SageTV on Linux with Playon for Netflix

[davephan]

I am planning on rebuilding my Windows XP Pro SageTV computer with Linux or Windows 7 64-bit. I would like to try moving to Linux, but PlayOn is needed for Netflix streaming and PlayOn does not work with Linux. Is anyone using PlayOn installed on a separate Windows computer, pointed at their Linux SageTV computer? Is that an option, or does the need for Netflix streaming (though PlayOn) make Windows 7 my only option?

Dave

[gplasky]

I don't run Linux but I have Playon running on a separate PC. And you don't "point" it at the server. Playon is uPnP and it is found by the Playon plugin STVI. But you need to verify that the plugin Playon:STVI by evilpenguin actually works on Linux. I thought there was some issues or that it didn't work yet.

Gerry

[drewg]

How beefy is your box?

I run linux & I run playon via a Windows VM running XP. Going from a 4850e to an X4 635 made all the difference for me. The older dual core produced choppy videos, but the x4 is fine. I hate having the VM running all the time & my ISP's bandwidth is terrible during "prime time", so I have a shell / perl script that runs in the off hours, and "records" shows via playon (complete with comskip), and imports them into the SageTV videos folder. I don't use netflix, only comedy central & hulu.

Drew

PS: I looked at your sig -- that i7 rig should be fine for running Playon in a VM!

[jbmia]

but depending on your situation, you might consider a Roku box that natively streams Hulu & Netflix + others... Prices range from $59 - $99 and they really just kinda take the hassle out of it.. Depends on how many clients you have.. might not make sense if you have a bunch of TV's to search, since Roku is a point solution. But, if you did go that way, you could avoid the whole XP Box chewing KWH's and all the hassle associated with managing the box. Just a though.

[touchstone]

I have a Sage VM w/the PlayOn STVI on SuSE 11.2, and PlayOn on Vista, each in its own Xen VM with 2 of the 6 cores on my AMD pinned to it. The tricks to smooth playback were 1) Hardware RAID with direct access from the partition to the VM and 2) Paravirtualized drivers for the Vista box.

Originally Posted by drewg

How beefy is your box?
I hate having the VM running all the time & my ISP's bandwidth is terrible during "prime time", so I have a shell / perl script that runs in the off hours, and "records" shows via playon (complete with comskip), and imports them into the SageTV videos folder.

Any chance you could to those shell scripts?