Whither Sage?

[chairmanmao]

Is there a document or thread or subforum that talks about where Sage might evolve? I'm interested in reading up on that.

Personally, I'd love to see the ability to handle streaming services. I suspect that's either very difficult or impossible due to licensing issues. But I really like the Sage UI.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by chairmanmao

Is there a document or thread or subforum that talks about where Sage might evolve? I'm interested in reading up on that.

Personally, I'd love to see the ability to handle streaming services. I suspect that's either very difficult or impossible due to licensing issues. But I really like the Sage UI.

A lot of the conversation of this type is happening on GitHub. Much of the current discussion is around cleaning up the code and better organization of the different parts of SageTV.

[Fuzzy]

'streaming services' is far too broad to ever be supported. Every streaming service seems to have their own ideas on how it should work, how it should be implemented, and what protection schemes should be used - this is why everything ends up being through their own app on whatever platform you might be using to access that service. This makes it very hard for a project like SageTV to make use of it. These days, if streaming services figure in to be a major part of your desires, the best option seems to be an Android TV box, with the sageTV miniclient on it. This will let you use all the streaming services you might desire, with easy access to all your sagetv content as well.

[NetworkGuy]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

'streaming services' is far too broad to ever be supported. Every streaming service seems to have their own ideas on how it should work, how it should be implemented, and what protection schemes should be used - this is why everything ends up being through their own app on whatever platform you might be using to access that service. This makes it very hard for a project like SageTV to make use of it. These days, if streaming services figure in to be a major part of your desires, the best option seems to be an Android TV box, with the sageTV miniclient on it. This will let you use all the streaming services you might desire, with easy access to all your sagetv content as well.

You can also use PlayOn to capture most streaming services. I use this when something does not record correctly on SageTV. The output of PlayOn goes into a SageTV "video import" directory, so I can then watch it on SageTV.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by NetworkGuy

You can also use PlayOn to capture most streaming services. I use this when something does not record correctly on SageTV. The output of PlayOn goes into a SageTV "video import" directory, so I can then watch it on SageTV.

Yeah, I used PlayOn a lot until I got the mi box. I wasn't trying to imply that the Android TV solution was the ONLY way to use sage AND streaming services somewhat together.. just that it was the 'best' option.. :-)

[NetworkGuy]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Yeah, I used PlayOn a lot until I got the mi box. I wasn't trying to imply that the Android TV solution was the ONLY way to use sage AND streaming services somewhat together.. just that it was the 'best' option.. :-)

Fuzzy, I did not take it that way.

I just wanted to give the Chairman another alternative.

[graywolf]

Q: Can Playon include CC?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by graywolf

Q: Can Playon include CC?

PlayOn simply captures what is displayed in the web page for the given service, so it really would depend on the service, I'd think.

[FriscoJohn]

There is a way to turn on closed captions in PlayOn. Check out the info in this link:

https://support.playon.tv/hc/en-us/a...other-channels

This makes a "player window" appear in which you can interact with the streaming service to turn on CC. It works. Only thing is they don't tell you the "player window" that pops up is behind the PlayOn window so to see it you have to first minimize the main PlayOn window.

It works, at least for YouTube. Don't use other streaming services much so can't say for them.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by FriscoJohn

There is a way to turn on closed captions in PlayOn. Check out the info in this link:

https://support.playon.tv/hc/en-us/a...other-channels

This makes a "player window" appear in which you can interact with the streaming service to turn on CC. It works. Only thing is they don't tell you the "player window" that pops up is behind the PlayOn window so to see it you have to first minimize the main PlayOn window.

It works, at least for YouTube. Don't use other streaming services much so can't say for them.

Yeah, like I said, it depends on the service. Primarily on whether they store a cookie or otherwise remember your captioning preference or not.

[FriscoJohn]

No cookies or remembered preference involved for the above method.

You simply have to go to the PlayOn player window. (Remember you have to minimize the main PlayOn window to see the player window.) Then you see what you would see if you were watching YouTube in a browser. You will see the playing video with some control icons below it, including the CC icon. You click on that icon to start the closed captions (just as you do when you watch YouTube through a browser).

You do have to do this quickly so as not to miss the captions on the first part of the recording.

[gary201]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

'streaming services' is far too broad to ever be supported. Every streaming service seems to have their own ideas on how it should work, how it should be implemented, and what protection schemes should be used - this is why everything ends up being through their own app on whatever platform you might be using to access that service. This makes it very hard for a project like SageTV to make use of it. These days, if streaming services figure in to be a major part of your desires, the best option seems to be an Android TV box, with the sageTV miniclient on it. This will let you use all the streaming services you might desire, with easy access to all your sagetv content as well.

