Windows 7 Upgrade, SageTV HD Theater

[MitchSchaft]

These are issues from your end, not Sage.

[zumpner]

I agree. I added the HD-PVR, Blu-Ray player / PowerDVD and changed the OS ... none of which are part of SageTV in any way.

SageTV is like an old man. It doesn't handle change well. If things just would not change, it'd be great!

[SprDtyF350]

Originally Posted by zumpner

SageTV is like an old man. It doesn't handle change well. If things just would not change, it'd be great!

I'm old (well if 50 is old) and I don't mind change. Otherwise I wouldn't be torturing myself playing with Windows Media Center..

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by zumpner

It does for me. That's what gets me.

The latest one was a codec debacle. The resolution... I now how 3 versions of PowerDVD on my machine. One for Blu-Ray, one for HD-DVD and one for SageTV. Oh, and they all have to be installed in a certain order to make sure DirectShow uses the one SageTV needs by default. That took about 6 hours to fix. That all started because a Blu-Ray I got via Netflix needed a PowerDVD software update run.

The one before that was getting the HD-PVR to work correctly. That took a lot of beta updates and weeks of messin' around.

The one before that was upgrading to Vista.

I could go on.

Also, now I have SageTV popping and telling me that one of my tuners failed every now and then. A hard reboot always solves it. That one popped up out of nowhere.

I'm not looking for solutions to these problems....just letting you know that I am always dealing with some issue. And yes, maybe it is just me.

Also, this goes back to my point that I will always need to update and tinker with it. In the examples above, all I wanted to do is watch my blu-ray, view ESPN in high-def and have a new OS (this one was not necessary really) which cost me countless hours of tinkering.

Well if you are going to go with a new OS then you have to expect some change and tinker time. Window7 will be no different.

Windows7 is not going to solve your Blu-Ray\HD-DVD problems!

There is no reason you should need three versions of PowerDVD. When you upgrade to Win7 try AnyDVD and the TME software that came with the HD-PVR. AnyDVD will remove a lot of the DRM crap that was probably at the root of your problem. Download the latest Video card drivers.

The HD-PVR is probably the only thing that has historically not been stable. It has definitely been a work in progress but I think it is now mature enough that you should be able to set it up to run without significant issues. It would probably be worse in MCE because support is pretty much a hack. I would not give up on it now.

Life with a DVR will probably be more stable but you also have to live with what you buy. There are no changes to be made bad or good. The multi-room setup is crap. A DVR also has a hard drive and I can tell you from personal experience they will go bad and there is no restore.

[zumpner]

Originally Posted by SprDtyF350

Otherwise I wouldn't be torturing myself playing with Windows Media Center..

HA! Zing!

[zumpner]

After some soul searching and advice from many I think I have come to my conclusion...

On one side of the spectrum you have lots of power/flexibility with a high cost of time/effort. SageTV sits at this extreme. At the other side you have little power/flexibility but ease of use and robustness. Sat/Cable DVRs sit at this extreme.

I want something in the middle which is what I was hoping Windows 7 Media Center would be. It doesn't sound like this is the case.

So, I'm stuck. I'm just going to wait for either side to move closer to the middle.

[SprDtyF350]

Originally Posted by zumpner

After some soul searching and advice from many I think I have come to my conclusion...

On one side of the spectrum you have lots of power/flexibility with a high cost of time/effort. SageTV sits at this extreme. At the other side you have little power/flexibility but ease of use and robustness. Sat/Cable DVRs sit at this extreme.

I want something in the middle which is what I was hoping Windows 7 Media Center would be. It doesn't sound like this is the case.

So, I'm stuck. I'm just going to wait for either side to move closer to the middle.

Only one way to know for sure.. Find the Windows 7 Beta and try it. It doesn't expire til next year sometime. Then you will know. Something that used to really annoy me with Windows Media Center was that it was hard to disable if you wanted to use something else. You could disable it, and then hitting the green button on an MCE remote would turn it back on. Well you can now turn it off completely if you don't want to use it and it actually stays turned off. And it is as simple as a mouse click. Yahoo to Microsoft for that one...
I know you like the MCE interface because it looks nice but I have a problem with the function. I can just rip around in Sage with a keyboard, mouse, or MCE remote. MCE thinks I'm old and makes me drive slower. To each his own I guess.

They all have there good and bad features. They all will occasionally give you a headache and make you want to break things.. TV used to be so easy when we only had 3 channels and an antenna...

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by zumpner

It does for me. That's what gets me.

The latest one was a codec debacle. The resolution... I now how 3 versions of PowerDVD on my machine. One for Blu-Ray, one for HD-DVD and one for SageTV. Oh, and they all have to be installed in a certain order to make sure DirectShow uses the one SageTV needs by default. That took about 6 hours to fix. That all started because a Blu-Ray I got via Netflix needed a PowerDVD software update run.

Welcome to the world of Blu-ray on a PC. The other thing is you should never use DirectShow's automatic priorities to select decoders, you should always specify the ones you want used in Sage explicitly for exactly this reason.

The one before that was getting the HD-PVR to work correctly. That took a lot of beta updates and weeks of messin' around.

HD PVR had a painful birth, no doubt.

The one before that was upgrading to Vista.

You should never expect an OS upgrade to go smoothly, especially if it's a true upgrade and not nuke-and-pave.

Also, now I have SageTV popping and telling me that one of my tuners failed every now and then. A hard reboot always solves it. That one popped up out of nowhere.

Sounds like all the various app installations and updates have corrupted your system.

I'm not looking for solutions to these problems....just letting you know that I am always dealing with some issue. And yes, maybe it is just me.

Also, this goes back to my point that I will always need to update and tinker with it. In the examples above, all I wanted to do is watch my blu-ray, view ESPN in high-def and have a new OS (this one was not necessary really) which cost me countless hours of tinkering.

Sounds to me like you've got fundamental stability problems with your system that you haven't resolved. That's the root of your problems.

IMO you should save your SageTV config (see FAQs) format your computer, reinstall the OS from scratch. Install just the drivers and apps you really need.

This is what I think gets most people, they take a "dirty"/"cluttered" computer and decide to add media to it and expect it to act like an appliance. That's just not likely to work that well. Media in general is very sensitive to system problems.

Originally Posted by zumpner

I agree. I added the HD-PVR, Blu-Ray player / PowerDVD and changed the OS ... none of which are part of SageTV in any way.

SageTV is like an old man. It doesn't handle change well. If things just would not change, it'd be great!

But it's beyond just not being Sage's "fault", it's a fact of media on PCs. I'd expect any PC solution to have those problems with all the updates that you've done.

Originally Posted by zumpner

After some soul searching and advice from many I think I have come to my conclusion...

On one side of the spectrum you have lots of power/flexibility with a high cost of time/effort. SageTV sits at this extreme. At the other side you have little power/flexibility but ease of use and robustness. Sat/Cable DVRs sit at this extreme.

Let's clarify, PCs are at one extreme, not SageTV specifically. And frankly Sage isn't even at the extreme, I'd put MythTV and some of the other OSS/free/community developed solutions out there.

I want something in the middle which is what I was hoping Windows 7 Media Center would be. It doesn't sound like this is the case.

So, I'm stuck. I'm just going to wait for either side to move closer to the middle.

Your "closer to the middle" solution is this:
Buy a standalone BD player.
Install Sage on a dedicated machine with a clean OS install (or at least do the clean OS install).
Get an HD200.

Done.