Hot ! SageTV 2.0 $58.95, SageTV + PVR250MCE Bundle $139.95 at PCAlchemy.com

[a2k]

I built a MythTV box a few weeks ago using KnoppMyth. I'd recommend checking it out. Great interface, very simple. Girlfriend friendly.

 

[AlvinKlein]

Originally posted by: Granamere
Does anyone know if sage can stream live TV if you have a card that has mpeg2 hardwareencoding like the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 or in my case the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB2. Beyond TV can not does this. SageTV kind of makes me think it might be able to.

Yes, you can stream live tv using SageClient. It's a separate purchase, but it's fairly cheap. You can pretty much do anything with the client that you can do on your server, except maybe some of the tuner setup functions.

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: Granamere
If you notice anyone can download SageTV 2.0 beta RC3. I have not tried to install it yet but I have it downloaded.

Link

Granamere

Yes, anyone can download the beta releases, but you need a registered serial number in order to install and use it. If you have already registered v1.4, you can simply install one of the betas on top of it and it won't ask for serial number in that case.

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: Dixiesys
I've yet to find where the shows I've had it record are listed in the menus though, granted I haven't played with it that much either. What is nice is that the files are basic mpeg files and I can play them anywhere in the house on another pc (I have a pc hooked to my tv upstairs too).

The recorded shows are listed under the "Sage Recordings" menu. If you are using Sage 2.0, you can cycle thru the "Options" button to get different kind of grouping for the recorded shows. I like the two pane grouping where the show names are shown on the left and the individual episodes (under each show name) are shown on the right.

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: a2k
I built a MythTV box a few weeks ago using KnoppMyth. I'd recommend checking it out. Great interface, very simple. Girlfriend friendly.

And if you are little more familiar with Linux, defnitely check out Jarod Wilson's most excellent step-by-step MythTV on Fedora installation guide

I did try it once and the guide indeed made it very easy to get started with MythTV, but overall it seemed like a LOT more work to keep a production PVR solution on MythTV running, so I continued on the Sage path.

 

[Probedude]

Yes, anyone can download the beta releases, but you need a registered serial number in order to install and use it. If you have already registered v1.4, you can simply install one of the betas on top of it and it won't ask for serial number in that case.

Are there any 'serious' issues with 2.0 RC3? I'm running 1.4 and don't want to miss out on any recordings. Setup is Duron 900, PVR250MCE, 120GB HD, USB-UIRT blasting a DISHnetwork receiver.

Thanks,

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: Probedude

Are there any 'serious' issues with 2.0 RC3? I'm running 1.4 and don't want to miss out on any recordings. Setup is Duron 900, PVR250MCE, 120GB HD, USB-UIRT blasting a DISHnetwork receiver.

Thanks,

I personally haven't tried RC3 yet (it was released just this morning) but looking at the latest posts at SageTV forums, it doesn't look like there are any showstoppers.

I am still on 2.0.17RC2 and don't see any problems; so if you are still at 1.4, it makes sense to at least upgrade to 2.0.17RC2. Just make sure you backup the sage.properties, wiz.bin and wiz.bak files ... just in case you decide to go back later.

You can still find the 2.0.17RC2 download here.

 

[dailyfreestuff]

shouldnt be much longer before the offcial 2.0 is out

 

[RossMAN]

Well I installed the Hauppage PVR-250 then plugged our analog cable TV into the TV tuner card.

Beyond TV - The setup wizard is fine until the next to last step where you should see video and hear audio in a small window. Nothing, I tried changing the channel and volume. Nothing. So I proceeded with the installation, no luck.

Sage TV - After installing Java Runtime Environment I downloaded the Sage TV demo. The GUI is VERY BASIC/SPARTAN but it seems to work. During the setup on step 2 it says "Please select the video capture device listed below that you wish to configure at this time. To configure multiple tuner support, you will need to rerun the Setup Wizard for each input source"

and that's it. There is no source for me to select. Pressing right, up, down, left arrows or enter key advance to other screens but doesn't offer me a video source to select.

