Thinking about using SageTV to replace my Replaytv 5040

[dvrmonkey]

Anyone here switch from Replaytv? I love my Replaytv 5040 (commercial skip), but I didnt buy the lifetime sub, and ive been using it for 2.5 years.

My first experience with DVR was when I bought a Leadfast 2000XP tv tuner card. It wasnt hardware based, and alot of my recordings the audio/video were out of sync. It also wasnt a dedicated machine, so I didnt have very good experience with a PC solution.

If I decide to go the SageTV route, im definitly going to buy a hardware based card (any recommendations?)

I know Replaytv stopped selling DVRs last year, and they are working on a PC based software due out sometime soon. Anyone have anymore info on it than whats on Replaytvs site?

[src666]

Here's the info: Don't count on ever seeing it. DNNA (the current owners of the Replay brand) have never really delivered anything new. I moved to Sage from 4 ReplayTV's + DVArchive.

It was a bit of an adjustment - for one thing the commercial skip solutions aren't nearly as accurate as Replay's (in my experience - others have better luck). But over all, the features are quite equal. The default interface doesn't feel quite as polished, but the customizability more than makes up for it. There are lots of very smart and generous people here who are improving things every day.

One of the nicest benefits is not having to play the "Which Replay is the program I want to watch stored on?", although DVA certainly helped mitigate that issue. Also, while the Replay's had their stability issues (weekly reboots, etc.), overall I could count on them working, and if one didn't the rest kept going. With Sage (or any software PVR), when the server glitches everything stops.

As for tuners, most people feel that the Hauppauge 250 and USB2 tuners are very good. The 150 and 500 (dual tuner) have some image quality issues. I have a couple of 250's and a 500, and like them. Overall the image isn't quite as clean as my Replays', especially on High, but it's acceptable. There is a new nVidia dual tuner card out that is getting pretty good reports, but the drivers are very young - you can't run more than one in a computer yet, and there might be problems running it with other brands (too early to tell yet). I plan on buying a couple once the kinks get worked out.

I think you will be happy with Sage, but everyone has their own personal preferences. Give it a try. Worst case, the hardware you buy will work with just about any other PVR software, so it won't be wasted.

[jhkoenig]

After years of joy using multiple Replays, I added a dual tuner Sage system to the mix. Now the Replays might as well be sculptures, they are used so infrequently. The WAF is higher with Sage and dual tuners and 512GB of space makes it possible for everyone to record and view their shows without conflict.

Go for it! It sure made me a hero around the house.

--John

[dvrmonkey]

Originally Posted by jhkoenig

After years of joy using multiple Replays, I added a dual tuner Sage system to the mix. Now the Replays might as well be sculptures, they are used so infrequently. The WAF is higher with Sage and dual tuners and 512GB of space makes it possible for everyone to record and view their shows without conflict.

Go for it! It sure made me a hero around the house.

--John

Tnks for the comments so far.

What TV tuners are you using? Are the bundles that SageTV sells in their Store competitivly priced? I havent shopped around yet, I usually buy online (Newegg, Monarch, etc)

[dvrmonkey]

Cant edit my above post.

Another issue I have with a DIY DVR is computer noise. How do you eliminate this if the PC is in your entertainment center? Do they sell remotes that work well when the PC is in another room?

[Polypro]

The only thing I can hear on my HTPC (bedroom environment, 4 ft away) is the hard drive motor noise. Select the right equipment and you can get it very silent (quieter than a TiVo), even using the less expensive air cooled options. Passive video card, passive chipset cooler, passive or low rpm cpu cooler, Nexus fans, etc...

You'd need an RF based remote/receiver for non-line-of-sight use...I don't know if anything supports that. There may be an RF to IR converter you can stick in front of a UIRT, but I'm just guessing here.

P

[Davey78]

I keep an eye on SageTV because I'm very interested in migrating. I have 2 50xx ReplayTV's and I have one at a friends house so we can use IVS to share shows (because it seems that there is TOOO much stuff on TV on the same nights)

I used the trial of SageTV and loved it but I realized that I would lose out on the IVS feature. IVS (poopli) has saved me more than once when the power went out or a show was pre-empted by some local news... and when you move to a non-dedicated HTPC (where anything can happen and cause a missed recording) its hard to give up that "safety net"....

I wonder if the new PlaceShifter function will allow me to share my shows with my friend in real time and vice versa... Anyone know?

