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

[wayner]

Why isn't UHD something that we won't start seeing in the forseeable future? Cameras from a GoPro or a Phantom 3 drone can output 4K video so why wouldn't you want to see that on a SageTV extender?

And I would think that UHD will start to become commonplace for movie files before too long - 4K BluRays are supposed to be released before the end of 2015.

[will]

Originally Posted by wayner

Why isn't UHD something that we won't start seeing in the forseeable future? Cameras from a GoPro or a Phantom 3 drone can output 4K video so why wouldn't you want to see that on a SageTV extender?

This reminds me of the debates we used to have here around 3D and SageTV's lack of support. No one seems to talk much about 3D any longer...

While I don't doubt 4k will be standard we are probably still a long ways away. To put it in perspective, HDTV broadcasts started in 1996 in the US - almost 20 years ago. New technologies that require expensive infrastructure and expensive hardware upgrades can sometimes move slower than we want.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by will

This reminds me of the debates we used to have here around 3D and SageTV's lack of support. No one seems to talk much about 3D any longer...

While I don't doubt 4k will be standard we are probably still a long ways away. To put it in perspective, HDTV broadcasts started in 1996 in the US - almost 20 years ago. New technologies that require expensive infrastructure and expensive hardware upgrades can sometimes move slower than we want.

I think the future of TV will be UHD. This is different from 3D tv being just a resolution/technology improvement.

I'm sure there are several reasons why the latest resurgence of 3D tv failed but I always thought it was as gimmicky as 3D movies/TV has always been. No new TV's are 3D so the focus to support it is also gone.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by will

While I don't doubt 4k will be standard we are probably still a long ways away. To put it in perspective, HDTV broadcasts started in 1996 in the US - almost 20 years ago. New technologies that require expensive infrastructure and expensive hardware upgrades can sometimes move slower than we want.

These transitions do take a while but the folks using SageTV are on the bleeding edge so are quite likely to adopt new technologies much faster than the general public. I got my first HDTV in early 2002 and I have nine TVs in my house, all of them HD. I don't have any 4K TVs yet but I imagine that every TV I buy in the future will be 4K. And once the content starts to appear, which is happening much sooner in movies and self-generated content than in TV, it will accelerate the shift.

[valnar]

I still think 3D quadraphonic laserdiscs will catch on. I'm keeping my hopes up.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by will

This reminds me of the debates we used to have here around 3D and SageTV's lack of support. No one seems to talk much about 3D any longer...

If you mean on these forums, why would someone do that? SageTV has been frozen for 4 years now. Anyone who wanted 3D ditched Sage entirely or supplemented their SageTV setup with another program. I use Kodi for 3D and, because of that, I now use Kodi for all my movie watching. Thankfully, I can switch between the two programs quite easily with my Logitech remote. So, Sage usage has gone down significantly in my house over the past 4 years.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by wayner

Why isn't UHD something that we won't start seeing in the forseeable future? Cameras from a GoPro or a Phantom 3 drone can output 4K video so why wouldn't you want to see that on a SageTV extender?

And I would think that UHD will start to become commonplace for movie files before too long - 4K BluRays are supposed to be released before the end of 2015.

You're right, I'm injecting too much of my own personal bias into it. I've abandoned Sage for anything but TV. I use my HD300 for TV, and I use a Chromebox/OpenELEC for all my ripped media (movies/TV/videos). So in my setup, 4K will likely never come to Sage as I don't see it coming to OTA or Cable any time soon, and by the time it does I'll (hopefully) be free of cable altogether.

But yeah, I can see it being a bigger deal for folks who use Sage for everything. Though that said, Sage should handle 4K just fine on PCs provided the right decoders are available.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by valnar

I still think 3D quadraphonic laserdiscs will catch on. I'm keeping my hopes up.

[wayner]

Quadrophonic sound did catch on except they added a centre channel and a subwoofer and renamed it surround sound.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

Why isn't UHD something that we won't start seeing in the forseeable future? Cameras from a GoPro or a Phantom 3 drone can output 4K video so why wouldn't you want to see that on a SageTV extender?

And I would think that UHD will start to become commonplace for movie files before too long - 4K BluRays are supposed to be released before the end of 2015.

