"Sage" at CES?

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by wayner

Perhaps you didn't see the Engadget story from a couple of days ago:

• With Win8 MS removed the capability to boot directly to WinMC
• MS has stopped hardware certification for tuners and remote controls

Two more nails in the coffin of WinMC

As was mentioned in another thread on another topic in this forum, this is getting like the Monty Python sketch "I'm not dead yet"

Ah crap, I missed that one ... I still believe MS hasn't buried it yet.

[hemicuda]

stanger89, you said my experiences almost to a T. I started out with a friend recommending (or was it google search) Hauppauge tuners. I picked up the 150 and started tinkering with the setup. Quickly found out that titanTV was a cludge to set up and nothing was automatic. I just happened to pick SageTV first from the links on Hauppauge's site (glad I did). From there I started picking up supported tuners/storage as my viewing needs changed.

FFW to now. I'm married w/ a child. My solutions need to not be too tech-heavy for them on the TV end (thank you extenders!!!). The STB DVR provided by my "cable" company has at most a 500GB drive (mine has a bit less); USB ports a-plenty, but completely locked down as to expansion. They use an IP-based coax system that is incompatible with anything outside their hardware (similar boxes to AT&T's though). If I want HD I'm limited to OTA. Comcast has eliminated any access to SD via tuners in my area; all SD viewing requires some form of STB. The HD-PVR would be nice for premium content, but I still hear too much about lockups and other troubles with them.

I was forced into trying the online content option via Playon & extender last week when my OS drive's MBR went tango uniform. It's good to know that there are options that can be used in a pinch, but the transition looks like it would have a steep learning curve if I were finally pushed that direction.

That being said, I'll probably be using Sage until the content dries up or hardware support disappears. I'm not too worried about the OS going E.O.L. as long as I have a good firewall.

[will]

Originally Posted by wayner

Not if you are a sports fan. And in many instances the content on those services is of a lower quality - not HD, not surround sound, etc. And then you need a box that can play back all of those services since most people don't want a PC hanging onto their TV.

Exactly!

If you care anything about quality then streaming services aren't there yet. With that said, I do feel that most younger people care more about price/convenience than quality/control.

I love SageTV because it lacks DRM. Last weekend I quickly transcoded some news and science shows I wanted to watch on my iPad before heading out of town for the weekend. Try doing that with your cable box DVR... or better yet, try comskipping Hulu...

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by wayner

Not if you are a sports fan.

Like I said, depending on your tastes. F1 is one of the reasons I've still got cable, but that's about as "sports" as I'm interested in.

And in many instances the content on those services is of a lower quality - not HD, not surround sound, etc.

IMO surrounds sound for TV is very overrated because from my experience (recoding direct AC3 off Dish and OTA) there's really not much for surround effects on "TV".

And then you need a box that can play back all of those services since most people don't want a PC hanging onto their TV.

But of course this is all missing my point. I'm not trying to say everyone here can drop their PC setup for streaming, I'm saying a very large portion of what one might record is available through services that don't require recording.

If you don't have a DVR already, there's considerably less incentive to get one now than just a few years ago because a lot of what you would DVR is available online. And for the less tech-savy out there, they don't know/care about HD or 5.1, they just care if they can see the show.

I don't plan to give up my PVR anytime soon, but for example I have a friend who just got out of getting his MBA while working. He went a couple years with nothing but OTA (not even internet at home), so now he's upgrading his stuff, but I don't really see him getting a DVR because there so much stuff he can get online.

[Naylia]

True - online services are the backup to an occasional server/cable outage. My wife prefers her shows recorded on SageTV because they're just there and they look great with the soonest possible availability and limited searching required, but if she has to she knows to check the various options through PlayOn and find it that way, with the last option being to holler at me to go download it for her from less savory sources

I do think the online front ends that are moving towards blending multiple services together will create a good future, especially if you take capabilities like "Season Pass" from HBO GO and make it work broadly across online platforms - assuming that those various platforms keep more than a week or 2 of tv available. I want a strong back catalog so that I can catch up to current all at once for a given show.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by wayner

Not if you are a sports fan. And in many instances the content on those services is of a lower quality - not HD, not surround sound, etc. And then you need a box that can play back all of those services since most people don't want a PC hanging onto their TV.