Then again, maybe I could just get a developer to use Sage Studio and create an STVi to incorporate all of the Replay functions that Sage doesn't have....

[briands]

Originally Posted by Davey78

I wonder if the new PlaceShifter function will allow me to share my shows with my friend in real time and vice versa... Anyone know?

If you have a placeshifter license, anyone with your login information should be able to connect to your system with the placeshifter client. They will have complete control though unless you create a special STV that only has certain options exposed. Their watching habits will also impact your intelligent recording.

[RandyJohnson]

I dumped two Reply 5XXX machines about two years ago.

I have never looked back.

I currently have 5 CatsEye HD tuner cards and two of the PVR 500 tuner cards. I added a PCI extender card to the main server in order to fit all of the boards.

As Sage has matured over the last few months, regarding HD OTA recordings, I rarely watch live TV anymore.

I have two client machines that are used for playback.

I would strongly recommend a client server setup. I was never able to get recording and playback to work effectively on the same machine.

Once the playback and recording functions were seperated, I have encountered very few problems.

Randy

[Davey78]

Anyone know the quality of the PS Stream?? I have read that there are options to turn off transcoding (which I suppose would mean that the same format I recorded is the same format that is streamed...)

Would that be unwatchable over the internet (where I have 768KB upload) OR would it intelligently buffer so much of the show before it starts to play?

With the Replay's IVS, it transmits the entire file to the other Replay before it can be watched (in 4MB increments), so the file usually takes overnight, but they receive the exact same quality that I watched....

[waynedunham]

I still have 4 ReplayTV's, 2 5500 series and 2 older 2000/3000 era machines. All have been upgraded with larger HD's.

I also have a 4 tuner SageTV system, Media MVP, plus a MediaREADY 5000 (Not a happy camper there).

I'd love to say that I use the Sage System, but my two 5500's are my "Main" devices with one of the older 2000/3000's next, then it's a tossup between the Sage/MediaMVP and the Mr5k.
The 2 5500's (one in the bedroom and one in the Entertainment Center) allow me to view recorded programs in either the bedroom or the living room.

I have the two 2000/3000 machines split, one in the entertainment center and one in the bedroom. These olde non-networks machines require me to watch what's recorded on them in their location.
The MediaMVP is in the bedroom as a Sage Client and the Mr5k is in the entertainment center.

Why do I keep using the ReplayTV's as the devices that I use most often? Simply put, TRANSPORT controls. Most specifically the ability to quickly and easily jump anywhere in the program.

I still haven't tried using com detection on the Sage machine, but it REALLY concerns me that someone said that Sage is LESS reliable than ReplayTV at marking commercials. My Replay's are probably only 70-75% accurate at best. Sometimes missing entire segments, or coming in early or late from commercials.

That's why I LOVE the ability to jump anywhere in the show easily which you can't do in Sage (On a TV, not the computer). Ooops, the Replay missed the comeback from commercial, no problem, just hit 3 Instant Replay to jump back 3 minutes, then hit the QuickSkip and Instant Replay to quickly get to the right point in the file.
Now sure, if it's always 3 minutes back and then 30 second skips and 10 second IR's to get back to the right place you can do that in Sage.

However, ooops I fell asleep and missed 15 minutes of the show. Hmm lets see I was approximately 10 minutes into the show when I fell asleep. On the Replay, no problem, just hit 10, Jump and you're at the 10 minute point of the show.

I use these quick transport features of the Replay so much that I just can't get used to anything less no matter how hard I try.
Another couple things I miss very much is slo-mo, and frame advance.

I'm probably alone in wanting the ability to quickly access any point in a program since nobody seems to "get it" the many, many times I've asked for it over the last couple years here on the forums. They can't understand why I'd want/need that feature.

Why? Because once you find something that works, it's VERY difficult to go backwards.

As far as some of the other questions about SageTV, I absolutely love it. With proper hardware a dedicated machine can be rock solid. I've had mine running for over 60 days continuously on many occasions and could easily have gone longer but had to shut it down to do maintenance, (i.e. software updates, patches).
Most people hate it, but I love the "Intelligent Recording" feature. It takes some time to train it, but once you have it trained it works very good. Every once in a while when you record something new and different it may suddenly start suggesting things you don't want. Another usually quite short round of "training" and it gets back to doing a great job of recording what you might want to watch.

