Would you Buy/Use an XCard with SageTV it if had an OSD?

[jptaz]

I personally feel the XCard would be an excellent product for SageTV and SageTVClient. There are two products that are available that have an OSD and there are no stability issues as with the PVR 350 when using the OSD and fastforwarding and rewinding.

An XCard is an $85 Hardware MPEG2/ MPEG4/ DVD Decoder card that can outpout to an SVideo, Composite, Component( With Full HD resolution support up to 1080i - Note Copyrighted DVDs will only ouput at 480P), and VGA. Note this is a seperate output and not a substitute for your video card and it will not display the windows desktop.

When using Joveplayer or the Mediaplayer provided with the Card it uses less than 10% CPU on a Pentium III 733Mhz and no hickups or stuttering occurs during playback if other applications are used on the PC. Most of the CPU is accessing a slow harddrive.

[salsbst]

Note this is a seperate output and not a substitute for your video card and it will not display the windows desktop.

Personally, this is a deal killer for me. I just like having the flexibility and power of sticking with the video card, even if it means slightly higher CPU usage.

EDIT: If the financial incentive for Sigma and/or Frey Technologies are to be estimated, I think the following two polls should be conducted

a) "How many (additional) Sigma Xcards would you buy if you could see SageTV's OSD on them?"
0
1
2
3
etc.

b) "How many (additional) SageTV or SageClient licenses would you buy if you could see the SageTV OSD on a Sigma XCard?"
0
1
2
3
etc.

Not trying to hijack the thread, just trying to refine the polling methodology to better suit the purpose that I presume is behind the poll.

[Opus4]

This sounds familiar: Poll: Do you use an Xcard with Sage? Would you?

- Andy

[insomniac]

How could this be a deal killer? Its an option, not a necessity. You can use any tv out product you want.

I.

Originally Posted by salsbst

Personally, this is a deal killer for me. I just like having the flexibility and power of sticking with the video card, even if it means slightly higher CPU usage.

EDIT: If the financial incentive for Sigma and/or Frey Technologies are to be estimated, I think the following two polls should be conducted

a) "How many (additional) Sigma Xcards would you buy if you could see SageTV's OSD on them?"
0
1
2
3
etc.

b) "How many (additional) SageTV or SageClient licenses would you buy if you could see the SageTV OSD on a Sigma XCard?"
0
1
2
3
etc.

Not trying to hijack the thread, just trying to refine the polling methodology to better suit the purpose that I presume is behind the poll.

[insomniac]

whoops...never saw that poll.

Originally Posted by Opus4

This sounds familiar: Poll: Do you use an Xcard with Sage? Would you?

- Andy

[insomniac]

Jptaz,

you might want to merge the top 2 into soemthing like "I would buy one or more".

It kinda splits up the vote

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by insomniac

How could this be a deal killer? Its an option, not a necessity. You can use any tv out product you want.

I.

I'm not saying I'll stop using SageTV!

I mean that the fact that you can't get regular video card output from it means that I won't be purchasing any Xcards regardless of OSD support.

[stanger89]

Hey, FWIW, I posted a poll too
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=7646

It seems somewhat related to this topic, since the Xcard/350 are much bigger benefits to those with SDTVs than those with HDTVs/computer monitors. Thought it would be interesting to see what kind of TV distribution we have here.

[jptaz]

Originally Posted by insomniac

Jptaz,

you might want to merge the top 2 into soemthing like "I would buy one or more".

It kinda splits up the vote

I guess I was getting at more what you were saying with your message to indicate that there would be more sales of SageTVClient because of the Xcard.

[insomniac]

Just poking a stick at ya :P

Originally Posted by salsbst

I'm not saying I'll stop using SageTV!

I mean that the fact that you can't get regular video card output from it means that I won't be purchasing any Xcards regardless of OSD support.

[ErsatzTom]

If the xcard were half-height and we had an osd for it I'd probably be all over it.

t

[kny3twalker]

I picked option three only cause I want MVP first and HDTV

It seems somewhat related to this topic, since the Xcard/350 are much bigger benefits to those with SDTVs than those with HDTVs/computer monitors. Thought it would be interesting to see what kind of TV distribution we have here.

why do you think this
it can output 1080i
use another input on the TV for windows desktop and games

[heffe2001]

If you had the Xcard, you could use a Via m10000 to run a HD TV with sage without it being way underpowered . I could stick a couple clients here in the house for cheap with that .

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

If you had the Xcard, you could use a Via m10000 to run a HD TV with sage without it being way underpowered . I could stick a couple clients here in the house for cheap with that .

I think I'd rather have a Roku HD1000 than a crippled PC (no GP ouput).

[White94Cobra]

With as much as I've spent on codecs trying to perfect PQ, I could have purchased an Xcard. I'd buy one the day Frey announced support for it.

[jptaz]

stanger,

The Roku has a completely open source approach. We do not need anythng from Frey to be able to add support ourselves. The XCard on the other hand requires a company, like Frey, to get any documentation on programming the XCard. I downloaded the Roku SDK and started looking at it. I believe at this point the MPEG2 Decoder only supports HD Streams, but I could be wrong.

Also I don't understand what you mean by "a crippled PC (no GP output)".

John

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jptaz

stanger,

The Roku has a completely open source approach. We do not need anythng from Frey to be able to add support ourselves.

Well a SageClient port for the Roku would require help from Frey. Now I don't really care if it's a true SageClient or a clone, as long as it has the full client functionality.

I believe at this point the MPEG2 Decoder only supports HD Streams, but I could be wrong.

I could be wrong also, but I think HD MPEG2 is a superset of SD, so any HD capable decoder should be able to deal with SD. I know the MyHD can decode SD MPEG2 with it's HD decoder.

Also I don't understand what you mean by "a crippled PC (no GP output)".

I just mean that a PC with an Xcard for it's only output is rather crippled since you can only output very special things, you're right it would essentially have the same functionality as a Roku. In that case, I'd prefer the diskless/fanless/silent Roku over a likely noisier PC.

[jptaz]

Stanger,

I did some checking and it appears that you are correct, but from what I can tell the Roku today expects transport stream format so a simple conversion is required to take the MPEG2 output by SageTV. From the forums I have read that the process is very quick.

In terms of help from Frey, I got the impression that the 2.1 version will add some more features to allow others to support things like the MediaMVP by exposing some things to Studio Developers, ala the MediaMVP mod that is being worked on. If they can expose a method for requesting EPG data and scheduling data I imagine a pretty good interface could be made to work on the Roku.

I see what you mean by the XCard being a crippled PC and I would agree with you for people who do not actually want a PC in the same room as the TV, but I always viewed the XCard as allowing me to take advantage of having a PC that was already in the living room for surfing the web etc. Or for example in a bedroom where the PC is there for general purpose use and the Xcard allows it to also be used to connect to SageTV without either impacting the other task if they are both being used simultaneously.

The XCard only makes sense ecomonically if you want to or already have PC relatively close to the TV. For example when I used JovePlayer I had my PC 10 feet from my TV and it had a monitor keyboard so I could use it to surf the web, chat, etc, while MPEG2 files could be played on the TV wihtout having to worry about dual monitor issues, or accidently closing the TV Playback app. The economics are more compeling if you already have an older PC that could not playback MPEG2s well while doing something else on the PC.