So... where are we?

[pjpjpjpj]

I have admittedly been away from the forums a bit, and frankly, a lot of the development stuff flies WAAAAAY over my head as too technical for me (I'm not a programmer like most of you). I used to hang here daily in the heady days of heavy plug-in development (and even dabbled in the idea of trying to understand it enough to write my own), but sadly that era has passed...

I upgraded to v9 when it came out (or within a couple of months) and have not really followed the development (or updated anything) since. For the most part, as has been the most part of my 11 years in SageTV, IT JUST WORKS.

However, I occasionally stop by to see what's new. Some things sound very exciting (64-bit build? )... but I find all the latest development is spread over a dozen threads and multiple dozens of pages and I don't know where to look without asking a bunch of questions all over the place. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this boat.

So, can anyone sum up, for people "dropping by", where things are?

1- What Sage release version are we in? Where do we download it? Will there ever be a situation where we'd get notifications in Sage that an update is available?

2- How stable is the 64-bit version (and where do we get it)? What risks are there (what parts are not flawlessly working yet... schedules/HDHR stuff)? What's the status of video codec usage in 64-bit? Does 64-bit cause potential issues or require changes if you've always just used the default SageTV stuff?

3- Does anything with the latest (32-bit) v9, or 64-bit, mess up use of extenders (HD200 or HD300)?

4- What other issues are lingering? Weather? Music player (though hardly anyone uses that anymore)?

5- What else is new?

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I have admittedly been away from the forums a bit, and frankly, a lot of the development stuff flies WAAAAAY over my head as too technical for me (I'm not a programmer like most of you). I used to hang here daily in the heady days of heavy plug-in development (and even dabbled in the idea of trying to understand it enough to write my own), but sadly that era has passed...

I upgraded to v9 when it came out (or within a couple of months) and have not really followed the development (or updated anything) since. For the most part, as has been the most part of my 11 years in SageTV, IT JUST WORKS.

However, I occasionally stop by to see what's new. Some things sound very exciting (64-bit build? )... but I find all the latest development is spread over a dozen threads and multiple dozens of pages and I don't know where to look without asking a bunch of questions all over the place. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this boat.

So, can anyone sum up, for people "dropping by", where things are?

1- What Sage release version are we in? Where do we download it? Will there ever be a situation where we'd get notifications in Sage that an update is available?

2- How stable is the 64-bit version (and where do we get it)? What risks are there (what parts are not flawlessly working yet... schedules/HDHR stuff)? What's the status of video codec usage in 64-bit? Does 64-bit cause potential issues or require changes if you've always just used the default SageTV stuff?

3- Does anything with the latest (32-bit) v9, or 64-bit, mess up use of extenders (HD200 or HD300)?

4- What other issues are lingering? Weather? Music player (though hardly anyone uses that anymore)?

5- What else is new?

1. It's at 9.2.1. Find both 32 and 64-bit versions in the "Windows Installer" thread here: https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63009 There's no notifications as of now and no plans that I know of.

2. Stability of 64-bit seems fine but there are a couple of unresolved issues. Get it as described in #1. Some users cannot use a USB-UIRT as an IR transmitter on a server running in service mode while also using it on the client as a IR receiver. This may be an issue in the vendor driver over which we have no control. Anything "Java" doesn't care if it's 64-bit since it runs inside the JVM. As long as your capture hardware has 64-bit drivers installed they work too. The recent installers have the option to install LAV filters which can replace the V7 proprietary 32-bit SageTV ones. I think that means the loss of CC support that was only in the original SageTV ones.

3. Version 9.1.10 and above can use a bit more heap memory since there were changes made to string handling in wiz.bin. One user has a current issue with DVD cover art causing spinning circles and hangs on 64-bit version only, yet TV art is fine (https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...d.php?p=620572). I'm trying to help with that.

4. tmiranda has made an updated plugin for Weather. Music player is working as far as I know.

5. Someone else will have to chime in since I've probably missed something.

[JustFred]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

HDHR stuff?

The HDHR Setup program isn't Sage-x64 aware. On the Application Tab, the Main Application drop-down doesn't show SageTv if Sage-x86 Server isn't installed. This is a Silicon Dust limitation.

There are two possible workarounds:
1. Also install the 32-bit SageTv Server, but don't actually run it. With this installed, HDHR Setup will allow selection of SageTv. The 32 and 64-bit installations will peacefully coexist side by side.

-or-

2. I've had success selecting either BeyondTV or Other: ATSC/QAM.

[RonBoyd]

Okay, my 10-year old Vista machine, after running non-stop it's entire life, gave up on me.

I purchased a new Windows 10 machine and installed the 64bit v9.2 edition.

