SageTV light years ahead of BeyondTV

[roxy99]

Having tried the demo on both versions, I can't believe BeyondTV is asking about the same price for such a clearly inferior product. The Menu options in BeyondTV are so rudimentary its unbelievable. I keep thinking am I missing something with BeyondTV is there another option to enable the other menus?

Where are all the recording preferences and favorites etc..The only menu that appears in BeyondTV is a main menu with 6 choices. It looks like SageTV is the winner by a mile.

I am interested in hearing from you on your feedback. Who do you think offers the best product?

[DIBU]

Originally Posted by roxy99

Having tried the demo on both versions, I can't believe BeyondTV is asking about the same price for such a clearly inferior product. The Menu options in BeyondTV are so rudimentary its unbelievable. I keep thinking am I missing something with BeyondTV is there another option to enable the other menus?

Where are all the recording preferences and favorites etc..The only menu that appears in BeyondTV is a main menu with 6 choices. It looks like SageTV is the winner by a mile.

I am interested in hearing from you on your feedback. Who do you think offers the best product?

i come from BeyondTV (yes i have a licence for BTV). sagetv is the better product (for me native hauppauge mvp and ir!!)

[rp1790]

I also bought BeyondTV and now use Sage. To be fair, I think the main configuration of BeyoneTV is via the web interface...once you find it!

[kpsmith]

Own both... I use SageTV

Actually I think Beyond TV is good and its big downfall to me was lack of custimization. Where as with sage there are a lot of addon and you coudl always build somethign in studio.

On the flip side I think Sage TV is harder to get setup so if I wasn't a power user i might be using BTV.... or not

[klunde]

I'm also considering both, but from where I am now I will probably go for BeyondTV and not SageTV. mainly because I need one special feature and that is to run a batch file against the files after recording. This can easilly be done in BeyondTV, but SageTV seems to be unable to handle such a task.

To those of you who has been using both, what about some comparisons regarding recording quality?

(You should know that I'm only looking for a recorder, not a playback solution)

[blade]

Originally Posted by klunde

I'm also considering both, but from where I am now I will probably go for BeyondTV and not SageTV. mainly because I need one special feature and that is to run a batch file against the files after recording. This can easilly be done in BeyondTV, but SageTV seems to be unable to handle such a task.

Have you looked at Dirmon2? I don't know exactly what you want to do, but it will scan the directories you specifiy and launch programs for you depending upon what triggers you setup.

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by rp1790

I also bought BeyondTV and now use Sage. To be fair, I think the main configuration of BeyoneTV is via the web interface...once you find it!

Where is that web interface?

[rp1790]

Originally Posted by roxy99

Where is that web interface?

From memory there's an icon on the task bar and if you right click on that the options there.

[mlbdude]

BTV is not too bad and does not some niche features. However, you have to be willing to give up some regular PVR functionality. Little things begin to nag you like lack of full timeshifting (only in one screen), no preview or video background, ugly menus (but I think laid out better), poor support for anything but TV (even having ffdshow installed causes problems with it).

I guess it comes down to them being in constant catchup to Sage and MCE. I would like to see them come out with some unique new technology rather than just copying the other two with every release.

[tmiranda]

I have three licesnses for both and have settled on Sage. Funny how one man's weakness is anothers strength and vice versa. I for one like the fact that BTV is easy and has many less customizations. Sure, customizations are nice but they add complexity. My main reason for Sage? MediaMVP support and intelligent recording. If BTV had those features I would use BTV instead.

Both are excellent products but each will appeal to a different audience. Sage will almost certainly be more appealing to techies and people who generally like to tweak things. BTV will be more appealing to those who do not want to (or can't) fool around with customizations.

Rather than focus on weaknesses, here's what I see as strengths of each product. This is subjective and certainly not complete.

BTV strengths:
- Easier to navigate, many less options to fiddle with.
- Easy to create custom recording qualities.
- Build in support for smart skipping and compression to DivX/WMV.
- Strong forum support.

Sage strengths:
- Highly customizable.
- MediaMVP support.
- Intelligent recording.
- Preview window on many menus.
- Strong forum support.

Anyway, now that I've come to grips with Sage I like it a lot and am impressed with it's functionality and reliability. YMMV.

[mlbdude]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Strong forum support.

