Open Source Project

[Naylia]

I got an empty slot in my tv stand and spare hardware in the garage. Test/QA box build will begin shortly.

[pvrpenguin]

I can't believe my SageTV system is going on 10 years now. I actually finally got around to upgrading my server to Windows 7 from WHS. SageTV is still my main viewing platform but is augmented by Plex and Netflix now as well.

I am a Java/Android/Web developer by day so am definitely interested in contributing to the SageTV open source effort.

I personally find the SageTV UI is looking dated now compared to other offerings. I wonder if a SageTV Roku channel would make sense or possibly looking at integrating with Plex, which was already started a while ago.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by pvrpenguin

I am a Java/Android/Web developer by day so am definitely interested in contributing to the SageTV open source effort.

I personally find the SageTV UI is looking dated now compared to other offerings. I wonder if a SageTV Roku channel would make sense or possibly looking at integrating with Plex, which was already started a while ago.

Keep in mind, you don't need SageTV to open source to do an integration effort. SageTV is arguably the most OPEN, closed source system, that I've ever seen

Making the UI look newer doesn't require the source. Integrating to Plex doesn't require the source. Even writing an Android Application doesn't require the source. You have complete control of the SageTV apis and UI without the source.

I'm not sure what people think, now that SageTV is going open source. It's great news, but I'm not sure it will change much for most people. I can see people wanting to look at the source code to maybe tweak scheduling algorithms or adding new hardware support, and maybe implementing the placeshifter apis on some other platform, but most people can already tweak and integrate SageTV to the fullest extent without the source code. I've written 2 android apps, a web server, and a plex channel all without the SageTV source And in all cases, it wasn't SageTV being closed source that prevented me from creating a better integrations, it was the platforms on which I attempting to integrate that provided the challenges. (ie, Plex and Android)

Don't get me wrong... I can't be happier that SageTV is open source (or will be), since that means I now have a "support" plan for my system. Developers can already do almost anything with SageTV without the source code, and, they don't need to wait for the source code to begin the next great project

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I'm not sure what people think, now that SageTV is going open source. It's great news, but I'm not sure it will change much for most people. I can see people wanting to look at the source code to maybe tweak scheduling algorithms or adding new hardware support, and maybe implementing the placeshifter apis on some other platform, but most people can already tweak and integrate SageTV to the fullest extent without the source code. I've written 2 android apps, a web server, and a plex channel all without the SageTV source And in all cases, it wasn't SageTV being closed source that prevented me from creating a better integrations, it was the platforms on which I attempting to integrate that provided the challenges. (ie, Plex and Android)

I don't think the interest is because we'll be able to do so much more, I think it's simply that Sage isn't "dead" so it's worth working on again. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Plex didn't exist when Sage was bought by Google (or, if so, it was very new?). Android was several iterations younger and less developed, and waaaaay less people were familiar with writing apps. Things like Chromecast, FireTV, etc., didn't exist. By the time all of these things came around, Sage was gone enough that many devs had left, or had focused their attention on finding other products/devices they could use (from Plex to TabloTV to Rpi to whatever). Thankfully, a few kept the faith and kept working on Sage - such as you and the fantastic work you've done - but I suspect if Sage had still been a living product all along, more and more new devs would have joined by now, old ones wouldn't have left, and who knows what we'd have... Sage might have had so many options developed that no one here would need Plex or anything else.

Same thing with the UI. Sage v7 wasn't THAT old when Sage was sold; Phoenix and Gemstone were made fully-functional just before the sale and ADM as well. Had the sale not happened, I suspect more work would have been done on UIs since then and everyone would be aware of how much could be done.

You are correct that some people have the mistaken idea that lots of things will be available which actually have always been available... forgive them for not knowing, perhaps it's because, since the Google buyout, they just plain haven't paid enough attention or cared enough to notice.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Jeff,

Can you give us a heads up on the development environment? What tools are needed to build the system? I'd like to get a head start on putting the environment together.

I used NetBeans for Java...but there's no project files in the source tree for that (but there are scripts for compiling the jar files). For the Windows binaries, I was using MS Visual Studio...I don't recall what version right now, I haven't dug into the Windows code yet...but will get around to that soon and once I build it again and know which version I was using I'll let y'all know. Linux uses Makefiles.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Narflex

For the Windows binaries, I was using MS Visual Studio...I don't recall what version right now, I haven't dug into the Windows code yet...

From the runtime DLLs in the STV directory looks like Visual Studio 2008. I compile my directshow filter with 2010 and sometimes I need to provide the right runtime as well.

