MediaReady 5000

[waynedunham]

I'll let everyone know how it goes once I get the unit.

SHS, I'll have to see about pulling the top. Depends on how well "sealed" the unit is. I certainly don't want to void the warranty!

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I hadn't even thought about updates to the Sage software and the requirement that all the clients must use the same version that the server is running until you just mentioned it. Dang! (off to Email we go!!)

Did you ever get an answer to this? Do they have some sort of cvs update server (which would be too cool) or are they going to release patches for you to apply to it? or are they just not going to give you updates? I would imagine that the same bugs being found in the windows beta would apply to the Linux v3 also, at least most of them, so I would think that this will be a very important issue.

Now that the newest Windows beta no longer requires all clients to be the same version, hopefully that will be the same with the Linux version. Still, this doesn't fix the other bugs...

[atlantic]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I'll let everyone know how it goes once I get the unit.

SHS, I'll have to see about pulling the top. Depends on how well "sealed" the unit is. I certainly don't want to void the warranty!

Well has it came in yet? Waiting to hear what you think.

[zz5]

For the love of all that's holy, please tell us what's going on, Wayne! Has the thing arrived yet?! How much longer is it going to be?!? Is there a chance it might have gotten lost in transit!?? What's the tracking information say???!?

[waynedunham]

Whoa, slow down folks!

It arrived yesterday and was waiting on my doorstep when I got home.

I eagerly pulled the contents out of the box, read through the startup guide manual and removed my Roku from the AV rack so I could just swap all the cables from the Roku to the 5000 without having to dig around the back of the AV Receiver.

Plugged it in and powered it up. Everything looked good at first. First thing I noticed was the power supply fan was noisier than I'd like for something in an AV rack. Not horrendously noisy, but I'm also not the most critical about such things so others might find it totally unacceptable.

The wireless keyboard and remote/trackball that comes with it work nicely with absolutely no problems at about 12 feet. Short of going outside that's as far as I can test it.

I have a hardware issue that I'm awaiting a call back from VWB on. For some reason Sage isn't seeing the PVR card in the machine so I can't set that up. I thought that might be because I had a lockup of the Sage interface while using the remote and couldn't find a way out of it. It "appeared" like it might be an issue where the lockup might have caused Sage to put the card in the ignore list.
I was sure I'd seen the add source dialogue before the lockup, but wasn't sure if I was just remembering seeing it in the startup guide.

That was about 3pm and I called VWB, but their tech support guy was out and was supposed to call me back. Being so near the end of the day maybe he had left for the evening already?

I could not find any way to exit Sage to get to a desktop or Linux (MediaReady 5000 uses Gentoo Linux) command prompt. So I pulled it from the AV rack and hooked it up to a computer monitor after seeing in the Bios that it had both the regular monitor port and the Svid/Composite ports being used simultaneously. I was hoping that it might be set up in some kind of dual monitor setup where the OS was on the VGA port while the Media interface was on the Svid/Composite ports.
No dice there, it was the same output on both.

Next step was to grab my Knoppix CD (Linux Boot CD). I put that in and booted to Knoppix (based on Debian Linux). Did an "SU" (super user) at a command prompt and fired up the GUI file browser. From there I found the sage.properties and properties backup files and moved them elsewhere so that Sage would create a new one. I moved them instead of deleting them in case I had to put them back.

I was hoping that this would allow me to get to the source setup screen.

So I rebooted the machine and had to go through initial setup again. However I still did not get to the source setup screen during that process.
Anytime I would go to either the setup wizard or source setup screens it would give me the setup wizard screen. However there was no option to set up sources anywhere on that screen so I had to go through the entire wizard each time.
I would get to the screen in the wizard that said something like "on the next screen it will show the already configured sources and any seen by the system that you can set up" (really paraphrasing, but you get the gist). As soon as I hit the "continue" button it would always send me back to the main setup screen.

That's the major issue I have so far. It may just be that the card got loosened in shipping and isn't seated properly on the riser card. However there's a seal on the case so I'm not going to break that seal unless the tech tells me to in case I have to return the unit.

So it looks like that support call will be a long one between the tuner issue, noise issue, and a couple software issues I've noticed so far.

