Come Back to SageTV - Open Source in "Near" Future

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Both do. I use wine in CommercialDetector for linux.

Glad to here you have it working. Just not sure if Wine will run in a Docker. Especially if the linux distro that Docker is running on does not have an XWindows GUI like unRAID. That is why I qualified my suggestion later. If it is possible then that would be my preferred SageTV server. A Docker of SageTV Linux server also running Wine for CommercialDetector.

[Steve20A]

Old Sage user and forum lurker. Over the years, checked every three or four months to see if, perhaps, maybe, somehow Sage would be coming back. And today, lo and behold, the prayer is answered. This really is a good day.

Thank you Jeff and to everyone who has contributed to Sage over the years. May the best get even better.

FWIW, if anyone is keeping track, I would buy 3 HD300s or an improved version immediately. I'm still running an HD100 and 2 HD200s and they're getting a bit long in the tooth. Yes, I'm interested in all the new technology, but I have to get this working and the WAF for a known process is very high.

Thanks, again. Long live Sage!

[calypsocowboy]

I'm still running SageTV as my daily driver with plans to move over to a new solution by the start of Fall 2015 TV shows, just some food for thought. I'm going down the MB3/NextPVR path right now.

My personal feeling it is would take a large effort to get SageTV to the point of other solutions out there Kodi/Plex/OpenElec/MB3 as far as bells and whistles, and in that time all those other solutions will be moving forward with new features.

Admit there are things out there that other systems are going to do better, Android/IOS/Roku make much easier clients for the general user to add. Getting 500-1000 users to commit to buying a client is going to be difficult. Getting access to Netflix/Hulu, is going to be difficult look at all the others that have tried. Other systems have better interfaces for Music or Netflix or Weather.

I would say focus on the things that SageTV does well, which are the recordings, turn the project into a rock solid DVR backend that has a solid open API for connecting to other systems Kodi/Plex/MB3, then work on clients for IOS/Android/ or standalone Unix systems. I'd love to have SageTV powering live TV on MB3, but there is just too much MB3 does for me to move away from it that I don't think SageTV will do any any point in the remotely near future.

-Josh

[Fuzzy]

I'll be honest, I haven't really even looked at other options out there (don't even know what MB3 stands for), as Sage does 80% of what I want, and Plex adds another 10% (remote and mobile viewing). Netflix would be nice, as its the only streaming service I have, but it's used almost exclusively by my daughters on their tablets, so it certainly isn't over 10% value to me. I think I actually purchased PlayOn at one point, but not sure I ever even set it up.

[bclenney]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

That's funny I hate fireTV's interface it's too amazon centric on the main screen

I freely admit to being an Amazon fanboy in addition to a SageTV fanboy.

[PLUCKYHD]

Got to admit this looks pretty nice. I am sure if we get developers over here we can get something like this in sagetv (with official Silicon Dust support). Of course it like sagetv can do nothing with my DRM stuff

HDHomeRunForKodi

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Got to admit this looks pretty nice. I am sure if we get developers over here we can get something like this in sagetv (with official Silicon Dust support). Of course it like sagetv can do nothing with my DRM stuff

HDHomeRunForKodi

That is real cool You can already watch DRM channels on an Android tablets using HdHomerunVieW.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Got to admit this looks pretty nice. I am sure if we get developers over here we can get something like this in sagetv (with official Silicon Dust support). Of course it like sagetv can do nothing with my DRM stuff

HDHomeRunForKodi

Are you talking primarily about the UI with the pop-up guide on the right? That doesn't really sounds like something that would need to be tied to an HDHR specifically, just a UI mod in sage. Advantage of making it source agnostic is it will be.. y'know.. source agnostic. In their case, it is, of course, tied to the HDHR, because SiliconDust is providing the guide and fanart to it, because there is no EPG source for Kodi otherwise. With sage, though, we've already got that, this is just a different way of displaying/browsing the guide, looking at just what is on in the current time slot.

The UI itself that they have, is really focused on the bulk of their users, who have a limited channel set (OTA only in most casess), so that sort of UI works well - if you've got a few hundred channels, however, a UI that only shows 4 items on screen at a time could be pretty limited.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

The UI itself that they have, is really focused on the bulk of their users, who have a limited channel set (OTA only in most casess), so that sort of UI works well - if you've got a few hundred channels, however, a UI that only shows 4 items on screen at a time could be pretty limited.

No not the UI at all it sucks. But more the fact kodi is getting Silicond Dust to support their apps and Kodi is getting much better at tv.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

That is real cool You can already watch DRM channels on an Android tablets using HdHomerunVieW.

Wasn't aware of that...when I tried last (probably a year or so ago) it didn't...they must be downgrading it per cable labs specs. but a interesting tidbit it The new google tv or droidtv whatever they are calling it supports the drm for cablecard but nothing has come of it yet.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Unfortunately I think you can give up on that. I'm not aware of a single open source product/project that offers Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.

Except Sage (when it goes open source) , with the PlayOn plugin, which includes all of those and much more. As I've said on previous pages, I would love if someone just did a little more work on that plugin to fully get the HD content working and fix the occasional Netflix bugs. PlayOn HD was not even available when evilpenguin stopped working on it and virtually disappeared. I'm sure with Sage going open source, the plugin can be fixed up and even the UI made prettier.
As I've said before, I still don't know why more Sage users don't use the PlayOn plugin.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Except Sage (when it goes open source) , with the PlayOn plugin, which includes all of those and much more. As I've said on previous pages, I would love if someone just did a little more work on that plugin to fully get the HD content working and fix the occasional Netflix bugs. PlayOn HD was not even available when evilpenguin stopped working on it and virtually disappeared. I'm sure with Sage going open source, the plugin can be fixed up and even the UI made prettier.
As I've said before, I still don't know why more Sage users don't use the PlayOn plugin.