Many new TV's have these services built in, and most game consoles do to. The new Xbox 360 Amazon Instant Video app is quite nice, for example.

The problem I have, in addition to what you mentioned above, is that the content on those services comes with ether a terrible playback interface, unskippable ads or maybe both. For example, Amazon Instant Video is utterly *maddening* in how terrible its ffwd / rewind is done. No thumbnails, no fast motion, just a 5-10 second pause where you hope that you reached a point near where you wanted to wind up. ESPN 360, Hulu & their ilk force ads on you, etc, etc.

You can pry my PVR from my cold, dead hands..

[MickBurke]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

This statement kind of makes me love and hate you!

BTW, did you get a new cat?

Mick

[scoful]

I live near Kansas City where Google is deploying a massive 1Gb fiber project. Perhaps Google's plan is for a 'community dvr'? A massive amount of storage, recording of virtually everything new and perhaps dumps off automatically after a period of time. Customers would have placeshifter extenders and a significant amount of content filtering and management so they can find what they want or stream 'live' channels. No hardware tuners on the customer end.

I had an idea several years ago (shortly after starting to use SageTV) that cable companies would either operate like this and/or have subscription streams of content and your PC would be a DVR (or a new breed of STB) that wouldn't have tuners - it would just latch on to the stream on the right channel at the right time and capture the data stream. Having a timed stream would require far less bandwidth than on demand technologies that require dedicated streams for each request.

This model would also allow a true ala carte cable system - either pay by the channel or even pay by the show. 'Free' channels could be enhanced by interactive content options - a commercial for the movie 'Ted' for instance could have tags (even simply embedded into CC) that would pop up 'Buy Tickets now from Fandango' or 'Play Full Trailer'. Clicking on the popup would pause the current show and take them to the content. Advertisements for TV shows would pop up 'Add this show as a Favorite?'...

Just my two cents.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by scoful

Perhaps Google's plan is for a 'community dvr'? A massive amount of storage, recording of virtually everything new and perhaps dumps off automatically after a period of time. Customers would have placeshifter extenders and a significant amount of content filtering and management so they can find what they want or stream 'live' channels. No hardware tuners on the customer end.

These sorts of "network DVRs" are legally problematic. I think Cablevision had to store a separate copy of the same program for each subscriber that wanted to record a show. I kind of doubt Google would be able to negotiate more favorable terms from all of the necessary parties, given they're not a major player.

Originally Posted by scoful

This model would also allow a true ala carte cable system - either pay by the channel or even pay by the show.

There's no particular technical reason we couldn't do that pretty well now. But, there are largely business reasons that would make that difficult.

[scoful]

Originally Posted by reggie14

These sorts of "network DVRs" are legally problematic. I think Cablevision had to store a separate copy of the same program for each subscriber that wanted to record a show. I kind of doubt Google would be able to negotiate more favorable terms from all of the necessary parties, given they're not a major player.



There's no particular technical reason we couldn't do that pretty well now. But, there are largely business reasons that would make that difficult.

I think you're missing the point - if Google wants to be a major player they will be. I think it's naive to expect that they are installing a massive ultra high speed data service just to be nice. Google is all about advertising. Cable providers are allowed to 'inject' advertising into channels for additional revenue. Those 'injections' are limited to specific times and durations. If the programming is recorded at the viewer location that all goes at the window. Rather than injecting two commercials at the allocated spot they could inject 4 since it's not real time and if they know where the other commercial spots are they could replace all of them during playback in addition to interactive advertising as I've described.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by scoful

I think you're missing the point - if Google wants to be a major player they will be. I think it's naive to expect that they are installing a massive ultra high speed data service just to be nice.

If Google really wants to be a major player, they might be able to become one. They have the cash on hand to do it if they really wanted. But they're not one now. That puts them in a difficult negotiating position. Basically, the only way you could do something like what you have in mind is to license stuff straight from the content creators. And, as I think the current situation with Game of Thrones and HBO demonstrates, that's not an industry that is inclined to bite the hand that feeds them.

So, Google would have to convince them that they're going to make more money by bypassing their typical distribution partners while at the same time managing to prevent them from thinking that they should just go straight to the consumers themselves.

If Google had a huge customer base right now buying media, maybe they'd be able to do that. But they'd have to negotiate that kind of deal before having any customers in Kansas City, and a small fraction of the digital media market.

