Digital guide saga: STBs (PVR-500MCE) + QAM (HVR-2250)

[null_pointer_us]

(skip to end for questions, if you don't feel like reading the whole thing)


I've finally connected 2x DCT700 STBs to the PVR-500MCE so that we will not lose access to most of our SD lineup when analog cable service is finally cut here.

However, configuring channels for these devices has been frustrating.

Originally, the 4x sources from the 2x PVR-500MCE cards were configured as analog (extended basic), and they worked fine. Analog is so simple: physical channel == logical channel. Of course, there's a limit to what analog can tune.

Then I removed 1x PVR-500MCE and replaced it with an HVR-2250, configuring the latter with 2x digital sources. SageTV thoughtfully offered to download a new lineup, and after the 2-hour QAM channel dance, the digital channels were properly mapped into the logical (guide) channels, too.

SageTV managed these different sources perfectly up to this point.

Today, I remove the analog cable from the PVR-500MCE and replaced it with a pair (2x) of (3x) RCA cables for composite input from 2x DCT700, which are little digital STBs. The inputs worked fine.

I removed the SageTV sources for the PVR-500MCE analog (coax). Next I tried to add the PVR-500MCE's composite inputs with the digital guide data for the SD STBs.

This is where the trouble began...

SageTV would not provide any option to download a new digital lineup. Instead, it said I could copy an existing lineup (and forgo any automatic updates to the new lineup) from the HVR-2250, or reuse that digital lineup.

I chose to copy the HVR-2250's QAM digital lineup since this was the least inappropriate of the two options. Naturally, the PVR-500MCE's digital lineups were now filled with a strange, logic-defying amalgam of QAM and digital channels. I had a little of both, and many channels did not work right.

Apparently, whatever part of SageTV maps guide channels to sources cannot tell the difference between QAM tuning, analog tuning, atsc tuning, and external tuning because no lineup for a given source should have a mixture of those channels. It just doesn't make sense.

So I tried several times to do this without removing the HVR-2250 and wiping out all channel related data, but nothing helped. Eventually, I removed all sources from SageTV and then tried to re-add my PVR-500MCE composite inputs with digital guide data. This time, SageTV offered to download a new lineup (YES!), but sadly the QAM channels came back and the result was a broken channel lineup.

I tried removing all sources and restarting. Same issues. I tried shutting down SageTV and its service, then hacking away at the ChannelScan stuff and epg overrides in Sage.properties. But the cat came back...as the song goes. Those QAM channel mappings just kept coming back again, and again, and again. And the sources I'd removed also came back.



Sooooo after a long combination of some of the above, I finally got the PVR-500MCE's composite sources configured with fresh digital guide data and NO QAM CHANNEL CRAP.

Frustrating as heck.

Then I had the infrared programming/isolation/troubleshooting, which was its own little minefield, but I was familiar with all those issues. Very time-consuming, though.

Now for the kicker. After the PVR-500MCE's composite inputs were finally setup, working, tested, and channels properly enabled/disabled, I tried re-adding the HVR-2250's QAM sources. Uh oh. Now I was left with the lose/lose situation of copying/reusing the PVR-500MCE's digital lineup with the HVR-2250's QAM sources.

I chose to copy, and now I'm back fighting the same problems with the HVR-2250's QAM sources. It's filled with analog tuning entries. Not all of them, but definitely several hundred. And the digital/QAM tuning entries (e.g. xx-xx-xx) WILL NOT MAP TO CERTAIN CHANNELS. 815, 816, and a bunch of other logical guide channels have ceased to exist in the channel setup.

Oh, I can go back into the PVR-500MCE's channel lineup and enable/disable those "nonexistant channels," and I can see them as analog tuning entries (e.g. physical channel 815, 816, etc.) in the HVR-2250's digital lineup, but I cannot map the QAM physical channels (e.g. 29-0-10) to them because they don't show up in the map-to list.



Question: How does one force SageTV to download a new digital lineup for a source without removing all other digital sources?

-or-

Question: How the heck can I fix this manually?

Seriously, this should take 15 minutes, not 5 hours...

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

Question: How does one force SageTV to download a new digital lineup for a source without removing all other digital sources?

