only critic would be to get rid of that VMC/3MC crap and just stick with sage.. ;-) It's got NetFlix.. ;-)

[Jackal]

I tried installing those STVi things. Mess up Sage and had to reinstall. Installing Netflix in MC was much easier.