Everything looks normal... except... I can't seem to get live TV to play. I have 10 HDHomeRun tuners and they all receive the signal (and I can view the signal on several different media players (on this computer). In SageTV, when I go to Channel Setup>Scan for Available Channels>Scan for Available Channels Now>Start a Full Channel Scan I get:

Channels Found - 0
New or modified channels - 0
Scanned Channels - 133

The Channel Scan found 0 Tunable Channels.
There were no channels changed in the scan.

I have Schedules Direct installed and the EPG listed the current programs. However, clicking on any program gets me a "No Signal" notice. (HDHomeRun Setup finds 79 viewable channels.)

What did I miss during the Setup process?

Oh! If I had read message #3 above I wouldn't be embarrassed.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Oh! If I had read message #3 above I wouldn't be embarrassed.

Well, I installed the x86 version. Nothing changed. I cannot view Live TV with either version.

Any other suggestions?

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Well, I installed the x86 version. Nothing changed. I cannot view Live TV with either version.

Any other suggestions?

Did you select SageTV in the HDHR setup program?
Does sagetv.exe need added to Windows firewall exceptions?

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by wnjj

Did you select SageTV in the HDHR setup program?
Does sagetv.exe need added to Windows firewall exceptions?

While there was once a way to select programs in the HDHomeRun setup, the new (about 2 years) is to simply plug the tuner in and it automatically installs with no user input.

The firewall is (and was) set to allow all SageTV files to pass through.

I am sure this is confined to the SageTV install. All other programs can access the TV programs on this computer.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

1- What Sage release version are we in? Where do we download it? Will there ever be a situation where we'd get notifications in Sage that an update is available?

2- How stable is the 64-bit version (and where do we get it)? What risks are there (what parts are not flawlessly working yet... schedules/HDHR stuff)? What's the status of video codec usage in 64-bit? Does 64-bit cause potential issues or require changes if you've always just used the default SageTV stuff?

3- Does anything with the latest (32-bit) v9, or 64-bit, mess up use of extenders (HD200 or HD300)?

4- What other issues are lingering? Weather? Music player (though hardly anyone uses that anymore)?

5- What else is new?

2- I have been using the 64 bit version of SageTV for unRAID for a couple of years and there are no issues. It is stable since it has been around for a while. I would recommend this if you have a client-server implementation as unRAID is great to run as a file server, you can use a whole bunch of other useful Dockers, and you can run a few VMs on it for other purposes. I also have SageTV server running on another PC in Windows.

3- I have 9 TVs with a bunch of both HD200 and HD300 extenders and they all run fine on with SageTV9 on 64 bit. In fact, 64 bit is a must if you want to run more than three extenders simultaneously without crashing.

4- There was a weather issue as Weather Underground was bought by IBM and it was changing from a free service to a service that starts at $850/month. So the weather stuff was changed to work with other services. One other lingering issue, at least for me, is that 1080i files don't play back on SageTV Placeshifter. There are occasionally issues with YouTube in SageTV.

5 - What is new? There are some new HDMI encoders that work with SageTV - like the BM-1000. The good thing is that these are becoming prevalent and relatively cheap but they only seem to be sold via AliExpress from China. The bad thing is that they only seem to support stereo, not DD5.1. There are versions of these devices that can accept 4K (aka 2160p) input so that is a possible future path for getting 4K cable or satellite TV recording in SageTV.

Other new things - some folks have got playback of 4K content working on SageTV but this will only work from PCs, not from extenders. Extenders can only support up to 1080p.

There is an AndroidTV client for SageTV which works pretty well, especially for non MPEG-2 content.

ATSC 3.0 broadcasting is supposed to take off soon so hopefully we will see tuners from the likes of Silicon Dust that will allow us to capture OTA ATSC 3.0 signals into SageTV.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Okay, my 10-year old Vista machine, after running non-stop it's entire life, gave up on me.

I purchased a new Windows 10 machine and installed the 64bit v9.2 edition.

Everything looks normal... except... I can't seem to get live TV to play. I have 10 HDHomeRun tuners and they all receive the signal (and I can view the signal on several different media players (on this computer). In SageTV, when I go to Channel Setup>Scan for Available Channels>Scan for Available Channels Now>Start a Full Channel Scan I get:

Channels Found - 0
New or modified channels - 0
Scanned Channels - 133

The Channel Scan found 0 Tunable Channels.
There were no channels changed in the scan.

I have Schedules Direct installed and the EPG listed the current programs. However, clicking on any program gets me a "No Signal" notice. (HDHomeRun Setup finds 79 viewable channels.)

What did I miss during the Setup process?

Oh! If I had read message #3 above I wouldn't be embarrassed.

