advice for moving to SageTV from TiVo and WAF?

[tchapin]

Hi there. I have been a long-time TiVo owner (since 1999, I think) when I first bought my Series 1 & lifetime subscription. It was a great machine, and I even upgraded the hard drive.

However, last year, TiVo had a great deal on a Series2 80GB w/ 1 year service included, so I picked one up, hoping to really enjoy the network features. However, that hasn't really worked out too well.

The basic TiVo functionality still works great, but the networking aspect of being able to push or pull media from my server has been unreliable. In addition, I've noticed that the TiVo interface has become slower and slower over time and I've been unhappy with the direction that TiVo's taken in terms of putting ads on my device and all that.

At first, my wife was quite skeptical of the TiVo, but she has come to love it. Obviously, she'll need to approve of the functionality of the Sage setup.

In addition to my TiVos, I have two networked DVD players that I use to watch videos and listen to music. They work, but not awesomely; their video performance is especially flawed. I also have a Rio Home network music player in another room where there's a TV that's connected to our cable w/o a cable box. It'd be nice to access real content from that room as well. On my server, to support all this, I have 5 server programs running, which is annoying.

I'm excited by the possibility of being able to access my recorded TV, videos, and audio via the same mechanism. I'd also be glad to avoid paying TiVo the monthly fee (even though it'll be reduced) when my first year of ownership is over.

I'd like to simplify my set up and hopefully improve things and here's what I was thinking. Currently, I'm only interested in SD and we'd be watching video / listening to audio at more than 2 displays at a time. I'll be connecting the video encoder card to my cable box via SVideo.

Here's the stuff I was thinking of buying:
SageTV
3 MVP / Sage Extenders (wired; my house is wired for ethernet)
Huappage PVR150MCE (I currently only need one channel
UIRT IR blaster

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Todd

[sainswor99]

I don't use a set-top box in my setup, but I would recommend that you explore the concept of a multi-tuner setup. With multiple users in your household, you may experience a lot of tuner conflicts (not to mention the normal conflict resolution issues with recording multiple favorites).

I realize an STB complicates things, but it's worth it.

Stu

[stevech]

lack of monthly fee affect WAF?

[mayamaniac]

I agree with Stu, go for a dual tuner, the PVR-500MCE. Besides that, I think you are all set. The MVP on wired connections worlks almost flawlessly. If you plan to watch non MPEG2 videos such as Divx or Xvid videos on the MVPs, then make sure your PC is powerful enough (P4 3ghz or better).

[HawgGuy]

I also was a longtime Tivo charter member & switched to Sage a few years ago.

The single best thing I did for the WAF was to stick with the Tivo remote, which is pretty good, and map its buttons to support the analogous features in SageTV. The USBUIRT will receive the Tivo remote signals without a fuss.

[mikesm]

A few things to consider:

1) Don't replace the Tivo until you have the Sage system working flawlessly. Wives HATE debugging.

2) Try SageMC - my wife found it pretty intuitive and "pretty". While I am an engineer and "prettyiness" isn't that important to me, it is to her.

3) Make sure suspend/resume works VERY well. WAF plumments if she sees the windows desktop. It needs to be like an appliance.

4) Make sure you get comskip/showanalyzer installed and working well. Commercial skip is a big deal. Tivo has 30 sec skip, but not automatic skip.

5) If you have kids, rip all the dvd's to disk and lock the DVD's away. Kids always seem to find ways of ruining DVD's, and the ability to access all that video content and not have to worry about the DVD's being scratched up is great.

6) Being able to burn TV programs to DVD so they can be watched in a car or on a plane also does great things to WAF. So make sure you load the appropriate addons to make that happen.

7) Remember that none of the other features matter if the core PVR functionality is not drop dead solid.

