Where's 3.0??

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by GbrNole

hmmm... msft has provided free upgrades for all their incarnations of mce based on the xp core

MS has provided free UPDATES not UPGRADES. They don't make you pay to fix their bugs.

The Roku runs linux, it could probably be made to handle divx playback via software.

[GbrNole]

considering what mce was like when it first rolled out to its current mce 2005 state that not an update, that's a pretty freakin impressive upgrade in my book.

it went from essential betaware to the benchmark COMPLETE solution at no additional cost to any users.

sage is definitely firmly in the game but 3.0 really needs to address the core needs of users if they want to be considered a COMPLETE ap. native CD playback needs to be added and video quirks really need to be addressed whether that means that sage needs to have full screen exclusive renderless vmr9 remains to be seen.

sage still beats mce for its real purpose of recording though.

now to get back to this upgrade/update thing - is 3.0 really an upgrade? from what has been announced thus far 3.0 really doesn't show itself as being an upgrade unless you want to use linux. every other feature of 3.0 is already available as a plugin.

ps. as far as the roku goes why would i want to settle for a software transcode when pleny of hardware devices are available? roku really missed the boat with that one. it's been known for a long time that h.264 would be the next standard in video and it was short sighted to omit mpeg4 capability.

the roku is very over priced for what it does. the MSFT extenders are also overpriced but atleast the xbox 360 has some pretty serious potential.

[ben_gb]

Actually, I think the Buffalo Linktheater would make a great extender, looking at it's specs (though I haven't tried one yet).

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...&categoryid=18

It handles all the major formats (including Divx & WMV), and even has a built in DVD drive.

It looks like it's fairly early days for the product, but there's already an unofficial user forum building at http://www.my-blt.com/ and one of Buffalo's support guys seems to put in an appearance there. Apparently there's going to be a SDK available too, at some point.

[Stuntman]

Just saw the following headline:

TiVo rises after firm trounces estimates


What that tells me is that more and more people are buying the TiVo system, and it also tells me that if SageTV doesn't becoming a bit more progressive and forthcoming with both product and information, they will be left in the dust of TiVo and MS's MCE.

So come on Frey, get this party started.. lets pick up momentum again, while we all still have a pulse!

[mlbdude]

Tivo won't affect the HTPC market much since it is just a closed STB and not an open PC that can act like a STB (you don't see someone go to a Tivo from an HTPC it is generally the other way around). Most Tivo's sold now are from DirectTV and such. Not too many people actually go buy them any more since they don't work with digital cable/satellite as well.

[Stuntman]

My point is that soon everybody will have some type of PVR, and the bigger the splash SageTV can make, the more likely it will become a household name.. If we wait too long then Microsoft will have their PC's in the living room, or it will be a TiVo.. Leader or follower, fringe product or market definer.. Sage has the opportunity at this point to pick what they want to be.. a small market player, or an industry leader..

[mayamaniac]

Can't believe members here care that much about 3.0 that they fear SageTV folks won't be making enough profits by giving 3.0 as a free upgrade, which will affect developement of 3.0 and delay it even further.

I don't know about SageTV roadmap, but I think they know they have a top notch product. And one of the reason is how affordable it is to build such a powerful PVR system with SageTV. Currently, there's no real competition to SageTV in terms of affordability and features that is packed in SageTV. Of course, all the community plugins and customizations really helped, can't thanks these people enough for sharing their hard work.

So don't worry about SageTV folks starving. In fact, lets hope they don't start over charging everything thinking people will pay extra for it because their product is so great. Look at what happened to BeyondTV. I dumped BTV and switched to SageTV because of it.

[ukmgranger]

I would not mind paying a few quid for the upgrade.

I would much preffer that all these plugins were consolidated into one main package. It would make life so much easier.

The ability for sage to play CD's would also be great - and all those other feature requests that people have put in.

As long as updates included new, great features - I wouldn't mind paying that extra little.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by ukmgranger

I would not mind paying a few quid for the upgrade.
I would much preffer that all these plugins were consolidated into one main package. It would make life so much easier.

Ditto.
By the way, what's a quid ?

[ukmgranger]

GBP! (Pound! - colloquial - sorry!)

[ben_gb]

Hm...well, actually I DO worry about the Sage people starving - well, a little bit

I think their product is too cheap. Look how many hundreds or thousands of dollars (or quids) people are prepared to pay for all the disks, TV cards, graphics cards, memory, HTPC cases, cable/satellite TV subs, and yet the software which makes all these work so well together is under $100.

There is no point Sage being cheap if it puts the future of the company at risk. Cheap is fine if it's a mass-market product which sells in the tens- or hundreds of thousands per year, but I don't believe SageTV is a mass-market product.

Look at it this way: they currently need to sell about 12,000 copies of SageServer each year to bring in $1 million pa. Take out a few decent software engineers' salaries, sales and marketing costs, testing staff, support staff, admin staff, office space, hardware etc and there's little, if anything, left. And that's just for one year. They need to sell 12,000 copies every year just to cover these costs, yet they also would have an increasing support load (and costs) which builds as they get more customers. Sure there is extra income from SageClient, SageRecorder etc, but I would guess that the proportion of people buying these is not that great.

(I would be surprised if they had sold as many as 12,000 copies since they opened for business - the forum traffic would seem to attest to this. I'm not intending to speculate, but when you consider the figures, it makes you think...)