I can't believe I am the only one with this situation. Maybe I am explaining it poorly so let me add this:

I have a new Windows 10 machine on which I installed SageTV v 9.2.1.826 – both x86 and x64 versions.. The problem I have is that while SageTV recognizes the 10 HDHomeRun Tuners (3-Connects and 1 Connect Quarto), it won’t play Live TV. (Recognizing in the sense that the EPG populates when scanning for channels.) Furthermore, when attempting to view live tv, I get a “No Signal” message, the HDHomeRun GUI App shows connection to the tuner and can be viewed with VLC. (It cannot be “released,” however, except by unplugging the HDHR device.) Even when trying “Preview,” I get, for instance, “100% Signal Strength” but still get a “No Signal” message.

When I go to Source>Details, I am told the "Currently being used for Live TV = False." How do I change that?

One other thing I am curious about. I just remembered that during the Setup process, I was not asked for my "Software License Key." Is that something new?

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

I can't believe I am the only one with this situation. Maybe I am explaining it poorly so let me add this:

I have a new Windows 10 machine on which I installed SageTV v 9.2.1.826 – both x86 and x64 versions.. The problem I have is that while SageTV recognizes the 10 HDHomeRun Tuners (3-Connects and 1 Connect Quarto), it won’t play Live TV. (Recognizing in the sense that the EPG populates when scanning for channels.) Furthermore, when attempting to view live tv, I get a “No Signal” message, the HDHomeRun GUI App shows connection to the tuner and can be viewed with VLC. (It cannot be “released,” however, except by unplugging the HDHR device.) Even when trying “Preview,” I get, for instance, “100% Signal Strength” but still get a “No Signal” message.

When I go to Source>Details, I am told the "Currently being used for Live TV = False." How do I change that?

One other thing I am curious about. I just remembered that during the Setup process, I was not asked for my "Software License Key." Is that something new?

Okay, this was a simple fix. But for anyone in the future that it happens to in the future, I will keep the Thread together.

From Silicondust help desk: "Go into HDHomeRun Setup, Configuration tab, change the BDA Compatibility Mode to SageTV, and click OK, then try SageTV again. "

Of course, the "Currently being used for Live TV = " line would only be "True" if you were actually watching a program.

I am still curious, however, about the "Software License Key" question.

[KryptoNyte]

Ron, the BDA compatibility mode is what JustFred and wnjj were talking about in their posts. That's been part of the SageTV/HDHR setup for years - I do not know why Silicondust seems to have abandoned SageTV with their instructions and such on their website. They don't even have a forum area for SageTV users - I guess they figure we're tight enough around here.

When SageTV went open source, it no longer required a license key. It's now being developed by a handful of really sharp folks that basically donate their time and skill. You will find them here in the forum, and you are welcome to seek them out and contribute time or even a few bucks here and there if you wish.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Okay, this was a simple fix. But for anyone in the future that it happens to in the future, I will keep the Thread together.

From Silicondust help desk: "Go into HDHomeRun Setup, Configuration tab, change the BDA Compatibility Mode to SageTV, and click OK, then try SageTV again. "

Of course, the "Currently being used for Live TV = " line would only be "True" if you were actually watching a program.

I am still curious, however, about the "Software License Key" question.

Isn’t that what I suggested? I haven’t set up an HDHR in 10 years so wouldn’t know of any recent changes.

As to a license key question, what was the last version you ever installed? There hasn’t been a license required in any V9 versions. The question may have been there in the past when it wasn’t needed.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Ron, the BDA compatibility mode is what JustFred and wnjj were talking about in their posts....

When SageTV went open source, it no longer required a license key. It's now being developed by a handful of really sharp folks that basically donate their time and skill.

You will find them here in the forum, and you are welcome to seek them out and contribute time or even a few bucks here and there if you wish.

Oh! Did I mention that I am a little slow at times. Silicondust Help Desk's suggestion was, evidently, more within my understanding domain.

Actually, I donated a $100 a year or so ago. I forgot to whom but they had set up a "fund me" type account. (It was someone who I recognized as a long-time contributor, however., and someone I trusted to add value to your group.)

And FWIW, I would have no reservations about contributing further but would like a little more hand-holding on those rare (check it out) times I ask for assistance.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by wnjj

Isn’t that what I suggested? I haven’t set up an HDHR in 10 years so wouldn’t know of any recent changes.

Yeah, I really misunderstood what you were saying. I apologize.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Yeah, I really misunderstood what you were saying. I apologize.

No apology needed. My post may have come across a little blunt when I was really trying to confirm that the fix was the same. KryptoNyte's came in at the same time so it may have looked like ganging up on you. Think of it as double support response.

Glad you got it up and running.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by wnjj

No apology needed. My post may have come across a little blunt when I was really trying to confirm that the fix was the same. KryptoNyte's came in at the same time so it may have looked like ganging up on you. Think of it as double support response.

