SageTV Still the Best

[Evil_Attorney]

Originally Posted by IVB

For Phoenix, the fatal flaw (I think) is that it doesn't visually indicate which TV episodes are watched. Default V7 uses italics. I could be wrong, but I just tried it 2 days ago and couldn't figure out which of 8 Law & Order:SVU's I hadn't watched yet.

No, Phoenix 2 has a "W" that shows up to tell you it has been watched. You might need to turn it on in the options, but it's there.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

No, Phoenix 2 has a "W" that shows up to tell you it has been watched. You might need to turn it on in the options, but it's there.

Phoenix 2? oh ok, thanks, perhaps that'll work after all...

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by IVB

What UI is that? I really wonder if I jacked up Gemstone install, now.

Gemstone (with the MyMovies plug in since its easier to have 1 media repo that gets shared by both CQC & Sage..., but Gemstone has the same basic views/flows and the gemstone ones are very editable/changeable...)

[wayner]

Originally Posted by IVB

Mine is basically identical to V7-default, but with a black background. I was a little baffled by it. I wonder if I have it set up wrong.

Mine is actually Diamond but Gemstone is essentially Diamond 2.0 but I haven't wanted to risk the WAF by switching my main server to Gemstone. I have about 8 extenders and if I have more than 3-4 working at once it can cause the SageTV service to crash. I don't want to risk performance being even worse with Gemstone so I haven't switched over. But I have played with Gemstone a bit on my backup server and it looks pretty similar.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

... And, I will eventually figure out my W7 server issue, and have CQC wake me up by announcing the weather....

I have had HomeSeer doing that for years now, it's a nice wake up.

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by IVB

wayner, thats gemstone?

Mine is basically identical to V7-default, but with a black background. I was a little baffled by it. I wonder if I have it set up wrong.

fwiw, gemstone out of the box is kind a blah... it is a blank slate with nothing cool enabled by default...
after install you are just left with essentially the stock UI just all the artwork is now blank and black and white...
you need to figure out what options you want turned on/etc...

[IVB]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

fwiw, gemstone out of the box is kind a blah... it is a blank slate with nothing cool enabled by default...
after install you are just left with essentially the stock UI just all the artwork is now blank and black and white...
you need to figure out what options you want turned on/etc...

Hmmm. I have no artwork, black/white, and thought that was the mighty Gemstone. I looked all over (obviously not), couldn't find anything with options. I want that pretty cover art thingey!

Srsly though, even the Gemstone FAQ didn't point out any options dialog. I'm not home right now, I'll keep looking when I get home, but i'd love it if someone threw me a tip about where to look.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I have had HomeSeer doing that for years now, it's a nice wake up.

I had it working for a while, got addicted. But then I upgraded my server to W7 and there's some (UAC?) setting I have set wrong, service-based apps cannot access my audio device.

And THAT is why I hate that I have to resort to this nonsense just to have infinitely expandable storage.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by IVB

I had it working for a while, got addicted. But then I upgraded my server to W7 and there's some (UAC?) setting I have set wrong, service-based apps cannot access my audio device.

And THAT is why I hate that I have to resort to this nonsense just to have infinitely expandable storage.

I put HS on an atom D525 based cube (eeebox) with an SSD. I never log on to it, it reboots every sunday night.

I turned UAC completly off in the user account settings and rebooted, that should do it. You might want to run those services with admin rights, they can be set from the service property window.

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by IVB

Hmmm. I have no artwork, black/white, and thought that was the mighty Gemstone. I looked all over (obviously not), couldn't find anything with options. I want that pretty cover art thingey!

if you are using an extender you just press the button on the remote ironically named "options", admittedly a very insidious place to hide an option button
on a PC I believe it is the "ESC" key...

lots of menus...lots of things to tweak...
turn on "flows" in some submenu of the options... that is what gemstone calls the cool video/tv/tiles/menus/what have you...
you will need BMT installed and happy to get the artwork...

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I put HS on an atom D525 based cube (eeebox) with an SSD. I never log on to it, it reboots every sunday night.

it reboots once a week? you should fix that...
my cqc server is running on a D525 (I think... same general era as far as atoms go) little supermicro board...
those little atoms do make wonderful little servers...
I don't know when my HA server rebooted last... maybe 6 months ago or so? I forget, it coincided pretty much exactly with a power outage in the neighborhood... odd how that works outs...

I am just using an nLite'ed XP for OS though... nothing fancy...

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

it reboots once a week? you should fix that...
my cqc server is running on a D525 (I think... same general era as far as atoms go) little supermicro board...
those little atoms do make wonderful little servers...
I don't know when my HA server rebooted last... maybe 6 months ago or so? I forget, it coincided pretty much exactly with a power outage in the neighborhood... odd how that works outs...

I am just using an nLite'ed XP for OS though... nothing fancy...