We'll see what happens in Kansas City. I don't expect it to quickly duplicated in different cities though. Maybe it really just is a testbed. Maybe Google just wants to try out technologies/products that won't be practical to the general public for another 10 years or so. And to do that, they're just going to build out one city with roughly the technology and capabilities that are expected 10 years from now.

Or, maybe its a hedge against stagnation in the ISP market. Verizon essentially decided they're not interested in the market- it's just not profitable enough for them. If that's true, we might not see any other competitors pop up. Maybe Google will decide to enter the market in a big way if things stall too long with TWC and Comcast.

But mostly I figure someone at Google just thought it was a cool idea. They'll get some good publicity over it, and can probably recoup most of their costs in a reasonable amount of time.

[mkanet]

It would be pretty cool if Google comes out with a device that can do everything this can (3D bluray with full menus, android apps, etc); except has live TV/DVR capabilities as well.

http://www.nikktech.com/main/article...d-media-player

[IVB]

Originally Posted by mkanet

It would be pretty cool if Google comes out with a device that can do everything this can (3D bluray with full menus, android apps, etc); except has live TV/DVR capabilities as well.

http://www.nikktech.com/main/article...d-media-player

Heck, i'm content with leaving something like SageTV software running as a back-end capture, and using something like this to point at the recording directories. I suspect the problem would be that it would list every recording separately, instead of collating all the episodes of <show x> into a single item with drilldown.

Although i'm still hoping against hope that content providers will give us some mechanism to have a massive "aggregator", where we see all HuluPlus, AmazonInstantVideo, SageTVRecordings, all in a single location. Another location for RippedDVD, RippedBR, NetflixInstantQueue. That'll never happen, but boy it would be nice.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by IVB

Heck, i'm content with leaving something like SageTV software running as a back-end capture, and using something like this to point at the recording directories. I suspect the problem would be that it would list every recording separately, instead of collating all the episodes of <show x> into a single item with drilldown.

Although i'm still hoping against hope that content providers will give us some mechanism to have a massive "aggregator", where we see all HuluPlus, AmazonInstantVideo, SageTVRecordings, all in a single location. Another location for RippedDVD, RippedBR, NetflixInstantQueue. That'll never happen, but boy it would be nice.

Plex with the addon scanner and metadata agent for BMT that we created will group them all for you, pull in your fanart, and metadata for all recordings (movies and TVShows).

The plex client for pc is free and will play all content in a non transcoded format. No live TV and No EPG, but it does everything and more that you are looking for above.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Plex with the addon scanner and metadata agent for BMT that we created will group them all for you, pull in your fanart, and metadata for all recordings (movies and TVShows).

The plex client for pc is free and will play all content in a non transcoded format. No live TV and No EPG, but it does everything and more that you are looking for above.

whoa; i've got a newegg cart for a new server as my current one can't handle plex (5 years old), I have next weekend free, perhaps I better pull the trigger. I even have 2 ROKU boxes, and there's a plex channel for that.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Plex with the addon scanner and metadata agent for BMT that we created will group them all for you, pull in your fanart, and metadata for all recordings (movies and TVShows).

The plex client for pc is free and will play all content in a non transcoded format.

Assuming you know the path and client's IP, any easy way to launch the playback?

[rwc]

Do you think we will find out why google bought sage when they launch google fiber next week?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by rwc

Do you think we will find out why google bought sage when they launch google fiber next week?

nope

[nycjoe]

Originally Posted by rwc

Do you think we will find out why google bought sage when they launch google fiber next week?

Yes, I am certain of it. I believe Google is going to announce they intend to have most major cities wired with fiber by the middle of next year, at which point they will have finalized deals with all the major content providers to stream content directly to end users. I also believe that they will announce the reason they are refusing to sell extenders is because they do not wish to support old equipment - it is their intent to sell fiber enabled HD400's (which they will exchange for older HD1/2/300's) that are allvid equipped and capable of recording/streaming personal media directly to/from Google drive, or from the content providers.

...either that or they're going to announce another one of their absurd products, like a fiber cable modem that includes a 25W amplifier (revolutionizing the way you connect your wireless router to your ISP). It will have a USB port so you can hack it and install cyanogenmod on it </sarcasm>

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by nycjoe

Yes, I am certain of it. ... </sarcasm>

At least you still have a sense of humor ...