Should I get the SageTV HD200?

[wildgoose]

I am thinking about buying a SageTV HD200 to watch my ripped DVD from my NAS. I have some questions that I hope someone can help me out with.

1) How is the video/audio quality compare to watching a DVD from a DVD player? I'll be watching it on a 50" Panasonic Plasma TV. Has anyone done a side by side comparison between a DVD player and the SageTV and whether any differences in picture quality can be noted? The same calibration setting on the TV for DVD can be used with SageTV right? (ie, no funny PC black level stuff..)

2) I'll be using it standalone mode. My computer is kind of old and don't have a tuner, so I don't think I'll be installing the Sage software on it. Is the interface Ok or clumsy in standalone mode?

3) Does it support Hulu? Is it complicated to setup?

Thanks!

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by wildgoose

1) How is the video/audio quality compare to watching a DVD from a DVD player? I'll be watching it on a 50" Panasonic Plasma TV. Has anyone done a side by side comparison between a DVD player and the SageTV and whether any differences in picture quality can be noted? The same calibration setting on the TV for DVD can be used with SageTV right? (ie, no funny PC black level stuff..)

As far as raw decoding goes it's excellent. Audio is passthrough S/PDIF so thus perfect. Video, haven't done DVD so much, but Blu-ray is basically indistinguishable from my Pioneer 51FD.

The one "rub" with the extender is it's deinterlacing is not the best, it's a flag reading player, so if the disk is not flagged right (usually TV or low budget DVDs) it has trouble.

It won't match a good upconverting player for upconverting, but it does do native output switching so it can output DVDs in their native 480i form, so if you've got a TV with good processing the resulting quality is excellent.

2) I'll be using it standalone mode. My computer is kind of old and don't have a tuner, so I don't think I'll be installing the Sage software on it. Is the interface Ok or clumsy in standalone mode?

The interface is basically the same either way (unless you run customizations on the server). IMO it's very functional.

3) Does it support Hulu? Is it complicated to setup?

Not natively, but if you do a search, you can watch Hulu via Playon running on a PC.

[wildgoose]

Thanks for the quick reply!

How does Playon work? Does the server side software stream the content to a folder, and the SageTV pick it up from the directory?

[stanger89]

AFAIK, it runs on a PC, and then via UPnP it provides a list of content to a device (the HD200) and the when you pick it, it starts streaming (transcoding if necessary) to the device (HD200).

[impro]

You will be better of getting ASUS o!play if you are only interested in stand alone mode.
Unless Sage fixes the hd200 to playback a little better.
Sorry sage.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by impro

You will be better of getting ASUS o!play if you are only interested in stand alone mode.
Unless Sage fixes the hd200 to playback a little better.
Sorry sage.

That's interesting that you state that. I saw you posted one post with no information on what your issue is in an old thread about the HD200 playback. Nothing about your setup, nothing about where your studder actually is. Nothing. Kind of hard to help you when you don't help us.

[wildgoose]

One more question. Does the HD200 support playback of AVCHD files from HD camcorders?

I have a Panasonic HD camcorder that produces .mts files. These are 1080i video files. I am having a lot of trouble playing back these files on my computer, computer probably too old. It'll be awesome if the Sage can play it.

Thanks again!

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wildgoose

One more question. Does the HD200 support playback of AVCHD files from HD camcorders?

I have a Panasonic HD camcorder that produces .mts files. These are 1080i video files. I am having a lot of trouble playing back these files on my computer, computer probably too old. It'll be awesome if the Sage can play it.

Thanks again!

Do a search no the forums for HD200 and AVCHD, and you will see numerous reports of it playing them back just fine.

[bits]

Originally Posted by impro

You will be better of getting ASUS o!play if you are only interested in stand alone mode.
Unless Sage fixes the hd200 to playback a little better.
Sorry sage.

Please elaborate!

I am streaming pretty much everything you could think of from low bitrate SD mpeg to full blown BD rips to my HD200 and the PQ is excellent and there is no stuttering, not ever. I own and use four other network media streamers(2 Linplayer2s, Ziova and MediaSmart Connect) and the HD200 streamed PQ quality is as good or better than all of them. My observation is that there is very little to no PQ loss when my video is streamed to the HD200 and played on my 55" Samsung TV.

I will admit that I think getting the HD200 and using it only in standalone mode is a bit of a waste and that there are a number of somewhat cheaper good alternatives for standalone mode.

[wildgoose]

Originally Posted by bits

I will admit that I think getting the HD200 and using it only in standalone mode is a bit of a waste and that there are a number of somewhat cheaper good alternatives for standalone mode.

Can you elaborate on what some of the 'alternatives' are?

Some follow up questions:

1) When playing back AVCHD (.mts) files from a folder (I have my HD camcorder content archived on the NAS), does it automatically go to the 'next' file and play? like my camcorder does, or does it goes back to the index and require you to select the next file?

This will be a huge spouse approval factor. The difference between "geez that's an expensive $100 toy" to "That's an awesome $300 machine!"

