Riding Sage into the sunset
 

This is kind of the opposite of NetworkGuy's thread. ;)

I've been a SageTV user since 2003. It is literally the only PVR I've ever owned. Not any TiVO; nor any cable company's DVR. I do have a couple cable company tuners, but between my HDHR for OTA and HDPVR for recording extended cable channels, it still does everything I need it to do. I find it far more likely that I will cut the cord and cancel CableTV before I entertain a different PVR. The comskip capabilities are still a golden feature.

I own four HD300's...well, no - I now own three. One just died. I only use two, so that means I have one spare left. I bought them here when everybody was having a fire sale. I hope all the remaining live long enough for any future usage.

To all developers past & present, thank you for all that you've done. I'm not leaving the Sage world, but I thought it worth mentioning now instead of as a swan song.

Indeed!!

Fear not! Odds are, it's the external power supply that died (not the box itself). Replacements are cheap and readily available.

It's not likely that I'll be abandoning Sage anytime soon, either. I'm no fan of the streaming services for various reasons. Recent example: the disappearance of Star Trek from Netflix.

Nope, the box itself = :thumbdown. I do have many other PSU's!

Ditto. Besides our Tivo’s (the best interface), SageTV does everything I need since I don’t care about 4k.

+1 !

I am happy you are enjoying the ride. :thumb:

I'm in to the bitter end too..... For me that will be when Spectrum kills off the cable card.

I've historically used HD300s as well, but the continued development of the Android Miniclient client by jvl711 has made this my go to SageTV viewer. This software loaded on a Amazon 4k Firestick or Nvidea Shield is a great solution IMHO.

I still use a HD300 at my main TV (primarily because I also use it to distribute the same broadcast to a small TV that normally faces my desk - so I can see what is playing on the big TV while sitting at my desk by watching a small screen) But the other TVs around the house pretty much all use the Miniclient loaded on a Firestick or Shield.

It's really nice that they stream over wifi because it means I can easily move a TV from room to room if needed. Just this weekend I moved two extra TVs into the Den in order to watch all the great football games that where on at the same time. (The small screen is normally against the side wall facing my desk area which is off to the left side of this picture, but it's on a swing mount so we can move it next to the big TV to watch two games at the same time). By using wireless Firesticks, it was as simply as plugging the TV and Firestick into a powerstrip. No network cables, etc were needed.

https://i.imgur.com/2MRonIX.jpeg

Remember when Picture-in-Picture used to be a thing? I sure do miss that capability. Of course, the argument against it is that you can record and watch later, but that doesn't really work well for sports events does it...

Yep, it really stinks that you can get a huge TV nowadays but no picture-in-picture. I did recently buy an adapter box from Amazon to combine 2 HDMI signals for PinP, but due to home reno I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. But also I'm working on a setup like @sic0048's with multiple TV's in the gameroom.

I still have and use PIP on my 65” Samsung, circa 2017? With a small switch-box, I can watch pretty much any two sources. Great for Olympics, or movies with silent-sports on the side.

Funny all of the mention of PIP - this came up in last week's episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. See around 2:45 of this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7XqfTi6foc

Sage for the long run....
 

Sage is currently the best system I can imagine thanks to lots of work by the developers and this forum - this can not be matched by any cable company and they did it would cost >$300/month to do it... My System -

TUNING:

4 - OTA tuners w/amplified external antenna - perfect performance!

HDHRPrime CableCard - using 2 laptops configured with WMC/Windows 8,1Pro and WMC Live tuning capability - mostly OK....since WMC is constantly running and laptops have limited RAM (one is nonexpandable) - need to reboot these once or twice a week... will try SSD drives to relieve some of the RAM demand through a larger paging file.

HD300 and Shield - these work best for highest quality - for large dedicated TV
4k Firesticks all over the house - these are fabulous for outdoor TV, bedroom, kitchen,

and NO cable box!

I will say that it is very difficult to pay attention more than two TVs at the same time. Even 3 TVs is too much. I've moved the extra TVs out for other sporting events (like the Olympics) and experience tells me that you really end up ignoring the other TVs. We've had lots of people over watching with us and they all say the same thing.

Having multiple TVs would be great if you wanted to show different sports so that different people can focus on the sport they want to see - like a sports bar. But actually trying to absorb more than 2 shows at the same time is pretty tough.