Should I switch from Beyond TV...

[gilded07]

I've used BTV for 3+ years and love it. However, I'm ready to extend my viewing experience from a monitor to a TV...an unfortunately obvious shortcoming of Snapstream's BTV. I've downloaded the free trial of Sage and although the interface isn't quite as intuitive, I like what I see and I can adapt. Questions:

#1-How do I get the commerical skip feature? BTV did it well and I'm told Sage does it better. Unlike BTV, it doesn't appear to be a native feature; is this correct? I'm hoping for a one key touch skip capability, like w/ BTV.

#2 - BTV has a neat showsqueeze feature that you can automatically set to sqeeze recorded shows from MPEG-2 to .avi and it works well. Is there a way to get Sage to do this too?

#3 - My dedicated, headless server is a PIII, 700mhz, w/ 512mb running XP home / SP2. It has a Hauppage WinTV PVR150. It works fine for BTV; Currently, it is working fine now w/ one Sage PC client. I tune a Directv stb with a serial tuning cable and it works fine w/ Sage too. Will this server hardware be enough horsepower to stream stnd definition to multiple Sage extenders and or clients?

#4 - Can I use the Sage extender to access multiple servers on my network? For example, the Sage server will contain recorded shows and another photo server will contain family photos and ripped DVDs. Can I toggle between the servers using the extender front end?

#5 - Can I have full access to my Sage server via a browser from w/in or outside of my home network w/out using a client? (localhost).

#6 - Will Sage run as a service? BTV won't and I had to buy a 3rd party software to run it as a service.

#7 - The placeshifter license is confusing; BTV has only a server license and client (or Link) license and it's pretty straight forward. Sage has both a placeshifter and client licenses. if I never access Sage from outside my home network, do I need a placeshifter license? Are client licenses sufficient for using the extenders and PC clients?

#8 - Regarding recording, if I schedule a weekly series or sitcom to be recorded and then I look ahead and see that I've already seen an episode that is scheduled to be recorded, can I tell Sage to not record that particular episode in the series?

My home is wired w/ CAT5; I rarely use wireless and never for streaming video or music. I have two VoIP lines and several PCs connected. My networking / configuration skills are moderate.

Thanx.

[malbec]

1) Install JREkiwi's comskip import to enable the comskip functionality in Sage. In addition, you will need to install either Comskipmonitor and comskip or Dirmon2 in place of Comskipmonitor and Showanalyzer (same link as Dirmon2) in place of Comskip. You need either Dirmon2 or Comskipmoinitor to monitor the directory your recordings are stored and kick off Showanalyzer or Comskip to scan the recordings and mark the commercials.

2) Install JREkiwi's autocompress plugin. I don't believe it is as feature rich as what you are used to in BTV, but it gets the job done.

3) For the most part I think so, but you may run into issues with >2 MVPs.

4) I believe so as long as the Sage server can access the other "photo" servers

5) I believe so, use Nielm's plugin. I have not played with this myself, so...

6) Yes

7) I am not sure, but I think there are three separate license types - placeshifter, client and extender. I do not believe they are interchangeable.

8) Yes

My networking skills are moderate as well and have been able to figure them out and make everything work well. Also, I would encourage you to check out the customizations part of the board. In particular, this is a good reference of other capabilities you can add.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by gilded07

#1-How do I get the commerical skip feature? BTV did it well and I'm told Sage does it better. Unlike BTV, it doesn't appear to be a native feature; is this correct? I'm hoping for a one key touch skip capability, like w/ BTV.

You can achieve this using comskip from...
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16237
and the comskip plug-in
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21515
and something to kick off the comskip processes
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20358

All 3 are incredibly easy to configure but its definetly not an out of the box solution.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#2 - BTV has a neat showsqueeze feature that you can automatically set to sqeeze recorded shows from MPEG-2 to .avi and it works well. Is there a way to get Sage to do this too?