Here's my setup:

• Standard analog cable (no cable TV box) plugs into cable splitter which goes into Apex 13" TV and Hauppage PVR-250 TV tuner card. I highly doubt it's the cable splitter but it could be.
• Dell 1900 LCD (using analog, yeah yeah I'll hookup my Ti4200 DVI card when I find it).
• Hardware specs are more than sufficient.
• Initially I only want to record and watch TV on the LCD, no output to TV (yet)
• XP Home
• Cable internet (via WiFi)

Any suggestions? I can take pics of the TV tuner card or error messages, if necessary.

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: RossMAN
Well I installed the Hauppage PVR-250 then plugged our analog cable TV into the TV tuner card.

Beyond TV - The setup wizard is fine until the next to last step where you should see video and hear audio in a small window. Nothing, I tried changing the channel and volume. Nothing. So I proceeded with the installation, no luck.

Are you using a PVR 250 or 250MCE (Amity - 32552) or a Roslyn (28552) card ? If it is Roslyn, then couple other people have reported similar problem in this thread (you have probably already seen this, but just in case).

Are you using BTV ver 3.4.4 or later ? BTV is supposed to support the Roslyn cards with ver 3.4.4 onwards only ... though surprisingly some people on that other thread had success using an older version (Version 3.4 Build 1217 ... as reported by ViRGE here). My guess is that using the older version it probably is still doing software encoding and not recognizing the hardware encoding capabilities of this card.

Try the BTV support forums. Since SnapStream is selling this as their leading bundle now, I am guessing there are many other people who might have had the same issue.

Sage TV - After installing Java Runtime Environment I downloaded the Sage TV demo. The GUI is VERY BASIC/SPARTAN but it seems to work. During the setup on step 2 it says "Please select the video capture device listed below that you wish to configure at this time. To configure multiple tuner support, you will need to rerun the Setup Wizard for each input source"
and that's it. There is no source for me to select. Pressing right, up, down, left arrows or enter key advance to other screens but doesn't offer me a video source to select.

Again same question - is this a Roslyn card or a non-Roslyn ? If you see BOTH a CX23416 AND CX23880 chips on the card, then it is a Roslyn; if you see only CX23416 (and Philips SAA7115) then it is a non-Roslyn.

If you have a Roslyn card, you need one of the latest 2.0 betas of SageTV (2.0.17RC2 or 2.0.18RC3). SageTV v1.4 or earlier will not work with any Blackbird card ... period. There is no point trying.

If you have a non-Roslyn card and Sage 1.4 is still not recognizing the input source, do the following -- exit SageTV, go to the Sage installation directory, locate the file sage.properties, open it in a text editor and find a line that starts with "ignore_encoders=". Delete everything after the "=" sign on that line and restart Sage.

However, based on your problem description, it seems like you have a Blackbird card. Sage ver 1.4 does not support the Blackbird cards, and hence it is not finding any valid input source.

I am guessing you have already made sure that the correct drivers for the Hauppauge card are installed, and it is showing up in the device manager as "Encoder-16" ... if not that is what I'd do first.

Good luck !

Here's my setup:

• Standard analog cable (no cable TV box) plugs into cable splitter which goes into Apex 13" TV and Hauppage PVR-250 TV tuner card. I highly doubt it's the cable splitter but it could be.
• Dell 1900 LCD (using analog, yeah yeah I'll hookup my Ti4200 DVI card when I find it).
• Hardware specs are more than sufficient.
• Initially I only want to record and watch TV on the LCD, no output to TV (yet)
• XP Home
• Cable internet (via WiFi)

Any suggestions? I can take pics of the TV tuner card or error messages, if necessary.

 

[ViRGE]

Speaking of drivers, RossMan, what drivers did you use. Did you use the drivers on the included CD in the "Hauppauge_BTV" folder, or did you use the downloaded ones from earlier in the other thread(mce_2.92.21350.exe)?