Oh yeah! This is a really important thing. The BTV forums are realy bad. Not only does it contain LOTS of bad and innacurate information, but they are actively censored. This was the reason I dropped their software completely.

[aperry]

I am a big fan of SageTV (I actually own BTV and Meedio, including Meedio TV as well).

Anyhow, one thing that BTV offers that I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wish would be offered on SageTV is remote setup of recordings. From BTV's features page:

Forget to record your favorite show? Don't sweat it. Schedule recordings from the Internet or a web-ready or WAP-enabled phone with SnapStream.net's Remote Recordings feature. Simply log onto SnapStream.net, locate the shows you want to record, and add them to your scheduled recordings...from anywhere. You can even check to make sure that your new shows have been added to your current lineup.

Even without that, I still have to give the edge to SageTV, at least for PVR'ing.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by aperry

I am a big fan of SageTV (I actually own BTV and Meedio, including Meedio TV as well).

Anyhow, one thing that BTV offers that I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY wish would be offered on SageTV is remote setup of recordings. From BTV's features page:

Even without that, I still have to give the edge to SageTV, at least for PVR'ing.

Get nielm's webserver and then you'll have your remote scheduling too.

Gerry

[tmiranda]

I forgot a few things:

Yes, I like remote recording in BTV but I like nielm's webserver A LOT better than anything BTV offers. I've seen the work of a lot of talented programmers and nielm ranks high on the list.

Another major strength of Sage - it really supports multiple drives for recording. Using multiple drives on BTV is a hassle.

I also dislike BTV forums being censored (thanks for the reminder mlbdude), this thread would have been deleted 3 nanoseconds after it was started.

I said I would not focus on weaknesses but I have to say the wiz.bin "single point of failure" is a weakness of Sage. BTV stores all the program data at the end of the .MPG so you don't lose all data if a single file gets corrupted.

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Oh yeah! This is a really important thing. The BTV forums are realy bad. Not only does it contain LOTS of bad and innacurate information, but they are actively censored. This was the reason I dropped their software completely.

I once posted a post on their forum about the fact that their continual sensorship was causing me to look elsewhere (why I ended up at Sage) and guess what they sensored the post!

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I said I would not focus on weaknesses but I have to say the wiz.bin "single point of failure" is a weakness of Sage. BTV stores all the program data at the end of the .MPG so you don't lose all data if a single file gets corrupted.

I don't think the real problem is to have a single database, but not being able to access and manipulate it easily. I really like the way Meedio stores its data in a SQL database, having something similar in Sage would be a dream ...

Dirk

[SprDtyF350]

Originally Posted by roxy99

Where is that web interface?

Use http://localhost:8129 to get to it. Once there you can tell it to also showup in the icon down in the right hand corner.

I have both, but use Sage. Both have unique features, Sage just has the ones I have more of a use for.

[DFA]

Since this is a Sage forum rife with Sage devotees, not likely to get much desention here.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that Sage is winning the PVR wars. Before I knew anything about BTV and Sage I tried trials of both. BTV lasted about 60 minutes. I had a dislike at the fundamental level with IIS, SQL, and .NET as the building blocks. I have personal preference for Java and Apache over the alternatives. Besides that, that particular version of BTV was crashing at every other turn so decided not to waste any more time with it.

It is a credit to Andy (Opus4) for not running this forum with an iron fist. He has never censored anything to my knowledge just for being critical or stupid false claims being made of Sage. A great product needs no spin control and members can be trusted to always right the wrongs when they appear.

Thanks Andy.

DFA

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by DFA

Since this is a Sage forum rife with Sage devotees, not likely to get much desention here.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that Sage is winning the PVR wars. Before I knew anything about BTV and Sage I tried trials of both. BTV lasted about 60 minutes. I had a dislike at the fundamental level with IIS, SQL, and .NET as the building blocks. I have personal preference for Java and Apache over the alternatives. Besides that, that particular version of BTV was crashing at every other turn so decided not to waste any more time with it.

It is a credit to Andy (Opus4) for not running this forum with an iron fist. He has never censored anything to my knowledge just for being critical or stupid false claims being made of Sage. A great product needs no spin control and members can be trusted to always right the wrongs when they appear.

Thanks Andy.

DFA

Nicely said.

[roxy99]

I second that