To upgrade or not to upgrade - That is the question....

[scoful]

I've been using Sage since version 2 and have been very happy with it. A little over six months ago, I got an HDTV and setup Firewire recording. It took me a while to get most of the kinks out of the HD stuff. It has been quite stable for some time now.

I have been putting off upgrading. This is certainly NOT due to cost, as the upgrade policy is VERY reasonable. I am concerned about performance issues. I have seen complaints about choppy playback and UI slowdowns. My client PC isn't the fastest (I rarely try to watch HD content on it - it plays back reasonably, but the UI pretty much shuts down on HD) and I wouldn't want to have to build a new client PC.

What's the general concensus? Is the current release as stable as V5.04?
Anybody else with similar hardware to mine running V6 with HD comfortably?

[rickgillyon]

Stable for most. The best advice IMO is: back everything up then give 6.1.9 a try. If it craps out, restore your backups. If it's still good after a day or two, pay for it. Minimal risk, unless the wife/gf/bf/kids/dog use it - then tell them they can moan when they pay the bill...

[MeInMaui]

Also, if you haven't done it yet, consider updating to the latest Java v1.6 release. It has been very stable and sage seems much 'snappier' than it did before. Multiple versions of java can coexist on the same system. So if you don't like it, just uninstall it and you should be right back where you started.

Aloha,
Mike

[cychou]

Originally Posted by scoful

I've been using Sage since version 2 and have been very happy with it. A little over six months ago, I got an HDTV and setup Firewire recording. It took me a while to get most of the kinks out of the HD stuff. It has been quite stable for some time now.

I have been putting off upgrading. This is certainly NOT due to cost, as the upgrade policy is VERY reasonable. I am concerned about performance issues. I have seen complaints about choppy playback and UI slowdowns. My client PC isn't the fastest (I rarely try to watch HD content on it - it plays back reasonably, but the UI pretty much shuts down on HD) and I wouldn't want to have to build a new client PC.

What's the general concensus? Is the current release as stable as V5.04?
Anybody else with similar hardware to mine running V6 with HD comfortably?

Are you using VMR9 as your video render in your current setup?

If so, your current video card (7300GT) won't be able to keep up with HD content. There are plenty of discussions about HD video stuttering in this forum. Most of them have much more powerful video card than yours. To upgrade, Nvidia 8500GT pci-x (fanless) seems to be the favorite at the moment. However its driver is not that mature for XP yet.

If not, your video card should be just fine. I started using the Sage 6 beta last December, and 6.1.19 is the most stable one so far. But I still think there are a few quirks (Support just confirmed a defect for me) to be fixed before being considered as stable as previous Sage Release.