SAGETV - POWERFUL PVR SOFTWARE
FOR TV TUNER CARDS THAT HAVE
BUILT-IN HARDWARE ENCODERS

Updates to this page are ongoing and forthcoming. So visit here again soon.

Ruel currently uses SageTV 2 with two ATI E-Home Wonder cards and a Creative Videoblaster Digital VCR card where all three cards have built-in mpeg hardware encoders. (Note that the ATI E-Home Wonder card is different from the ATI TV Wonder PCI card or the different ATI All-In-Wonder cards.) SageTV can also work with the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250, WinTV-PVR 250MCE, WinTV-PVR 350, and WinTV-PVR USB cards as well as several other TV Tuner cards that have built-in mpeg hardware encoders. You need a TV Tuner card that specifically has a hardware encoder to be able to use SageTV. Currently, please note that most of the TV Tuner cards that are available for sale from most vendores don't have the built-in mpeg hardware encoder. So check to see what type of TV Tuner card you are getting or using if you want to use the SageTV software.

Also, SageTV 4 is currently available for use with TV Tuner cards that have built-in mpeg hardware encoders and with various HDTV Tuner cards such as the ATI HDTV Wonder card. SageTV 4 is also suppose to work with regular TV Tuner cards, like the Hauppauge WinTV-GO card, that are WDM-compatible and don't have built-in mpeg hardware encoders. FYI, if you need it, you can the manuals for SageTV version 2.0, or version 2.1, or version 2.2. You can also click here for a datasheet on SageTV. If you are interested, you can also check out the manual for SageTV version 3.0 and for SageTV version 4.0.

If you are looking at the other PVR-related pages here at Ruel.Net, then you might be asking yourself: Which software does Ruel like the best? Well, stay tuned and visit this page again as Ruel updates this page.

SIMPLE CUSTOMIZATION
OF SAGETV BACKGROUND

SageTV 2 comes with a default blue background as seen above. You can keep that or you can change the background. All you have to do is change the background1024.jpg file found in the C:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV\STVs\OriginalV2\ directory. You may want to rename the origintal background1024.jpg file to background1024original.jpg and then name your favorite background graphic file image as the new background1024.jpg file. Just be sure to put your new background1024.jpg file in the aforementioned directory.

So, as you can see from the next screenshot below, a simple change of the background picture will give SageTV a change of view that may make SageTV more appealing as to what you see on the screen.

There are other specialized customizations that you can do with SageTV, but the simple background change is the easiest custom change that you can do immediately.

You can click here to see how Ruel is further tweaking and customizing the menu interface of SageTV.

MANY OF SAGETV'S BASIC SCREENS
AND FUNCTIONS

Below are several screenshots of many of the basic screen and functions found in SageTV to give you an idea as to how SageTV works and operates. The only difference with the SageTV in these screenshots and what you will see in the default installation of SageTV is that the SageTV in the screenshots only has the simple change to the menu background graphic. (Of course, you don't see the background graphic when you are watching the TV shows in fullscreen television mode.)

USING FIREFLY
REMOTE CONTROL
WITH SAGETV

I've been using the Firefly Remote Control with SageTV and found the Firefly remote to be very versatile. When you switch from one software program to another, the Firefly can automatically set up its remote control buttons to commands for each software program using "profiles" of button settings for each software program. The Firefly does come with a profile for SageTV. But I tweaked it a bit so that the Firefly remote works the way that I would want the remote to work. See picture to the right.

As you can see, I set the "Firefly" button in the middle to go to 'Live TV', the "Menu" button to go to the EPG, the "Video" button for displaying the current Video Recordings made by SageTV, the little "TV" button for showing SageTV's Recording Schedule, the "DVD" button for displaying the menu for the Media Library & DVD, the "A" button for doing a Time Scroll to quickly skip ahead or backwards in a TV show, the "B" button for bookmarking a TV show as a 'Favorite', the "C" button for marking a TV show as 'Watched' (meaning already 'seen' which phonetically sounds like the letter 'C'), and the "D" button for marking a TV show as 'Don't Like'. If you have ever played with TiVo, then you'll see that SageTV's 'Favorite', 'Watched', and 'Don't Like' commands are similar in functionality to the Thumbs Up (green) button and Thumbs Down (red) button on the TiVo remote control.

