Community Comments on Google's Acquisition of SageTV

[jbuszkie]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

some smart, technical engineer who knows how to fix things with a soldering iron could make quite a business repairing these things, you know? Say $30 to estimate, and then deduct from final price if repairs are done?

Yeah.. I can see it now.. Yeah... send me your HD300 and I'll look at it.. [takes "broken" HD300 fixes something easy..] uumm.. sorry.. but it's broke beyond repair!.. uh... I'll just dispose of it for you!

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

Yeah.. I can see it now.. Yeah... send me your HD300 and I'll look at it.. [takes "broken" HD300 fixes something easy..] uumm.. sorry.. but it's broke beyond repair!.. uh... I'll just dispose of it for you!

I didn't say a dishonest guy, I said a smart guy...

[moamoa]

Hi,

This is addressed to the current and old owners of SageTV.

If has now been quite some time since overnight SageTV and the investment all it's customers had placed in it and the team developing it, was pretty much put in major jeopardy.

Can the people in charge of what is left of SageTV please have the common decency to offer some kind of useful information to it's inherited customers. What is going to happen to SageTV?

Is it dead?

If so, what about open sourcing the current version to allowing development to continue?

[thomaszoo]

Originally Posted by davidjames

Anyway, my HD200 is dying. I switched HDMI cables today and bam, no more HDMI or Component. Yeah, I tried different cables reset the HD200 etc. etc.

Now only composite works.

Try a different power supply. My HD PVR seemed to die about a week ago. I checked the voltage of the PS and it seemed fine. A few days later I saw a thread that suggested trying a different PS. Instant success! I split open the PS and found (not suprisingly) a couple of bulging capacitors!

Good luck.

Wayne

[IVB]

Originally Posted by moamoa

Hi,

This is addressed to the current and old owners of SageTV.

If has now been quite some time since overnight SageTV and the investment all it's customers had placed in it and the team developing it, was pretty much put in major jeopardy.

Can the people in charge of what is left of SageTV please have the common decency to offer some kind of useful information to it's inherited customers. What is going to happen to SageTV?

Is it dead?

If so, what about open sourcing the current version to allowing development to continue?

Heck, just tell us its dead so we can have people publicly post their license keys knowing that Google doesn't care about this anymore and at least others can use it in its current state. No way do I do anything remotely close to that right now as its totally bad, but if Google at least officially killed it then that would be something.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by moamoa

If so, what about open sourcing the current version to allowing development to continue?

Originally Posted by IVB

Heck, just tell us its dead so we can have people publicly post their license keys knowing that Google doesn't care about this anymore and at least others can use it in its current state. No way do I do anything remotely close to that right now as its totally bad, but if Google at least officially killed it then that would be something.

I very much doubt they would do/allow this... after all it would become competition. I don't think Google wanted any part of the Sage core (no code, no hardware etc) but what I do think they wanted was the expirence and knowledge of the staff... nothing more.

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by IVB

Heck, just tell us its dead so we can have people publicly post their license keys knowing that Google doesn't care about this anymore and at least others can use it in its current state. No way do I do anything remotely close to that right now as its totally bad, but if Google at least officially killed it then that would be something.

You make a compelling case for Google to not say anything at all. Abandonware doesn't typically change license rules, and even then support is ongoing so it doesn't even qualify as abandonware.

Martin

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by jaminben

I very much doubt they would do/allow this... after all it would become competition. I don't think Google wanted any part of the Sage core (no code, no hardware etc) but what I do think they wanted was the expirence and knowledge of the staff... nothing more.

If you are right (which you probably are) maybe they'll open source sagetv so we can continue the fun? Android is open source so why wouldn't they do the same to sage? Maybe we should start a petition?

[will]

Have you tried hooking your HD200 up to a different TV with an HDMI cable?

A few years back the HDMI connection stopped working on my HD200. I was positive that it was the HD200 (I tried a new cable, etc.). I sent it back into to Sage, they did some tests and said nothing was wrong with it, but to be safe they sent me a new HD200.

The HDMI output on the new HD200 didn't work either. The issue was my TV. I still have and use the TV but I now only use component with it.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by jaminben

I very much doubt they would do/allow this... after all it would become competition. I don't think Google wanted any part of the Sage core (no code, no hardware etc) but what I do think they wanted was the expirence and knowledge of the staff... nothing more.

I came to same conclusion. But the part that doesn't jive is how much of Jeff's (and the other Sage core) repertoire is applicable to streaming media?

Unless they wanted Jeff for a less technical position and more strategic dealing with the IHVs, content partners, FCC, etc.

