6. Media Center Import And Tuner Configuration

On step 15 of the installation I came across another small snag.

The import directories screen was not clear

At first glance, I took this screen to mean that all imported media files would be placed into directories called "videos", "music", and "pictures" within SageTV, so I just hit continue and moved on. I found out later that instead of creating directories, this step was intended to set paths in order to populate the default directories with media files. I was able to go back and set the appropriate paths after the installation was complete, but it would have been nice if the instructions were a little clearer on this step during initial setup.

The source (tuner) configuration took by far the most time to complete. I had three tuners that needed to be configured: two standard definition Hauppauge tuners connected to a cable signal, and a high definition ATI HDTV Wonder tuner connected to an over-the-air (OTA) HD antenna. Every time I tried set up the HD tuner, the SageTV setup would freeze and make me start over. In addition, only one of the standard tuners was receiving a cable signal.

I knew that all three tuners were functional, since I merely installed a fresh hard drive into a working HTPC for the purpose of this review. After becoming very frustrated, I shut the HTPC down and took a break. When I returned and rebooted the system, I was pleasantly surprised to find that all three tuners were working fine. I was unable to determine what had been causing the problems before the reboot - and there's a good chance that SageTV's setup was not at fault - but I thought it was worth mentioning in case anyone encounters a similar problem.

TV tuner setup

Part of the tuner configuration process involves selecting a channel lineup that matches each tuner's TV input. After downloading the cable company selections for my zip code, I found that there was more than one choice for my cable TV provider. After three tries and a little time spent verifying that the content matched the channel number, I finally found the correct channel lineup, which contained about 100 channels that I don't receive with my service. Fortunately, SageTV features an auto-scan feature that was able to automatically remove the channels that were not receiving a signal.

The over-the-air tuner was much easier to set up, since there was only one OTA lineup to choose from. I ran the scan to eliminate the channels with poor signal strength, and completed the setup.