2) Are all the inputs hot? (hdmi, spdif, etc). I'd hate to have to go into setup to choose between RCA/S-video/HDMI. I guess the most important thing is HDMI audio and SPDIF out should be on at the same time. This makes setting up the unit, and moving the unit around between different setup much easier.

3) For network share, can I specify the ip address of the NAS? or does it automatically find the computer on the local subnet without providing an option to specify ip address? (my NAS is on a different subnet, behind a wireless router, from my NAS which is on the main LAN).

Thanks!

[joe123]

I have been running SageTV for many years with MVP extenders.

I recently went from SD to HD recordings and bought one HD200. The HD200 is GREAT and has fantastic image quality, so much so that I bought another HD200.

Since the HD200's do all decoding locally, they help by not adding extra CPU processing work on the mother ship ( the PVR server ).

[davephan]

The HD-200 audio quality appears to be the same as the Blueray player. I have a Pioneer, I think it is a Pioneer 51FD. Sometimes my wife thinks the Blueray player sounds a little better, but I can't tell the difference. The picture quality is very good on a 73" HD rear projection TV. I can't tell a difference with video either.

We do own a lot of music DVDs where they use chapter marks between the songs. It is drastically faster using the HD-200, SageTV , and a ripped DVD (with AnyDVD or DVD Fab) to skip the chapter marks than to use the Blueray player. I haven't tried comparing it with Bluerays yet because I don't own any Bluerays and haven't rented any yet.

The video quality of the HD-200 is better than the MVP. The audio quality of the HD-200 is drastically better than the MVP. The HD-200 is far more reliable than the MVP too. MVPs only playback mpeg format. Any compressed videos have to be transcoded on the fly from your computer. If your computer is too slow, the video and audio stutters. The MVP is a bit cheaper, but is not worth saving a little money, since the HD-200 is far superior compared to the MVP.

Dave

[impro]

Originally Posted by impro

You will be better of getting ASUS o!play if you are only interested in stand alone mode.
Unless Sage fixes the hd200 to playback a little better.
Sorry sage.

I am talking about 24p files in general and vc-1 m2ts files.

[impro]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

That's interesting that you state that. I saw you posted one post with no information on what your issue is in an old thread about the HD200 playback. Nothing about your setup, nothing about where your studder actually is. Nothing. Kind of hard to help you when you don't help us.

Here is my setup:
Panasonic 54V10
Asus p5q-EM 3ghz core 2 duo 2 gb asus aprooved ram.
2 hdpvr 1 pvr1600
WD 500gb system drive
Seagate 1.5 TB 64k cluster video/sage drive
windows 7 32bit oem not cracked
latest java
Tried both with native recordings beta 10 plus extra files and without.

Hd100 and hd 200 with latest beta. Tried with previous firmwares as well.

I have no complaints about anything TV viewing related.

Main issue is 24p playback of mkv files. If I convert them to BR disk structure the 720ps playback fine.
M2ts files from netflix blurays mainly vc-1 stutter. Not constantly. Sometimes 20-30 seconds stutter free.
When I have VC-1 with DTS m2ts audio stutters.
This is in both extender and stand alone mode.
In extender when I play VC-1 menu barly responds and sometimes the extender even freezes
I gave up on extender for blu ray playback so I am trying to get m2ts playback in stand alone mode.

Anything else you need to know?

[impro]

Is it possible that my HD200 is faulty?
Also I tried playing back Blu ray from different usb external enclosures 3.5 and 2.5 7200rpm driver formated with 64k cluster.
To tell you the true I have not tried the back usb which I will soon.
Everything that I playback is not added in the library. I just browse to it.

The movie 9 is the worst performer.

[impro]

And what is up with 25-30 seconds preparing to watch? and slow browsing menus.
Constant rotating arrow when you skip forward.

Just added bluray rips to media directory / playback as blu ray rip and the playback is even worst.
30 seconds freeze and then fast motion video is trying to catch up.
My sound DTS MAster disappeared while it started skipping. Never came back.

[impro]

I wish somebody could make sagetv work on ASUS oPlay.
Or at least have a HD300.
DO you hear that Sage?
Willing to upgrade both my hd100 and hd200 to hd300 if you make it.
Willing to pay $300 even $500 if I have to just to have it working.
Considering how much my time is worth and how much time I have spent testing and tweaking I am in the whole at least $10000.

Again the TV part of it I am very happy with. Occasional hdpvr freeze once every maybe 2 months. Not your fault. Hauppauge hardware design can be blamed for that. Blu ray rip playback and 24p compressed files are my biggest concerns.

[impro]

Installed the latest beta on HD200.
Playback of most m2ts is better except every other 1-2 minute I get 1 second freeze.
I have tried 4 different usb hard drives. EXT3 or ntfs 64k blocks.
It seams it is a hardware limitation since in every setup when I replace the HD200 with Asus oPlay everything works perfectly.
Or my hd200 is defective.

[impro]

latest tests.
Reverted to official firmware and m2ts playback seams fine in stand alone mode. It is missing the 24p option which sucks. Is there a way to add the 24p output option to HD200 with the official firmware?