I think if you choose a neighboring zip code (one within the same cable coverage area) it will allow two distinct setups to coexist. Also, keep in mind that the loss of update capability from choosing the 'copy' feature is NOT the loss of updates to the EPG, it is simply a loss to updates to the Lineup (the list of channels available). So if your cableco moves channels around, or adds/removes channels, it will not be automatically fixed up in sage.

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

Question: How the heck can I fix this manually?

Seriously, this should take 15 minutes, not 5 hours...

I'd actually recommend setting up the STB based tuners first, and choose the download 'digital' lineup for those. That way, they CAN be updated when the cableco changes it's lineup.

THEN, I'd recommend setting up the QAM tuners. You can probably use your local BROADCAST lineup for this, as most likely all you'll be getting on QAM will be locally broadcast anyways. Then, if you ARE lucky enough to get some non-broadcast stations, you can add them to that lineup individually. When you choose to add a station to a lineup, it will offer you a list of ALL stations you have on your server, so the channels will already be in the list from your already configured STB lineup. Just add them, map them, and carry on.

When the cableco moves around your QAM mappings (not if.. when.. because they WILL...) You'll have to adjust that lineup manually.. there's really no way to automatically handle this.

[null_pointer_us]

Thanks!

Choosing the broadcast guide data for QAM source did not work very well. It seemed to be missing lots of QAM channels in the scan, and mapping the few that were found was troubling.

Some part of the mapping process adds/removes stations from the list of all available stations, in a seemingly random manner.

So I don't know why stations in the 81x-830 range, which had mysteriously vanished, just as mysteriously reappeared after a I ran a few more Update scans and remapped channels that had nothing to do with the stations in 81x-830 range.


In summary, things that compounded the problem:

- SageTV provides no option to download a fresh channel lineup unless all digital sources are removed. This makes it very difficult to set up two digital sources with the same EPG/zip/lineup yet different tuning types, e.g. external and QAM, which have radically different tuning and station availability.

- SageTV exposes no easy way to review, clear, or even view channel mapping information. Wiping out the channel mapping from sources that were no longer present required: (1) exiting SageTV, (2) stopping the service, (3) hand-editing Sage.properties in two separate places, (4) starting the service, (5) loading SageTV, and (6) checking to see if the unwanted sources (and their mapping info) mysteriously reappeared thus requiring steps 1-5 to be repeated until the stuff is gone.

- SageTV service has a tendency to hang while doing steps 1-5 above. The hangs may require a reboot to get the service working again. And, as the above process may need to be repeated several times, factor in several possible reboots.

- SageTV incorrectly mixes analog tuning, external tuning, and various types of digital tuning in the same channel lineup. When this happens, the analog channels incorrectly tune random digital channels. These random digital channels are consistent until the channel is remapped, at which point the remapped channels then tune other random digital channels. These "analog but really random digital" channel entries in the digital lineup then seem to "hide" stations in the list of ALL available stations. Multiple update scans and tediously remapping some channels seems to fix this.

- SageTV tends to hang, in various ways, during channel previews:

(preview hang 1)
After successfully remapping a scanned QAM channel to a logical channel (e.g. station), the next QAM channel preview attempt will fail. When this happens, the preview area just says (please wait...) indefinitely. Hitting the Remap button in the UI will show the video NOT playing. Hitting the back and stop buttons on the remote clears this but still does not show the video. However, hitting the Preview button in the UI again then causes the same problem. Some combination of previewing other channels and hitting the Remap button, then stopping, fixes the problem. Then the grey circle of limbo appears for ~15 seconds. After this, previews work again until another QAM channel is remapped.

(preview hang 2)
When clicking the Preview button, sometimes the preview area just says (please wait...) indefinitely. However, the video is really playing; hitting the Remap button in the UI will show the video playing fine. Hitting the back button on the remote will show the preview working. This does not cause any problems other than just being incredibly annoying.

(preview hang 3)
Rarely, preview stops working entirely. Grey circle of limbo would appear for ~15 seconds no matter what part of the preview/remap process I try to do. Pressing stop appears to stop the video. Exiting to the SageTV menu seems to work fine. But the recording icon flips on, and I end up with 8-10 hours of No Data recordings on the channels I was trying to preview. This ends up in a lot of shows being autodeleted. These No Data recordings do not offer a Stop Recording option. Restarting the service fixes this.