Does playon even work. I have a lifetime but it was so buggy and crappy I gave up on it years ago. It was very unreliable. (never used sage plugin just playon itself was unreliable.)

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Wasn't aware of that...when I tried last (probably a year or so ago) it didn't...they must be downgrading it per cable labs specs. but a interesting tidbit it The new google tv or droidtv whatever they are calling it supports the drm for cablecard but nothing has come of it yet.

I don't think they are downgrading it at all. The HDHR-Prime doesn't have the processing power to convert anything. I think they are just using authentication to ensure the stream can only be played back in their app.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I don't think they are downgrading it at all. The HDHR-Prime doesn't have the processing power to convert anything. I think they are just using authentication to ensure the stream can only be played back in their app.

This is from the Google Play store.
HDHomeRun VIEW will even access your premium subscribed channels like HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Cinemax.

[mechling-burgh]

Yes but you can only view them not record them. Windows does not support that feature yet if I recall when reading it on there site.

[jchiso]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Got to admit this looks pretty nice...
HDHomeRunForKodi

That was a big letdown. It does not work with the DualTuner HDHR-US ...

[roymcd]

One of the main reasons I chose SageTV when I was looking for a media solution was that it did pretty much everything i wanted, all on one client device. It was a PVR, it could play almost every media format available at the time, it could display my photo collection and it could play my music collection. I didn't need to have a separate PVR and media player. I actually switched from XBMC at the time because it couldn't do it all. In particular, it didn't do PVR and by all accounts still doesn't do it well. Several years later, there still isn't anything that does it all as well as Sage even though the product is essentially dead. One of its biggest advantages is the client-server architecture. If Open Source Sage does take off, I'd really like to see the architecture change to something where the core server software doesn't include any media source or rendering components. So, no tuner component, no audio server component, no video server component, no photo server component, no media output component. All of these would be separate server processes. That way, the core server could access media independently of its location and type and display on a device which is running a rendering service. Then, for example, you could attach a remote http-based video source and tune into it whenever you chose to, as you would a TV channel. Or attach an internet radio URL and tune into that. The local media server components would also be attached to the core server as you chose to configure them. I think it would also be sensible to then separate the UI as a service probably accessed through an http-api. That way you could have relatively simple UIs on different platforms. I know that some of these features are already doable with the web encoder plugin, browser plugins and TCP API plugins, but i think it would be more efficient and flexible to have this functionality at the core of the design. Having the EPG as a separate, configurable service would probably fit this model pretty well too.

I also vote for sticking with Java (not that I think its very realistic to change to anything else) because its pretty much OS-agnostic and I prefer to run Sage under Linux :-) In fact, if Open Source Sage happens then a complete, read-to-run, live distribution becomes a realistic possibility.

Thanks again Jeff. Looking forward to the release.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by calypsocowboy

My personal feeling it is would take a large effort to get SageTV to the point of other solutions out there Kodi/Plex/OpenElec/MB3 as far as bells and whistles, and in that time all those other solutions will be moving forward with new features.

It's likely an even larger effort to get Kodi/Plex/MP3 up to where SageTV is for DVR, as far as the interface/options go. I suppose I should give Kodi another chance, but when I tried it a few weeks ago it was just too painful to devote any time to figuring out.

I would say focus on the things that SageTV does well, which are the recordings, turn the project into a rock solid DVR backend that has a solid open API for connecting to other systems Kodi/Plex/MB3...

It already has that, it had that for years before Google bought it.

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

As I've said before, I still don't know why more Sage users don't use the PlayOn plugin.

Everything I've heard about PlayOn and the SageTV plugin is that it's terrible quality, buggy, and unreliable. I'd rather just switch to another player than deal with screen-scraping and transcoding of the video.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Everything I've heard about PlayOn and the SageTV plugin is that it's terrible quality, buggy, and unreliable. I'd rather just switch to another player than deal with screen-scraping and transcoding of the video.

I suspect most people looked at the plugin when it was created by EP and at the time, PlayOn did not have HD, so they just said "nah" and moved on. At that point, PlayOn also didn't have many (any?) native channels, it was all just plugins, and some of those (depending on the author, whether said author keeps it updated when the source changes, etc.) might not have worked. User-written plugins/scripts (as we know) are always iffy and can always break. But now PlayOn has a wide array of native channels that are maintained and work fine.
There were - and still may be - issues with netflix. I don't have my own netflix account (neighbors let us use their password), and in the little use I have had of it through Sage, it's worked fine... but I'm not doing a queue, which I think may have been the issue (though I can see my neighbor's queue just fine, so I would assume it would play). You can definitely find a movie by genre or other category and watch it. The hulu channel is great because it's the wider array of free stuff as you would get on a PC, rather than the limited stuff you would get on a mobile device. Amazon is sketchy, but I don't have a full account (shared into my sister-in-law's Prime account) so I honestly am not sure what I "should" be getting anyway.
In general, I suppose it's better for cord-cutters as a way to get archived cable network shows, if you don't care about watching things live. I have not tried the HBO Go or Showtime or many of the other password-required channels, so I can't comment on those. I do watch my alma mater's sporting events on ESPN3 through the "Watch ESPN" plugin and they look decent, same as watching ESPN3 on any streaming device. There are lots of other channels/scripts which provide a lot of content that would be for-pay otherwise, and of course lots of bootleg stuff which is often questionable quality.

And of course, there's the "podcast recorder" plugin...

[SHS]

stanger89 have look at Media Bowser 3?.