How much time do you spend for maintence?

[zik]

I'm currently a Tivo user of 3+ years.
I don't like the direction Tivo going so I'm looking into alternatives.

I'd like to know how much time you spend in regards to maintence of your HTPC.
This is only for people that use their system solely for thier home theater needs.

By maintence, I mean things like having to restart the software often, missing shows because of bug in the software, etc. Do you ever find yourself monitoring things to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to do?

Or could you just describe your experience with the current version 2.2? good , bad, would you recommend this product to a friend.

I will be using a spare computer with the following specs.
Windows 2000 for the OS
1400 Mhz AMD T-bird
768 megs pc133
hard drive space in excess of 300 gigs
ATI radeon 7200 (s-video out) OR gforce4 4600

not sure on which haupauge card yet.....either 250 or 350
I like the fact that the 350 has the decoder chip onboard so that the CPU isn't strained as much.

[nielm]

Your CPU will not be strained decoding MPEG2 for the TV-out (a 500Mhz PIII can do it!) The only time that a 1400Mhz CPU would start to be strained is if you transcode MPEG-2 to MPEG4 for archiving, or are rescaling the SDTV mpeg2 to HDTV resolutions via FFDSHOW with its advanced deinterlacing/scaling.

Note: The Hauppauge -150 is cheaper than the -250 and -350, and some people have had problems with the -350, and the -350 cannot play DVDs, or MPEG-4 (divX/XviD) files

Your questions:
> having to restart the software often.
Never (*)
> missing shows because of bug in the software, etc.
Never (*)
> Do you ever find yourself monitoring things to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to do?
yes -- with Intelligent recording enabled, I montor what it is going to record because it thinks I might like, and often correct that assumption!... I also pre-emtively delete shows before Sage deletes it itself. Both of these I can do remotely (while on holiday or at work) via my web interface customisation (plug!)

(*) unless I start playing with the configuration (read: breaking it!), trying different enhancements etc...


The only thing that has taken me a while and used lots of time is playing with the config to get it setup to my liking... This is partly because I am not in the US and so have to use XMLTV (and write my own grabber!). I also chose to test the beta versions which meant time debugging issues in the beta (buts that to be expected with Beta software).

[stanger89]

I think neilm summed up my experience well. I don't recall ever having to restart Sage unless it was somehting I caused by messing with settings. About the only time I restart Sage on my server is when a new version comes out.

I do monitor IR, but mainly because it works well enough that the minor amount of work preemptively "Don't Like"-ing things is a small price to pay for having IR catch stuff I'd want to see.

[GTwannabe]

Sage server has been rock solid on my server PC. The client sometimes locks up though. The main issue I have with it is that if my Windows screensaver kicks in, the Sage window is permanently black w/o video until I restart the client.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by zik

I'm currently a Tivo user of 3+ years.
I don't like the direction Tivo going so I'm looking into alternatives.

I'd like to know how much time you spend in regards to maintence of your HTPC.
This is only for people that use their system solely for thier home theater needs.

By maintence, I mean things like having to restart the software often, missing shows because of bug in the software, etc. Do you ever find yourself monitoring things to make sure it's doing what it's supposed to do?

Or could you just describe your experience with the current version 2.2? good , bad, would you recommend this product to a friend.

I will be using a spare computer with the following specs.
Windows 2000 for the OS
1400 Mhz AMD T-bird
768 megs pc133
hard drive space in excess of 300 gigs
ATI radeon 7200 (s-video out) OR gforce4 4600

not sure on which haupauge card yet.....either 250 or 350
I like the fact that the 350 has the decoder chip onboard so that the CPU isn't strained as much.

Very little maintainence. To be frank, if Sage was a hassle, I wouldn't use it. I install patches for XP for time to time, but I've never missed a show because of a bug. About once, maybe twice a week, when fast forwarding, I get a lock up. So my downtime for Sage is say 5 minutes out of running 24/7.

You can't get much better uptime than that. I use USB2 drives so adding a harddrive doesn't even require me to shutdown the machine.

I have recommended Sage to people without hesitation.

[Kanati]

Same as others...

I haven't rebooted my machine at all because sage blew up where it wasn't my fault specifically. And I don't think I've rebooted it at all now in over a week.