- The fact that the hangs appear to start with the same symptoms but then have different fixes, adds further time as I must troubleshoot every 2-3 channel remapping attempts. Which is of course compounded by the fact that, with some stations "hidden" due to incorrect presence of analog channels in the digital lineup, channels have to be remapped out of order, with scans in between each series of attempts.

- On many recordings, SageTV does not provide a Stop Recording or Cancel Recording option. I've checked in Recording Options. There's just nothing. Removing favorites seems to be the only way to stop SageTV from continually trying to record the shows. Then I have to remember to re-add the favorites later. There's also no way to cancel some recordings from the Scheduled Recordings list.


Like I said, 15 minutes task --> 5+ hour headache.

The sources configuration seems to be fine now...


However, hybrid tuner 2 of my HVR-2250 is still broken. QAM channels have weird signal problems, and its analog tuner (coax) just shows a blue screen. Both QAM and analog (coax) appear to work fine on hybrid tuner 1. If I have to send the HVR-2250 in for a replacement, must I repeat all of this madness with the replacement card (when I re-add its sources into SageTV)?

[jmhardy]

I think there are some MAJOR bugs with v7 beta relating to remapping channels, QAM or otherwise. I'm using 2250's too, and getting Sage to a) identify analog channels, b) identify QAM channels and then c) allow me to map those QAM channels to the appropriate analog entries so that I can get proper guide data is a complete nightmare. I went through, remapped my network affiliate QAM channels to point to the right guide listings, and now, all of a sudden and for no reason I can figure out, all the ANALOG channels are wrong. I go to channel 28 which should be MSNBC, it's CNN. I go to channel 25 which should be TWC, it's ESPN. I know one of the things that makes SageTV attractive is its customizability, but IMO they have sacrificed an intuitive setup process in order to accomplish it. This just shouldn't be this difficult. I can achieve the same exact thing in MediaCenter very simply. Thank God I'm still in the beta period, because I wouldn't pay a dime for this software right now.

[jmhardy]

As to your issue about how to stop a show from recording, join the club. I can't even figure out how to delete one, let alone stop it from recording. Wouldn't you think you could go to the list of recordings, right click one and pick "Delete"??? But no...there is no delete option which is the most counter-intuitive thing I've seen on here. So I guess they will just sit there until I decide to go into the folder manually in Windows, and delete them. Ridiculous.

[SHS]

jmhardy
Try turn off intelligent recording
As for stopping the there are two way rigth click in video window a popup box should open from there you should see Stop Playback or left click in rigth buttom window there stop icon.
Del a recoding is eazy in main menu sel TV that if your going to recing menu then sel a video a popup box should open from there you should see delete this video.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by jmhardy

I think there are some MAJOR bugs with v7 beta relating to remapping channels, QAM or otherwise. I'm using 2250's too, and getting Sage to a) identify analog channels, b) identify QAM channels and then c) allow me to map those QAM channels to the appropriate analog entries so that I can get proper guide data is a complete nightmare. I went through, remapped my network affiliate QAM channels to point to the right guide listings, and now, all of a sudden and for no reason I can figure out, all the ANALOG channels are wrong. I go to channel 28 which should be MSNBC, it's CNN. I go to channel 25 which should be TWC, it's ESPN. I know one of the things that makes SageTV attractive is its customizability, but IMO they have sacrificed an intuitive setup process in order to accomplish it. This just shouldn't be this difficult. I can achieve the same exact thing in MediaCenter very simply. Thank God I'm still in the beta period, because I wouldn't pay a dime for this software right now.

It is eazy to remap depending on what you want to do the problem is if you are must likey Remap Channel when you should be Remap Station or your download the wrong EPG data for your area.
Like in my case when I move from Stow to Ravenna thinking the EPG was still Kent TWC sub hub which it is in most of Ravenna when it should be Atwater TWC sub hub.
Keep in mind that both MCE and SageTV get there data from Zip2it.
You think you have problem try Dishnetwork it so mess up up it nt funny Tribune Media and Dishnetwork can't get there @#$% ack rigth that problem is even with MCE.
I would love it if SageTV was using TitanTV at leas they have there stuff rigth.