New Sage competitor coming

[mikesm]

Looks like Meedio is going to enter the multituner PVR space as well. Look at this webpage for roadmap info. When coupled with Meedio's other capabilities in CD/DVD archiving, this could be a real challenger.

Thanks,
Mike

[Ryokurin]

Its about time that they finished.

I really do value intergration since it would make things much easier for me so I will try it out but for the life of me, I cant understand why everyone is defaulting to the .dvrms format. Granted its not as bad as it was a short while ago when it was somewhat hard to get rid of quickly, but its essentially the same as mpeg as how most people are using it.

anyhow, competition is good imho, makes people innovate.

[Watter]

I'm not even using Sage right now and I'm forced to offer a bitter, "I'll believe it when I see it" when it comes to Meedio TV. I jumped on the Meedio TV bandwagon earlier, and now, a year and a half after the first "release" was supposed to be available, devlopement is still progressing at a snail's pace and what I have used and tested has been unimpressive.

Sorry to be so negative, but that product really let me down, and I was one of the ones who actually paid for it and Meedio Essentials in anticipation of its release a year ago. Perhaps the final release that they've committed to on the 27th will force doubters like me to eat crow.

[Watter]

Doh, still no client/server option. For me, that kills it right off the bat. It's the same problem I have with Mediaportal, an otherwise fantastic product.

I just don't get it. Do the creators of these products think everyone only has one TV? Sage, MythTV, MCE, and BTV have been handling this correctly for a while. Why are these new products taking a step backwards?

[mikejaner]

They are not taking a step backwards, it's just that they are taking the steps that MCE, Sage, MythTV, and BTV took years ago. These first steps are needed first to make a stable and working product. Next comes the breaking out of the processes to allow separate frontend and backend configurations.
With that said, I think Meedio is year/s behind on the TV front. Look how long it took them to come out with the release of a standalone product for TV, let alone how long it will take them to split up the system.

[GbrNole]

sage is in a pretty unique position to become a major thorn in microsoft's side. the real issue is getting stronger hardware vendor relationships and the one announced with plextor is a huge step in the right direction.

extenders are already a huge selling point and will only get bigger. mce leads in the category currently but sage has a massive leg up in that they offer a true software client which is something we might never see from MSFT (xsled vaporware to the core)

as long as i can maintain image quality similar to that of windows/sage/nvidia codec then i really don't care what OS i use to integrate all this stuff.

now if someone could just write a nifty little plugin that would port sage to the current xbox - man that would be a bonanza.

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by Ryokurin

I cant understand why everyone is defaulting to the .dvrms format. Granted its not as bad as it was a short while ago when it was somewhat hard to get rid of quickly, but its essentially the same as mpeg as how most people are using it.

I believe the main reason is that more information can be imbeded into the file. Show name, episode name, category, record times, length, actors, favorite color can all be embeded in the file itself. If Sage used dvrms then you would never lose any information about a show regardless of if you moved it, burned to a dvd (as dvrms not mpeg) and then inserted months later. (I am NOT requesting or advocation such support by sage!) Additionally, it allows closed caption support for just about every tuner on the market since they (almost) all have a VBI pin. Tap off of that and encode as a seperate stream in the same dvrms. Presto. If I understand correctly, this is how MCE supports captions on the 150 and 500.

If people are using it as just a video/audio container, they're missing the main point of dvrms. Sad, but true.

I don't mean to support Microsoft (they just rejected my application for a license to access ASF with ShowAnalyzer!), but it's the dvrms format is not necessarily bad.

Jere

[Kanati]

Doh, still no client/server option. For me, that kills it right off the bat. It's the same problem I have with Mediaportal, an otherwise fantastic product.

oooooooh... I hadn't heard of this media portal thingy... It appears to have pretty much everything I was looking for excepting maybe the "intelligent recording" thing sage has. In a slicker looking interface no less. And I'm sure if someone hasn't made the intelligent recording plug-in, someone will (maybe even me since after looking at it's .NET plug-in interfacing it looks incredibly easy to do).

I've been disappointed by every other package I've looked at other than sage, but this one looks promising. (Note: I could care less about client/server even WITH more than one tv so that's no worries here).