 

[RossMAN]

I used the CD drivers.

Was that a mistake?

 

[ViRGE]

No, that's correct. I only asked that because I was messing around with the download drivers, and noticed that the situation you described happened. Anyhow, let's do this: I'm going to list off all the devices related to the PVR250 in my device manager list; check to make sure you have these:

Hauppauge WinTV 88x Audio
Hauppauge WinTV 88x Crossbar
Hauppauge WinTV 88x MPEG Encoder
Hauppauge WinTV 88x Tuner
Hauppauge WinTV 88x Video(MPEG + Front)

The driver tab for all of these should read 2.96.22090.0

 

[psxjunky]

I just re-installed the Roslyn card in my Sage machine once again (I had removed it after an initial experiment last time) and closely noted the installation process. Everything is working great and the Roslyn is humming along very nicely with the other three 250 cards in the system. Perfect audio and video from cable, no problems whatsoever.

I am sharing this info for the benefit of anyone having problem getting this card working. Note that I have only tried this with SageTV beta v2.0.18 RC3 so far and it is working like a champ. It *should* work with BTV 3.4.4 also, but since I have not personally tried it yet, I can't gurantee success.

Here is what I did --

1. First ran hcwclear.exe to remove every Hauppauge driver from the system. Rebooted the machine
2. While the PC was off, installed the Roslyn card into the LAST PCI slot on my A7N8X-E Dlx mobo.
3. restarted machine. Win XP detected new hardware and wanted to install the driver ... I cancelled the action.
2. Downloaded driver ver 2.96.22090 from SHSPVR
3. Unzipped the downloaded exe file contents into a temp directory. [Right click, "Extract to folder ..."]
4. Ran mce_2.96.22090.exe. It asked me to reboot at the end of the quick installation, and I did so
5. After the machine rebooted, XP once again detected the card (remember that last time I had cancelled this operation) and this time I followed the driver installation wizard and pointed it to the folder where I had extracted the contents of mce_2.96.22090.exe.
6. XP installed 5/6 different devices, and each time I kept on pointing it to the same location.
7. Once everything was installed, I went to Device Manager and looked under the "Audio, Game, Sound" etc menu to make sure there were 4/5 diffferent Hauppauge WinTV 88XX devices (Audio, MPEG Encoder, MPEG+Font, Crossbar, TV Tuner etc.). MAKE SURE NONE OF THE DEVICES HAVE A YELLOW EXCLAMATION MARK NEXT TO IT.
8. Rebooted the machine (no one asked, but I did anyway).
9. While the machine was booting up, I went ahead and hooked up my cable tv coax cable to the TV input of the Roslyn card (this is the SECOND coax socket from the TOP, right above the S-Video socket).
10. Once the machine booted up, I first ran the AMCAP application from the Hauppauge WinTV program group. Used their TV tuner feature to make sure that it can AutoTune all channels that I am supposed to get.
11. Once all channels were tuned, I set it to a good channel and then used the menu item to Preview. Got perfect video ... but no sound. I wasn't too worried since Sage solved the sound issue for me last time. I wanted to first run AMCAP to make sure that the drivers were installed correctly.
12. Next went into Sage and configured this source (this card has a whole boatload of inputs ... make sure you use the TV Tuner input). I am not going into the details of this configuration since it probably will be different for BTV. But if anyone is interested in the details, let me know and I will elaborate.

So basically follow steps 1 thru 11 and make sure that you get VIDEO thru AMCAP. That will prove that your drivers are up and running. Once that is done THEN go into BTV and try to configure this card.

Good luck !

 

[commOdog]

i'm about 'this' close to buying the beyond tv bundle with remote.

I wanted the 250btv bersion so i could get firefly remote and beyond media lite software

is this roslyn card same as the bundled 250btv they are selling?

 

[psxjunky]

Assuming you are talking about this bundle ... yes, it is a Roslyn card included in this bundle.

