Mediaready5000 Review in PC Magazine: Thumbs Down!

[Deadbolt]

Anyone see the PC Magazine Article on the Mediaready 5000 and it's SageTV interface?

The web version is here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1911911,00.asp

They gave it a very poor rating and I was wondering if this is other's impression of this box as well.

[DFranch]

Can't tell if the mediaready just has bad hardware, or if the reviewer is a complete idiot. The fact that he could not get the video out of 16x9 into full screen mode has me leaning toward idiot. I'm glad the review did not mention Sage directly. I'm also surprised he did not find out who makes the tuner card or video card he trashed. Seemed to be a half a$$ attempt at a review. 256 meg of ram was slow in my windows system, but I'd expect linux should use less resources. perhaps the components are not up to par, but without the details from the reviewer how can you tell.

[lovingHDTV]

I guess it is all from you point of view.

If my parents had bought that machine they would have not wanted to tweak things, they would not care what tuner/video card was in it, because they bought a product and it did not work as advertised. Also why would the reviewer care what the cards were? He was reviewing the system, how it looked, setup, played. Apparently it did not work well for him.

I do think that Sage has along way to go for ease of use. You can't expect consumers to read a detailed manual to use a PVR. They want to plug it in, and use it, like a Tivo or the cable companies DVR. Sage is a long way from this ease of use.

I love Sage, but I don't mind reading manuals, and tweaking. Most consumers hate/won't do that. From that point of view, I think the reviewer was spot on.

[dbfresh23]

I cannot say that I am surprised at the review. The price itself for an SD system is enough to warrent a poor grade. I've not tried the MR5000, but now that linux is available to everyone I see no reason to. The main thing to keep in mind is that it isn't really just a SageTV box, it does also have screens designed by VWB. It does sound like the reviewer was more partial to MCE so he may also be less of a techie and geared his review towards the novice.

[DFranch]

lovingHDTV, you are right. Sage is not for people who just want it to work, it is for people who like to open up their computer reinstall software, add remove tuners add hard drives. If you just want it to work you should buy a Tivo. Is the mediaready5000 a closed system like Tivo, or can you add tuners, HDD's, update the video card etc, in that respect it is not fair to directly compare to Tivo. I had a Tivo series 1 for 2 years, and there is no doubt, if you just want it to work that is the best system.

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by DFranch

lovingHDTV, you are right. Sage is not for people who just want it to work, it is for people who like to open up their computer reinstall software, add remove tuners add hard drives. If you just want it to work you should buy a Tivo. Is the mediaready5000 a closed system like Tivo, or can you add tuners, HDD's, update the video card etc, in that respect it is not fair to directly compare to Tivo. I had a Tivo series 1 for 2 years, and there is no doubt, if you just want it to work that is the best system.

My understanding is that MR500 is a closed system. You can hack it to accept different/updated STVs, but that is not the intention.

[Narflex]

He probably used the VGA port instead of S-Video. And VGA does not give a good quality video image on the MR5000. The S-Video image is quite nice though IMHO. (it maintains proper interlacing, unlike the VGA signal which is horribly deinterlaced since there's no hardware for it)

[Kanati]

The price is so prohibitive that only the hacker type that wants to fiddle and tweak the system would want it. I could buy a half dozen tivos for the price of one of the MR5000 systems. Definitely not worth the money. Especially with the less than friendly sage interface.

That said... I have yet to find an HTPC piece of software that matches sage for usability, ease of setup, and stability. But that's just the software and comparing it to other pvr software packages.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Kanati

I could buy a half dozen tivos for the price of one of the MR5000 systems.

Tivo's are bare minimum $400 (maybe a little less). Or you have to pay a monthly fee. Plus, they don't offer DVD playback, DVD burning, or client/server ability. If you want the DVD support you'd need to go with something like a Pioneer DVR-810H-S, which is $1200 retail (though available for more like $500), but you still need the $300 for the Tivo service to use it.