It's ability to set up favorites is excellant and VASTLY more flexible than what you have on the ReplayTV.

On the Replay side, I just never got DVA. I mean, why would you want something that takes longer to transfer the file from your Replay to your PC than the time it would take to watch it? (That's one place I really like SageTV, hey, it's already on my PC and I can transfer it quickly, burn it to DVD, or whatever) I record too much on my Replays and whenever DVA was transferring a file the Replay was pretty much useless for recording or watching, especiallyif you wanted to watch something on one of your other Replays. And on more than one occasion I was forced to Reboot the ReplayTV's after DVA was done with them becuase they became very unstable.

So overall I love SageTV and if/when it ever gets "real" transport abilities my Replay's could be showing up on Ebay. Until then Sage will be my safety net for conflicts (yes I still have them even with 4 Replays, Thanks networks that can't start/end shows on hour/half hour segments!!) and through it's favorites capabilities knowing NOT to record the repeat Stargate-SG1 episode and record the first run "My Name Is Earl" instead.

[blade]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I still haven't tried using com detection on the Sage machine, but it REALLY concerns me that someone said that Sage is LESS reliable than ReplayTV at marking commercials. My Replay's are probably only 70-75% accurate at best. Sometimes missing entire segments, or coming in early or late from commercials.

You shouldn't believe everything you read. Commercial detection for me is far more accurate than 70-75%. If I had to guess I'd say +95%. Of course everyone has different results, but you should really try it for yourself before dismissing commercial detection with Sage. There is ShowAnalyzer and comskip and both can be tweaked to increase accuracy.

Most of my shows are 100% accurate. Sometimes I see 1-2 seconds worth of commercials and every now and then it might miss an entire commercial. But rarely does part of the show get incorrectly marked as a commercial.

I know it's not the same, but you can jump to the beginning or end of the next block of commercials with 1 key press. If it misses the first commercial of a break you can jump directly to the end of the break skipping over the missed commercial. If part of the show is marked as the beginning of a commercial break you can jump back to the start of the break and watch the incorrectly marked show then jump to the end of the break.

I'm probably alone in wanting the ability to quickly access any point in a program since nobody seems to "get it" the many, many times I've asked for it over the last couple years here on the forums. They can't understand why I'd want/need that feature.

I think many people don't "get it" because when they're watching a show for the first time they don't have any idea what number they need to enter to jump to a specific point they want to be at. It takes 3 key presses for you to tell replay to jump 10 minutes. With 3 key presses I could already have jumped to the end of the first 3 commercial breaks. If I was uncertain as to where I fell asleep and were estimating it I'd have a better idea with Sage because I'd have seen where the show picked up after each break. Personally when I fall asleep watching a show I have no clue how many minutes into the show I was. I always have to jump ahead until I run into something that doesn't look familiar then backup a little to find the right spot.

I'm not saying the feature you want isn't useful. I'm just saying not everyone finds it as useful as you do. Especially when you have almost perfect commercial skipping.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by blade

You shouldn't believe everything you read. Commercial detection for me is far more accurate than 70-75%. If I had to guess I'd say +95%. Of course everyone has different results, but you should really try it for yourself before dismissing commercial detection with Sage. There is ShowAnalyzer and comskip and both can be tweaked to increase accuracy.

Most of my shows are 100% accurate. Sometimes I see 1-2 seconds worth of commercials and every now and then it might miss an entire commercial. But rarely does part of the show get incorrectly marked as a commercial.

I know it's not the same, but you can jump to the beginning or end of the next block of commercials with 1 key press. If it misses the first commercial of a break you can jump directly to the end of the break skipping over the missed commercial. If part of the show is marked as the beginning of a commercial break you can jump back to the start of the break and watch the incorrectly marked show then jump to the end of the break.



I think many people don't "get it" because when they're watching a show for the first time they don't have any idea what number they need to enter to jump to a specific point they want to be at. It takes 3 key presses for you to tell replay to jump 10 minutes. With 3 key presses I could already have jumped to the end of the first 3 commercial breaks. If I was uncertain as to where I fell asleep and were estimating it I'd have a better idea with Sage because I'd have seen where the show picked up after each break. Personally when I fall asleep watching a show I have no clue how many minutes into the show I was. I always have to jump ahead until I run into something that doesn't look familiar then backup a little to find the right spot.