On the upside:
# The unit looks like a piece of AV equipment with good quality fit and finish.
# Good amount of IO options on the back with RCA, 5.1, Coaxial, and Optical audio outputs, Component, Svid and Composite video.
# Network didn't seem to be any issue. I could set up my existing video directories on my Sage Server in the other room as import directories. They played just fine. With REAL FF/RW, not jumps, I might add!! The regular jump FF/RW were still there too. There was one small issue in that I had to shorten the share names on the Sage Server because they were longer than 12 characters. That hadn't been an issue between my XP machines, nor the Roku, but XP did warn me that they were too long and some OS's might not be able to see them.

It does not appear, at least as it comes out of the box, that it can be used as a Sage Client, but can be used as a Sage Server. I would prefer this be a client to my existing server, but if necessary I suppose I could live with it using my tuners in my existing machine and make that a slave machine.

As you can see this tech support call is going to be a LONG one with many questions and hopefully just as many answers.
Now how the heck did this thing get out with that noisy of a fan?

[atlantic]

Couple of questions.

# Network didn't seem to be any issue. I could set up my existing video directories on my Sage Server in the other room as import directories. They played just fine.

Will it allow you to map or save programs to another machine such as a NAS box? If so I found a program (Linux based) where you can build a NAS server out of an old machine (such as a 486) add up to 4 -300 GIG IDE HD's or larger (or whatever you can afford) then you have 1.2 TB worth of storage for less than $750, that is if you have a old machine lying around not being used.

Only possible issue with the above NAS is that it does not support RAID, but for a overall total of less than $1500.00 look what you have Beats Replay & Tivo.

The other is do you think it will support the MediaMVP. That would be really cool to.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by atlantic

Couple of questions.


Will it allow you to map or save programs to another machine such as a NAS box? If so I found a program (Linux based) where you can build a NAS server out of an old machine (such as a 486) add up to 4 -300 GIG IDE HD's or larger (or whatever you can afford) then you have 1.2 TB worth of storage for less than $750, that is if you have a old machine lying around not being used.

Only possible issue with the above NAS is that it does not support RAID, but for a overall total of less than $1500.00 look what you have Beats Replay & Tivo.

The other is do you think it will support the MediaMVP. That would be really cool to.

While I did not set up a video directory over the network it should work. Not being able to get the tuner enabled has kept me from trying this.

I haven't tried the MVP yet. Maybe I'll try that later on.

[waynedunham]

Versions are incompatible for getting the MVP to work with the MediaReady 5000. That's the report I get after feeding it the IP address of the MR 5000 when I tried to run the client without my existing Sage server running.

The MR 5000 is running v 3.03.1. Not sure how the Linux versions relate to the Windows versions, but hopefully they're the same. Unfortunately connection between different (compatible) versions of the server/client weren't added until 3.0.11. Hmmm, now how does 3.03.1 relate to 3.0.11?

[waynedunham]

Just an update. I called VWB again this afternoon and they said that the tech person responsible for the MR 5000 had to leave on an "emergency" so I doubt I'll be getting a call today. This in not boding well here!

[atlantic]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Just an update. I called VWB again this afternoon and they said that the tech person responsible for the MR 5000 had to leave on an "emergency" so I doubt I'll be getting a call today. This in not boding well here!

1 Tech

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by atlantic

1 Tech

The have several products, so maybe that's the 1 person responsible for the MediaReady 5000 and/or Sage?
In this day and age I'm almost surprised they even have 1. At least my call to VWB wasn't answered by Apu from The Simpson's. "would you like a grape slushy with your MediaReady 5000 sir?"

[atlantic]

Wouldn't mind having a grape slushy right now.

Hey you wouldn’t happen to have a digital camcorder would ya? Looks like it has a 1394 input and if you would be able to do a quick dump of raw video from a camera directly to a DVD with good quality that would be a big seller as well since a stand alone like Sony makes is $350.00 at Sam’s Club. Network, MVP and 1394 input, those 3 works for you well and I’ll order one next and you can ask them for a commission....

[insomniac]

i would be looking into the return poilcy of this product if I were you...

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by atlantic

Wouldn't mind having a grape slushy right now.

Hey you wouldn’t happen to have a digital camcorder would ya? Looks like it has a 1394 input and if you would be able to do a quick dump of raw video from a camera directly to a DVD with good quality that would be a big seller as well since a stand alone like Sony makes is $350.00 at Sam’s Club. Network, MVP and 1394 input, those 3 works for you well and I’ll order one next and you can ask them for a commission....

