Which extender works best?

[pat_smith1969]

I am considering buying a media extender for SageTV. I am leaning towards getting the Sage branded media extender but see others use the MediaMVP from hauppauge (I have the hauppauge tuner card). Looking further I see there are a couple other media extenders that might do the trick as well.

Which extender does the general community recommend and why? I would think getting the sage one would be a no brainer.. but you never know.

[Opus4]

Right now, the Hauppauge MVP is the only media extender, regardless of whether you buy it from SageTV or someone else.

If you've seen reference to any others, it would be the HD extender prototypes that were shown at CES.

- Andy

[airmech737]

Yeah, don't feel bad. I just bought one through the SageTV store. The website finally said in stock... Just jumped right on it. Opened the box to find a Hauppauge MediaMVP. Not really what I thought I was getting.

I even sent in an email whining that I had not received what I ordered. George responded quickly, that this is the unit that they are selling now. And he addressed that you get the extender license when you purchase the extender though SageTV, verses purchasing the Hauppauge somewhere else and then coming to SageTV and purchasing the extender license... A value of $29.

Robert

[jquinlan]

Both are the same but SAGE gives you a nice discount on the client license.
Stick to the hardwired networks, wireless has had mixed results with people. Don’t want your first experience to be a bad one.

[jbarr]

Also, keep an eye on PC Alchemy. They offer lots of SageTV stuff including the MVP and required licenses, and they sometimes have discounts that undercut the SageTV store. I've had excellent service from them.

[pat_smith1969]

Thanks for all the responses.. it seems my choices are much simpler than I thought.. I either buy a MediaMVP, or not... I love choices that are binary

Exactly how well/bad does the wireless extender work? I have a full G network (actually it is one of those G+ networks that SUPPOSEDLY get up to 108 mbps, but I seldom see more than 54mpbs).

Thanks for a nice signature Opus, I downloaded all the PDF files and am in the process of reading the links.

[ybrew]

Stick with wired. My wireless laptop is a great client, but a wired MVP is good only for pictures and menus - not video.

I bought 3 wired MVPs from PCAlchemy as well. If Sage Store is out, I highly recommend them.

[blade]

If you have HD or plan on getting it anytime soon you might want to wait on the HD extender. It's supposed to be released in Q2 of this year.

[AngelofDeth]

Originally Posted by ybrew

Stick with wired. My wireless laptop is a great client, but a wired MVP is good only for pictures and menus - not video.

Huh? Did you mean to say wireless? In any case, the wired MVP works great on a wireless bridge... I don't think i'd touch an actual actual wireless mvp though.

[zzmystique]

I'd stick with the wired. I have 2 x wireless MVP and 1 x wired MVP and I have had to wire all 3. This was initially due to the intermittent poor preformance of wirelss especially when both were running at the same time. This didn't really improve when using a wireless bridge.

I replaced the DLink wireless router with a Netgear DG834GT and then ran into the issue where the wireless MVP's could not obtain an IP Address. (This issue has been mentioned in other threads.)

Wired all 3 MVP consistently work well, the picture quality is excellent, only issue I have now is occassionally the MVP's get stuck at the "Loading SageTV Media Centre, Please Wait..." screen. When this happens, Stopping and restarting the sagetv service solves the problem, but is a pain if sage is in the middle of recording a film or program.

[cortechs]

Originally Posted by blade

If you have HD or plan on getting it anytime soon you might want to wait on the HD extender. It's supposed to be released in Q2 of this year.

There were no official statement about that anywhere so i'm gonna do just like pat_smith1969 and get myself 4 wired MVP. Tired of waiting for something that might not come this year.

Anyway, with 4 MVPs, i got 1 or 2 years to see it coming....

Regards,

Cortechs

[blade]

Originally Posted by cortechs

There were no official statement about that anywhere so i'm gonna do just like pat_smith1969 and get myself 4 wired MVP. Tired of waiting for something that might not come this year.

It was announced at CES and Narflex gave a projected release date in this this thread. When the CTO gives an estimated release date I take it as an official statement because he's speaking on behalf of the company.

I understand not wanting to wait. Even when companies make official announcements with estimated releases dates they are still estimates. I was considering picking up a MVP myself, but if I can get a HD extender for a little more I'm willing to wait. I just wanted to be sure the OP knew about it so that an informed decision could be made.

[davefred99]

Originally Posted by cortechs

There were no official statement about that anywhere so i'm gonna do just like pat_smith1969 and get myself 4 wired MVP. Tired of waiting for something that might not come this year.

Anyway, with 4 MVPs, i got 1 or 2 years to see it coming....

Regards,

Cortechs

I have been watching and waiting for a more official update on the much anticipated HD Extender too.
Last week I noticed that the Sage Store had some MVP's back in stock so I just ordered one on an impulse buy thinking it probably would not serve my needs but what the heck its pretty cheap and I can always sell it on ebay if I didnt like it.
I gotta say I am pretty impressed with the way this little thing works. The picture quality is very good and all you have to do is enable the media function on the main server and plug it in and it works. It doesnt work too good for HD due to the transcoding overhead on the server for me but thats not really what its made for. The menus are not as fast as a PC client but there are acceptable.
In my setup I was using my sever on 2 different TV's, 1 sdtv via svideo and 1 hdtv via HDMI. Switching back and forth was a pain because one is SD 4x3 and one is HD 16x9, forcing me to switch between tv's in video setup and also to go into the Sage setup menu everytime I switched between them for proper aspect ratio's on the Tv's. That is why I wanted a dedicated HD extender so I could eliminate the need to switch back and forth. I was able to accomplish the same thing by dedicating the MVP to my SDTV and dedicating the Server for my HDtv viewing. This is not my Ideal setup as I would really prefer to not use the Server as a server/client but this will buy me some time until the HD extenders are available around Q2 of 07.
Bottom line I am now an MVP fan for its simplicity and functionality vs. price. I would recommend it for anyone that just needs a basic SDTV client for Live Tv, DVD & Music. IF your looking for an HD Client I would recommend that you either wait for the HD extenders to come out or build a dedicated PC client with a decent Cpu and Video card for the purpose.

[jayrbrown77]

Can't you build your own client computer to act like a HD media extender. All you really need is a decent processor, decent memory, and a good video card? You can probably buy something cheap off of ebay, and repackage it.

Would you use the SageTV Client License, or would you need the placeshifter. I could of course search the forums for the answer.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by jayrbrown77

Can't you build your own client computer to act like a HD media extender. All you really need is a decent processor, decent memory, and a good video card? You can probably buy something cheap off of ebay, and repackage it.

Yup, you could, but once you got a PC and a Good video card, you'd probably be way over the sub-$200 price of a HD extender(IIRC the price correctly)

Would you use the SageTV Client License, or would you need the placeshifter. I could of course search the forums for the answer.

For a PC, I'd recommend the SageTV Client License, instead of the placeshifter. You could use the placeshifter, but that is not what it is designed for. With the SageCLient, you have the abiltiy to pick and choose decoders and stuff. WIth the placeshifter, you don't. And you can't play DVDs on the placeshifter either. One plus for the placeshifter is that it is a floating license, so you could have less licenses than clients and be ok, as long as you didn't have more clients on than you had licenses. SageClient requires one license per client, no floating.