[SHS]

Jere_Jones there is a way around that problem on show name, episode name, category, record times, length, actors, favorite color with out embeded in the file itself that if Jeff where to change to do the falling
TheXFiles-TheJerseyDevil-2076492-0.mpg
TheXFiles-TheJerseyDevil-2076492-0.xxx = data base for what said above.

Hmmm Meedio planing Picture-In-Picture (PIP) on August 24 ho man I got try this when it come out.

[Ryokurin]

Mediaportal does have major potential but the one main thing I hate about it right now is that the interface is still dog slow. its getting better and better but no matter what I play it on or what setting I have the osd lags or the interface/video lags when its playing.

The number one thing im looking for right now is tv capability and the ability to play various files from cds. Sage comes close, but I dont like the fact that you have to tell it to refresh the folders to see new files, and it only really plays mpeg and avi files (cant get it to do ogm, mkv, some subs etc)

Meedio is decent but its geared more for people who archive to hard disk which is fine but again I rather just put in a CD, and the browser wont use its built in player to play the files anyways when using the browser plugin That brings Zoomplayer into the picture. needless to say it makes it kind of hard to look uniform, or to use programs like girder or various tricks like xwindows and taskbar hiders to make the right app have focus at the right time...

Anyhow to stop my rambling if someone were to come up with an all in one system that can do what sage, meedio, and zoomplayer can pull off then it would be the ultimate killer app. The only one I could possibly see pulling that off is mediaportal but not until possibly years from now.

[silkshadow]

..if someone were to come up with an all in one system that can do what sage, meedio, and zoomplayer can pull off then it would be the ultimate killer app.

When, when are we going to see that!? Right on the money Ryokurin! Though add J river into that mix. Meedio's open database system is its real strength. For everything else you need to use other apps.

...this could be a real challenger

Eh, I won't hold my breath. When MeeTV was first announced I was pretty excited as I really want to take my HTPC programs down to one. However, without being fatalistic, I have very little faith in the Meedio team getting anything out quickly and in usable shape. Everything that gets released (not plugins mind, but core components) always are bug filled and there are always long delays in fixes. In fact, I use mostly external progams with Meedio (zoom player, j river, sage) because it just too difficult to rely on their core components functioning properly from release to release. The TV app is a biggie and I expect that to take a year or so before it can be considered competition to Sage (from whenever it finally gets released). Just getting the first version out has taken many time longer than they originally anticipated. That is not a good sign but a good indicator as to its actual development cycle.

[aperry]

Yeah, I see people here complaining about how long it is taking for 3.0 to get released. Look at MeedioTV if you want to see a bunch of waiting WAY past when it was originally planned. That being said, I'm gonna check out MeedioTV to see if it's any good...

[JasonJoel]

*cough* At least they get status updates on the state of the development though. And updated release ETAs. *cough*

[Watter]

Originally Posted by JasonJoel

*cough* At least they get status updates on the state of the development though. And updated release ETAs. *cough*

Too true. There is that.

[stanger89]

Would you rather have functional software or updates?

[Kanati]

if they were mutually exclusive... functional software... Good thing they aren't...

[RedR]

BAH! I love my SageTV setup as is, so why would I care what bells and wistles "the other guy" has to offer only now? Anyway, I'll keep my setup as is.

[JasonJoel]

RIGHT!

Want and expect BOTH.

Originally Posted by Kanati

if they were mutually exclusive... functional software... Good thing they aren't...

[chadwolcott]

Gotta say it sounds interesting, but we'll see how it actually turns out. Marketing spin is usually just that... spin. I personally would rather have the best in class apps being used for their respective purposes like Sage for TV, TT for movies, winamp (or like) for music. I have them all integrated with xlobby and a sage skin that matched my xlobby skin. Everything nicely "integrated" and I get to use the best of the best for each purpose. In my experience, when companies try to do it all they end up with sub-par results for everything.

[JasonJoel]

And there is nothing wrong with that philosophy... If you are using a PC as a client.

HOWEVER, if we are ever going to get a fully functional app in a set top box (Media MVP or other), then we have to get to the state where ONE program does all of the functions acceptably.

Plus, the fewer apps you have to manage (even if you ARE using a PC) the better, right?

Jason

Originally Posted by chadwolcott

I personally would rather have the best in class apps being used for their respective purposes like Sage for TV, TT for movies, winamp (or like) for music.