New SageTV Media Player

[Bacon2002]

Hi,

Does anyone know when/if the STX-HD100 will be available in the UK.

Has anyone tried using one? I have an MVP which works reasonably well but seems to be a little unstable sometime.

Many thanks,

David

[jaminben]

I'm waiting for this news about these as well.
I did take a look at the order page the other day and it said they where out of stock, so guess if they cant keep up with US demand then it wont be hitting our shores any time soon. I also did a quick search on ebay but didnt find anything

Still I'm looking forward to when then do appear here

[carlgar]

You might want to look at this post about why it does not ship outside of U. S. and Canada. http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...6&postcount=22

[Bacon2002]

Hi,

I just ordered a HD Media Extender, I assume they have sorted out the suppliers.

Cheers,

David

[jaminben]

Is that for a UK/Euro unit or a US version ?

[mickm]

I've one on the way as well but as far as I'm aware, there is only the one version. It is RoHS compliant this time around which allows them to ship outside of the US.

The internal power supply can take anything from 100-240V so that won't be an issue and even if it does come with a US plug, I can figure my way around a snips and screwdriver to fit a new one!

The issue that is still to be resolved at the moment is that there is no PAL support in the current firmware. What issues this will cause will be dependent on your TV but it would appear from other posts in the Extender thread, that setting a custom output config will fix this.

[jaminben]

Cool, You'll have to let us know how it goes

[TommyGonk]

Looks like ParcelFarce handle the parcel this side, you can track the shipment with them here - http://www.parcelforce.com/portal/pw...?catId=7500082.

Gary

[TommyGonk]

My HD extender just turned up, it was sent Friday, arrived in the UK yesterday, cleared customs and the status this morning was 'out for delivery'.

The first job was to cut off the johnny foreigner plug, plugged in and did the firmware update. It's all looking very good so far. Got some tweaking to do later, and need to get hold of some HD files to test with.

Gary

[jaminben]

whoa, that was a good delivery time.
I assume it works ok with a pal tv? Any other problems or does it just do what it says on the tin? What was the total cost in pounds if you dont mind me asking.
I so want one of these but I've gotta wait now till their back in stock

[TommyGonk]

I'm using HDMI into a 37in Toshiba Regza TV, that works fine.

I paid £136 including the delivery, not sure if there will be a customs charge but I was expecting that before they would deliver.

So far I've played Freeview and Sky Mpeg recordings, various DivX files, MKV files and one 720p H.264 file. One or two of the DivX files didn't look too good, maybe too much compression on them. The 720p H.264 file looked very sharp.

I've got audio set for HDMI, the TV will play it but it's not passing it to the amp, that's a TV issue. I'll need to play around with that later maybe switch to using phono inputs for the audio.

Very impressed so far.

[PeterC]

I just received mine today.

I had to pay £13.27 customs duty and £13.50 Parcelforce clearance fee.
With the current exchange rate its still a fairly good price though.

I have only had a quick play with it but it looks promising, and an improvement over the MVP, although the video is jerky due to the lack of PAL support. It also handles wide screen switching correctly where my MVP did not.

I will still do most of my viewing with the MVP until PAL support is integrated.

[taylormadearmy]

D*mn - I missed that they were available and they are all sold out now

I hope there are more in stock soon!

T

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by PeterC

With the current exchange rate its still a fairly good price though.

Hmm, I have six extenders so I don't think I'll be replacing them any time soon...

[PeterC]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Hmm, I have six extenders so I don't think I'll be replacing them any time soon...

I wont replace my other 2 MVPs on SD TVs but it does allow me watch BBCHD on my main TV. I do not notice any picture improvement when watching SD TV, infact I think the MVP is slightly better quality.
I do notice the 60Hz video judder which puts me off a bit though, hopefully PAL support will be integrated soon.

The animated interface is a big improvement and more responsive then the MVP.

[flipside]

apologies about the cross post (its the general european forum as well) but im seeing the HD extenders on sale through TranquilPC in the UK as part of their new M-one whs/sageTV setup ( http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/aca...IA_SERVER.html so im assuming CE approval etc has been sorted, are the uk pluggedSsage branded ones going to be for sale soon with hopefully less markup ?

M

[mickm]

Originally Posted by PeterC

I wont replace my other 2 MVPs on SD TVs but it does allow me watch BBCHD on my main TV. I do not notice any picture improvement when watching SD TV, infact I think the MVP is slightly better quality.
I do notice the 60Hz video judder which puts me off a bit though, hopefully PAL support will be integrated soon.

The animated interface is a big improvement and more responsive then the MVP.

Just wondering what exactly your setup is like (capture card, receiver, TV etc.). I spent a little time over the weekend playing with my extender and am quite happy with it. There is a massive difference between SD and HD and BBC-HD looks fantastic, no way you could miss the improvement!

I added support for 1080i & 720p @ 50Hz and that improved things greatly too. Most noticable thing that really bothered me before the 50Hz settings was the scrolling headlines on Sky News. It was very jerky but now perfectly smooth.

[PeterC]

Originally Posted by mickm

Just wondering what exactly your setup is like (capture card, receiver, TV etc.). I spent a little time over the weekend playing with my extender and am quite happy with it. There is a massive difference between SD and HD and BBC-HD looks fantastic, no way you could miss the improvement!

I added support for 1080i & 720p @ 50Hz and that improved things greatly too. Most noticable thing that really bothered me before the 50Hz settings was the scrolling headlines on Sky News. It was very jerky but now perfectly smooth.

I have now added the extra resolutions to match my TV's resolutions at 50Hz and its now looking better then the MVP, especially the colours.
I have to manually select the new resolution each time I switch the unit on, I dont know if it possible for it to be automatically selected.

I have 2 dual DVB-T tuners and 1 DVB-S/S2 tuner, BBC-HD looks really good but I have not managed to get any other HD channels working yet to compare it against.

[mickm]

Originally Posted by PeterC

I have to manually select the new resolution each time I switch the unit on, I dont know if it possible for it to be automatically selected.

Yep, that's the problem until they add PAL support. I'd hope that they could do this quite quickly as it shouldn't be a major task. Maybe in the next firmware update...

If you're using component or your TV supports 576i over HDMI you might be in a better position. If you enable native output switching, the extender seems to try match the closest output format to the source. It looked like it worked for me over component when I had 576i @50Hz mode defined that it seemed to pick this mode over the 60Hz ones when viewing SD TV. If you have 480i or 480p enabled, it may pick these ahead of the 576i so you can just disable them in the settings menu at startup.

When I moved to HDMI (component was only a test setup for me), I had to remove the 576i mode from my properties file as HDMI didn't support it. The fact that the TV used always come up with 'unsupported mode' each time I changed a channel proved in my mind that the extender was automatically picking 576i mode each time for SD channels.

Why have I stuck with HDMI over component if using component fixes the PAL issue? I need the component for another source and HDMI on my TV supports PIP which is quite neat...