I'm not saying the feature you want isn't useful. I'm just saying not everyone finds it as useful as you do. Especially when you have almost perfect commercial skipping.

I seriously doubt I'd have anywhere near that success rate. People on the Replay forums say the same thing. I've got a horrendously inconsisten analog cable signal. Com detection (at least on the Replay) is very much influenced by the quality of the signal. Tonight I watched back to back shows recorded on Fox that marked 0 commercials so the transport features were essential. Other times I'm still amazed at how accurate it can be, it's frame on accurate. In those instances I rarely use any transport controls. However it's rare that any show is 100% accurate.

How can you not know where you are in a show? I've always had a very good sense of time. I can usually be within 1-2 minutes of the actual time of a show when I "guess" where I am in the file.
I've probably got that from the sheer amount of Tv I watch. In a typical week (during first runs) I'll record anywhere from 20 to 50 hours. I watch most of what I record, especially when new shows come out I'll record anything that even remotely looks like it has potential.

You say that to jump 10 minutes I need 3 keypresses. True, but like you I only need one keypress to skip commercials. "IF" they're marked correctly. If your com detection isn't right you're now stuck with random points in a show and then have to either watch stuff you've already seen or use the limited 2 ff/rw of Sage to hunt your way back to the correct point. I can jump ANYWHERE in the file with a few keystrokes.
With mismarked com breaks I've gotten in the habit of hitting info and then the key to skip the commercial that way I know exactly where the commercial started and the info is still onscreen after the keypress so I can see just how much it skipped. Did it jump 4 minutes and come back into the show, or did it jump 7 minutes and I'm seeing the middle of a scene?

I didn't mention that Replay has buttons to jump back and forth to the beginning and ends of the commercial breaks because the com detect plugins for Sage can also do that.

90% of the time the controls in Sage now work just fine, I just like to be able to go anywhere in the file at any time. Usually it's because of mistagged commercials, and sometimes It's because I fell asleep and don't have the patience to use the limited controls in Sage to hunt my way back to where I left off.

All of this is keeping in mind that I watch on a TV, not a computer so I don't have access to the mouse to use the timeline. That's an improvement, but far too innacurate for precise control.

I think it's also one of those things that's hard to get people to understand why they need it, but once they've used it they can't imagine going back.

I remember back when I first got my ReplayTV trying to explain what it did and the puzzled looks I'd get from people. "oh so it's a VCR?" <sigh>
For me personally the big buzzword of DVR's means NOTHING, "pause live TV". What the h-e- double hockey stick is "Live TV"? Oh yeah, that's that thing that people do when they have a lot of time to kill.
For me the HUGE advantages of DVR's is #1 the ability to watch a recorded show while another one is recording, and very closely followed by the enhanced transport features over a VCR. IMHO anything that can further enhance the transport features makes it that much better.
Heck there are times when I've even wished for a colon key on the keypad so I could say 23:38 to instantly jump to 23:38 in the recording rather than go to 24:00 and then have to hit instant replay (rw/rw2) 3 times to get back to 23:38, or to to 23:00 and hit the 30 second quick-skip and then have to watch 8 seconds of the show that I'd already seen.

[blade]

As I said before, you should give commercial detection in Sage a chance before coming to the conclusion that it's not going to work. I've used both SA and comskip and am currently using comskip because it's much more accurate on "live TV" for me. I have analog cable and my signal isn't always that good and it works great for me with the default settings. It can also process HD recordings if you're doing HD. It's free to try and doesn't take long to setup.

Personally I think you're missing out on a great feature, but if you don't want to try it because of what 1 person posted that's your business. I've read several posts on various forums stating how poor Replay's detection is compared to PVR apps. I'd want to see for myself before coming to any conclusions.

[AndyS]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I still haven't tried using com detection on the Sage machine, but it REALLY concerns me that someone said that Sage is LESS reliable than ReplayTV at marking commercials. My Replay's are probably only 70-75% accurate at best. Sometimes missing entire segments, or coming in early or late from commercials.

You're quite right that commercial detection can be hit-and-miss and the quality of the feed has a lot to do with it. I have a cable feed and use SA and I'd say that probably 95%+ of my shows are correctly detected. The ability for SA to encode a show while it's still in progress means that I can wait 15 mins and have no commercials for an essentially 'live' show. I'd suggest setting up dirmon2 and either SA or comskip (ideally test them both) to see how they stack up against your Replay's results. I'd be really interested in a comparison.

