Sunday, July 26, 2009

SageTV, not so wise.

So, I ended up at SageTV's door, www.sagetv.com. The first thing that I noted when reading the requirements for it was that it required the Java virtual machine to be installed. At first, I thought that explained why it didn't have a problem running on 64-bit Vista, but to be honest, I've seen very little use of Java. The program is even installed in the program file folder for 32-bit applications. On the other hand, it might be using the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) because when I installed the trail version, it looked like it installed the 32-bit JRE as part of the process, even though I had already installed the 64-bit JRE.

The User Interface was very hard to grasp at first because it has some very un-Windows characteristics. The first one that drove me nuts was the scroll bar on the list boxes. On Windows, when you click within the scroll bar, the list box will scroll one page, depending on whether you clicked above or below the slider bar. In SageTV, clicking within the scroll bar will position the slider to the indicated point in the scroll bar, and position the list box to the appropriate place. On Windows, when you click on the arrows at the end of the scroll bar, the list box will move one line. In SageTV, the arrows will instead advance the list box one page. I never did figure out how to advance one line.

Then there is the way that the user interface handles during the channel selection. There are two columns. On the left, there is a list of available channels and on the right, there are some commands like Enable and Preview this Channel. There are no right mouse click pop-up menus here. To preview a channel, you have to hover over the desired channel, carefully move the mouse to the right, being careful not to accidentally stray over another channel, and then move arrow down over the desired command. Then and only then do you click. This probably makes loads of sense if you're using a remote control, but if you're using a mouse, this is a little tedious.

The installation was pretty straight-forward, until it got to the part about setting up the tuner card, and then the whole process got very confusing. I was not surprised to be asked about which of two Hauppauge cards to set up, as there are two tuners on the card, but the screen described then as WinTV-7164, not 2250, Analog cards. Hmmm. I picked one of the tuners and was then presented a list of inputs on the tuner: Composite, Composite_2, Digital TV, S-Video, S-Video_2, and TV Tuner. Huh? It is true that a tuner handled could handle Composite, Digital TV (QAM and ATSC), and Analog TV (NTSC), but each tuner did not have two composite inputs and two s-video inputs. Furthermore, the setup acted like the card could handle only one of these inputs, not multiple ones. So, I selected Digital TV, the obvious choice, and went on. The setup asked for my ZIP code, correctly identified the different cable providers in the area, and then let me select either regular cable or digital cable. It then asked me if I had Basic Service or Extended Basic Service. Huh? Extended I guess. It then proceeded to scan for channels and, as can be expected, only found the QAM channels. Since the tuner can handle both QAM and NTSC, I went back to scan for the cable's NTSC channels (since not all of the NTSC channels have a QAM equivalent on the cable system) and I couldn't figure out how to do it. I looked in the forums and there are others who have accomplished it, but they did it by adding the same tuner as a source twice. When I tried this, it merely replaced the previous description of the tuner. It was beginning to look like I going to have to set up SageTV to record QAM channels on one tuner and NTSC channels on the other which would have prevented me from recording two QAM programs at once. If that was the case, I'm not going to be happy and will probably go back to WinTV.

I read the SageTV forums for some clues and finally found some help. The problem was that I could not perform a full scan using the same channel setup for both digital and analog TV. So, I had to trick the software into accepting the same card twice by having two different setup sources. Here are the steps:

  1. Start the Source Wizard.
  2. Select Add New Source.
  3. Select Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture.
  4. Select Digial TV Tuner and then Continue.
  5. Select Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Cable TV.
  6. Select Use US, Canada, or XMLTV Guide Data with this Source.
  7. Select Cable or Satellite.
  8. Enter your zip code.
  9. You will be presented with a list of cable and satellite providers for the entered zip code. This is where the trick comes in. With some luck there will be an entry for your cable provided for standard cable and for digital cable. Choose the digital cable entry.
  10. You'll be asked for Basic Service or Extended Basic Service. I have no idea the proper answer to this question, but I selected Extended Basic Service.
  11. If you've tried this already, your database could be completely confused. In the left hand column, hover over Edit Channel Lineup and then in the right hand column, select Clear all Remapped Channels.
  12. In the left hand column, hover over Scan for Available Channels. In the right hand column, select Scan for available channels now.
  13. Select Start a Full Channel Scan.
  14. Wait for the scan to complete. Select Review Channel Changes.
  15. Select Done Reviewing Scan.
  16. Look at the scanned channel and remove any that you don't want by selecting, which will make the green dot go away. Look at each located channel and decide if you wish to keep it. The software has a bit of a problem here because, if you say you want to preview a channel and for some reason it can't, it will display the last channel that it can. To make matters worse, it will put the name of the channel you are trying to preview at the bottom, making it appear that it was able to successfully display it.
  17. Select Done with Channel Setup.
  18. Select Add New Source.
  19. Select Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture #2.
  20. Select Digital TV Tuner and then Continue.
  21. Select Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Cable TV.
  22. Select Use US, Canada, or XMLTV Guide Data with this Source.
  23. Select Cable or Satellite.
  24. Select the zip code that you used the last time.
  25. Select the same Digital Cable source as last time.
  26. Select Use the same channels as other sources using this lineup.
  27. Select Extented Basic Service again.
  28. Select No - I will scan for channels later.
  29. Select Done with Channel Setup.
  30. Select Add New Source.
  31. Select Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture.
  32. Select TV Tuner and Continue.
  33. Select Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Cable TV.
  34. Select Use US, Canada, or XMLTV Guide Data with this Source.
  35. Select Cable or Satellite.
  36. Enter the zip code to use.
  37. You will be presented with a list of cable and satellite providers. Find your cable provider and select the one without digital service.
  38. Select Extended Basic Service.
  39. If you've done this before, hover over Edit Channel Lineup and then select Clear all Remapped Channels.
  40. Select over Scan for Available Channels and then select Scan for Available Channels now.
  41. Select Start a Full Channel Scan.
  42. Wait for the channel scan to complete. Select Review Channel Changes.
  43. Select Done Reviewing Scan.
  44. Locate any SD channels that also have QAM channels located in the previous scan and select them to remove them from the list. Look at each located channel and decide if you wish to keep it. The software has a bit of a problem here because, if you say you want to preview a channel and for some reason it can't, it will display the last channel that it can. To make matters worse, it will put the name of the channel you are trying to preview at the bottom, making it appear that it was able to display it. Also on my analog scan, it located some digital channels which it was unable to preview, so I disabled them too.
  45. Select Done with Channel Lineup.
  46. You should now have three WinTV-7164 in the Wizard Summary. Select Add New Source.
  47. Select Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture #2.
  48. Select TV Tuner and then Continue.
  49. Select Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Cable TV.
  50. Select Use US Canada, or XMLTV Guide Data with this Source.
  51. Select Cable or Satellite.
  52. Select the same zip code and last time.
  53. Select the same non digital cable provider as last time.
  54. Select Use the same channels as other sources using this lineup.
  55. Select Extended Basic Service.
  56. Select Done with Channel Setup.
  57. You should now have 4 sources configured. Select Finish Source Setup.


See, that was obvious. Wasn't it?

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