Community Comments on Google's Acquisition of SageTV

[emveepee]

The assumption all along was that Google bought SageTV for the PVR. Maybe it was always all about CATS! http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ecognize-cats/

Martin

[simonen]

If there was a "Like" button, I would click it.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by simonen

If there was a "Like" button, I would click it.

No like, but there is a +1 :-)

[wbarber69]

Will someone please pull the "Full speed ahead" message from sagetv.com home page. I think it's safe to say that google killed sagetv.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by wbarber69

I think it's safe to say that google killed sagetv

Seeing as SageTV became part Google Fiber, I think "full speed ahead" is still quite appropriate.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Seeing as SageTV became part Google Fiber, I think "full speed ahead" is still quite appropriate.

But not with our existing hardware/software that's for certian.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Seeing as SageTV became part Google Fiber, I think "full speed ahead" is still quite appropriate.

Locking an open, customizable, and movable system into proprietary hardware and a single specific provider, in a single market, reducing usability, while at the same time stopping production of the previous open system, and not even selling further software licenses, is certainly NOT full speed ahead - if anything, it's at most 'Back 2/3', if not Back full.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Locking an open, customizable, and movable system into proprietary hardware and a single specific provider, in a single market, reducing usability, while at the same time stopping production of the previous open system, and not even selling further software licenses, is certainly NOT full speed ahead - if anything, it's at most 'Back 2/3', if not Back full.

I suppose I should have clarified my statement. It's "full speed ahead" for Jeff, his team and the next chapter of their creation -- not us. That "full speed ahead" was ever meant to include "us".

I don't think any of us actually expected anything different than the current result. We may have hoped, much like some hope to win the lottery. But we all knew the probable outcome, even if some of us were unable to admit it.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Locking an open, customizable, and movable system into proprietary hardware and a single specific provider, in a single market, reducing usability, while at the same time stopping production of the previous open system, and not even selling further software licenses, is certainly NOT full speed ahead - if anything, it's at most 'Back 2/3', if not Back full.

How long did that take you??? And try saying that three times in a row whle eating popcorn.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by brainbone

I suppose I should have clarified my statement. It's "full speed ahead" for Jeff, his team and the next chapter of their creation -- not us. That "full speed ahead" was ever meant to include "us".

I don't think any of us actually expected anything different than the current result. We may have hoped, much like some hope to win the lottery. But we all knew the probable outcome, even if some of us were unable to admit it.

The part that was unexpected, and especially disappointing, was the stop to hd300 production, and shuttering off the store. The software licenses themselves could have continued sales, with no true liability to google, as they never had any real support guarantee. It only makes sense to drop it completely if it competed with the upcoming product, which is obvious now it does not.

[Fuzzy]

R&D on the hd300 is done, at most, they should have made a minor revision change (hardware version 1.1) to fix the issues in the startup system (the hand soldered addon capacitor), and it has all the changeability to continue functioning as a SageTV extender, and would have worked perfectly well as a Google fiber extender as well.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

The part that was unexpected, and especially disappointing, was the stop to hd300 production, and shuttering off the store. The software licenses themselves could have continued sales, with no true liability to google, as they never had any real support guarantee. It only makes sense to drop it completely if it competed with the upcoming product, which is obvious now it does not.

I absolutely agree... although then it wouldn't have been "full speed ahead", it would have been "direct 0.2% resource to legacy thrusters".

[drewg]

Originally Posted by brainbone

I absolutely agree... although then it wouldn't have been "full speed ahead", it would have been "direct 0.2% resource to legacy thrusters".

Now, can we come up with something involving photon torpedos, or phasers?

At any rate, they probably killed the HD300 due to the SageTV staff's time involved in dealing with the OEM supplier, shipping, etc.

What would be really nice is if the GoogleFiber extenders spoke the same protocol & worked with SageTV, and were purchasable from the Play store..