Yeah, once a week to make shure it stays running. Microsft win7, I should have kept embedded XP ... There great little server boxes are they - I love it.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

it reboots once a week? you should fix that...
my cqc server is running on a D525 (I think... same general era as far as atoms go) little supermicro board...
those little atoms do make wonderful little servers...
I don't know when my HA server rebooted last... maybe 6 months ago or so? I forget, it coincided pretty much exactly with a power outage in the neighborhood... odd how that works outs...

I am just using an nLite'ed XP for OS though... nothing fancy...

Why do you use a different machine for CQC vs Sagetv server?

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by IVB

Why do you use a different machine for CQC vs Sagetv server?

because...
years ago...
in a basement not so very far way... (well, it is down a flight a stairs... and stairs can be tricky sometimes)
my SageTV/CQC (and BTV/CQC before that) server would reboot once/twice a day.. or worse, BSOD and get stuck there...
changed hardware to no avail
change from BTV to Sage to no avail (and I really liked sage's HD200 at the time, that made the change pretty easy)
ruled out CQC as the culprit "Just Because"(TM) (besides, anyone who has CQC, knows it just doesn't ever do that sort of thing... ever...)
finally got fed up, I was ok with my media server crashing, but when automation goes down I get lost... so I split out CQC from everything else so it could stay safe and happy...
once split out, my SageTV became super stable...
my CQC would still crash/BSOD/etc... multiple times a day..
turns out it was that crappy Lantronix serial port redirector thingy I had been using for years... so I removed it
now both systems are pretty much 100% stable... I could combine them back into one, but why bother? they are working fine as is, and the little atom uses maybe 30W running at 100% (and CQC never needs more that a couple % CPU at any given time...) so re-combining them just doesn't seem worth the hassle...

[IVB]

Ah, got it. I'm the other extreme, everything on one monolithic mainframe and stable.

And D'oh on the options button, I don't think I've pressed that in years. Didn't even think of it.

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by IVB

Ah, got it. I'm the other extreme, everything on one monolithic mainframe and stable.

and how is that working out for you?
oh wait, I already know the answer to that... just based on your posts here and at CQC forums, you update/change/redo your server at something like >5x vs me....
so I guess you would claim having 1 server do every thing saves you time/money?

[IVB]

well, I go in waves. I left everything damn well alone for 3 years while I played soccer, then decided to putz with things. But if I'm going to change the water pump I may as well change the timing belt. (AKA, if I'm going to putz with the server, I may as well putz with CQC, SageTV, RAID arrays, cards, etc). Then once its set, i'll go back to soccer.

BTW thanks for the tips on Gemstone, still trying to figure out how all these settings work and if I can create a movie-poster view but in my "folders" view, and I still can't figure out how to change backgrounds, but thats probably just a learning issue. And Very interesting stuff.

[SomeWhatLost]

as I have rebuilt/built a couple engines in my time, I did in fact get the water pump reference...
but if your engine has a timing Belt it is best to just scrap it and get a real motor...


anyway, I don't think you can create a poster view in your folder view... (although I am probably wrong about that...

backgrounds are semi easy...
either:
A) d/load the weather background plugin, or B) point it to your picture of choice....

[toony]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

as I have rebuilt/built a couple engines in my time, I did in fact get the water pump reference...
but if your engine has a timing Belt it is best to just scrap it and get a real motor...


anyway, I don't think you can create a poster view in your folder view... (although I am probably wrong about that...

backgrounds are semi easy...
either:
A) d/load the weather background plugin, or B) point it to your picture of choice....

Timing chains are for little girls.

Real men play with interference engines with belts. Or is it stupid men?

[IVB]

Originally Posted by IVB

honestly, I view this as a MASSIVE missed opportunity and a cause for depression instead of a feather in Sage's cap. The marketplace is sorely lacking something as simple as the Roku search across streaming combined with a search of local media, at this point I wonder if there's a legal reason. I fail to see why consumers should care about where video is stored (local or cloud - HuluPlus, Netflix, amazon).

The Sage UI is also woefully behind the times. If I didn't own extenders and was still using SageTV-Client, i'd have tossed it and switched to JRMC linked to SageTV as a back-end.

I know people say this is a small market, but at this point people are more comfortable than ever with using computers for media consumption. Roku's GUI sucks and yet it sells by the millions. One would think it wouldn't be hard to beat that could best this, but yet nobody seems to even be trying. I really don't understand it, again, unless its some form of legal threats.

Ok, I was somewhat wrong. After realizing there's a whole set of stuff with Gemstone, I spent a few hours this weekend "cleaning up" the menus, adding TV series coverart display, right side widgets. So...much...nicer... Even the wife said she really likes the new setup.

So, that still leaves me with my annoyance that I need to care about locally stored vs in the cloud, with no unified search. And the GUI for Roku (HuluPlus or PlayOn) or SageTV is sad. I used to like the Roku.HuluPlus GUI until the latest update, now I can't find anything, and happy I just terminated my HP given my cord reattachment. As the above posts discuss, I'll have to suck up my distaste as the odds of that being solved are nil.