[bunch92]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

If you are right (which you probably are) maybe they'll open source sagetv so we can continue the fun? Android is open source so why wouldn't they do the same to sage? Maybe we should start a petition?

I like the idea of a petition

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by bunch92

I like the idea of a petition

Yeah, nothing is quite as effective as a small petition from a small user base to a large private company...

[davidjames]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions about my HD200. One thing I only now, after reading them, realized is during my debugging I tried replacing the HD200 with the one from my theater. The one from the theater worked perfectly so that pretty much localizes it in the HD200.

Thanks again for your ideas, however.

[ayacht]

We are now approaching the 6 month till the death of SageTV. What are folks planning to do? I was hoping by now to have some better direction from the Google folks.

[fventura]

Originally Posted by ayacht

We are now approaching the 6 month till the death of SageTV. What are folks planning to do? I was hoping by now to have some better direction from the Google folks.

I have been having good luck with my evaluation of MediaPortal with the StreamedMP skin, My TV series, and Moving Pictures plugins.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by ayacht

We are now approaching the 6 month till the death of SageTV. What are folks planning to do? I was hoping by now to have some better direction from the Google folks.

Windows 8 is going to be a big factor for me:

* Does SageTV play well on Win 8 ?
* If/What is the next incarnation of Windows Media Center?

And to a lesser degree, what is the next incarnation of Xbox and is it still a WMC extender?

[reggie14]

While I certainly don't expect Google to open source SageTV, there would be a certain logic to it. I really don't think Google cares about DVR, so I don't think there's much IP on the SageTV codebase that's important to Google. I still don't quite get why they bought Sage, but I assume it was mostly just to get Jeff and the other Sage employees developing for them and GoogleTV.

But, rather than simply letting SageTV die, which brings them no benefit, they could open source it and get a niche group of people continue developing it as something that could connect to future GoogleTV devices. It wouldn't help a lot, since I don't see many more people than currently use SageTV using a moderately supported SageTV+GoogleTV combo, but it would help a little (and cost them next to nothing).

But, I don't expect to wait around long enough to find out. I'll probably move to WMC at some point. I'd consider TiVo, if they ever release the Preview at retail. I'd also consider just moving to a cable/satellite whole-home DVR, but Comcast's sucks right now, and that's the only provider I have access to right now.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

Windows 8 is going to be a big factor for me:

Why is this? I have tried out Win8 and I wasn't crazy about it from the perspective of a desktop UI. It might make sense as a mobile/tablet UI but not on the desktop. And if you will require specific Metro-enabled apps to run on Win8 tablets then does that really bring the benefit of one OS for both desktop and tablet which was the most interesting thing about Win8.

I think WMC is still one of the best UIs for watching online TV. Their Internet TV is a good front end for most online services and it is easy to integrate Hulu as well with the Hulu desktop. But MS seems to be moving away from WMC all the time and moving to more of a streaming model with the Xbox as their device for the living rooms of the world.

I can't see myself moving away from Sage. I have now purchased several backup extenders and unless my HD-PVRs die and can't be replaced then there really isn't a reason to move away from Sage. As online content gets better I may be able to supplement my Sage extenders with a Roku or AppleTV but I doubt that will replace Sage and it is pretty easy to throw in another < $100 source onto my TV setups.

This doesn't matter to most of you as you are in the US, but outside of the US the online services are very weak. MS doesn't offer Internet TV in Canada, although they do now offer some Xbox channels for Canadians and WMC doesn't even support ATSC for "Canadian" installations of WMC. We have had Netflix in Canada for about 18 months but we can't access Hulu and most interesting web sites, like the TV networks, use IP blocking. It is fairly easy to get around that if you are a geek but that isn't going to happen for most peopele.

[phareous]

Originally Posted by moamoa

Hi,

Can the people in charge of what is left of SageTV please have the common decency to offer some kind of useful information to it's inherited customers. What is going to happen to SageTV?

Is it dead?

If so, what about open sourcing the current version to allowing development to continue?

You do realize that nobody from Google reads this forum or cares about it? And even if they did, the admin basically made it clear when he made this thread that he was moving anything critical of Sage/Google into here so he wouldn't have to look at it/deal with it.

[phareous]

Originally Posted by TBoneJones

I know Sage is officially no more, but are any of the original Sage crew at CES showing off what they're doing in GoogleTV this year? Anyone heard anything?

Well so far Google TV has had nothing to do with SageTV. They have revamped it, adding app store, moved to ARM, etc. and implemented nothing from SageTV. I seriously doubt they ever will. They no doubt bought Sage for the talent and not for any of the technology