Extender without sagetv

[fredarters]

Can you buy and use the media extender without sage tv software? I have a lot of personal video, tv shows and other media on my pc that I want to watch on my tv. Can I do that?

I dont want the video mvp from happauge because it doesnt do divx or xvid and a lot of my stuff is in that format.

Any ideas? How about (inexpensive) alteratives if that wont work?

[JUC]

the mvp from hauppauge is the same exact unit as sage sells. If you use the extender without sage running on the server you will be using Hauppauge software. Its one or the other i believe. However--i thought that recent versions of hauppauge software did transcode divx on the server side but i could be wrong.
JUC

[fredarters]

Oh ok. So does sage tv do the same transcoding of divx/xvid on the server side? I assume it does if the hardware itself is exactly the same.

If all I am interested in doing is being able to view video on my tv that resides on my computer should I just get the mvp?

Is there any other benefit to getting it from sage tv?

[ke6guj]

Yes, SageTV will transcode divx/xvid and probably others on the server to send to the MVP.

You could just get the MVP is all you want to do is view videos that are already on the computer

Other benefits on getting it from SageTV, well, if you have a SageTV server, then you get all the benefits of a DVR on your computer and can control it from the MVP. IF you aren't going to run SageTV, then you don't need the ~$100 Sage-packaged MVP. You would be paying for an extender license you don't need. You would just be using the MVP software from Hauppauge no matter where you bought it.