This is possible using the auto compress plug-in...
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23103

Originally Posted by gilded07

#3 - My dedicated, headless server is a PIII, 700mhz, w/ 512mb running XP home / SP2. It has a Hauppage WinTV PVR150. It works fine for BTV; Currently, it is working fine now w/ one Sage PC client. I tune a Directv stb with a serial tuning cable and it works fine w/ Sage too. Will this server hardware be enough horsepower to stream stnd definition to multiple Sage extenders and or clients?

I only have one client so I can't speak to this, although I know there are people with servers that handle 4+ clients/extenders.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#4 - Can I use the Sage extender to access multiple servers on my network? For example, the Sage server will contain recorded shows and another photo server will contain family photos and ripped DVDs. Can I toggle between the servers using the extender front end?

To accomplish this you'd set up your main server media import directories to point those shared folders on those other PC's and this way everythign would be available though your extenders. (media import doesn't actually import them, to the main server, it will just monitor those directories and make that music/photos/videos available to clients/extenders)

Originally Posted by gilded07

#5 - Can I have full access to my Sage server via a browser from w/in or outside of my home network w/out using a client? (localhost).

You can use this with Nielm's webserver plug-in
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8426

Originally Posted by gilded07

#6 - Will Sage run as a service? BTV won't and I had to buy a 3rd party software to run it as a service.

Yes, this is an option in the SageTV installer. The only trick is you need to run the service as a user with network privledges otherwise it can't access other PC's.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#7 - The placeshifter license is confusing; BTV has only a server license and client (or Link) license and it's pretty straight forward. Sage has both a placeshifter and client licenses. if I never access Sage from outside my home network, do I need a placeshifter license? Are client licenses sufficient for using the extenders and PC clients?

Clients and extenders and placeshifters have different types of licenses. I know its explained somewhere but I don't have a link.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#8 - Regarding recording, if I schedule a weekly series or sitcom to be recorded and then I look ahead and see that I've already seen an episode that is scheduled to be recorded, can I tell Sage to not record that particular episode in the series?

Yes, you can set that show as watched and if you have your favorite configured to only record unwatched episodes it won't be recorded.

[malbec]

Must have beat you by a hair. Although, I must admit I like your post better.

[evilpenguin]

That'll teach me for take the time to properly quote everything

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by gilded07

I've used BTV for 3+ years and love it. However, I'm ready to extend my viewing experience from a monitor to a TV...an unfortunately obvious shortcoming of Snapstream's BTV. I've downloaded the free trial of Sage and although the interface isn't quite as intuitive, I like what I see and I can adapt. Questions:

#1-How do I get the commerical skip feature? BTV did it well and I'm told Sage does it better. Unlike BTV, it doesn't appear to be a native feature; is this correct? I'm hoping for a one key touch skip capability, like w/ BTV.

You will need to add some software, a directory monitor (dirmon, dirmon2, or comskip monitor) to look for new recordings. the monitor will trigger a commercial scanner (comskip or showanalyzer) to create a commercial list file. Then, add a plugin to Sage to automatically skip commercials by reading the commercial list file. You could set the pluging to not auto-skip, but to let you hit the right arrow key once to skip over the commercials.

#2 - BTV has a neat showsqueeze feature that you can automatically set to sqeeze recorded shows from MPEG-2 to .avi and it works well. Is there a way to get Sage to do this too?

Yes, Sage has transcoding capabilties to shows to many formats. IIRC, there is a plugin available to automate this, or the SageMC UI has it built-in.

#3 - My dedicated, headless server is a PIII, 700mhz, w/ 512mb running XP home / SP2. It has a Hauppage WinTV PVR150. It works fine for BTV; Currently, it is working fine now w/ one Sage PC client. I tune a Directv stb with a serial tuning cable and it works fine w/ Sage too. Will this server hardware be enough horsepower to stream stnd definition to multiple Sage extenders and or clients?

For straight streaming, it should be fine. Now, if you wanted to watch non-mpeg2 files, such as .avi files, on the extender, then you need major horsepower to let the server convert the .avi file to .mpg on-the-fly to play on the extender. The upcoming HD-extender should hopefully be able to play most files without needing on-the-fly transcoding.

