How about a demo video on SageTV's capabilities??

[Chilli]

...ala AppleTV-style demo
http://www.apple.com/appletv/tour.html

I've been a Sage user since v1 and recently upgraded to v6 w/HDHR. AppleTV doesn't even come close to Sage in terms of UI, functionality, and format support. Seriously, how about a Sage demo video?

[traker1001]

This is true and would be neat, But what do you display in the video, Seeing as alot of sages real power comes from it ability to be customized.

[SHS]

AppleTV UI is by the coolest I saw so far and it some pettey cool functionality UI features but nothing like SageTV which also suit for Avg and Power User and it has TV DVR functionality, etc, etc the AppleTV is nothing more then a Media Extenders that works with iTunes which has no DVR functionality what so ever.

[rickgillyon]

Worse than that, AppleTV is a Media Extender without streaming capability! Incredible...

[flavius]

^Why do you say that? It can stream contents from up five iTunes instances.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by flavius

^Why do you say that? It can stream contents from up five iTunes instances.

No, from what I've read (several positive reviews) it has to sync everything to the local HDD first. No streaming except for movie trailers from iTunes.

[nielm]

I am a bit surprised about AppleTV's capabilities, and wonder what it is really meant to do...

It has HDTV out, but the playback capabilities don't really allow for HDTV content playback (see below).
MPEG4 playback cannot even do SDTV.
No MPEG2 playback at all means no playback of DV home movies, nor ripped DVDs.
No 5.1 sound...

So, It seems like it is only intended as a iTunes-on-TV device:

And as an iTunes-on-TV device it will not look too good on HDTV's, because iTunes currently only sells 480p video, and as PC World mentions, NetFlix is cheaper!

However, as a cheap OSX PC with HDTV output, and interesting looking remote, it is ripe for the hacking!

tech specs on apples site list
H.264 maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps
iTunes Store purchased video: 320 by 240 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels
MPEG-4: maximum resolution: 720 by 432 pixels at 30 fps

[flavius]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

No, from what I've read (several positive reviews) it has to sync everything to the local HDD first. No streaming except for movie trailers from iTunes.

Nope. No streaming from the internet, but from iTunes instances for sure.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by flavius

Nope. No streaming from the internet, but from iTunes instances for sure.

Aah, you're right, I should read more carefully. Well, video streaming so long as it's M4V format it seems...

[flavius]

I would assume that when you own qt pro as I do I should be able to stream mpeg2 as well. Not that I'm planning to get one right away, but at some point this year I probably will..

[rickgillyon]

It seems a funny choice for a Sage user, with a HD extender almost here...

[flavius]

I also own a few Macs, and I use iTunes. And I may simply want to take a look

[rickgillyon]

I think that for anyone who doesn't use iTunes (like me!) it's a non-starter. But I do that "taking a look" thing way too much, thank the gods for eBay!