Tom, you should still be able to download the VS 2008 express edition which is free

Eddy

[pvrpenguin]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Keep in mind, you don't need SageTV to open source to do an integration effort. SageTV is arguably the most OPEN, closed source system, that I've ever seen

Well said stuckless. The server portion of SageTV has been rock solid for me. The scheduling, recording, favourites always work flawlessly. All I really desire is a better way to control all of it. Whether that is a web UI, native app, or streaming box channel.

Does core SageTV already provide a clean set of APIs that can be accessed over a local network or is there a plugin that provides that integration layer? Since you've already written an Android app I guess there must be a way for an app to auto-discover a SageTV server running on the same local network that it can connect to.

I'm starting to think out-loud now as I have experience writing PhoneGap apps that I'm hoping to leverage.

[Taddeusz]

I think the improvements to the existing code may need to be made to Placeshifter. Since CPU power has increased the MPEG 4 Part 2 video being used should be updated to H.264 (MPEG 4 Part 10) and add support for resolutions above 720x480. Plex does this very well so I don't see why this can't be done with SageTV.

[Fuzzy]

Yeah, there is a great, well documented API for sage, and the community made a network connection into it (sagex) many years ago. Nearly everything is accessible via it. As stated, about the only thing getting into the core code allows is integrating some improvements in sources, expanding the client side to more platforms, and basic things like file and network access (like my recently discovered issue with sage's user-agent limiting the quality of PlayOn).

[jreichen]

Originally Posted by pvrpenguin

Well said stuckless. The server portion of SageTV has been rock solid for me. The scheduling, recording, favourites always work flawlessly. All I really desire is a better way to control all of it. Whether that is a web UI, native app, or streaming box channel.

Does core SageTV already provide a clean set of APIs that can be accessed over a local network or is there a plugin that provides that integration layer? Since you've already written an Android app I guess there must be a way for an app to auto-discover a SageTV server running on the same local network that it can connect to.

I'm starting to think out-loud now as I have experience writing PhoneGap apps that I'm hoping to leverage.

It looks like this is the current home for the sagex APIs: https://github.com/stuckless/sagetv-sagex-api

They're a web service wrapper for the SageTV API: http://download.sage.tv/api/

[metapath]

I'm as excited as the next guy about Sage going Open Source. A Sage 7 installer that doesn't require licensing is a boon to my neighbors that have wanted it for years, lusting after my system. I've been using Sage since version 4. That's 9 years (at least). My neighbors still can't get an equivalent system without buying used licenses and such...

So that's number 1 in renewing interest in Sage. Just let us install Sage 7 on our Macs, our PCs, and Linux boxen. For free. Have I said thank you yet, Jeff? Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But along with that, it is the extenders that make for such a satisfactory experience. The HD-200 sold me on Sage TV. And the HD-300 was fantastic. That's what we need. Compatible extenders. They make a good system great.

Sure, Sage on my server is the heart of the system. But I wouldn't be thrilled if I had to build and install a PC for each TV in the house. We need an HD-300 replacement, and soon, if all this effort is going to pay off.

Maybe that's a Roku with a Plex channel better integrated with the Sage server. I don't know. But we need to get there as soon as possible!

My two bits anyway...

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I think the improvements to the existing code may need to be made to Placeshifter. Since CPU power has increased the MPEG 4 Part 2 video being used should be updated to H.264 (MPEG 4 Part 10) and add support for resolutions above 720x480. Plex does this very well so I don't see why this can't be done with SageTV.

Isn't there an issue with ffdshow or something like that which is used with Sage? Wasn't that the reason that PS didn't work with 1080i files? So that really needs to be fixed as well.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

Isn't there an issue with ffdshow or something like that which is used with Sage? Wasn't that the reason that PS didn't work with 1080i files? So that really needs to be fixed as well.

ffmpeg historically has always had problems with interlaced files. I do think newer versions have greatly improved in that regard, but you can't just plug in a newer version into sage and have it work. The SageTVTranscoder.exe file that is packaged with sage is a modified version of ffmpeg SVN-r93 from 2006. Any updates would have to duplicate or replace the changes Jeff made a long time ago. In truth, some of the modifications may not even be needed for the capabilities placeshifter requires, but placeshifter may instead need to be reworked to work with similar capabilities in newer versions of ffmpeg.

[Gustovier]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

ffmpeg historically has always had problems with interlaced files. I do think newer versions have greatly improved in that regard, but you can't just plug in a newer version into sage and have it work. The SageTVTranscoder.exe file that is packaged with sage is a modified version of ffmpeg SVN-r93 from 2006. Any updates would have to duplicate or replace the changes Jeff made a long time ago. In truth, some of the modifications may not even be needed for the capabilities placeshifter requires, but placeshifter may instead need to be reworked to work with similar capabilities in newer versions of ffmpeg.