#4 - Can I use the Sage extender to access multiple servers on my network? For example, the Sage server will contain recorded shows and another photo server will contain family photos and ripped DVDs. Can I toggle between the servers using the extender front end?

No, no sever selection available. On the sage server, just let it know where your photo and DVD content is at, and it will have access to it to give to a client.

#5 - Can I have full access to my Sage server via a browser from w/in or outside of my home network w/out using a client? (localhost).

You can add a webserver, to be able to manage the server, ie: favorites and recordings. Not really designed to watch content, but it can.

#6 - Will Sage run as a service? BTV won't and I had to buy a 3rd party software to run it as a service.

Yes, runs as a service.

#7 - The placeshifter license is confusing; BTV has only a server license and client (or Link) license and it's pretty straight forward. Sage has both a placeshifter and client licenses. if I never access Sage from outside my home network, do I need a placeshifter license? Are client licenses sufficient for using the extenders and PC clients?

SageClient licenses are only good for PC clients, and 1 license per PC client. If you never access Sage over the internet, you don't need a placeshifter license. However, if you are going to use an extender, it is the same license as a placeshifter. The extender/placeshifter license is the same and is a "floating" license. That is, only active usage is licensed. If you turn off your extender, you can now use the license on another extender or a placeshifter.

#8 - Regarding recording, if I schedule a weekly series or sitcom to be recorded and then I look ahead and see that I've already seen an episode that is scheduled to be recorded, can I tell Sage to not record that particular episode in the series?

Yup, just mark it Watched and it'll know not to record it.


edit: too slow

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by gilded07

I've used BTV for 3+ years and love it. However, I'm ready to extend my viewing experience from a monitor to a TV...an unfortunately obvious shortcoming of Snapstream's BTV. I've downloaded the free trial of Sage and although the interface isn't quite as intuitive, I like what I see and I can adapt. Questions:

Originally Posted by gilded07

#1-How do I get the commerical skip feature? BTV did it well and I'm told Sage does it better. Unlike BTV, it doesn't appear to be a native feature; is this correct? I'm hoping for a one key touch skip capability, like w/ BTV.

I don't use the commercial skip feature, so I'm not an expert. Search the forums for comskip, and there will be lot's of advice on how to set it up.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#2 - BTV has a neat showsqueeze feature that you can automatically set to sqeeze recorded shows from MPEG-2 to .avi and it works well. Is there a way to get Sage to do this too?

Sage has a built in transcoding engine, but it's not quite as convenient as BTV's; you have to pick the shows to transcode manually. There are plugins to Sage that can and will transcode for you. Be aware that transcoding takes a lot of horsepower (but, if I recall, Showsqueeze was CPU intensive as well).

Originally Posted by gilded07

#3 - My dedicated, headless server is a PIII, 700mhz, w/ 512mb running XP home / SP2. It has a Hauppage WinTV PVR150. It works fine for BTV; Currently, it is working fine now w/ one Sage PC client. I tune a Directv stb with a serial tuning cable and it works fine w/ Sage too. Will this server hardware be enough horsepower to stream stnd definition to multiple Sage extenders and or clients?

Maybe. If you transcode to avi files, and then stream them to the current media extenders, the file has to be transcoded back to MPEG (on your server) for the MediaMVP to play them. That uses a lot of juice. If you leave the files in a MPEG format, the MediaMVP can play them natively, and thus less load on your CPU. Note that the fabled forthcoming HD extender is supposed to support many other formats natively, so this issue of transcoding-to-MPEG will go away.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#4 - Can I use the Sage extender to access multiple servers on my network? For example, the Sage server will contain recorded shows and another photo server will contain family photos and ripped DVDs. Can I toggle between the servers using the extender front end?

Not that I'm aware of; however Sage has a media center built in, and so you could set up your Sage server to access a shared drive on the photo server and access the media therein. No need to toggle front-end UI's; the media would just appear as if it were sitting on a single back end box.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#5 - Can I have full access to my Sage server via a browser from w/in or outside of my home network w/out using a client? (localhost).

nielm's webserver is a custom plug-in that is an absolute MUST for every SageTV owner. It does have some limitations in that you cannot perform certain administrative functions with it, but it's a great tool for managing your recordings.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#6 - Will Sage run as a service? BTV won't and I had to buy a 3rd party software to run it as a service.

