Why Sage?

[grandalf]

I have played about with versions 5 and 6 of Sage on a couple of machines and have never really got it to work right. Lots of problems with refusing to play various files, and constant freezes along with a rather long winded menu system. It occurred to me that surely others cannot be having the same problems, or else why would you pay for a program that at least in my eyes seems inferior to the free offerings. I can use GBPVR and MP without any issues, I am currently using the latter, finding it slick and reliable with some very attractive skins. Please don't get me wrong here, I am not trying to rubbish Sage in any way, but feel that somehow I am missing the point. Your comments would be most welcome.

[mayamaniac]

Not all things are equal in the computer world, I bet the opposite is also true to some user where SageTV just works and other products are headaches. So just search for solutions in this forum or post your problems with SageTV and maybe users here will help you work around them.

[jdamore]

It sounds like you are having mostly playback problems(?). Have you tryed playing the same recordings that give you errors in sage, in other softwares?

What are your detailed settings:
overlay or VMR9?
Decoder?
Sage Ver.?

As mayamaniac said, some software may work for some and some wont. What hardware do you have?

For me, Sage is the most stable. I go months without rebooting my server/client.

[grandalf]

I appreciate your comments. I have tried this software on 3 different machines, all Athlons of varying sorts with DVB-T tuners. Possibly this combination maybe causes problems. Anyway I only had it for the trial period and kind of gave up after that. I suppose what I was trying to get at, is what advantages does it offer that make a viable commercial product, rather than the freebies that seem to do the job just as well, or indeed better in my case. I can get MCE to work reliably, but find it a bit restrictive. If I thought Sage could offer me any real advantage, I would happily pay for it, so far I remain unconvinced. I feel sure that it works just fine for many people, but sadly I do not seem to be one of them.

[davephan]

You should be able to get SageTV to work for you. It is a bit more complicated than putting in a CD, and running setup.exe, and never doing anything else! It took me awhile to get it configured and operational.

I've been using SageTV for about 3 1/2 years now, starting before version 2.0. SageTV has improved drastically in the past several years. Some tweaking may be required to get it working for you. Once you get everything setup, you should take disk images of your boot drive periodically to make recovery quick and easy if you run into problems.

What type of hardware are you using? What is your version of Java are you using?

Dave

[grandalf]

Thanks for your comments guys. I may play about with it again on a clean install machine at some point as my demo time has now run out. For the moment MP is working flawlessly for me, so I will stick with that until I fancy a change. Just cant stop fiddling...

[mickp]

Originally Posted by grandalf

I appreciate your comments. I have tried this software on 3 different machines, all Athlons of varying sorts with DVB-T tuners. Possibly this combination maybe causes problems. Anyway I only had it for the trial period and kind of gave up after that. I suppose what I was trying to get at, is what advantages does it offer that make a viable commercial product, rather than the freebies that seem to do the job just as well, or indeed better in my case. I can get MCE to work reliably, but find it a bit restrictive. If I thought Sage could offer me any real advantage, I would happily pay for it, so far I remain unconvinced. I feel sure that it works just fine for many people, but sadly I do not seem to be one of them.

Hey Grandalf,

I've been a btv and (for a very short time) gbpvr user. I haven't checked out media portal as at the time I was last in the market it didn't appear to do tv at all.

The big advantages that I see are;

Stability. Sage has been rock solid for me. No problems with crashing (aside from the time my cpu fan gummed up), no missed/corrupted recordings. This is quite different from my experiences with at least one other platform.

Flexibility. I like that it supports Windows, linux, mac (and hauppauge mvp). I'd consider myth as an option but the lack of a Windows client rules it out for me.

Features. Compared to other solutions that I've used it's (with SageMC and a couple of plugins) feature complete. There isn't any major capability that I find myself wanting (your mileage may vary). Many things that were on my wishlist using other platforms are just non issues in Sage.

Must have additions to the base Sage install (imho);

SageMC
Video Editor
DVD Burning
Cool Toolbar Thinger

I note that you mentioned a long winded menu system. Many users prefer to use SageMC which is a complete replacement for the Sage UI (thanks Sage for providing this capability). Make sure you check this out if you check out sage again.

Mick.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by grandalf

If I thought Sage could offer me any real advantage, I would happily pay for it, so far I remain unconvinced. I feel sure that it works just fine for many people, but sadly I do not seem to be one of them.

