SageTV vs Media Center 7

[J3G]

Originally Posted by sdsean

Funny I read this post. . . and I completely disagree. . . Sage is really the best thing out there still. . . (granted my opinion)

However I agree that there is still lots of work that needs to be done. . . for example plugins/mgmt of them is getting out of control. . . and yeah there definately needs to be an entire UI upgrade (movie/music/pic wall [e.g. coverflow], better theme, fan art for all media being much easier to auto load, etc), Blu ray on the client pc. . .

I can totally understand venting. . .i love tweaking stuff and i am an engineer so that's my nature. . .but it can be a big pain. .

Still though . . all that configurability gives you power to solve problems. . . that alone makes Sage the best thing out there. . .

STV, STVi management would be a HUGE step in the right direction.

Some may call it venting. I like to think of it as constructive criticism. I had to recently rebuild my sagetv server and had forgotten how much of sagetv I had to hack.

[J3G]

Originally Posted by SHS

That odd I don't recall SageTV needing any hardcore hacks most of it had to do with Hauppauge by improve the drivers and hardware it self.
Now Vista and Windows7 MCE on other hand dose need a ture hardcore hack it called DVBSBridge for HDPVR.


You forgot the most important one of all Ture Multi-Source input, And let not forget this Network Encoders and fully customize Audio/Video setting and Prefiltering settings giving more control.
And best of all no max of 4 or 6=OEMPC like MCE has you see with SageTV it has no tuner limit, for Example let say I max out my motherboard all the way up to 18 tuner all in one system with (8) HVR-1950 USB Tuner, (4) HVR-2250 or HVR-1800 PCIe Dual Tuner and (2) HVR-1600 PCI tuner and being it a dual input I can also use 1 analog video input from each 1600 and 1800 all at same time all with use of GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 keep in mind that is just an Example.

its true, for the enthusiast SageTV is a dream. But if you notice my first post. I don't ask the owners of SageTV to re-invent the wheel. I just want to see the "low hanging" fruit of SageTV cleaned up.

[J3G]

Changes I consider as "low hanging fruit":

1. sagetv.com (the site gives no compelling reason to pick sagetv)
why sagetv is the best
why sagetv hd theater is the best
what are the FULL CAPABILITIES of a modified sagetv (comskip, hulu, placeshifter)
recommended hardware guides (quickest path to a complete setup)

2. themes management (STV, STVi)
Worst case is you clean up the website to make it easy and painless to download and install a new theme. To this day I have trouble finding the themes. They are embedded somewhere in the forums.
Best case is theme management all from with GUI.

3. plugin management
Worst case is that you clean up the website to its easy and painless to download a install a packaged plugin.
Best case is that SageTV lists plugins available within the GUI

4. upgrade management
I recently tried to "upgrade" my SageTV server. I was already running version 6. So I downloaded the latest version 6.6. It installed great. EXCEPT, the fact that all my setting had been overwritten! Seriously? The installer can't either warn me of an installation overwrite, or it can't just install and keep all my settings? All my favorites and recorded TV meta-data was lost.
SageTV added their notification service. Great feature. We now know when recordings fail or new channels are added. How about you also tell us about updates. And go a step further with it auto-updating?

5. sagetv installers (windows: placeshifter, client, server)
Would be nice if the installer said, "I have detected that windows media center is installed and active. Would you like me to de-activate?"
There is a lot to be said about installing and "it just works". As of right now that is typically not the case with Windows. Windows Media Center is always getting in the way of Sage. Getting Media Center remotes to work is also a trip to the forums (and then a trip to Andys blog). This could all be seamless.

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by J3G

My point is very simple. I have to hack around on SageTV to get the "goodies". The process always requires lots of research in the manual or the forums. So the consistent logic is hacking! If I am going to hack something to work as I want, then why not hack on the FREE Windows Media Center 7. You want to argue about "cheap" extenders...last I checked xbox 360 was about the price as SageTV HD. You want Hulu, Youtube, blahblah ... get PlayOn. I'm saying you can hack the free solution to do a lot of stuff!

So back to SageTV vs MC7...why would someone other than an enthusiast pick $99 software over the already free installed MC7?

As I said in my first post. If sagetv is to see an increase in market share there needs to be some significant changes to the website, GUI, extensions, and documentation. MC7 is now bundled with about every ones Windows 7 machines.

Maybe for the American market situation is different but, "hacking" around SageTV is very different to hacking in MC7 for us in Europe.

In SageTV we do have to in some cases have to delve into configuration files to get what we want but this is only because SageTV has not yet automated these configs.

In MC7 you have to hack because you need to get around the closed doors that MS has put in place to stop you from doing things that you need to do to get the use you need.

Such examples are DVB-S2 tuners, multiple epg lineups etc....

I still think that SageTV with the extenders is much easier to hack with to get a fully integrated whole house system with say 5-8 tuners and 5 or more TVs than MC7.

Plus, SageTV just works once you set it up....

I agree with you though in that this fact is not really well known across the community.....

Every time I suggest SageTV to users in other forums it is ignored and risk appearing like an E.T. because it is Media Center or Myth TV or whatever else or people just don't realise the full potential of managing your audio/video home experience via an integrated commercial system rather than through a collection of devices such as media players, DVRs, sat receivers and the like.

It seems to me that only a few enthusiasts have the common sense to make their life simple....

[sbherculano]

Dear All,

I like so much this discussion because it is a wonderfull opportunitie to everybody that like SageTV to discuss the Strenghts and Weakness of this product and the most important in my opinion, think about a Roadmap for the future.