Sage will run as a service.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#7 - The placeshifter license is confusing; BTV has only a server license and client (or Link) license and it's pretty straight forward. Sage has both a placeshifter and client licenses. if I never access Sage from outside my home network, do I need a placeshifter license? Are client licenses sufficient for using the extenders and PC clients?

Nope; placeshifter and media extender licenses are the same thing. A client license is different. I posted a summary about the differences between client and placeshifter licenses here. If you're accustomed to Link and you don't need a full-featured installation, you'll probably be happy with placeshifter on the LAN; it's what I use for most of my viewing, but I can also use it when I travel or use the license for my MediaMVP.

Originally Posted by gilded07

#8 - Regarding recording, if I schedule a weekly series or sitcom to be recorded and then I look ahead and see that I've already seen an episode that is scheduled to be recorded, can I tell Sage to not record that particular episode in the series?

Yep. You can do this natively in Sage, or as I mentioned before, nielm's webserver is a great tool for this.

Originally Posted by gilded07

My home is wired w/ CAT5; I rarely use wireless and never for streaming video or music. I have two VoIP lines and several PCs connected. My networking / configuration skills are moderate.

Thanx.

you sound like a perfect candidate for an extender; you may want to wait to purchase an extender until the HD extender is released (hopefully in November) and see what the pricing will be like.


HTH,
Stu

EDIT: dangit ; I'm slowing down in my old age. I don't want to throw away the post.

[reggie14]

gilded07,

The answers to one of your questions are misleading. You can't use the webserver plugin to watch shows from outside your network. Well, in theory you can, but you can't stream it unless you have an amazingly fast internet connection since the webserver doesn't transcode it to take up less bandwidth.

The placeshifter does a great job at that, but I highly doubt your 700Mhz CPU is up to the task. It won't be able to transcode video files in realtime, which also means you won't be able to play divx/xvid/etc. movies on a media extender.

Other than that the responses so far are pretty accurate.

[flavius]

Originally Posted by gilded07

I've used BTV for 3+ years and love it. However, I'm ready to extend my viewing experience from a monitor to a TV...an unfortunately obvious shortcoming of Snapstream's BTV.

BTV has issues, sure. What did you see on your TV? Hit ANY key?

[waltraud]

Originally Posted by reggie14

gilded07,

The answers to one of your questions are misleading. You can't use the webserver plugin to watch shows from outside your network. Well, in theory you can, but you can't stream it unless you have an amazingly fast internet connection since the webserver doesn't transcode it to take up less bandwidth.

The webserver actually does transcode the recording. You can even select the bitrate and the format (H264, MPEG2, MPEG4 or WMV).

[matt91]

Originally Posted by waltraud

The webserver actually does transcode the recording. You can even select the bitrate and the format (H264, MPEG2, MPEG4 or WMV).

IIRC, all you need to have installed on the server end is VLC and it will transcode on the fly. Does a good job too...but you can't seek, start/restart like placeshifter.

Matt

[tipstir]

Just can't compare the two... Try SAGETV you'll never go back to buggy PVR software again. I did the same move myself with 3 yrs with GBPVR software with sound sync problems or no sound recorded and timeline errors. SAGETV doesn't do that and I am using the same drivers go figure, but I am happy with SAGETV doing these 8 months of heavy duty recording now with the Fall Season all 3 PVR-150 gets a good workout with SAGETV behind the wheel..

[davephan]

Originally Posted by gilded07

I've used BTV for 3+ years and love it. However, I'm ready to extend my viewing experience from a monitor to a TV...an unfortunately obvious shortcoming of Snapstream's BTV. I've downloaded the free trial of Sage and although the interface isn't quite as intuitive, I like what I see and I can adapt.