I believe he was implying that it won't be of a concern with the current extenders. Meaning support for h.265 on the HD300 is not necessary (and not possible anyway). I fully expect that we should be implementing a more capable transcoding engine, which would scale and transcode any media on the server down to whatever a given client can handle, so a 4k h.265 video can be played back at 1080 h.264 on current extenders. ffmpeg's maturity has made this type of activity immensely simple.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I believe he was implying that it won't be of a concern with the current extenders. Meaning support for h.265 on the HD300 is not necessary (and not possible anyway). I fully expect that we should be implementing a more capable transcoding engine, which would scale and transcode any media on the server down to whatever a given client can handle, so a 4k h.265 video can be played back at 1080 h.264 on current extenders. ffmpeg's maturity has made this type of activity immensely simple.

One of the biggest challenges that I see with this, is how to support skip/seek. If you are transcoding on the fly, and someone skips a commercial... what happens... today, I think you have to tear down the transcoding engine (ffmpeg), then seek to the part in the real file, and then re-start the transcoding engine.... and all of this introduces lag I do think that for recorded shows, and if you don't care about watching commercials, then the on-the-fly transcoding would fairly easy to do... provided you had the server hardware to keep up.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stuckless

One of the biggest challenges that I see with this, is how to support skip/seek. If you are transcoding on the fly, and someone skips a commercial... what happens... today, I think you have to tear down the transcoding engine (ffmpeg), then seek to the part in the real file, and then re-start the transcoding engine.... and all of this introduces lag I do think that for recorded shows, and if you don't care about watching commercials, then the on-the-fly transcoding would fairly easy to do... provided you had the server hardware to keep up.

SageTV already does this with Placeshifter when you're using the comskip plugin.

[wayner]

Skipping is the one thing that Sage excels at - none of the other solutions that I have tried handle skipping nearly as well as Sage. But that is less of an issue for ripped movies than recorded TV and it is less likely to have recorded TV in h.265 as I don't think there are any TV capture devices that output that type of file. TV content will likely continue to be MPEG-2 from OTA/cable and h.264 from an HD-PVR. Unless an HD-PVR3 comes out that encodes to h.265. But Hauppauge seems to be on life support so I don't know if that will happen.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

SageTV already does this with Placeshifter when you're using the comskip plugin.

Correct, what I'm not sure is if this (the ability to seek in the transcode) was one of the modifications that they made to ffmpeg or not.

[jptheripper]

cant believe i am just hearing about this. So glad i never bailed.

Still have my same sagetv server, hd300, and 3x hd100s running

I contacted the mymovies plugin writer to make sure he is aware as well.

[KryptoNyte]

I was kind of hoping that Jeff would take his time with this, and maybe even roll in native support for Prime/Ceton cablecard tuners. I suppose that's probably more of an undertaking than it would seem to person who doesn't do much programming.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I was kind of hoping that Jeff would take his time with this, and maybe even roll in native support for Prime/Ceton cablecard tuners. I suppose that's probably more of an undertaking than it would seem to person who doesn't do much programming.

+1 That would solve a multitude of problems.... Including prime tuner sharing.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

+1 That would solve a multitude of problems.... Including prime tuner sharing.

Prime tuner sharing could be fixed in the network encoder as well, if there was enough demand and volunteer strength for it. I honestly don't think there needs to be built in support, just more wizard like install and configuration of the network encoders. The network encoder system is actually probably better than native for future proofing anyway.

[stanger89]

Also, IIRC the network encoder system is a lot more capable than we've seen. There are two "levels" of network encoder, there's the level that has thus far been made public, and then there's the internal level that Sage used when you setup an encoding server. I believe the encoding server method supports auto detection and scanning, basically everything native tuners support.

Again, IIRC.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Also, IIRC the network encoder system is a lot more capable than we've seen. There are two "levels" of network encoder, there's the level that has thus far been made public, and then there's the internal level that Sage used when you setup an encoding server. I believe the encoding server method supports auto detection and scanning, basically everything native tuners support.

Again, IIRC.

Yes, that is mostly correct. Most of it can be gleamed from doing some packet sniffing, but we'll be able to build up some real documentation for it once the source is released (as well as make any changes might be required for it to go to a public stage). The API itself seems very lightweight. I'd love to be able to squeeze it directly into and HDHR's firmware, for instance.