Since I started to used SageTV several things changed, new technologies such as DLNA and UPnP are available and it turn some tasks very easy, new Media Center/HTPC products such as XBMC, Media Portal, WMC 7 and other tools such as Mediabrowser and Mymovies are available and there are nice things that could be incorporated in SageTV or at least analyzed in detail in order to find another solution.

I like several developments that the colleagues of the Forum created and I am using that now, things like SageMC were the reason for me to decided for SageTV. In one hand these developments are good but in another hand could be a problem for the future if you do not think about the SageTV platform with a comprehensive view. As I said new technolgies arrived and others is comming, the way that we'll use our HTPC's in the future will change a lot and if SageTV would like to consolidated as the best option we need to be aware in which direction the market is going.


I have been worked with Software for 22 years and I know that there is no perfect solution in any area, but nothing is more boring that try to do something and discover that this not working and there is no plan to be incorporated and people that love a product in a unconditional way and would like to keep the status of the things like they are at the moment, but it's good that everybody has your opinion, is really nice that we have a democratic place like this forum where we can discuss this kind of things.

Nothing is good forever, the challenge is to improve day after day, but it's cost money and I don't care to pay if I can see improvements happening.

When Microsoft launch the Windows 12 or maybe when Google created the Google Media Center :=), we'll be here discussing the same things again but it's the life of the people that love technology like us.

Cheers,

[OldPCGUY]

Once upon a time I had a dream for a reliable and integrated whole house video delivery system (Before HD100).

I built my HTPC, purchased a Hauppauge Card and evaluated Sage and Beyond. Sage looked more capable and had an unsupported CC option. Beyond TV still does not support captions.

The biggest issue I had with Sage in the beggining was with my PC crashing. At first I blamed Sage but in the end it was just another Windows XP problem. It took me a few days to study the problem and come up with a workable solution.

A) Install OS from Scratch
B) Dump Norton Anti Virus
C) Add Non-Resident Scanner
D) Defrag Drives every Day with smart defrag
E) Use a program to cleanout my PC every week (Advanced System Care)

It has been 18 months now and my PC still has not crashed.
Trying to playback via my PC and a highend video card worked but was difficult to setup and test. Mapping QAM channels was painful.

Dumping comcast going OTA+cheap DISH package saved me $100 per month. So I could justify buying 2 HD200.

HD200 is the Dream Maker. It never crashes.

HD-PVR is dream Killer with its odd locking problem. First 3 months worked with no problems and now it locks up almost daily.

I have two Hauppauge Cards recording OTA and neither Sage or the Cards have ever hung my system.

Sage needs to build its own HDPVR

[stevech]

On WIndows 7 Media Center
A few hour's play with it, and I conclude it's not usable. No, I mean it's not a debate on how pretty it is or not.

Buggy: logic errors abound in the software.

Videos library: if I activate one, it takes the CPU load way up, constantly, forever. Never drops back. Tried 25 videos and also tried 800 videos. When in the videos directory (divix avi's) no thumbnails are generated. Maybe this is the problem - endless loop trying to make thumbnails and it can't. Meanwhile, the response time for user key presses is 10's of seconds. Just silly.

There are many aspects of the UI that I like very much. Such as the easy way to tell it to record a series as a favorite. Direct TV's DVR does the same - just choose record series in a pop-up.

But it's just not ready for prime time, I say. Typical Micro$oft software: it assumes you have a very fast processor to run the bloat. Not so, many video servers.

Makes me respect the Direct TV and TiVo DVRs which use a really cheap CPU.

I must be in the minority.

Oh, and where's the extender for this one? I don't have an XBox. I do have two Extenders on Sage.
Don't want no stinkin' PC in the room where the main TV is, not to mention the bedroom media extender.

[DFranch]

I started using Sage with version 2.1. I used it for a few years then decided to try Win Media center 2005 because I was having playback issues with Sage (micro-stuttering). It had several shortcomings which caused me to switch back after about a year. They are as follows:

1) Can only record to a single drive. I had like 3 at the time and I had to set up a dynamic drive to fool Media Center.
2) Conflict reporting - With Sage I am notified 2 weeks before that a conflict exists. With Media Center If I did not happen to be watching TV 5 minutes before the recording was scheduled to start I missed the conflicted show.
3) Ability to customize - I love the detailed reporting of upcoming shows by day or channel or type of show. With Media center I had to go through 2 weeks of shows to see what is scheduled to record in 2 weeks.
4) Adding more than 2 SD and/or 2 HD tuners required hacking Media center.

I'm sure there are other smaller issues which bugged me, but these were the major ones. Have any of these issues been addressed in either vista of Win 7? FYI by the time I switched back to Sage the Micro-stutters were fixed in Sage. Now I use a Sage HD-100 and it is almost flawless. I might take another look at Media Center when the Ceton Cablecard tuner becomes available next year. I have Time Warner, and they seem to be chomping at the bit to turn off unencrypted access to cable.

[stevech]

If sagetv is to see an increase in market share there needs to be some significant changes to the website, GUI, extensions, and documentation. MC7 is now bundled with about every ones Windows 7 machines.

I agree that Sage's GUI needs to be SIMPLIFIED and EASIER. My family's main complaints are Too Many Button Pushes for simple things, and Fonts Too Small.

As to MC7 free with higher end Win 7 bundles.. My brother might be typical: His PC came with MC and a tuner. Never unboxed. He prefers to spend $ on 4 DVRs: two for the house, 1 for boat, one for RV. He wants plug and play. So Sage needs to come a little closer to to plug and play and simple/intuitive GUI minus all the rarely used stuff.