Plugin: Sage Recording Extender 4 (SREv4)

[Slugger]

This is more of a preview/warning for those who may be considering an SREv3 only license. Please be aware that I am actively developing SREv4. No release date is available, but I'm aiming for "before Christmas holidays."

What's new?

• A complete rewrite of the monitoring engine (and the reason for a new major point release)
• New: Support for monitoring of "live" events only
• New: Allow active monitors to have overrides added/removed/modified even while the recording is in progress

Planned, but not started and may not make it to v4:

• Integration of the web UI into the web server plugin

Lost features:

• The current SRE STVi will not work without an update from tmiranda

It is early - I don't even have a build of v4 running on my test server yet and I'm really not that close, but felt this was worth a post in case there are some who are considering an SREv3 license since it will not work with v4 - as per my project's policy. I don't want people upset if they buy a v3 license today only to have it invalidated within a few weeks to a couple months. This is that warning.

[drewg]

Do you have any plans to support moving recordings scheduled after live sports to compensate for overruns? For example, CBS never allows enough time for NFL Football on Sunday night, and all shows scheduled after football are typically delayed 30 or more minutes. Having a way to dynamically shift those recordings would be nice..

Drew

[jbrandon]

I too would like to see this feature...

Originally Posted by drewg

Do you have any plans to support moving recordings scheduled after live sports to compensate for overruns? For example, CBS never allows enough time for NFL Football on Sunday night, and all shows scheduled after football are typically delayed 30 or more minutes. Having a way to dynamically shift those recordings would be nice..

Drew

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by drewg

Do you have any plans to support moving recordings scheduled after live sports to compensate for overruns? For example, CBS never allows enough time for NFL Football on Sunday night, and all shows scheduled after football are typically delayed 30 or more minutes. Having a way to dynamically shift those recordings would be nice..

Drew

Originally Posted by jbrandon

I too would like to see this feature...

Sorry, this feature is just not as easy as it sounds to implement. I've discussed the reasons why I don't attempt this feature here.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by drewg

Do you have any plans to support moving recordings scheduled after live sports to compensate for overruns? For example, CBS never allows enough time for NFL Football on Sunday night, and all shows scheduled after football are typically delayed 30 or more minutes. Having a way to dynamically shift those recordings would be nice..

Drew

Originally Posted by jbrandon

I too would like to see this feature...

Originally Posted by Slugger

Sorry, this feature is just not as easy as it sounds to implement. I've discussed the reasons why I don't attempt this feature here.

With that said, I am considering implementing a modification of this request as discussed here. Instead of trying to identify and extend recordings affected by sports run overs, I'm going to identify those recordings and try to reschedule them for a future airing.

So if your recording schedule is set to record 60 Minutes on CBS Sunday at 19:00 ET, but NFL Football is airing in front of it, SREv4 would identify that football precedes 60 Minutes and will look for another airing of 60 Minutes in the future and choose to record it instead. In this case, it would look for the airing on a west coast feed of CBS (for satellite/cable users), if it were available. If not, then SRE would do nothing and just leave the schedule as it is. Probably of no use to OTA/basic cable only users, but should help for satellite/digital cable users who have access to multiple time zone feeds of network stations.

Even this approach isn't as easy as it sounds to implement and may not make it to SREv4 depending on how testing goes.

[drewg]

I read that post, and I see what you mean. Since I'm an OTA user, your proposed solution would not be helpful to me, though I can see its merit for Sat viewers.

It seems like EIT might actually be helpful here. I wonder if the EIT data correctly reflects the schedule when the NFL overruns...?

Drew

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by drewg

I read that post, and I see what you mean. Since I'm an OTA user, your proposed solution would not be helpful to me, though I can see its merit for Sat viewers.

It seems like EIT might actually be helpful here. I wonder if the EIT data correctly reflects the schedule when the NFL overruns...?

Drew

Does the EIT data end up in your Sage EPG? If so, then Sage should just adjust accordingly if the EIT data is being updated.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Does the EIT data end up in your Sage EPG? If so, then Sage should just adjust accordingly if the EIT data is being updated.

I have Sage configured to use the normal Sage/Zap2It listings server, since it provides many large advantages over the EIT data (show descriptions, original air dates, etc).

I was just wondering if the EIT was correct, and if it was, if there was any way for an extension to use it..

Drew

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by drewg

I have Sage configured to use the normal Sage/Zap2It listings server, since it provides many large advantages over the EIT data (show descriptions, original air dates, etc).

I was just wondering if the EIT was correct, and if it was, if there was any way for an extension to use it..

Drew

Sage plugins don't have direct access to the tuner hardware and so no direct access to the EIT data. I can only use the data in the Sage EPG. External code could be written to grab the EIT data, but I'm not familiar with the requirements to do it nor do I have OTA tuners/data to even try it if I wanted to so it won't happen for this plugin.