I think they should be charging for major release upgrades, so long as bug fixes for the previous releases were provided for free. However, I think they need to have a bit more of a stable base first, deal with some of the longstanding issues (such as vmr9 tearing, periodic java? crashes etc), tighten up the overall installation package, and increase the trial period.

Perhaps all this will come in 3.0, and future major releases after that will be charged...?

I also think they should consider charging extra for some of the options which add significant extra functionality, such as additional tuner support.

In the end, I want Sage to have enough money to be able to survive and grow, building a more aggressive development/testing cycle, and supporting (sooner!) the new things that are coming along, such as HDTV, DVB cards, media extenders and so on.

Ben

[dragon]

Originally Posted by ukmgranger

GBP! (Pound! - colloquial - sorry!)

Also known at $1.81 at Friday's exchange rate.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by dragon

Also known at $1.81 at Friday's exchange rate.

Then I can afford "few quid" for a sage upgrade as well

[RedR]

Heya,

I think being able to dump Windows for Linux alone would be worth a few bucks for an upgrade. But, the bottom line is currently, SageTV does everything I could dream of and more. The biggest pain I have right now as far as the server goes is Windows. Thus soon as 3.0 hits and is field tested to be solid, I will be making the shift to Linux and never looking back. Thus ya, I am chomp'n at the bit to have 3.0 just for the OS shift alone. Till then I will wait quietly enjoy'n my SageTV 2.2 =)

Enjoy,
RedR

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by RedR

Heya,

I think being able to dump Windows for Linux alone would be worth a few bucks for an upgrade. But, the bottom line is currently, SageTV does everything I could dream of and more. The biggest pain I have right now as far as the server goes is Windows. Thus soon as 3.0 hits and is field tested to be solid, I will be making the shift to Linux and never looking back. Thus ya, I am chomp'n at the bit to have 3.0 just for the OS shift alone. Till then I will wait quietly enjoy'n my SageTV 2.2 =)

Enjoy,
RedR

Hope you realize at this point that shifting to linux will require buying one of Sage's preconfigured boxes. As I understand it so far only OEMs will be able to get their hands on the linux version otherwise. I would also love to switch to the linux version once it is out, I really hope SageTV reconsiders and makes it available to all of us instead of just OEMs.

[dvd_maniac]

I think that if Sage charged for full version upgrades and started getting greedy, then people would just go the MCE, tivo etc...route.
But I wouldn't mind them charging for add-ons...

[dbfresh23]

I think that's silly. Just because Quicken charges for an upgrade does that send people to MS Money? Not everyone likes MCE, and going to Tivo you have that monthly fee again.

How is charging for continued product development greedy?

I think that if people start going to MCE or Tivo it will be because of features and not price. As I see it now, MCE has more features, but SageTV has a much nicer interface and menu system. If features that MCE has and Sage doesn't become more important to me then maybe I'd consider switching, but hopefully by that time Sage would have them too.

[silkshadow]

Wow, I came to check this thread to see if there was an updated release date for 3.0 and it seems this thread has gone a bit OT . I have to say one thing to those who are asking for Sage's price to be increased for fear that Sage will go out of business:

Are you dense?

SageTV is not run by morons. In fact I would say the opposite is true in general. Does anyone believe that the owners of SageTV would price their product to a point where they are in danger of going out of business? SageTV is an American company. Not a North Korean one. Their purpose is to make money. If they were not making money they would, obviously, increase the price. Let alone if they were in any danger of going out of business.

Personally, I will generally not purchase from a company that charges for incremental upgrades. The move from 2.2.8 to 3.0 might not be incremental, I will have to see what changes are made to decide. If Sage started charging for every point update, I would probably leave SageTV. That said, SageTV again has my full loyalty. I actually tried to give BTV another go while building my new server. I was very dissapointed. Though the UI is a bit better than Sage's, for the feature comparison and, more importantly, usage is just not there (BTV link is not good). I tried GBPVR as well (the free PVR), its also nowhere near Sage. MeeTV is not ready for primetime. MCE on Server 2003 works but I like Sage's client/server approach far better and I cannot go without Meedio as my front end. MCE is just not there yet (if it ever will be) for me. However, I would be reevaluating my options again if Sage does try and charge for updates though I would much, much rather not ever have to .

Edit: I'd also pay for quality addons. Considering the circus around Cayar's sudden dissapearence though, I would much rather just have studio released and use plugins from the great dev people that would be releasing things. Studio open to only a few people causes things like Cayar's dissapearence to be a big problem. If it were generally avalible loosing one developer wouldn't hurt the entire community so badly. I used to use MIE for Meedio but that developer dissapeared. It was nothing big since there were dozens of other options to choose from not just 2 or 3 others. Thats a huge difference.

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by silkshadow

Wow, I came to check this thread to see if there was an updated release date for 3.0 and it seems this thread has gone a bit OT . I have to say something to those who are asking for Sage's price to be increased for fear that Sage will go out of business:

Are you dense?

Please forgive me and my evil Capitalist thoughts!

[silkshadow]

Please forgive me and my evil Capitalist thoughts!

Actualy your thought was more on the soclialist tip . BTW, thanks for taking my comment in the spirit it was intended. I was just re-reading what I wrote and it could've been interpreted as offensive which, in no way, did I intend. I put the in there but sometimes a is not enough.