There's definitely mods to it. In fact because ffmpeg is open source sage provided the source code to me for it a long time ago as I was looking to improve placeshifting quality. But c is not really my thing and I never could get the time to figure out exactly what Sage modified without documentation. So I ended up hacking up a pearl script wrapper that passed different parameters to the modified ffmpeg (this worked sorta)

[Fuzzy]

I did a bit of that as well (the wrapper) - but then I installed Plex and decided i didn't need placeshifter, so the priority went away. Still, it will be necessary going forward to really tweak the ffmpeg connection so that streaming could be done from any source material to any client, with the many hardware clients out there having varied capabilities.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Keep in mind, you don't need SageTV to open source to do an integration effort. SageTV is arguably the most OPEN, closed source system, that I've ever seen

Making the UI look newer doesn't require the source. Integrating to Plex doesn't require the source. Even writing an Android Application doesn't require the source. You have complete control of the SageTV apis and UI without the source.

I'm not sure what people think, now that SageTV is going open source. It's great news, but I'm not sure it will change much for most people. I can see people wanting to look at the source code to maybe tweak scheduling algorithms or adding new hardware support, and maybe implementing the placeshifter apis on some other platform, but most people can already tweak and integrate SageTV to the fullest extent without the source code. I've written 2 android apps, a web server, and a plex channel all without the SageTV source And in all cases, it wasn't SageTV being closed source that prevented me from creating a better integrations, it was the platforms on which I attempting to integrate that provided the challenges. (ie, Plex and Android)

Don't get me wrong... I can't be happier that SageTV is open source (or will be), since that means I now have a "support" plan for my system. Developers can already do almost anything with SageTV without the source code, and, they don't need to wait for the source code to begin the next great project

Sean,

IMHO the main thing that going open source will do is spark interest in Sage and stop people from seeing it as a "dead" platform. Very few people were interested in an unsupported system that was going to die a slow death. Now that it's going to be open sourced there will be lots of interest

I'm looking forward to the unexpected. I can imagine somebody (or some company) coming out of nowhere and doing something interesting with the codebase.

[bclenney]

The only reason I was thinking of moving on from SageTV was fear that my HD200 would die and I would not have a way to access it from my TV. (did not want to use Plex)

[cslatt]

The open source announcement enables some pretty vital things:

1) The ability to get a client on newer hardware. [quick before our extenders all die!]
2) No more licenses required, so new people can get on board without having to buy used licenses.
3) A clear way forward so people don't view SageTV as a dead end.
4) The ability to fix longstanding bugs & maintain compatibility as dependencies move forward (new java versions, etc)
5) The ability to natively support newer tuners (like cablecard tuners)

[Narflex]

Looks like it was built using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (at least that's the most recent environment I have installed on my old workstation and that I've now opened the project files with).

[Vaskill]

Exciting news and I love the interest being shown here.

What I have:

36TB 8 core ESXi 5.5u2 Server with
XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and PR Win 10 running; a couple linux installs.
3 x HD-PVRs recording 720p from SA3250 cable boxes being controlled by FireWire, and soon an ATSC tuner HDHomeRun Plus.
1 x HD200, 4 x HD300,
1 x 720p AppleTV, 2 x 1080p gen 3a&b AppleTV
2 x PC clients; 2 Mac Clients; 3 iPads gen 3, 4 & 6, 1 iPad mini gen 1, 3 iPhones 4, 5s & 6 plus.

I run SageTV 7 Server on win8-64bit, flex raid as my storage on win7-64bit, firewire changer on XP-32bit.

What I can give:

I can host any type of VM, codeshare, automated testing, hosting, etc.
I have 20+ years leading large software development, testing, service desks and implementation projects.
I can (a bit rusty) code in VB, .NET, C, Java.
I have created STVi's.
I can contribute to costs of cloud based open source hosting, etc.

What I want:
from Core:
Spinning wheel "issue" when using very large DB's (I have over 6000 movies and shows and have rebuilt WIZ etc.)
Better WIZ management tools (batch meta tools help but its not perfect)
Heap limitations
True 64bit Java
Distributable Linux 64bit / VMWare appliance maybe
64bit FireWire channel changer

from Clients:
Apple TV Client (App store coming soon )
Airplay capabilities?
Working Mac Client
Strong Plex/DNLA client support
iPad/iPhone second screen remote (e.g. browse and manage using sageTV interface while playing video on extender/AppleTV)