We're good.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by JustFred

The HDHR Setup program isn't Sage-x64 aware. (snip)
There are two possible workarounds:
1. Also install the 32-bit SageTv Server, but don't actually run it. With this installed, HDHR Setup will allow selection of SageTv. The 32 and 64-bit installations will peacefully coexist side by side.(snip)

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this... picking up from early in the thread:
I do use HDHRs as my tuners, so I have that software installed and running for my 32-bit version.

1. If I just stop the (slightly outdated v9) 32-bit version on my current server and install the 64-bit version and run that, will that work for the HDHR issue? Seems like it should.
2. Do I need to install the latest 32-bit version first (i.e., do the 32- and 64-bit versions need to be the same release version)? Sounds like this doesn't matter, please confirm.
3. From the 64-bit installer notes, it says once you have the HDHR configured, you can uninstall the 32-bit version. I would want to save the bare minimum just to ensure I have it in case the HDHRs die or for some reason I need to install new HDHR software or config it. Assuming I *never* run the 32-bit version again, what files does the HDHR need to see in order to be configured? Just "sagetv.exe"? Anything else, or could I blow away everything else?

Other questions regarding items from the change log:

1. "AC3Filter is NO LONGER part of the installer as of 9.2.1". What did AC3filter do previously and will I see any change to anything?
   
2. "The installer has options for setting "EnableSageTVStreamDemux" and "AlwaysSwapForAC3Filter" " Anything to be concerned about with this?
   
3. "If you wish to retain Closed Captioning or MPEG2 decoders from your V7 install, please install V9 on top of a V7 install." I currently have 32-bit v9 installed over my old v7 and MPEG2 (OTA from HDHR) plays fine, so I assume I did that correctly. If I install 64-bit (which installs in a different location), will those still be seen? My biggest concern with with switching to 64-bit is somehow messing up my ability to handle OTA HDHR recordings. Any concerns here? Or things I need to address?

Thanks.

[JustFred]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this... picking up from early in the thread:
I do use HDHRs as my tuners, so I have that software installed and running for my 32-bit version.

If I just stop the (slightly outdated v9) 32-bit version on my current server and install the 64-bit version and run that, will that work for the HDHR issue? Seems like it should.

Yes.

Do I need to install the latest 32-bit version first (i.e., do the 32- and 64-bit versions need to be the same release version)? Sounds like this doesn't matter, please confirm.

It doesn't matter which 32-bit version of Sage server is installed (since you won't actually run it).

From the 64-bit installer notes, it says once you have the HDHR configured, you can uninstall the 32-bit version. I would want to save the bare minimum just to ensure I have it in case the HDHRs die or for some reason I need to install new HDHR software or config it. Assuming I *never* run the 32-bit version again, what files does the HDHR need to see in order to be configured? Just "sagetv.exe"? Anything else, or could I blow away everything else?

My recommendation is to leave the old 32-bit Sage installed in its entirety. Don't try to hand-prune stuff. What's to be gained?

I'll let others respond to your remaining questions, since you don't seem to be in a hurry to upgrade.

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Other questions regarding items from the change log:

1. "AC3Filter is NO LONGER part of the installer as of 9.2.1". What did AC3filter do previously and will I see any change to anything?
   
2. "The installer has options for setting "EnableSageTVStreamDemux" and "AlwaysSwapForAC3Filter" " Anything to be concerned about with this?
   
3. "If you wish to retain Closed Captioning or MPEG2 decoders from your V7 install, please install V9 on top of a V7 install." I currently have 32-bit v9 installed over my old v7 and MPEG2 (OTA from HDHR) plays fine, so I assume I did that correctly. If I install 64-bit (which installs in a different location), will those still be seen? My biggest concern with with switching to 64-bit is somehow messing up my ability to handle OTA HDHR recordings. Any concerns here? Or things I need to address?

Thanks.

AC3Filter is an audio decoder, LAV will typically fill this gap. If you have issues you can manually install this, but unlikely needed.

For those settings leave them untouched and you should be fine. These are for tweaking so LAV filters are used by Sagetv

The need/use of installing version 7 is of no value for a 64 bit install as it cannot use the 32 bit MPEG2 decoder. Really only an issue for CC and as far as i know there is no good known CC solution for 64 bit. This should not affect your use of HDHR

k

[JustFred]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

The need/use of installing version 7 is of no value for a 64 bit install as it cannot use the 32 bit MPEG2 decoder. Really only an issue for CC and as far as i know there is no good known CC solution for 64 bit. This should not affect your use of HDHR

k

Someone please correct me if I've overlooked something ...

The primary (only?) advantage of going 64-bit will be had in running the 64-bit server (allows greater java heap size). There's no benefit to 64 vs 32 bit for Placeshifter or Client. In fact, I run a "hybrid" config with 64-bit server but have remained with the v7/v9 32-bit Placeshifter & Client. This gets the best of both worlds: increased java heap for the server, while retaining Closed Caption capability for Placeshifter & Client.