1000 days of SageTV

[Opus4]

Somehow, about a week ago, I noticed that June 25, 2006 marks my 1000th day of forum membership. I don't remember exactly what day I installed SageTV, but it wasn't too long after joining the forum, so I'll just count that.

I still have the 2 VCRs we were using before switching to SageTV & they occasionally get used for some kids movies we have on tape. But, I sure don't want to go back to using them for recording. Programming a dozen or so recordings between the VCRs to prevent conflicts, juggling tapes to make sure they didn't get filled up, and having to watch the recordings in the order they were recorded just seems so much longer ago than those 1000 days. I never quite got that web-enabled scheduling working with them, but our cat sitter would at least switch tapes for us when we went on vacation.

What? You never heard of a cat sitter? They'll come to your house daily to feed the cats, bring in the mail, etc. I've heard some will even do that for dogs. That all worked fine until one cat attacked the sitter every time & we had to find a cats-only kennel for that one. Anyway...

We've certainly enjoyed the TV freedom that SageTV gives us. There were a few good things that we ran into via live TV channel flipping in those pre-SageTV days, but I much prefer how we handle that now -- make a point of completely ignoring live TV and let the Intelligent Recording feature catch some new shows for us. (OK, so we also added a few favorites before they ever aired.) Just setting our Favorites & letting IR do its thing lets us practically ignore any TV airing schedules.

One side effect is that my kids don't seem to understand the concept of non-recorded TV. Even after we explained it to them while visiting their grandparents, they just gave us that blank expression as if we had been speaking another language & asked if we would FF through the commercials anyway.

I suppose I'll stop rambling and just say that I'm glad I ran into SageTV back then & decided to try it out -- it has been a great product for us.

Now to go choose what to watch now.

- Andy

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Somehow, about a week ago, I noticed that June 25, 2006 marks my 1000th day of forum membership. I don't remember exactly what day I installed SageTV, but it wasn't too long after joining the forum, so I'll just count that.

Congrats Andy!

Originally Posted by Opus4

One side effect is that my kids don't seem to understand the concept of non-recorded TV. Even after we explained it to them while visiting their grandparents, they just gave us that blank expression as if we had been speaking another language & asked if we would FF through the commercials anyway.

You're raising those kids right! You've just got to get the grandparents on board with the "right" way of thinking!

Recorded TV: Good for almost everything!
Delayed TV: Good for sporting events!
Live TV: Good for nothing!

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

You're raising those kids right! You've just got to get the grandparents on board with the "right" way of thinking!

We're working on it... at least they have broadband now, so we can run the Placeshifter while visiting.

- Andy

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Congrats Andy!



You're raising those kids right! You've just got to get the grandparents on board with the "right" way of thinking!

Recorded TV: Good for almost everything!
Delayed TV: Good for sporting events!
Live TV: Good for nothing!

I don't know about Live TV.. I am sure enjoying watching England beating Ecuador in HD live..

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Somehow, about a week ago, I noticed that June 25, 2006 marks my 1000th day of forum membership.

Something doesn't seem right about that, I just checked and I registered 1100+ days ago

And I just checked and teh oldest info in my wiz.bin (using Malore's viewing history) is from 844 days ago

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Something doesn't seem right about that, I just checked and I registered 1100+ days ago

Time sure does fly, doesn't it!? (And, I'm under no delusion that I've been here anywhere near the longest! )

And I just checked and teh oldest info in my wiz.bin (using Malore's viewing history) is from 844 days ago

OK, now you made me look that up... I have an episode from Oct 4, 2003, so that one is from 995 days ago. I guess I really am still using my original wiz.bin.

Do I really need to say what the show is?? OK, OK, the show is The Flying Nun... but I really don't remember ever having watched it.

- Andy

[Opus4]

BTW: I don't know what anyone else is using, but a google search found a site that I used to Calculate duration between two dates and Add to or subtract from a date.

- Andy

[Opus4]

I tried to resist posting too much fluff

[Opus4]

But if it takes a bit of useless stuff

[Opus4]

I'll resort to pulling a Burma Shave

[Opus4]

For 9000 posts in 1000 days



Sorry folks, but after getting that close, I just had to finish it off before the day ended here.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled discussions...

- Andy
9000

[ToxMox]

Congrats Opus! Too bad there is no moderator around to delete the post flood

If anyone deserves to pull a Burma Shave it is most definitely you.

[mayamaniac]

1000 days and 9000 posts, thats a lot of posts. You are definitely one of the most valuable and resourceful member on this forum. Thanks for all the work you've done, keep up the good work for the next 1000th.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

I don't know about Live TV.. I am sure enjoying watching England beating Ecuador in HD live..

Which is just the type of thing that delayed watching is for. Start the recording and go get lunch, bring the kids to their game, do laundry, or whatever. Then an hour or so into the game you start watching it, skip through all the commercials, timeouts, announcers babbling incessantly about nothing, etc. Then if you timed it right, you finish watching the game just as it's ending and you haven't wasted an hour watching commercials, etc.

Another thing I'll do in those kind of situations is watch 2 things at once. Every time I catch up to "Live" in a game I'll switch over to watching something else for 15-20 minutes, which is just enough time to watch a sitcom episode, then switch back to the game until I catch back up to live.

I don't watch soccer, but in "real" football a 30 second skip is just about perfect for the time between downing the ball and the start of the next play.

Opus4,

You must have started out pretty slowly posting. An average of 9 posts per day (1000 days, 9000 posts) seems way low for your current level of activity. That is, when you're not "Burma Shaving" us to hit that 9k level.

As has been said many times by many people you are a great resource for everyone here on the Sage Forums. Congrats again on over 1000 days, and 9000 posts, only a few which were "fluff".

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Too bad there is no moderator around to delete the post flood

Don't worry -- I sent myself a PM asking me to be a little more careful about that.

Originally Posted by waynedunham

You must have started out pretty slowly posting.

Hey - I started out just as semi-clueless as most others... and then I got addicted.

- Andy

[IVB]

I'm at 1023 days today, and I just realized SageTV is the ONLY app that I was using then that i'm still using now. Since then, i've gone through using and/or trying out pretty much every non-TV HTPC app there is.

But on the TV side? Never even bothered looking - if it works, and it keeps getting better faster than I can keep up, don't muck with it.

[Humanzee]

I feel so inadequate, only 656 days here, and only .58 posts per day. I had a sattelite DVR way back in 2001 though, doesn't that count? If so, I'd be at around 1950 days of non VCR use. And to think I first recorded video onto my Pentium II 233 way back in 1999, but I needed a VCR to do it. HA, how far we have come. That would have been about 2500 days ago, now I feel inadequate and old.

[Menehune]

Congrats on the 1000 days!

I'm only at around 450 days of uptime myself.

[JasonJoel]

1198 Days here... You have me beat to heck on # of posts, though.

Jason Bottjen

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by JasonJoel

1198 Days here...

Heh, well the first person to join only has about 1237 days, so you're pretty close to that. Wait a minute... I got 1218 days for you so far. I think you sold yourself short.

- Andy