SageTV Linux hostage negations :)

[kallisti5]

Ok, I've been around the HTPC-Linux software market quite a few times. I have to say that SageTV has offered me the best features of all of the HTPC software solutions.. here are a few reasons why:

MythTV --- Powerful, great movie file identification through themoviedb.org
ugly themes, lots of bad UI design, and pretty buggy at times

Boxee --- Great interface and features, no live tv support.

Freevo --- nice but underdeveloped

Elisa (moovida) --- nice but not stable enough for set-top box use (python traces anyone?)


Now, SageTV is not without its faults. I currently own a license for version 6... if these things are addressed i would gladly re-purchase the license again for the next version. (thus the " SageTV hostage negations ")

* Video compatibility -- I find a lot of movies in my collection will not play in SageTv. When SageTV has problems with a video they are MAJOR, the interface freezes up, the sagetv processes top out at 100%, generally a restart is needed. This may or may not be the fault of the encoder... but SageTV should be above that

* Video subtitles -- It would be nice when subtitles are included that you could use them.. i have several mkv's with subtitles embedded that work on any other media player (vlc, mplayer, etc) but SageTV ignores them.

* Alternate video tracks -- ability to flip between multiple audio tracks in a video would nice.

* Video metadata lookup -- automatically parsing my video collection and grabbing box art/year/author/description/etc would be a VERY nice feature.

* Video fanart autodownload -- mythtv has this awesome feature of pulling high-def backgrounds from http://www.themoviedb.org/ , these backgrounds are HD (720 or 1080) and look awesome as a background behind the movie you are looking at.. the legality of these is not known so i can understand if this is not added.

* Stability enhancements --- if I am recording video via DVR on my Happ. PVR-150 and try to navigate back and forth through the recorded video sage tv starts to get sluggish and lock up.. eventually needing to be restarted. My system should be more then powerful enough to handle these actions (AMD X2 3.0Ghz, SATA 3 disks, 2GB memory, NVIDIA 7300 w/propriety drivers)

* Top of the hour video freeze --- when watching live tv, at the top of the hour the video stream locks up for about 3 seconds and kind of squishes left... it then returns to normal. This happens every hour on the dot.

[mayamaniac]

Getting the HD Extender will probably solve most of your playback issues. I can't say that all the features of MKV container will work, but I think I got subtitle to work with some MKV that I tested. I know the HD Extender does not support DTS audio, so converting the audio is needed.

As for the fanart and metadata. there are a few plugins that will take care of that, particularly BMT and FanArt.

[Fuzzy]

For clarification, the HD Extender will PASS DTS, it just won't decode it. So, if you are using an AVR, you can use DTS files just fine.