This is what I do. I cut the cord, invested in a couple HDHomeRun tuners and have a virtual machine dedicated to running the PlayOn app where it records Hulu, Netflix, and other freely available services directly to a NAS folder that's setup as a SageTV import directory. I have more shows to watch on my NAS recorded by both Sage and PlayOn than I ever had. I'm very happy with this setup.

[RonBoyd]

[QUOTE=Fuzzy;607734]Yeah, I used PlayOn a lot until I got the mi box. /QUOTE]

What is a "mi box"?

[NetworkGuy]

[QUOTE=RonBoyd;609565]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Yeah, I used PlayOn a lot until I got the mi box. /QUOTE]

What is a "mi box"?

http://www.mi.com/en/mibox/

[RonBoyd]

[QUOTE=NetworkGuy;609568]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

http://www.mi.com/en/mibox/

Oh! I see. It is like Roku. I have three TV's with Roku's attached - 2 Premiers and 1 Ultra. See https://www.digitaltrends.com/buying...xiaomi-mi-box/

I agree, PlayOn is kind of redundant having that type of device... except for the Recording part. I don't know of a way to use Roku as a DVR. Since PlayOn is basically a "screen capture" program (albeit, very sophisticated), it makes a great DVR, particularly when scheduling future recordings but also unattended complete series recording.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Oh! I see. It is like Roku. I have three TV's with Roku's attached - 2 Premiers and 1 Ultra.

Similar to a Roku but it runs Android, albeit Android TV which is a remote control friendly version of Android. That means that there are far more apps available than Roku, including a nice little app called SageTV.

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by wayner

Similar to a Roku but it runs Android, albeit Android TV which is a remote control friendly version of Android. That means that there are far more apps available than Roku, including a nice little app called SageTV.

Oh! That's interesting. I didn't know about the SageTV App. So it replaces the HD200/300?

I placed it on my cell phone. It found my STV Server and showed "Starting SageTV" (or something like that) but went no further. Unfortunately, someone was watching the Eclipse stuff and SageTV running through the HD300 also froze. It took me twenty minutes to get everything back up -- rebooting the server and the HD300 eventually did the trick. Apparently, the STV Server doesn't like both the App and the HD300 running at the same time. (I didn't make any friends, I can tell you.)

It is good to know that the mi box would replace the HD devices. However, I have two backup HD300's and one HD200. I will, nevertheless, give serious thought to adding a mi box to my ever-growing hoarding affliction.

[wayner]

Exactly - it replaces the HD200/300. I bought a MiBox to try but I still prefer the HD200/300 as they are better with MPEG-2 files and DVD rips. But the advantage is that you have a box that can do a whole bunch of other stuff, like Netflix, etc.

The client should run on your phone, at least if you are at home on your LAN. Assuming that you have enough JVM heap memory you should be able to run both and extender and Android client at the same time but about 3-4 miniclients is pretty much the max assuming 1GB of JVM heap space. That is the most you can use on a Windows server, on Linux servers you can use more memory and run dozens of miniclients if you desire.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by RonBoyd

Oh! That's interesting. I didn't know about the SageTV App. So it replaces the HD200/300?

I placed it on my cell phone. It found my STV Server and showed "Starting SageTV" (or something like that) but went no further. Unfortunately, someone was watching the Eclipse stuff and SageTV running through the HD300 also froze. It took me twenty minutes to get everything back up -- rebooting the server and the HD300 eventually did the trick. Apparently, the STV Server doesn't like both the App and the HD300 running at the same time. (I didn't make any friends, I can tell you.)

It is good to know that the mi box would replace the HD devices. However, I have two backup HD300's and one HD200. I will, nevertheless, give serious thought to adding a mi box to my ever-growing hoarding affliction.

You should be able to connect multiple HDx00 extenders and multiple Sage Mini-Clients for Android at the same time (as well as Placeshifters, Clients, etc.). In some cases, you can run out of memory if you have a lot of devices connected at the same time. Probably best to do some experimenting when not recording something important.

Also, while the Android Mini-client is intended as a replacement for the HDx00 extenders, there are some differences. For example, the Android mini-client cannot playback DVD's and BluRays that are ripped in their native folder structures (you have to convert to a single file in a format like MKV to play back on the Android mini client).

[RonBoyd]

Originally Posted by Tiki

You should be able to connect multiple HDx00 extenders and multiple Sage Mini-Clients for Android at the same time (as well as Placeshifters, Clients, etc.). In some cases, you can run out of memory...

Apparently, that is what happened because after I got everything back in order the Error message was "Out of Memory."

Netflix is available on Roku. (I don't subscribe to Netflix and, therefore, haven't tried it but it is listed.)