See the bigger picture of the card here ... the model number is 28552 and it has got both the Conexant CX23880 and 23416 chips (although you can't quite read the number off the chip in this picture).

 

[psxjunky]

UPDATE !! SageTV 2.0 has been officially released today. The official price of SageTV 2.0 has gone up to $79.95 from the $59.95 price of 1.4, but PCAlchemy is is still offering a great discount on the SageTV ($58.95) as well as SageTV Bundle prices ... even more reason to buy from them now.

(and oh, just a reminder that I still don't work for PCAlchemy )

Note that any existing v1.4 users will STILL get SageTV 2.0 for FREE ! So if you bought SageTV for under 50 bucks from PCAlchemy till yesterday, you got an awesome deal ... since you basically got a $30 discount on this great piece of software !

Finally, the SageTV trial version has also been upgraded to v2.0 as predicted. Also the clock on the trial has been reset, so even if you tried v1.4 earlier, you can still try v2.0 for another 15 days.

Get your SageTV 2.0 trial here

 

[RossMAN]

I should have listened to psxjunky and bought Sage TV 1.4 knowing I would get a free upgrade to v2.

Oh well.

 

[psxjunky]

No biggy ! At least now you can try Sage 2.0 first to make sure if it is the right thing for you.

Did you get your current setup working fine ? Let me know anytime if I can help with anything else.

 

[Todd33]

Excellent software, I've been using 2.0 beta for a month+ now. Woops my old Reply. I bought the 250 bundle from Sage.tv

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: psxjunky
No biggy ! At least now you can try Sage 2.0 first to make sure if it is the right thing for you.

Did you get your current setup working fine ? Let me know anytime if I can help with anything else.

Nope I haven't had time to work on it.

IF Sage TV 2.0 demo works, I am going to return my bundle to SnapStream and order elsewhere.

Roslyn should work with SageTV 2.0 right?

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: RossMAN

Originally posted by: psxjunky
No biggy ! At least now you can try Sage 2.0 first to make sure if it is the right thing for you.

Did you get your current setup working fine ? Let me know anytime if I can help with anything else.

Nope I haven't had time to work on it.

IF Sage TV 2.0 demo works, I am going to return my bundle to SnapStream and order elsewhere.

Roslyn should work with SageTV 2.0 right?

Absolutely ! I am using a Roslyn alongside two PVR250's and a PVR250MCE (Amity) in my SageTV 2.0 box right now ! Works like a charm. Since I am using this same setup, if you have any problems getting that to work, I can give you step by step instructions on how to get it working (which I couldn't with BTV since I am not using it).

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Rossman, sorry for not seeing this earlier.

Are you running XP? If so, reboot, go to c:\windows\prefetch\ and delete everything there. Now try running it.

If that doesn't do it, reboot again, delete the directory again, reboot, start it up.

Have you tried running the TV software from Hauppauge? It will give an error when it starts up, and you can use that error to figure out why the card won't work.

I had the same problem of everything looking fine hardware wise, it would just never initialize. Finally did some looking and seems to be a somewhat common problem with this card. A few reboots usually fixes it for people. Others have to clear out the file in the prefetch directory (no idea what the individual file is, doesn't hurt to delete them all).

 

[corinthos]

psxjunky

do you notice any difference in image quality or anything else between the roslyn vs retail pvr250? supposedly the roslyn's have as good if not better image quality due to improved filtering and other stuff...

 

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by: corinthos
psxjunky

do you notice any difference in image quality or anything else between the roslyn vs retail pvr250? supposedly the roslyn's have as good if not better image quality due to improved filtering and other stuff...

Not really ... they both look just about the same. Both of them are great, by the way !

Apart from the supposed improved picture quality, the Roslyn is also supposed to fix the audio-video sync issue that some people have seen with the 250 cards, which uses a separate chip for audio decoding. However, I myself have NEVER seen the audio-video synch issue with the original 250's (it has always worked fine), so can't comment on that either !