With intelligent recordings you'll be a bit disappointed if you are used to tivo suggestions (a point of contention here, but that's my opinion). So you'll be deleting a lot of shows and marking them "don't like" repeatedly before sage is smart enough to realize you don't like it. (Definitely turn on agressive negative profiling)...

Missing shows? None because of the software I don't think, but a few now and then because of the USB-UIRT not changing the channel correctly. About the same amount as tivo's ir blaster doing the same thing.

[zik]

Originally Posted by Kanati

Missing shows? None because of the software I don't think, but a few now and then because of the USB-UIRT not changing the channel correctly. About the same amount as tivo's ir blaster doing the same thing.

I have have a directv system at the moment. I have one of the good boxes with the serial port on the back, which is what my tivo uses to change channels.
Can I reuse that cable or should I get one of those USB-UIRT cables?

I've done a few searches on here and it seems few people are having channel changine problems.

Oh, and thank you to everyone that has responded so far. It's been a big help in my decision.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by zik

I have have a directv system at the moment. I have one of the good boxes with the serial port on the back, which is what my tivo uses to change channels.
Can I reuse that cable or should I get one of those USB-UIRT cables?

You'll be able to use the port, but unless your Tivo has a DB9 connector on the back, you'll probably need a different cable.

[zik]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You'll be able to use the port, but unless your Tivo has a DB9 connector on the back, you'll probably need a different cable.

Didn't realize that.
I've done some more searches and found the proper cable I need (either USB to low speed data OR serial to LSD).

Which one would be better or is there much difference, besides price?

[stanger89]

Theoretically it shouldn't matter. If the USB one appears to the OS like a com port I'd go that route.

[mayamaniac]

Once it's setup correctly and everything is working the way it should or the way you like it to be, then SageTV is very stable. The problem is getting to that stage. It depends on what you want it to do. If you want every bell and whistles in your HTPC, you'll be spending countless hours on it. But if you limit the tasks and just want basic PVR functions, it won't take as much time to set up. Also, knowing what you are doing really saves time, if not you'll have to do a lot of searching and reading on this forum to get all that info. I documented my frustrations somewhat in my sagetv experience thread, link is below in my sig. But SageTV is running solid for me. I have a server machine with 600G of space and 3 tuners, one which controls a cable STB, running SageTV as a service with 3 clients on the network, using Cayars STV with some modifications, all is well and running beautifully.

[humptybump]

Honestly. It is true. I have WinXP and SageTV 2.1 I don't watch that much live TV but I use SageTV to capture all of the shows I want to watch and them catch up on the weekends and rainy nights.

I have Cable service and it feeds 2 Hauppauge -250 cards. Thus far, the two card configuration has not been needed as I have not encounted two shows I would record at the same time.

I think I restarted my machine two or thee times since Christmas. One was because of a power failure and the other times were because Microsoft required security patches to be installed and then reboot. The SageTV sofware has never caused me any headaches. I don't do anything fancy with it. I just use it as a PVR.

[dblaine2]

Originally Posted by humptybump

I think I restarted my machine two or thee times since Christmas. One was because of a power failure and the other times were because Microsoft required security patches to be installed and then reboot. The SageTV sofware has never caused me any headaches. I don't do anything fancy with it. I just use it as a PVR.

Pretty much the same as me. I have had a couple of times when the EOF bug has caught me (I use a 350). But other than that - rock solid. My wife and I couldn't be happier. Big points!

[zik]

Okay, I'm about ready to pull the trigger on this one.
But just to be completely sure, I need one more piece of info.

Please correct any of the following that isn't correct:
1. I'll use the included remote control to control the card/sage software.
2. The sage software will then change the channel on my directv box via the low speed data port. I know this port works because my Tivo uses it.
3. To do this, I need a DB9F/RJ-12 adapter and of course a RJ-12 cable.

I found this site (http://www.monoprice.com) that has both of them which simplifies things a bit. If anyone knows of a better (cheaper) site that also sells both of them, I'd like to know. I'd usually try to buy from a local store, but I don't think there are any (ie radioshack).
Does anyone know if Fry's might sell these parts? I think I'll head out there tomorrow just to be sure.

[edit]I think I might go with snapstream instead of the other site. I think I'd have to assemble everything with monoprice.

Anyone ever buy from this guy?
http://ulav.videogon.com/cgi-bin/cl....813&class&3&4&