[Slugger]

The first release of SREv4 is expected this coming week. Here are the key highlights:

• Complete rewrite of the monitoring engine; lots of improvements both to functionality and performance
• Support for modification of overrides while a recording is in progress. This allows you to modify the override for a recording after it has started or to change it during the recording. In v3, the override was locked into a recording once it started and could not be changed.
• Support for monitoring only airings that have the 'Live' attribute set. This feature requires the licensed version of the plugin. Monitoring replays/tape delays of games can confuse SRE greatly. By telling SRE to only monitor 'live' airings you eliminate this headache. This feature requires that your EPG data provides the Live attribute and that it's accurate - this isn't always the case. Because of this, the feature is disabled by default.
• Post game show padding (licensed version only): With the licensed version you can tell SRE to tack on a configured amount of padding to the end of a successfully monitored recording. This allows for recording of post game type shows/coverage.
• Integration into nielm web UI: The separate web UI for SRE is no more. Instead, monitor status and override edits are dealt with in the nielm web UI (v2.32+). This provides a more integrated environment when dealing with SRE.
• STVi updates available: tmiranda has graciously updated the STVi for SRE to support v4. The update should be available at the same time as the engine release.

This thread becomes the official support thread for SREv4. Please also note that effective immediately, SREv3 is no longer supported.

[tmiranda]

STVi highlight: You will have the ability to hide the timeline for recordings that were monitored by SRE. I always found it annoying that you could more or less predict if the game was going into OT by looking at the time remaining in the timeline. Now you can simply turn the timeline off.

[vividweb]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

STVi highlight: You will have the ability to hide the timeline for recordings that were monitored by SRE. I always found it annoying that you could more or less predict if the game was going into OT by looking at the time remaining in the timeline. Now you can simply turn the timeline off.

Yes but if your team was losing it would give you hope they would come back, and I've seen a lot of losing lately.

[cat6man]

hi slugger,

i don't use SRE until baseball season but i'll be happy to test/debug in a leisurely mode before spring.

glad to see SRE4 is coming along nicely..........i'm looking forward to it.

cheers

p.s. i think i'd rather see darvish on the rangers that the jays............he could be very very good and the AL east is getting crazy strong.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by vividweb

Yes but if your team was losing it would give you hope they would come back, and I've seen a lot of losing lately.

You can leave the timeline on (default behavior), turning it off is purely optional. I've been testing for a couple of weeks and I really like the disabled timeline

[Slugger]

The first SREv4 beta is now in the repository. Please go over the plugin configuration carefully after installing/upgrading. All settings will revert to default values and will ignore any previous SREv3 settings.

The web UI is now integrated into the nielm web UI. Click on a recording (active or scheduled) to see/edit override information. This requires the v2.32 web UI update (just released along side this SRE update).

Please note that the old STVi for SREv3 will not work with v4. Expect an update from tmiranda later this evening. (We were suppose to release together later this evening, but I have to head out of town unexpectedly this evening.)

Enjoy...

[tmiranda]

The SRE UI update has just been posted.

One new addition is the ability to hide the OSD timeline for shows that were monitored by SRE. You have the ability to change the behavior in either the SRE options menu or the OSD options menu.

Merry Christmas,

Tom

[cat6man]

slugger + tmiranda,

thanks a lot for all your work on SRE. it's much appreciated in this household.

happy holidays to everyone and have a merry GooglySage new year.


update: got it all loaded and ready to play. anyone know what the web address is now for the web browser access to
SRE?

i was using
http://192.168.xxxx.xxx:8500/sre/SRE3.html which no longer works, but replacing SRE3 with SRE4 didn't work either.

update2: typical of an engineer......read the instructions last...........the SRE UI no longer exists and i need to update nielm's UI...........
now to hunt for that

[tmiranda]

Look in the plugin manager for the "SageTV Web Interface".

Just an FYI - If you install the SRE UI Mod plugin you don't need the Web Interface.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by cat6man

update2: typical of an engineer......read the instructions last...........the SRE UI no longer exists and i need to load nielm's UI.
where do i find thie nielm UI?

its the normal webui... so something like http://ipaddress : port/sage/Home

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Look in the plugin manager for the "SageTV Web Interface".

Just an FYI - If you install the SRE UI Mod plugin you don't need the Web Interface.

ok.................turns out i had the updates, was using the webUI (for years), but didn't see anything until i recorded a SRE-able sporting event.........shows up fine on TV screen (yea!), SRE status in webUI says it is being monitored (yea!) but i get a 404 error when i try to edit it in the webUI.

404 not found
http://192.168.xxx.xxxx:8080/sage/sr...dit&id=6032001

so it looks like it works for me except for override/edit

update: override works fine from STVi on tv set.................neither edit nor delete works in webUI for me