Now, if you want to have the same customization to the Firefly remote control as shown here, then you'll have to make some settings in both SageTV and Firefly to get this customization to work. You can get a copy of my Firefly profile for SageTV by clicking HERE -- do a right click and save the XML file to the Firefly Profiles directory which would be found at:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SnapStream\Firefly\Profiles\
(Note that many other Firefly profile files, which you can use "as is" or customize however you want, for other popular software programs will also be found in that directory.)

Note that IF this Firefly XML file does not work for your particular version of SageTV that you are using, you may have to edit the Firefly XML file (which is a text file) with notepad to edit the ClassName at the top of the file -- also note that you will have to use Firefly's AppIdentifier.exe (which is found in the Firefly PROGRAM directory) to find out what is the correct ClassName for your particular version of SageTV that you are using.

And then you would want to to map certain other keyboard commands in SageTV. In SageTV, go into "Setup," "Detailed Setup," "Commands," and "Link Infrared Keystroke to SageTV Command" and then set up the following commands:

• Ctrl-V -- TV (Firefly button)
• Ctrl-X -- Guide (Guide button)

• Ctrl-L -- Library (DVD button)
• Ctrl-P -- Photos (photos button)
• Ctrl-U -- Music Jukebox (music button)

• Atl-S -- Recording Schedule (little TV button)
• Ctrl-C -- SageTV Recordings (video button)

• Ctrl-T -- Time Scroll (A button)
• Ctrl-K -- Favorite (B button)
• Ctrl-W -- Watched (C button)
• Ctrl-J -- Don't Like (D button)

• Ctrl-F -- Skip Fwd/Page Right (Fwd button)
• Ctrl-A -- Skip Bkwd/Page Left (Rew button)
• Ctrl-F8 and Ctrl-. -- Skip Fwd #2 (Next button)
• Ctrl-F7 and Ctrl-, -- Skip Bkwd #2 (Prev button)

If you study how the SageTV profile XML file for Firefly is set up (you can edit the XML file in Notepad) and also see how you can easily change keyboard commands in SageTV, then you can customize the Firefly remote control and SageTV to work in whatever way that you may want the two to work together.

SKIP FORWARD AND
SKIP BACKWARD INSTEAD
OF FASTFORWARD AND
REWIND IN SAGETV.... AND
WHAT ABOUT SLO-MOTION?

SageTV has Skip Forward and Skip Backward commands. There are actually two sets of Skip Fwd and Skip Bkwd commands. SageTV doesn't really have fast-forward or rewind commands -- you have to skip forward or backwards. You can adjust how far ahead or backwards that the skip buttons go forward and backwards by changing the videoframe/ff_time, videoframe/ff_time2, videoframe/rew_time, and videoframe/rew_time2 settings in the Sage.Properties file found in the C:\Program Files\Frey Technologies\SageTV directory. For my SageTV configuration, I set my Skip Fwd/Bkwd commands to go ahead/backwards 7 seconds and 30 seconds:

• videoframe/ff_time=7000    (Skip Fwd -- 7 seconds)
• videoframe/ff_time2=30000    (Skip Fwd #2 -- 30 seconds)
• videoframe/rew_time=-7000    (Skip Bkwd -- 7 seconds)
• videoframe/rew_time2=-30000    (Skip Bkwd #2 -- 30 seconds)

Obviously, the 30 seconds for the Skip Fwd/Bkwd #2 commands are for quickly going through commercials while the shorter 7-second Skip Fwd/Bkwd commands are for simply skipping ahead or backwards a little at a time. Note that you can use the Time Scroll command (the "A" button as set up on the Firefly remote control in the preceding section) in combination with the Skip Fwd/Bkwd commands to quickly move two and a half minutes ahead or backwards and with the Skip Fwd/Bkwd #2 commands to go to the beginning or the end of whatever you are watching. Also using the Time Scroll command with the Skip Fwd #2 command will bring you up to "current" time when watching "live" TV. So, on the Firefly remote control, as set up in the previous section, you can just press the "A" button, the "Next" button, and the "A" button again to bring the TV to "current" time when watching "live" television.