I don't have a digital camcorder, but did plug in a USB Key and it popped up a menu asking if I wanted to copy to/from the USB Key to/from one of the media directories. Unfortunately right now I don't have anything either in a large enough USB device, or small enough video file to try that out.
Also, isn't that Sony standalone unit a Dual Layer writer? The one in this machine isn't. I don't even recall what formats/media this one works with.

In doing some more research it is looking like either the PVR card isn't seated properly, or the card may be bad. The behavior I'm seeing when trying to go to the add sources menu item is exactly what happens when Sage doesn't find any sources according to Opus4.

So it will either be going back, or maybe they'll give me an OK to break the seal on the cover to see if the card just needs to be reseated.

[dbfresh23]

Heh, and here the first thing I'd have been doing was taring up that sagetv stuff and and mess around with trying to get it working as a client on the roku!

[atlantic]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Also, isn't that Sony standalone unit a Dual Layer writer? The one in this machine isn't. I don't even recall what formats/media this one works with.

Yes it is a Dual Layer and supports most DVD formats. That's why I bought one a couple of weeks ago, but after I tried it for a few days I returned it and got my money back. The unit is not quite ready for prime time yet. To many little things that were a pain. Plus the DMCA guys must have programmed this thing because of all the copyright guards on it.

Guess anybody who has used a networked PVR or similar device would not be happy with it, that's why I am hoping this one does the things I described earlier, cause I can always copy a program to my PC and burn any type of DVD from there.

[waynedunham]

It was indeed the card not being seated properly. While I still haven't received an OK from VWB (or a call back for that matter) to open the case I did loosen the 2 screws holding the card in. Hmmm possibly one screw for the card and one for the riser card??
Anyway, I shut down the MR 5000, loosened the 2 screws, and tryed to move the card around to get it to seat better.

Then I turned the MR 5000 on and once it finished booting into Sage there were the extra options on the main menu indicating a card was there. I went into source setup and the card was there!! From there rest of the source setup went well.

I set a few shows to record overnight. I checked them this morning and they recorded fine. Looks like all I have to do on that front now is go into the source and tweak the brightness,color sat, etc. They appear just a bit dark and not enough color saturation on my HDTV monitor.

So now it's on to my one still major complaint about the noise of the PS fan. That and seeing if they have a client version. I'd really still prefer this be a client rather than server.

I also noticed an issue with the remote and the first FF. The remote key isn't linked and when I go into setup and add it that works fine. However as soon as I exit setup it forgets it. That option works fine from the transport controls on the IR keyboard, just not the IR remote.
Looks like it isn't saving the changes. Now is that because it isn't saving the changes or maybe the file is set to read only?

I'm sure I'll find other things, but overall it seems to work just fine from a Sage point of view.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

Heh, and here the first thing I'd have been doing was taring up that sagetv stuff and and mess around with trying to get it working as a client on the roku!

Yeah, right! I know next to nothing about Linux in general and WAY less than that about programming the Roku! (C+ shudder!!)

With the memory limitations of the Roku a full blown Sage client version would be out of the question. It would have to be something like Matt's SageMVP client where you're just grabbing the UI and returning remote commands and then viewing the streamed content.

Hmmm, maybe if I loaned Matt my Roku he'd tackle it?

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by atlantic

Guess anybody who has used a networked PVR or similar device would not be happy with it, that's why I am hoping this one does the things I described earlier, cause I can always copy a program to my PC and burn any type of DVD from there.

Looks like a pretty standard PC DVD writer. I just burned a short Mpeg through the Sage/Media Ready interface onto a DVD+RW. I didn't have anything on the MR 5000 so I burned the file over the network from one of the Video directories on my Sage Server. Checked the resulting DVD on my MR 5000, main PC, and my stand-alone DVD player that I know reads DVD+RW's and they all played the disk fine.
Looks like a small glitch in the progress dialogue while burning the DVD. Not sure where it was pulling the time from, Sage, or the Bios time, but in any case it wasn't paying attention to the Time Zone since it was off by exactly 4 hours.

[dbfresh23]

Memory limitations would be the least of the concerns, the x86 emulator would be more of a pain, but still not impossible...