Gilded07,

Do you see many people on the BTV forum that are switching to BTV from SageTV? There have been many people I've seen on the SageTV forum switching from BTV to SageTV.


Dave

[lparkin]

I switched a couple years ago from BTV to SAGE. I still have BTV up to date and installed but I really like SAGE better. It is a full media center not just a pvr. If Beyond had done the integration of TV and Media, it might be a better competitor. I don't use anything but Sage anymore. Development pace is much faster with Sage.

I have two silicon dust HD tuners, a Pvr 500 and Nvidia DualTV in my box--6 tuners and have no issues using all of them at the same time with Sage. BTV --- that was a different story.

[Khristopher]

Originally Posted by davephan

Do you see many people on the BTV forum that are switching to BTV from SageTV?

*raises hand* I switched, and absolutely love Sage! It's by far superior to BTV.

[gilded07]

EvilPenguin: I certainly appreciate the your post and all the others' posts as well. However, regarding the the three comskip threads you shared...I must admin I'm confused and overwhelmed. I guess I got spoiled w/ BTV's out of the box and easy to use commercial skip feature. I was hoping for some step by step instructions but have yet to find them; just a bunch of files w/ no explanation of what to do w/ them (download to where? run what?). Have I overlooked the instructions?

Regarding showsqueeze, based on what I've read I doubt my slow server would be able to transcode and stream the squeezed .avi content to an extender, and hdd space is cheaper than a new build so if I want to use an extender w/ Sage I'll have to give up the space saving .avi format. Not a big deal, because my 200gb hdd should be enough and especially since an HD extender might negate this disadvantage anyway.

I'm not ready to give up yet. I'll spend some more time re-reading the posts on comskip but having to learn a second language to get a com skip feature is a show stopper for me. If I can't figure it out I will have to stick w/ BTV because having Sage w/ the extender but having to manually FF through shows would feel like a step backwards.

Maybe I should have stated my configuration skills are beginner!

[GTwannabe]

512mb RAM is too small for a SageTV server, IMO. Sage is a bit of a RAM pig as it's Java-based. 1GB should be considered the practical minimum. Your CPU should be fine until your Wiz.bin database grows large or you import tons of media files (10,000+ MP3's will do it)

You will enjoy SageTV. It's extremely flexible and can grow as you add new hardware.

[Khristopher]

Originally Posted by gilded07

... regarding the the three comskip threads you shared...I must admin I'm confused and overwhelmed.

Try think of this this way.....there are essentially 3 parts which make Comskip work for Sage.

1) The actual program which analyzes the video file an creates an output file detailing when the commercials happen. There are two main programs, ComSkip and ShowAnalyzer. Both essentially do the same thing, however I've personally found ShowAnalyzer to be a little better.....your mileage may vary.

2) An "Import" for Sage TV which takes those output files from Comskip and uses that information to skip over the commercials while watching the show.

3) None of this is possible without another piece of software which sits idle on your computer, simply waiting until a file comes along which matches the criteria it's looking for. Once it sees that file, it activates ComSkip/ShowAnalyzer. This one is called DirMon (Directory Monitor) and is kind of the ringleader which kicks everything off.

Does that help clarify why there are three items?

[gilded07]

I think I understand the role of the apps; I was hoping for more detailed instructions or procedures on how to install. I'm going to look again tonite.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

512mb RAM is too small for a SageTV server, IMO. Sage is a bit of a RAM pig as it's Java-based. 1GB should be considered the practical minimum. Your CPU should be fine until your Wiz.bin database grows large or you import tons of media files (10,000+ MP3's will do it)

You will enjoy SageTV. It's extremely flexible and can grow as you add new hardware.

I've don't think I've ever seen Sage take more than a couple hundred megs of ram. Things like Weather.com's desktop app, maxthon, and Skype have taken up as much ram and don't do as much.

Also, Java apps don't necessarily need more ram. I would say that you can get buy with a sage server, easily with 512 on an XP box.

Sage is not a ram intensive app. Any app written in any language can be take a lot of resources.

I have commerical processing, three tuners, and IR running 24/7.