After almost a year of work I am at the point now of replacing replayTV's and hacked Xbox's with SageMC clients and still have good WAF because I built the server, storage and clients and got them all working before putting the system into "production". Even then I've run into a fair number of issues because I didn't have extra flat panel displays etc... to test it against. Still, this approach seems to be working well.

Thanks,
Mike

[twieder]

been there - done that.
The beauty of SageTV for you will be the included Studio, where you can use you engineering skills to modify any part of the STV (shell) that you don't like. If you go with SageMC, you can check out my SageMC Enhancements, which make some TiVo-like options available (i.e. no line numbers, folder icons, etc),

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by twieder

been there - done that.
The beauty of SageTV for you will be the included Studio, where you can use you engineering skills to modify any part of the STV (shell) that you don't like. If you go with SageMC, you can check out my SageMC Enhancements, which make some TiVo-like options available (i.e. no line numbers, folder icons, etc),

I use your enhancements. Very nice. Much more consumer electronics like.

Thx
mike

[tchapin]

hi everyone. Thanks for the responses.

The main things that I'm worried about with regards to WAF are the experience with SageTV when choosing shows to record, that they get recorded correctly, and watching them. From what I can tell from reading these forums, I feel that SageTV will do as good a job or better w/ conflict resolution and things like that.

So far, we haven't really needed two tuners. At the moment, the series 1 is just around so that we can watch stuff it's already recorded and not recording new shows. It'll also discount my TiVo service fee if I end up paying it due to either not ditching the TiVo's or don't get a solid Sage setup for a few months. I'd also have to get another STB if I wanted to add another tuner, as there are only about 8 channels that can be tuned w/o a cable box. This is with Comcast in Boston. In addition, we never watch live tv; well, perhaps twice a year. Other than that, it's all recorded shows or other media.

Good thought about not switching over until the new setup is solid.

When using Sage w/ the MVPs, it's pulling the interface file from the server, right? It's not a desktop viewer like VNC.

The current processor on my server is a AMD Athlon 64 3400; that's pretty beefy, right? Not top of the line, but at least somewhat respectible.

Todd

[stevech]

Originally Posted by tchapin

When using Sage w/ the MVPs, it's pulling the interface file from the server, right? It's not a desktop viewer like VNC.

Yes, MVPs use an IP stream from the server, this being essentially a file copy of mpeg 2 data - or it will transcode if need be from other formats; this is when you need a barn-burner X2 CPU. Otherwise, a modest CPU will do. The MVPs do have some disadvantages versus using a PC's video card, e.g., skipping forward/reverse in an MVP is much slower and glitches. For me, at standard definition, the MVP has higher quality than the video card -probably due to the extra resampling done on the video card for my 800 x 600 PC display. The PC quality is softer - kind of low-pass filtered, but subtle.

[autoboy]

Transcoding standard xvid files will be fine with a 3400+. If you want to transcode very high quality 720p h264 files, then you will need a dual core. But, I doubt you will be doing that because you can always find the xvid files of the same program. The new HD extender will be able to play those files natively so you can upgrade when you want. Your setup is simple and sage will work well for you. One feature I like is the Tivo like recomended recordings. I search through it all the time and find shows I would like to watch that it found for me.

By using the MVP you will avoid most problems that people have with sageTV. Most of the problems result from playback. Since the MVP will do that, you won't have too many issues. My sage server has been running for a year now without problems. It is the clients that have the issues. I really can't wait for the HD extender.

[tchapin]

Thanks again for the further input.

I'm hoping to never have to use SageTV via the desktop of the server on which it'll be installed and just be able to manage day-to-day tasks via the MVP. That seems possible.

Now, in terms of purchasing the hardware and software, is there any advantage to going directly through Sage? Or would that other site that I keep seeing mentioned (pcalchemy?) be better? I figure I'll start by buying one Sage Media Extender and the MPEG decoder card and trial the software and see how things stack up.

Also, any other tips on introducing SageTV as a TiVo replacement would be highly appreciated.

Thanks.

Todd