few questions about.. upcoming/current release

[xlr8shun]

im currently thinking about buying sagetv 1.4 now, as i just learned that i can get an upgrade to 2.0 for free, however i do have a few questions before i shell out the money and find that 2.0 isnt exactly what i had hoped for, or that it wont fit my needs entirely.

1) how does sage handle offline media, the only way i can accuratly describe what im looking for, is to refrence myomp, a plugin used for myhtpc, specifically designed for offline media.

what happens is, when you click on a movies 'button' to play that movie, it detects whether or not that file is online or offline (cd in this case) and if the movie is online, plays it normally, which i know sage2 will do fine, however if that media file is offline, stored on cd, it will pop up a box, and prompt me to insert the cd that contains that media, once that cd is inserted it will then play that media as if it was online.

will sage2 be able to do this out of the box? or will this require a user to make a plugin to get this kind of functionality? or will this be impossible?

2) say i get 1.4 now, and get a free upgrade to 2.0, where does my 'upgrades' stop, usually developers give free updates for minor releases (1.0 -1.9 for example) and charge for major releases (1.9 - 2.0 for example), if i get 2.0 free will i be able to get releases all the way upto 3.0 or is this some kind of 'free lifetime upgrades' i get with my purchase?

what im primarly concerned about is buying 1.4 now, getting 2.0 for free, maybe getting 2.1/2 for free, and then getting charged to upgrade to 2.4 or 5 because it includes "major changes" that frey feels they should charge for. the version numbering system is kind of throwing me off here

3) assuming that sage2 wont support #1 (of that i will have to wait for someone to develope a plugin to do this) will sage support command line options, so i can integrate sage with another frontend that does offer this functionality. while it might be anal to some, i want an 'all in one' solution, i dont necessarly want to have to buy or install 5 different programs to 5 different things, even if i can get them to integrate seamlessly, i'd rather get 1 program that does exactly what i need. given the price is right, and the time and effort needed to put into configuring the applications to work together SEAMLESSLY i would consider using multiple programs to do this, but it has to be 110% user friendly, and once setup easy enough for any joe blow that picks up the mouse/keyboard/remote to use without giving it a second thought.

4) if i wait till sage2 is released, and i decide to buy after i figure out that it will do what i need, or will do what i need with little configuration. is the price going to go up? because of all the 'new features'?

5) the epg, is it color coded, like ppv is red, movies are yellow, news is purple, sports are green, regular is blue.. etc.. it doesnt necessarly have to be those colors, but it would be nice flipping through the channels and if i was looking for a sports game (nothing inpaticular) i could easily see if what i was looking at were news, movies or sports at a GLANCE..

6) studio as i am lead to belive is part of the sagetv package, users will not be charged for the ability to make skins for their front end? (sticky at the top of the forums says "current users will not be charged for stage studio") it doesnt mention new users of sage2

7) sage recorder is primarly used for people who want to only record? dont want a full front end? sagerecorder incorperates its functions in sagetv right?

8) sage has a 'server' and 'client' if i dont have a dedicated media server (upgrading slowly here, running short on money) i can use the sagetv (sage server?) as my client? sage client is only for people who choose to run sagetv on a dedicated media server and access that information over the network with a "lite" version of sagetv that interacts with the server.. is that correct in thinking?

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right now the only thing keeping me from basically getting my htpc complete, up and running, and finished (for the most part) is the release of some software, there are more then a couple programs coming out that boast to be the 'best' and both at their current status have pros and cons, none currently being the 'all in one' front end im looking for.

seeing as how all my music, movies and pictures are offline, the above questions are listed in order of most important to least important.

while sage(2) might have the best recording of all the programs, if it cant play offline movies (not dvd's), music, or view offline pictures. then even if it supported the rest of the stuff, as you can see it wouldnt be my first choice over something that can. however if i could, easily, integrate it seamlessly, with another frontend, it would still be a consideration.

reguards

[mikejaner]

5) Yes the EPG is color coded, and yes you can change the colors to match whatever scheme you like, and this is possible in the current version.

6) What they mean by free to registered users is that the trial users will not be able to use sage studio

7) No, Sage Recorder does not have a EPG, so it's just like a vcr.

8) Sagetv(server) is what you want to have as the machine with all the disk space for storing your shows, and the machine with all of the capture cards, unless you want to buy Sage Recorder for networked recorders.
Sage Client is what you want your frontend box to be. Typically, again unless you have Sage Recorder and are doing network recorders, your client machine will not have capture cards in it.

mikejaner

[dkardatzke]

SageTV is designed to provide access to media files stored somewhere across your network permanently. Currently is does not allow for access to "offline" files. More information on how this could even be achieved will be available after we release the v2 beta of SageTV.

With regards to upgrades, we are not charging customers for the upgrade from v1.4 to v2. How long free upgrades will last depends on the functionality we integrate in the future. We plan to try our best to offer upgrades at no cost but cannot guarantee it forever. We also are not ready to announce whether there will be a price increase once SageTV v2 is released.

[xlr8shun]

thanks for your replies, seeing as how this whole htpc thing started out with me wanting to get something built that i could play all this movies and music i have on discs in some 'orderly' fashion, and sage cant do it right now, i think ill hold off a bit and see what happens with sage2.

thanks for your time, hopefully there will be some support for offline files in the near future.

thanks again.