As for watching in slow motion, press the"Pause" button and then you keep the "Pause" button pressed down to watch whatever you are watching in slo-mo -or- you can tap the "Pause" button to go forward one frame at a time.

IF YOU REALLY WANT REWIND
AND FAST FORWARD COMMANDS
(INSTEAD OF THE SKIP COMMANDS),
THEN YOU CAN USE OTHER DIFFERENT
MPEG2-COMPATIBLE SOFTWARE TO
PLAY BACK AND WATCH YOUR
SAGETV RECORDING FILES....

The Frey Technologies folks behind the SageTV software have a philosophy of using the Skip Forward and the Skip Backswards commands. You can say that they don't believe in having an actual REWIND command or an actual FAST FOWARD command. Click here for the technical reason from Frey Technologies about why there are no rewind or fast forward commands in SageTV. The reason apparently deals with how SageTV has to support several different MPEG2 formats as produced by several different hardware encoder TV Tuner cards. Whatever the reason, SageTV does the skip forward and skip backwards commands instead.

If you set the Skip Forward and the Skip Backswards commands in SageTV to the 30-second intervals as discussed in the previous section, then you can get used to using only the Skip Forward and the Skip Backswards commands in SageTV. I've gotten used to them and sometimes expect to have the same skip commands when I'm using other TV and video software. The closest thing to a REWIND or a FAST FORWARD command in SageTV is the slo-mo command that you can do with the "Pause" button to watch the video in slow motion by pressing the "Pause" button repeatedly to go forward one frame at a time -- but that would only be a "go forward" command that goes really slow.

If you really want a REWIND command and a FAST FOWARD command, then what you can do is play your SageTV recordings in different MPEG2-compatible software such as different software like the Snapstream Beyond TV software to play back the SageTV recording files.

You can play the SageTV recordings in different software such as playing the SageTV .mpg files in Snapstream Beyond TV, or in PowerDVD, or in WinDVD, or in some other MPEG2-compatible player that may have fast forward and rewind commands. However, the filename for the SageTV recording that you are watching in the different software will have the title for the recorded show all scrunched up in the filename without any spaces. Specifically, when you play the SageTV recording in a different software program, such as Beyond TV, then only the filename of the SageTV .mpg recording file will appear without any spaces in the show title and the episode name. However, the show title and episode name will appear correctly in SageTV because the SageTV software's database keeps track of the full name of the show as well as the show's synopsis. You can rename the file (such as to put spaces in the filename to make the text in the filename to be more readable to the human eye), but SageTV will lose track of the file as a SageTV recording. If you keep the file in an "import" directory then SageTV should be able find the file in the SageTV media library.

SAGETV IS PRIMARILY INTENDED
TO PLAY MPEG2 VIDEO FILES,
IS ABLE TO PLAY AVI / DIVX VIDEO
FILES, BUT CANNOT PLAY WMV FILES
(WINDOWS MEDIA VIDEO FILES)....

SageTV is intended to record MPEG2 video files and to play MPEG2 video files. If you have any other video recordings like AVI and DivX files, then you should be able to play those files in SageTV if you have DivX installed on your system. However, SageTV cannot play WMV files (Windows Media Video files). If you want to play any WMV files that you may have, such as any WMV files that you may have recorded with Snapstream BeyondTV, then you will have to convert WMV files to MPEG2 files or to AVI / DivX files. I would typically want to convert WMV files to DivX files. So, for converting to AVI / DivX, you can use either the Advanced X Video Converter shareware program or the free STOIK Video Converter program to convert WMV files to AVI / DivX files. Of course, in order to convert to DivX files (as well as play DivX files), then DivX should also be installed on your system. You can click here to get DivX. I'm using DivX Pro, but there is also a free version of DivX on the DivX download page.