Why NOT BeyondTV?

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

WRT mods taking down posts on the BTV forums, that is a issue that stopped when Rakesh became president about a year ago.

I might have to go start a SageTV vs BeyondTV thread over there on their forum just to test it.

[ertman]

A couple of more things that BTV has that Sage doesn't:

- Managed WAP and web servers for setting recordings (snapstream.net and mobile.snapstream.net - I don't want to have to run my own)
- A consistent UI (seriously when you hit the "back" button in Sage, it almost seems like crap shoot which menu you will end up on. There is no way to know what "back" will do unless you remember what the last screen you were on was. "back" should behave like "left" in the menus, and "left" should not be used for navigation between screens...)
- Showsqueeze
- An integrated backup utility (I can do a fresh install of BTV and restore all of my settings in about 4 minutes - useful when you play with the beta releases a lot.)

A lot of the complaints about BTV I see in this thread are for really old versions - version 4.6 fixes a lot of problems from the past. Still no DVD playback, though, which really stinks. I can -record- DVDs (and the DVDs even keep the commercial-skip info as DVD chapters!), but I can't play those DVDs back using BTV. Ugh.

[Wheemer]

It's seems whenever sage devs feel the need they will close threads with possible value aswell. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24667

So it's not only SnapStream that follows that ridiculas practice.

[PGPfan]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

It's seems whenever sage devs feel the need they will close threads with possible value aswell. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24667

So it's not only SnapStream that follows that ridiculas practice.

Wheemer, I'm not trying to be rude but you are being a bit extreme in your conclusions. The final reply in the thread you linked to: "Closing this thread because SageTV V6.1 does support Vista. If you have problems, contact us about them. There's plenty of users that are running Vista without any problems; even using media extenders." is quite different in practice than the BTV forums habit of DELETING entire posts that they don't like. In-fact, Sage ASKED that you contact them directly if you are currently having problems with Sage 6.1 on Vista - to me, that isn't dodging or ignoring a problem like what you'd find on the BTV forums.

-PGPfan

[Wheemer]

I already reported my problems, and no solutions have come. I still have a Vista Sage Client install that won't playback without tearing.

I thought that perhaps having a discussion with other users about sage and vista could possibly lead to a solution. It doesn't matter that others are using vista without issues. Vista is still the root of the issue. When my sage client runs in windows 2003 it looks fantastic.

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

It's seems whenever sage devs feel the need they will close threads with possible value aswell. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24667

So it's not only SnapStream that follows that ridiculas practice.

I was a bit surprised that Narflex closed that thread; it didn't seem any more outrageous than some of the discussions we've had about the UI. Plus, it didn't seem to violate any of the terms of service (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/rules.php). Of course, there's the standard CYA clause:

"You understand and agree that SageTV does not and cannot review every message posted by users in the Forum, and is not responsible for the content of these messages. However, SageTV reserves the right, but is not obligated to, delete, move or edit content, in whole or in part, submitted by you to the Forum for any reason. Re-posting deleted messages or portions thereof (yours or those of others) is considered a violation of these Terms. All determinations of what is "acceptable" and "unacceptable" content will be determined solely by SageTV and its designees."

I think it was the wrong move to close that particular thread, but I must say that as a whole, there's a lot of freedom to post in these forums.

My .02 (don't ban me Andy )
Stu

[rickgillyon]

Plus, it wasn't deleted or hidden, anyone can still view the thread. Not censorship I guess, just guidance as to what you should do if you have that issue...

And if anyone wants to discuss further, they can just start a new thread.

[mayamaniac]

I think he also closed it partially because Motofreak75 and Riekl were beginning to throw insults at each other. So to avoid future unnecessary personal insults, he suggested people contact tech support instead.

Wheemer, I ran SageTV client on Vista and it works fine. FSE works even better in Vista than XP in my experience. I haven't tried running SageTV server, but the client works fine as Narflex said.

[bcjenkins]

I am running a client on Vista Ultimate and it works better than MCE did. I also switched decoders as part of the process from NVidia to Cyberlink PowerDVD. They were the only ones (at the time) which stated Vista compatibility.

B

[doobiekeebler]

Hey guys I was thinking of going over to Sage TV from Beyond TV, so I think this is the place to ask my questions!

I'm running the demo. I'm not concerned about TV watching yet. Right now, I'm focusing on my ripped media library.

The reasons I want to convert all have to do with Beyond Media. Beyond TV makes me very happy (I understand that Sage will record shows it thinks you might like right? that'd be cool, but not going to convert me).

Anyway, first, my music is unusable through album list mode because I have too many albums (only like 400, but that 400 is too much for BM). Sage TV seemed to handle this great, so points to Sage.

The main reason I'm looking into a new HTPC front end is because I'm currently ripping my DVD collection. Beyond Media has a great user made plugin for to view movies by category, title, etc... along with poster art. But I want something like this for my DVD TV show collection as well. Are there plugins in this community for this level of organization? Browsing by the video thumbnail in Sage is great in concept, but my TV show names are too long, so I'd end up having to turn this off...and at that point I might as well be using the Beyond Media Video module (which is basically a file explorer for your video directories).

Last I love the YouTube and Google stuff, but I just tried it last night and it made my desktop scale to knock a bunch of stuff off the screen. This would be a plus for me, but if I have to constantly resize my desktop, never mind.

Thanks!
ben

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

It's seems whenever sage devs feel the need they will close threads with possible value aswell. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24667

So it's not only SnapStream that follows that ridiculas practice.

Even snapstream no longer follows that practice. In the past several months, they have only deleted spam and folk selling stuff on the forums (against the rules). Rakesh over at SS made a point to say that the over-moderation of their threads has been stopped. I think it is important to keep the forums (all forums) open for discussion imho.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by ertman

A couple of more things that BTV has that Sage doesn't:

- Managed WAP and web servers for setting recordings (snapstream.net and mobile.snapstream.net - I don't want to have to run my own)
- A consistent UI (seriously when you hit the "back" button in Sage, it almost seems like crap shoot which menu you will end up on. There is no way to know what "back" will do unless you remember what the last screen you were on was. "back" should behave like "left" in the menus, and "left" should not be used for navigation between screens...)
- Showsqueeze
- An integrated backup utility (I can do a fresh install of BTV and restore all of my settings in about 4 minutes - useful when you play with the beta releases a lot.)

A lot of the complaints about BTV I see in this thread are for really old versions - version 4.6 fixes a lot of problems from the past. Still no DVD playback, though, which really stinks. I can -record- DVDs (and the DVDs even keep the commercial-skip info as DVD chapters!), but I can't play those DVDs back using BTV. Ugh.

I use BeyondTV and Beyond Media. I would say the biggest complaint is that they do not have an integrated HTPC. My meaning being they have the PVR app (beyond TV) and the separate HTPC front-end (Beyond Media). To make matters worse, Beyond Media is not being updated for bug fixes or any feature improvements by SS.

Other than that, I think most are happy over there (at least as happy as HTPC users can be ) especially with the BTV app.