Rumours from SageTV or Hauppauge about future extenders?

[Mahoney]

Just wondering if anyone has heard any rumours from either SageTV or Hauppauge about future extender support. Whether it's SageTV supporting something lilke the Buffalo LinkTheatre, or Haupauge selling something like the Buffalo LinkTheatre. Either would be great.

I'm planning a setup involving a server with all the tuners in the study, and an HDTV in the living room. The MediaMVP is an inadequate solution for the client for the main HDTV on multiple fronts - it can't play a DVD inserted into it, it can't play HD and it can't play files with AC3 audio.

A client PC will cost me about £560. The Buffalo LinkTheatre is £162! Quite a saving.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Mahoney

Just wondering if anyone has heard any rumours from either SageTV or Hauppauge about future extender support. Whether it's SageTV supporting something lilke the Buffalo LinkTheatre, or Haupauge selling something like the Buffalo LinkTheatre. Either would be great.

I'm planning a setup involving a server with all the tuners in the study, and an HDTV in the living room. The MediaMVP is an inadequate solution for the client for the main HDTV on multiple fronts - it can't play a DVD inserted into it, it can't play HD and it can't play files with AC3 audio.

A client PC will cost me about £560. The Buffalo LinkTheatre is £162! Quite a saving.

Haven't heard any but I could start some.

Gerry

[Mahoney]

If only it were a matter of just starting them...

I really could use a hint here, if anyone at Sage is in a position to give one; £560 is a lot of money to spend and then browse these forums the next day and find out I could have have had a LinkTheatre for £400 less and much easier setup.

[IKK]

From what I understand form this forum and others. You could use a many of the media center STB out there. You just tell it where to look for the mpeg recordings. The issue is that you would not have the same interface or have the ability to play live tv.

I am personaly waiting for something that I could watch recorded HDTV shows that are recorded on my main system. Even if they are not played in HD. But I would also need the live tv ability.

[Mahoney]

The issue is that you would not have the same interface or have the ability to play live tv.

Or be able to schedule recordings - as I say, this is for the primary TV in the house. Having to go into the study and open Sage on the work PC just to set up a recording would be far too much of a hassle. I want a fully fledged client, like the MediaMVP.

[ben_95sl1]

Amazing how slow the market is, isn't it? Atleast the current media extender is cheap.

[mdjames0001]

I see references to the LinkTheater but not the LinkTheater High Definition. The new High-Definition one has a built-in DVD Player and DivX, AVI, AC3 support. Has anyone checked out this one yet? It is the interoperability with Sage that I am interested in.

As I see it, what someone metioned is correct, the basic problem is not having access to live TV. That being said, how many people WATCH live TV anymore once they have a system like Sage?

We are developing a whole house setup that will include a media server with anywhere from 2 to 12 tuners. At that, most everything you would want is being recorded. Add in the ability to move your DVD collection onto the server and you should not have to wory about live TV. Oh, news. that would be about it. Now if we can just stream CNN, Fox, ABC, Bloomberg, etc. that should cover it.

Thanks for any personal test results.

Aloha,
Michael James
Hawaii Plantation Store
Small Business Resource Center
Waipahu, HI

[cmaffia]

When I had 2 Tivo boxes, I still wanted to watch Live TV and the same goes for my SageTV setup. I don't believe PVR's were meant to replace live TV nor do I think they should. On Demand systems like Time Warner's don't replace channel surfing so why would we believe it should with Sage? With 2 or more tuners in your system, live TV balances very nicely with the ability to record something else to watch at another time...and with placeshifting, another place

Originally Posted by mdjames0001

I see references to the LinkTheater but not the LinkTheater High Definition. The new High-Definition one has a built-in DVD Player and DivX, AVI, AC3 support. Has anyone checked out this one yet? It is the interoperability with Sage that I am interested in.

As I see it, what someone metioned is correct, the basic problem is not having access to live TV. That being said, how many people WATCH live TV anymore once they have a system like Sage?

We are developing a whole house setup that will include a media server with anywhere from 2 to 12 tuners. At that, most everything you would want is being recorded. Add in the ability to move your DVD collection onto the server and you should not have to wory about live TV. Oh, news. that would be about it. Now if we can just stream CNN, Fox, ABC, Bloomberg, etc. that should cover it.

Thanks for any personal test results.

Aloha,
Michael James
Hawaii Plantation Store
Small Business Resource Center
Waipahu, HI

[mdjames0001]

Live TV Required. I'm getting that from a few different people. I guess I need to revise my configuration. I myself do tend to channel surf unless there is absolutely nothing saved to watch. My assumption was that if you had more tuners, were able to record more of what you wanted to watch you wouldn't need to surf.

OK, so the issues is, does the media MVP do everything that you want it to do. One of my plans is to enable the homeowner to move the DVD collection onto the server (only the DVDs that they OWN) in order to give them more flexibility to watch their collection and do it from what ever room they happen to be in. Guests staying over will have access to the library as well. Lastly, and I'm not sure how the law works on this, if they create a library of their favorite series either from timeshifting or from download (which gets a bit hairy on the timeshifting legality) they should be able to easily browse and watch their TV Series. The typical format for these items are AVI/DixX and AC3 encodings. Have you tried to watch an item like this on the MVP?