Drew

[wbarber69]

I just wish there was some other dvr software out there that could utilize the sagetv extenders even if its completely unsupported. My biggest letdown in all of this was watching sagetv grow into what it is and knowing that it would continue to get better.

When I first found Sagetv it was buggy but promising. At the time BeyondTV was kicking ass, so I went in that direction. I was young so of course I was pirating BeyonTV every which way I could. Then when Sage started to show some promise, I started doing some testing with their software. And when it became apparent that I could run sage consistently without crashing or locking up, I started pirating Sagetv. Then when I turned 21 and I finally got my own credit card I went in full and started buying licenses and even built my first dedicated sagetv server.

Now almost 10 years later and 3 upgrade licenses under my belt I finally have a fine understanding of Sagetv and its dead in the water. I feel like most of you do here. I watched Sage grow and flourish and I contributed as much as I could whenever I could to help make it better. I miss checking this forum every 2 hours to see if some new awesome upgrade or fix was being released.

I still use SageMC. personally I dont like any of the other GUIs, because that is what is home to me. This forum used to sit open on my desktop at all times. Now I probably come back once a month to see whats new.

I wish we could just take off where Frey gave up and take this thing underground. Or opensource it. I wish I was a coder sometimes.

I just miss it is all.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by wbarber69

... I still use SageMC. personally I dont like any of the other GUIs, because that is what is home to me. This forum used to sit open on my desktop at all times. Now I probably come back once a month to see whats new.

I wish we could just take off where Frey gave up and take this thing underground. Or opensource it. I wish I was a coder sometimes.

I just miss it is all.

SageMC was my favorite also, I moved on from that because I had too, but I miss it, as they say, "those were the days". I totally know how you feel.

I'll be moving on sortly, with 7MC as that is my only avenue right now. I'm still going to keep Sage running for a while, if not just for my ripped content.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by drewg

Now, can we come up with something involving photon torpedos, or phasers?

How about "It's dead Jim."

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

R&D on the hd300 is done, at most, they should have made a minor revision change (hardware version 1.1) to fix the issues in the startup system (the hand soldered addon capacitor), and it has all the changeability to continue functioning as a SageTV extender, and would have worked perfectly well as a Google fiber extender as well.

Actually it's not, I've got bugs logged with them for issues with the HD300 (the reason I was looking at the Echo) that are never going to get fixed.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

The part that was unexpected, and especially disappointing, was the stop to hd300 production, and shuttering off the store. The software licenses themselves could have continued sales, with no true liability to google, as they never had any real support guarantee. It only makes sense to drop it completely if it competed with the upcoming product, which is obvious now it does not.

The announcement was unexpected (as in, we had no warning) but I don't think the result is unexpected. Google obviously wanted the Sage IP and people for something and didn't want them distracted with something else, so I don't see how it's surprising they ended SageTV sales entirely (beyond the lack of warning).

Contrast this to Nik Software, which Google also bought recently, but in that case they've committed to keeping the "professional" products (eg Lightroom plugins) for sale and under development as they only wanted a small part of that company's IP.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Actually it's not, I've got bugs logged with them for issues with the HD300 (the reason I was looking at the Echo) that are never going to get fixed.

I was referring to it being done to a market-presentable level. They would have no problem selling many of them as soon as they could manufacture them.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

and would have worked perfectly well as a Google fiber extender as well.

It would be a fragmentation of their Google fiber platform that is, I'm guessing, Android based. Far more reason not to include it in Google Fiber than to have.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I was referring to it being done to a market-presentable level. They would have no problem selling many of them as soon as they could manufacture them.

But it would distract ex-Sage staff from their current responsibilities at Google, and there would be little to no benefit for Google.

How this small community receives Google Fiber will have no real bearing on its success.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I was referring to it being done to a market-presentable level. They would have no problem selling many of them as soon as they could manufacture them.

But if they were still selling them (beyond a closeout of existing inventory perhaps) people, I would expect them to continue to support it and fix bugs that are identified.