Thinking of moving from PCH to SageTVHD300's

[Krazypoloc]

New guy alert!

So I have been a long time user of NMT's (Networked Media Tank) and recently came across some information about S7+SageTVHD300.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG4YsvPRfAU

What plugins are used in that video?

Can the front end configuration of the HD300 be configured from the server?

Does all the scaping and library updating occur on the server? If so can this be easily automated?

Does that interface display TV Shows, Movies, Music, and Pictures? If so can you automate media scraping (cover art, info, ect) for each of these (obviously not pictures)?

I basically want the same functionality that I have now with YAMJ (Yet Another Media Jukebox) with the addition of a music jukebox in a faster, more seamless front end.

I have had a central server for years and all my content is stored there, so the HD300 must be able to stream everything from the network.

[wayner]

That uses Sage MyMoves. The scraping is done using the MyMovies Collection Management software. MyMovies was originally written for Windows Media Centre but it is no kind of cross-platofrm and you can even browse your collection now from a mobile device. The initial scraping is pretty automated although you may have to clean up a few movies that it won't get perfectly.

You then add the Sage MyMovies plugin to Sage that acts as the UI for your movie collection.

That interface does not do anything other than movies, but it integrates pretty well into the Sage7 UI. There are also some additional themes like Diamond (see a Youtube clip here) that you may prefer. There are some total UI replacements on the way as well such as Phoenix that look really sharp.

To get the metadata for stuff other than the movies in MyMovies there is BMT which does a great job getting the metadata and Fanart for TV shows, etc.

[Krazypoloc]

Originally Posted by wayner

That uses Sage MyMoves. The scraping is done using the MyMovies Collection Management software. MyMovies was originally written for Windows Media Centre but it is no kind of cross-platofrm and you can even browse your collection now from a mobile device. The initial scraping is pretty automated although you may have to clean up a few movies that it won't get perfectly.

You then add the Sage MyMovies plugin to Sage that acts as the UI for your movie collection.

That interface does not do anything other than movies, but it integrates pretty well into the Sage7 UI. There are also some additional themes like Diamond (see a Youtube clip here) that you may prefer. There are some total UI replacements on the way as well such as Phoenix that look really sharp.

To get the metadata for stuff other than the movies in MyMovies there is BMT which does a great job getting the metadata and Fanart for TV shows, etc.

Thanks a ton wayner! That clears some things up. How would you rate the music interface and playback and are there alternate jukeboxes for music?

[wayner]

The music playback is not ideal. I don't really know about alternatives for music, but the Music area is the one that gets a lot of complaints. Most people use Sage more for the TV and Videos sections.

But why not go ahead and download Sage and give it a try? The trial version works for 21 days and the interface on your PC is exactly the same as what you will see on the HD-300 extender.

[Krazypoloc]

Originally Posted by wayner

The music playback is not ideal. I don't really know about alternatives for music, but the Music area is the one that gets a lot of complaints. Most people use Sage more for the TV and Videos sections.

But why not go ahead and download Sage and give it a try? The trial version works for 21 days and the interface on your PC is exactly the same as what you will see on the HD-300 extender.

Awesome! You have been extremely helpful, I have already downloaded and configured S7 on my server at home and have been tinkering with it, but I can't actually try it out yet as I'm RDP'd in from work Its a vital piece of information that the interfaces will be the same on the PC and STB versions.

Yeah the Popcorn Hour's and other NMT's have the same issue with music. Their playback quality is outstanding, its the interface that falls abysmally short.

I will have to dig around and find the front end combination that I like the best.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Krazypoloc

Its a vital piece of information that the interfaces will be the same on the PC and STB versions.

IMHO this is one of the "killer features" of SageTV. You have a very good UI that is exactly the same on a PC and on an extender. And you have software clients that can connect to one centralized server. The main competitors to Sage, like Windows MC and MythTV, do not have that.

But the strongest part of Sage is the PVR functionality. Given that you are in a large city you could try this our fairly easily with an OTA tuner and an indoor antenna.

[Krazypoloc]

Poking around on the forum I keep seeing a SageTV Server application mentioned but cannot find it. Is this different that the SageTV 7 application? It would be nice if there was a server version as there would be less overhead I would imagine and it would make it easeir to navigate over RDP.

[wayner]

The server is the main application. You can run it as a service so that it boots up with Windows and you don't need the UI open on the server.

There are two other apps for Windows - Client (thick client) and Placeshifter(thin client).

You can use Placeshifter over your LAN, or over the internet (providing you open up the correct ports) to do pretty much everything that you can do with the server or extender UI, once again with exactly the same UI. You can also watch video streamed over the net - this is essentially the same as Slingbox. Placeshifter doesn't have to send that much in terms of resources over the connection unless you are streaming video. But if you are Placeshifting HD content bear in mind that your server has to transcode the video file in realtime so you need some CPU horsepower.

Once you get things up and running you can also install the Web server. This allows you to do many of the same things that you can do from the UI over the web. There is also a mobile version of the web server that you can run from your Android device. This mobile version will also allow you to stream video to iDevices, I believe there may be something similar for Android but I am a Blackberry and iPad guy so I can't help you there.

You have to buy an additional license for Placeshifter after the trial period ends, but it is well worth it. The licensing works on concurrent users so that you could use it from many different PCs, but only one at a time.

[Krazypoloc]

Originally Posted by wayner

The server is the main application. You can run it as a service so that it boots up with Windows and you don't need the UI open on the server.

There are two other apps for Windows - Client (thick client) and Placeshifter(thin client).

You can use Placeshifter over your LAN, or over the internet (providing you open up the correct ports) to do pretty much everything that you can do with the server or extender UI, once again with exactly the same UI. You can also watch video streamed over the net - this is essentially the same as Slingbox. Placeshifter doesn't have to send that much in terms of resources over the connection unless you are streaming video. But if you are Placeshifting HD content bear in mind that your server has to transcode the video file in realtime so you need some CPU horsepower.

Once you get things up and running you can also install the Web server. This allows you to do many of the same things that you can do from the UI over the web. There is also a mobile version of the web server that you can run from your Android device. This mobile version will also allow you to stream video to iDevices, I believe there may be something similar for Android but I am a Blackberry and iPad guy so I can't help you there.

You have to buy an additional license for Placeshifter after the trial period ends, but it is well worth it. The licensing works on concurrent users so that you could use it from many different PCs, but only one at a time.

Hmm....interesting.....well this could be handy for videos on the go. But I already have a music server at home powered by Ampache. This is quite a bit different from the world of NMT and open source where everything was free. At least Sage has trial versions of everything so you can give it a shot to see if its worth your $$$. I have been playing with J. River and its associated Android client Gizmo as of late and it seems like a cool concept. I have configured JRMC for S7 so I will have to check around and see if there is an Android app with the same functionality.

Hopefully I won't have to use My Movies as I have all my movies in one directory and am not about to create 1000 folders for each movie I have. Also I think its kinda shady that it masquerades as a free app but isn't really free if you take advantage of it, not to mention having to run its own SQL instance even though I'm already running an SQL server for other things.

Thanks again for the help!

[Krazypoloc]

Ok I have another question. Does the HD300 do framerate sync? Ie if your normal video output is 1080p60 and you play a movie that is 24p will it switch the output to 1080p24?