Andy.

[waynedunham]

Blade,

It's not that I'm influenced by any 1 (or many) post as a reason I haven't done it yet. Basically it comes down to 2 things, first and foremost my Sage machine is rock solid and I'm very skittish about adding things and possibly giving up any stability and/or performance. i.e. "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

The second probably largest reason is I'm a procrastinator and lazy to boot.

A day or two before this whole thread started I actually downloaded Dirmon2 and SA. I just haven't gotten around to trying to read through the instructions, installing and configuring them.

I *DO* want to compare the results of the Replays and the Sage options, again, it's just laziness on my part.

But if the com detection isn't 100% accurate, 100% of the time (which from anything I've read nobody can do that) then I still would really like the transport options. Again, one can't really appreciate them until you've used them for a long time and then don't have them available.

As you yourself said about com detection "I think you're missing out on a great feature". I'll say the same thing about my transport options.


AndyS,

If I ever do get off my lazy butt and get com detection installed on the Sage machine I'll run some comparisons and let people know.

[blade]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

As you yourself said about com detection "I think you're missing out on a great feature". I'll say the same thing about my transport options.

I might agree if I had a need to move around within the show. Comskip is so close for me that typically I only need to hit the 20 or 30 sec FF/Rew once and I'm good.

[blade]

I don't know if this thread has gotten off topic or we're just giving dvrmonkey a lot of info about commercial detection.

Originally Posted by AndyS

The ability for SA to encode a show while it's still in progress means that I can wait 15 mins and have no commercials for an essentially 'live' show.

That's how I have mine setup with comskip. I have it process up to 4 shows at once (I only have 4 tuners). I don't know how much testing you did between SA and comskip, but I noticed (for me) comskip was much more accurate when processing shows as they're recording.

If you process the show as it is recording all the detection tricks can't be done because it doesn't have the entire file to compare to. Comskip will output the the commercials as it finds them and after the show is finished recording it takes a few seconds to use all of it's tricks on the full file and updates the .txt file if it determines the breaks should be moved. That way you get "live" detection without losing the accuracy of processing a finished recording (if you choose to watch it later). I don't know if SA does this or not. Looking at my results it doesn't appear that it does because live detection seemed much worse than on finished recordings. I still want to do some more testing though.

[dshields]

I used 3 networked ReplayTV 50XX units for a long time and I had been "in line" for their software version... I also bought a 5504 for a friend this past Christmas. I was a big ReplayTV fan.

However, I just recently switched to SageTV (and only because I had to send a ReplayTV unit back for repairs). I'm still learning my way around SageTV, but it is already far superior to ReplayTV for me.

I find SageTV's commercial detection equal or better. In neither case is it perfect, but I'm slightly happier with the results in SageTV. In regard to all the other features, I'm far, far happier with SageTV. I would never go back - and I'm upset with myself that I waited so long to switch!

SageTV has features that I find really useful - plus it saves me a lot of time (using DVArchive was tedious).

I got to be really good at working with the ReplayTV, DVArchive, wirns, etc. Once I have invested that much time in SageTV, I suspect the comparison will be even more of a blowout in favor of SageTV.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Why? Because once you find something that works, it's VERY difficult to go backwards.

As far as some of the other questions about SageTV, I absolutely love it. With proper hardware a dedicated machine can be rock solid. I've had mine running for over 60 days continuously on many occasions and could easily have gone longer but had to shut it down to do maintenance, (i.e. software updates, patches).
Most people hate it, but I love the "Intelligent Recording" feature. It takes some time to train it, but once you have it trained it works very good. Every once in a while when you record something new and different it may suddenly start suggesting things you don't want. Another usually quite short round of "training" and it gets back to doing a great job of recording what you might want to watch.

It's ability to set up favorites is excellant and VASTLY more flexible than what you have on the ReplayTV.

I second the stability and Intelligent recording. Basically, IR has the philosophy of "I'm going to find stuff that you may like." It will copy as much has you have storage for, but Sage will constantly remove files. Space simply isn't an issue.

I personally agree with the proactive stance. I don't know what I may like, so sample from all of TV's stew, so to speak. If I don't like it, I either don't watch it or mark the show and its additional airing as "Don't like" and they tend to go away.

I've gotten in a few shows that I never would have picked, or even known about thanks to IR's sampling.

As you train it, it gets better and better. Just stick with it.