Sage Review on HTPC news

[Dekard]

http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=sagetv4_1

There is the link, I'm off to read the article now.

[Dekard]

Pretty positive all in all, the reviewer gave the PVR side of things glowing reviews. On the media side of things he had a few suggestions for improvement. And good words about the tech support.

All in all a good review that should get the word out about our favorite PVR app.

[lotusvball]

For the most part it was a good review. I did not like how much time he spent on the MCE remote issue thing. Everyone has their preferences and the MCE remote was made to work with a competitor. I use the remote wonder II and absolutely love it. I think he was a little biased with that part.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

For the most part it was a good review. I did not like how much time he spent on the MCE remote issue thing. Everyone has their preferences and the MCE remote was made to work with a competitor. I use the remote wonder II and absolutely love it. I think he was a little biased with that part.

I don't think he was biased re: the remote. Windows media center remotes and IR recievers are very common, and becoming more common as vendors build these IR recievers into their cases. Not being compatible with this IR reciever is a problem, but not one that should be hard to overcome. Sage just needs to focus on it.

His comments about true media center functionality are spot on. Music needs lots of improvements, pictures are anemic, and video library support needs lots of help. Sage is a great PVR, but not good as media center. Look at competing packages and see how they exceed Sage in this aspect today. I sure hope Sage decides to really focus on true media center support in the future.

Thanks,
Mike

[stevech]

I'm concerned that Sage is too focused on TV over-the-Internet. I view this as a too-small niche - people who want to look at teeny low bandwidth recorded TV shows from their house - have to be few in number.

Sage needs to NOT make the startup's mistake of moving on to more glitz and never getting the baseline product sufficiently debugged and UI-refined.

[Dekard]

Originally Posted by stevech

I'm concerned that Sage is too focused on TV over-the-Internet. I view this as a too-small niche - people who want to look at teeny low bandwidth recorded TV shows from their house - have to be few in number.

Sage needs to NOT make the startup's mistake of moving on to more glitz and never getting the baseline product sufficiently debugged.

This is a major concern I have as well. The core of Sage, namely the PVR app, is in excellent condition with worldclass features. There is still room for improvement though.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by stevech

never getting the baseline product sufficiently debugged and UI-refined

I don't think what you seek is possible. SageTV is a do-it-yourself product. The nature of diy is that some people will use crappy hardware or crappy OS/software setups or just be plain unlucky and get incompatible components.. none of these is Sage's fault. "Well it works perfectly on xxxx with no crashes or stability problems, so why doesn't it work with SageTV?" There simply isn't a satisfactory answer to this issue.. if there was, then there would not be a market for expensive stable elite brand name items. Can some people get SageTV to run without incident on their Vic20? Yes. Do some people have horrible problems with SageTV on their $3000 custom built htpc? Yes.

Welcome to the world of PC's. Not. SageTV's. Fault.

[PGPfan]

I agree regarding making 'Placeshifting' lower on the totem pole if that could mean improvement of the music side of things. I don't have access to the type of broadband that placeshifting would need to look good (my upload sucks since I'm on satellite internet) and any place I'd use it from (relatives homes, vacation, etc) would likely not have broadband anyhow.

Music, on the other hand is where Sage 'could' with a bit more attention truly "kick the a$$" out of the other competitors out there if they would try. The PVR is best in class now-by a WIDE margin-and Sage did the wise thing early on in focusing on it. As the competitors are learning, doing TV right isn't so easy and as a result will take a while before anybody even comes close to what Sage brings to the table. The music side of things I believe could really be painless to implement (compared to the PVR side) and with things like Pandora, great visualizations available, hugh codec availability, this is where Sage should concentrate effort for a while.

Just imagine what could be achieved if they applied some of the brilliant PVR "mojo" to the music side of things....

-PGPfan

-PGPfan

[Dekard]

I don't understand why Sage hasn't yet included a dvd decoder or made it automatic to install one. That to me would almost be a no brainer. Automatic DVD \ Cd playback would be such a nice feature!

I can only assume theres a legal issue preventing them from doing this.

Hey Pgp!

[PGPfan]

Hey Dekard,

How's it going, man? Has the quest for stability been resolved, I hope? If so, what did it?

-PGPfan

[dbfresh23]

Originally Posted by Dekard

I don't understand why Sage hasn't yet included a dvd decoder or made it automatic to install one. That to me would almost be a no brainer. Automatic DVD \ Cd playback would be such a nice feature!

I can only assume theres a legal issue preventing them from doing this.

I'm not sure why, but I'd assume that it's a similar reason why MS doesn't include one with MCE.

[sleonard]

It's called royalty payments to the MPEG group.

[phenixdragon]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

For the most part it was a good review. I did not like how much time he spent on the MCE remote issue thing. Everyone has their preferences and the MCE remote was made to work with a competitor. I use the remote wonder II and absolutely love it. I think he was a little biased with that part.

You have to think about the average Joe and the WAF. Personally I love the MCE remote and it is by far the cheapest solution for IR and a remote solution for any media center. I beleive that if it was native that Sage would be used a bit more. That and firewire and a better front end. I have Sage but I mainly use MCE due to the WAF and firewire just working with a few second install of an app which takes less then a minute to have running.

Buuuttttt....I am thinking I am going to switch over to the Linux verision of Sage and mainly run that. MCE has it's own issues that are really getting to me that does not happen with Sage. And music works much better with Sage then with MCE.

So the only things I want Sage to have is native firewire support, MCE remote and a better front end. Even the front end is a bit dated to me.

[phenixdragon]

Originally Posted by stevech

I'm concerned that Sage is too focused on TV over-the-Internet. I view this as a too-small niche - people who want to look at teeny low bandwidth recorded TV shows from their house - have to be few in number.

Sage needs to NOT make the startup's mistake of moving on to more glitz and never getting the baseline product sufficiently debugged and UI-refined.

I totally agree. It's a niche thing but even MSFT has this coming too but I think having a more solid frontend/media center would be a much better investment.

[nick_l]

It's interesting that different people have different opinions. If it weren't for place shifting I would not be switching to SageTV. I love the intigrated solution. I currently have 3 TiVos and a Slingbox. I had been been keeping an eye on Sage and when I saw the CES video and the beta demo I jumped on the sage wagon.

I'm glad Sage gives us all something (but I do agree the media end needs WORK!!)

Nick

[Crashless]

I'll agree with nick. Placeshifting is one of those things that you don't fully appriciate until you've used it. I've been using Orb with my WM5 EVDO phone and it's HEAVEN! I used to have to plan in advance what I was going to watch at lunch, but now, I just sign on and stream it in real time.

Now all I need is a WM5 sage client, and it'll be perfect!

(Hint, Hint! I have IBM's MIDP MIDlet environment on my PPC6700, it runs Google's Local program wonderfully! I'll beta test anything. )

[stevech]

IMO, active and sustained-use place-shifting users would be few in number in a poll of all users.