I had both HP and Linksys send me eval units of their MCE extenders and neither one would not work to view AVI/AC3 files. FYI.

Also, the limitation I see on the MVP is the lack of a DVD player. How have you worked that out, or do you have a separate DVD player in each room?

Thank you for your input, this is helping me to refine our solution offerings.

Aloha,
Michael James
Hawaii Plantation Store
Small Business Resource Center
Waipahu, HI

[dagar]

Live TV? What the heck is that?

[insomniac]

seriously...who the heck watches live tv anymore? They must not have enough tuners to fill up their HDD's with pre-recorded programming!

[Mahoney]

Personally sport is a major element in my watching, and I much prefer to watch it live. Also, there is so little on TV that I consider worth watching that when something does ome on I do sometimes watch it live. All the tuners in the world can't help if 99.99% of the content is worthless.

[briands]

Mahoney... please lower your standards

[JasonJoel]

I owned, and later sold, the HD Buffalo device. I had a lot of problems with the remote ignoring commands. The remote would basically just stop working for 10 seconds. Really lame. Did it a lot during FFWD, too.

Aside from those issues, it played the HD content well. They just were not making fixes fast enough to get it usable. Look on AVS Forums, there is a thread for the Linktheater, and it has a lot of negative coments.

If it works for you, great. But a lot of people had/have issues with it.

Jason Bottjen

Originally Posted by mdjames0001

I see references to the LinkTheater but not the LinkTheater High Definition. The new High-Definition one has a built-in DVD Player and DivX, AVI, AC3 support. Has anyone checked out this one yet? It is the interoperability with Sage that I am interested in.

As I see it, what someone metioned is correct, the basic problem is not having access to live TV. That being said, how many people WATCH live TV anymore once they have a system like Sage?

We are developing a whole house setup that will include a media server with anywhere from 2 to 12 tuners. At that, most everything you would want is being recorded. Add in the ability to move your DVD collection onto the server and you should not have to wory about live TV. Oh, news. that would be about it. Now if we can just stream CNN, Fox, ABC, Bloomberg, etc. that should cover it.

Thanks for any personal test results.

Aloha,
Michael James
Hawaii Plantation Store
Small Business Resource Center
Waipahu, HI

[dj7675]

From the reading I have done, the most reliable stand alone players of HD material have bee the Roku Photobridge/HD1000 or the Avel Linkplayer (also sold under the pioneer name). I can vouch for the the Roku Photobridge. It plays .ts, .tp, and. mpg HD files flawlessly over a network. Others have reported that the linkplayer also plays the material well. I really wish sage would consider one of these established players for their HD capable client. If not one of these, something else that would work to schedule recordings, watch live tv, etc... Recorded HD has arrived and there needs to be a client available that can play the material.

Darin

[waynedunham]

PLEASE!! I have a Photobridge I can help Beta with.

[dj7675]

I too would be willing to do testing if there was a developer that wanted to work on it, or if sage needed someone to do testing. I have 3 Roku Photobridges to play recorded sage content (Mostly HD and some SD). It plays the files perfectly. If it could just read the sage content and set recordings via the guide it would be a great start. How is the sage recordings data stored? Is there any documentation on how to access this data format? I might try another post on the roku forum too to see if there is any interest.

Darin

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by IKK

I am personaly waiting for something that I could watch recorded HDTV shows that are recorded on my main system. Even if they are not played in HD. But I would also need the live tv ability.

newbie here. I don't have SageTV yet. (Just downloaded the trial today)

My plan is to build my XP2600 system as a SageTV Server. I'll have 6 tuners most likely (two 500 dual tuners, and two HD tuners).

First - am I to understand the SageTV Extenders don't allow you to watch recorded HD shows?

Second - I'm building my home and I'll be doing all the wiring. If the above is true, I'd probably have SageTV extenders for ever room - so I can watch live TV and recorded standard def shows, and in my media room I'd have both a SageTV Extender AND a device capable of watching HighDef. They'll both be small set-top boxes. I'll make sure I have enough wiring to support both.

Aside from the minor inconvenience of having a second set-top box, isn't that a relatively good idea?

[dj7675]

You are correct. That is my understanding as well. I am puzzled why there is no HD extender yet, but that is the case. You either have to watch it via a PC within sage and have an adequate video card (such as NVidia 6600GT or higher), or another type of box that plays HD .ts/.mpg files. I use the roku photobridge and it works perfectly for such a task. I have heard others use iodata linkplayer2 also with success over a network. There aren't many players that play hd over a network well.

Darin

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by ybrew

First - am I to understand the SageTV Extenders don't allow you to watch recorded HD shows?

I'm pretty sure Sage will (or can) transcode HD recordings for viewing on the MVP, but they will not be HD via the MVP.

Second - I'm building my home and I'll be doing all the wiring. If the above is true, I'd probably have SageTV extenders for ever room - so I can watch live TV and recorded standard def shows, and in my media room I'd have both a SageTV Extender AND a device capable of watching HighDef. They'll both be small set-top boxes. I'll make sure I have enough wiring to support both.

I would just build an PC SageTV client for the media room.