A few questions

[QueOnda]

Nice work guys. I'll give v9 a whirl this weekend. I have a few qusetions:

Does the phoenix 2 skin work in v9?
Any idea if there are plans in getting to work with Kodi?
Are you planning on changing the wiz.bin format?

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

Are you planning on changing the wiz.bin format?

It's already been changed even before Jeff made the source public! If you're on Windows you might want to take a look at the link in my signature.

[QueOnda]

Nice! Thanks, I'll give it a try soon!

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

Are you planning on changing the wiz.bin format?

The biggest change in the wiz.bin format is that it is no longer encrypted. There are also new data fields added, many of which are not populated through the normal EPG source.

In case it becomes of any use, I built a standalone C++ program that reads any version of wiz.bin and dumps out an SQL table schema and SQL data files (lists of INSERT INTO...). I was able to pull my whole V7 wiz.bin into SQLite and then run queries on it. Again, not sure what purpose this serves other than to familiarize myself with what's all in there. Plus I now feel I could probably mostly restore a "corrupt" DB if needed someday.

I've already used it to help identify an issue with character/actor info that got fixed.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by jm9843

Also see my signature for a mini-guide of sorts. It includes everything mentioned here with a little more detail I think.

jm9843, Tried your instructions. great work. Can you please clarify the location of the sage.jar. Should state sagetv/sagetv folder.

Originally Posted by wnjj

The biggest change in the wiz.bin format is that it is no longer encrypted. There are also new data fields added, many of which are not populated through the normal EPG source.

In case it becomes of any use, I built a standalone C++ program that reads any version of wiz.bin and dumps out an SQL table schema and SQL data files (lists of INSERT INTO...). I was able to pull my whole V7 wiz.bin into SQLite and then run queries on it. Again, not sure what purpose this serves other than to familiarize myself with what's all in there. Plus I now feel I could probably mostly restore a "corrupt" DB if needed someday.

I've already used it to help identify an issue with character/actor info that got fixed.

Nice. Good to know.

[QueOnda]

I had an issue. My sagetv server upgraded to v9 but my HD200 seems to be using v7 (STV). Am I missing something? Also, do I need to upgrade my java?

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

I had an issue. My sagetv server upgraded to v9 but my HD200 seems to be using v7 (STV). Am I missing something? Also, do I need to upgrade my java?

Did I answer my own question?

"24. Codebase from EMBEDDED (HD300) merged with main SageTV codebase (NOTE: This will no longer run on the HD300 because it’s not Java 1.5 source rather than Java 1.4)"

I guess that goes the same with the HD200 (and HD100). Sagetv9 won't run I guess but I'm able to run the HD200 either though I have v9 and the box says v7.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

jm9843, Tried your instructions. great work. Can you please clarify the location of the sage.jar. Should state sagetv/sagetv folder.

Correct. So a typical installation has Sage.jar located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV I'll update the guide to make that more explicit.

There has been an update recently to the default STV (commit bf38) but it's still named SageTV7.xml. You can dl from GitHub if you're interested in the new features (the commit message has specifics).

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by wnjj

The biggest change in the wiz.bin format is that it is no longer encrypted. There are also new data fields added, many of which are not populated through the normal EPG source.

In case it becomes of any use, I built a standalone C++ program that reads any version of wiz.bin and dumps out an SQL table schema and SQL data files (lists of INSERT INTO...). I was able to pull my whole V7 wiz.bin into SQLite and then run queries on it. Again, not sure what purpose this serves other than to familiarize myself with what's all in there. Plus I now feel I could probably mostly restore a "corrupt" DB if needed someday.

I've already used it to help identify an issue with character/actor info that got fixed.

care to share that c++ program?

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

I had an issue. My sagetv server upgraded to v9 but my HD200 seems to be using v7 (STV). Am I missing something? Also, do I need to upgrade my java?

I don't think new artwork has been introduced yet, so v9 will advertise itself as version 7 in some places. Going to system information within sage itself will tell you the real version being run.

The current "sweet spot" for plugins with SageTV is Java 7. If you are unconcerned about using certain plugins you can run anything from Java 5 up to the latest update for Java 8.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

care to share that c++ program?

I need to clean up some of the debugging mess and comment it some and then I'll be happy to.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

Did I answer my own question?



I guess that goes the same with the HD200 (and HD100). Sagetv9 won't run I guess but I'm able to run the HD200 either though I have v9 and the box says v7.

The changes between v7 and v9 are very subtle. The STV (the UI or "skin") has not been changed at all. The changes are all under the covers.

The HD100 / 200 / 300 extenders will all work correctly with Sage v9. If the STV gets update in the future (or you load a custom STV, like Gemstone), they will display properly too. The comment about no longer supporting the extenders refers to the fact that you can not compile updated firmware for these devices.

This means that if there was a bug in how those extenders handle decoding certain file types, or displaying closed captions or something along those lines, we probably can't do anything to fix it, because those sorts of things are handled in the firmware.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Tiki

This means that if there was a bug in how those extenders handle decoding certain file types, or displaying closed captions or something along those lines, we probably can't do anything to fix it, because those sorts of things are handled in the firmware.

Hopefully we'll be able to get a more robust server-side transcoding system implemented, where any media file would be able to be rendered on any client, regardless of capabilities - including baking of captions into the stream if needed.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by Tiki

This means that if there was a bug in how those extenders handle decoding certain file types, or displaying closed captions or something along those lines, we probably can't do anything to fix it, because those sorts of things are handled in the firmware.

Well, Narflex could probably do something about such an issue if it cropped up, but wether or not he will want to when or if such an event occurs is probably another matter. At least where the base OS version of Sage is concerned I recall him saying he's going to everything he can to avoid approving changes to how Sage works which will break the extenders.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Hopefully we'll be able to get a more robust server-side transcoding system implemented, where any media file would be able to be rendered on any client, regardless of capabilities - including baking of captions into the stream if needed.

And the near-term case for that is h.265 encoded content, as I understand none of the extenders can process that. I imagine there are few STB's that can currently, never mind boxes built 5+ years ago.