SageTV vs SnapStream

[KeAuraPete]

Being a TiVO customer, I have a good idea of what I want in the product to run on my new PC. SageTV seems to be the thing, from what I've been reading in the forums and from the radio interview I just listened to.

I have a couple of concerns though: First, Frey Technologies is relatively young. I'm a risk-taker, so that doesn't bother me as much as the stability of the product. I also write software for a living, so I'm well-aware of the importance of testing. How long was the official release tested?

Second, Snapstream Media seems like the closest competitor. They also have a couple of releases under their belts. How does SageTV and its service compare?

[Mark Lamutt]

To answer your first question, the beta process that I was involved in lasted almost 7 months. Jeff and Dan have been writing/testing the software for 2 or three years now. Correct me if I didn't get the second number right, Jeff.

As how it compares to snapstream...I played with a demo of snapstream 8 or 9 months ago, and wasn't impressed. But that was before I had my hardware encoding mpeg2 cards. Haven't looked at it since, as SageTV does everytthing that I want it to do. And if I come up with something else that I want it to do, Jeff listens really well and it's usually not 6 months or a year before I see it.

[dkardatzke]

Peter,

Version 1.0 of SageTV and SageRecorder were developed over the last two years and have been user tested since August, 2002. We were very diligent in our testing as some of our beta-testers could attest to and we did not commit to a release date until version 1.0 was ready to go. We are very proud of how stable SageTV is from a standpoint of being a 24/7 application.

The biggest difference between SageTV and Snapstream is that we support different types of TV tuner/Capture cards. SageTV was developed to work with MPEG-2 hardware based encoding cards so that the application could run 24/7 just like a TiVo and use minimal system resources when recording. Snapstream only supports Software based encoding which requires a much more powerful processor to accomplish and also results in not being able to use your PC for other powerful applications while you are recording. We have some users that play Games and run other Graphic intensive programs with minimal problems while Sage is recording in the background.

Using hardware based encoding also allows us to support Multiple Tuner cards recording more than one channel at a time. (Available with beta version 1.2.2) This is something that is not really possible using Software encoding.

SageTV is also the only PVR application for the PC that introduces Intelligent Recording and Scheduling. We have very robust conflict resolution which is even more powerful when using multiple tuners.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any follow up questions.

Dan

[Narflex]

I've personally been using SageTV for all of my TV watching since about June of 2001....but back then I called it TVMaster...then it was TV2....then it became SageTV. There's also another tester who's been using it for all TV viewing since March 2002.

This is in addition to the extensive testing already mentioned in this thread, just thought I'd add a little more history.

Look, we've got more smilies now

[KeAuraPete]

See, this is how all companies should be! Thanks for the info.

I know these products don't cost hundreds of dollars, so if one isn't satisfactory, I can try another. Still, it is annoying to have things crash and behave mysteriously (isn't that the job of the OS?).

I glanced over the snapstream site and wasn't left with a warm-n-fuzzy feeling like I get from SageTV.

I've unboxed the new computer and have the Hauppage 250 card now. So I'll install it this weekend (or sooner) and download the trial copy of SageTV.

The other thing I like about SageTV, from what I've read, is the Java interface. I'm a Java Swing programmer and it will be nice to see a real application that does something other than my own software!

Again, thanks a million for the response. BTW - I bought TiVO over Replay because the folks at TiVO answered my questions while I never heard a peep from Replay. And TiVO is going strong.

[dkardatzke]

Peter,

Great to hear! If you want to learn more about us, check out the articles in the Sun-Times today. The links are on our press page located at:

http://www.freytechnologies.com/press.html

Dan