If you are perfectly happy with the other free products, then there is no reason to buy SageTV. But if you feel the other products are lacking features that are in SageTV, then you are in the same boat as many SageTV users who switched from other products, myself included. For me, this is what is lacking in other products that only SageTV has:

Placeshifter (Full working client)
MVP Extender (Full working client)
Run as a Service
HD Extender (due in Nov)

[grandalf]

Thanks again for your comments. My setup is only a single PC, so no real need for the other options. Did try the client/server in MP, worked o.k but no real advantage to me, so went back to single user for simplicity. Nice to see that Sage has got a loyal following, says a lot, must be my setup(s) that are the problem. I did try myth for a while, seemed to work o.k but could never get the screen size correct on my TV. I will have another go with Sage at some point now I know that it can be done.

[nielm]

I have never tried the other options (unless you count BTV, myHTPC and showshifter 4 yrs ago!), but one thing some people praise sage for is it's highly flexible recording system:

• favorites (series record) have several options to limit by channel/day/time so that you get the shows you really want.
• It aims never to re-record the same episode (or never to re-record an episode you have already watched, or said that you don't like)
• Very efficient auto conflict management system that can record later re-runs of the same episode to avoid a conflict. For non-auto resolveable conflicts you get a warning and a screen displaying the conflict with the options
• Intelligent recording (or intelligent suggested recordings using my plugin) can suggest other shows based on your viewing habits (this needs some training to work well)

Other things include intelligent disk management: can record to multiple disks, and auto-deletes watched shows to make space when required

[grandalf]

You have my interest again... I like the idea of not recording the same show again, not sure if MP does this. In saying that I do not really record series, just the occasional timeshift. I am however tempted to reformat a spare machine and try again. I always like to try several things just to get a feel of what is useful to me. I recommend trying GBPVR and Mediaportal just to see how the other half lives, so to speak. I hope this is not considered swearing in a Sage forum
grin.gif

[GKusnick]

One aspect of Sage that nobody's mentioned yet is its high degree of customizability. There's an active third-party developer community producing a wide variety of add-ons. Plus SageTV Studio is included in every release, allowing anybody with time and skill to create their own customized UI. This goes beyond simply skinning (i.e. replacing UI graphics); with Studio you can design your own menu system and feature set from the ground up. Or if you're not that ambitious, you can create small mods to the standard UI to rearrange menus or tweak existing features.

[stevech]

Isn't the MVP support in Sage unique in full-featured DVR-land?

Some others have PC clients, but not the MVP for simply adding TVs.

[tipstir]

Originally Posted by grandalf

You have my interest again... I like the idea of not recording the same show again, not sure if MP does this. In saying that I do not really record series, just the occasional timeshift. I am however tempted to reformat a spare machine and try again. I always like to try several things just to get a feel of what is useful to me. I recommend trying GBPVR and Mediaportal just to see how the other half lives, so to speak. I hope this is not considered swearing in a Sage forum
grin.gif

I just left one free PVR that supported MVP software as it the one you have mention above. I was using it for 3 years.. Then this year I had tried SAGETV again I got it it working but you really can't have both PVR programs on the system so one had to go and I kept SAGETV! I now get all my recording recorded! Gone is the timeline issues, no sound in recordings no sound on channels in Live TV and sometimes just no video but sound. MediaMVP would reboot while watching recorded video. I had to switch to Hauppauge MediaMVP Server to fix that problem. Comskip stop working it wasn't the comskip program. Prior to that PVR it was MediaPortal, that one crashed my system too may times. Or just hanged and it doesn't support MVPs. I have MCE 2005 that doesn't record MPEG2 and PQ looks fuzzy and it only uses DRM format. I just had enough! My wife said get those DVRs from cable company, which I did get. But I still have my 5 MediaMVPs that I wasn't going to dropped. But I rather use the PC to do the recordings! I've built 2 HTPC for this purpose. Now 7 of these MVPs but you know you can try whatever you want too, but you're learn the hard way.

YOu'll be back to SAGETV!
SAGETV has Smart Recording feature which is a bonus I have over 40 programs set to record on -FirstRun mode. Some I forget when it comes on and SAGETV still records it. Other PVR don't have features like that for automatic recordings. Supports the MediaMVP the fonts and graphics are first rate sharp and vivid.

There are many PVR software out there but go try them all but nothing like SAGETV

[grandalf]

O.K guys,

You have talked me in to it, I will have another go when I get a bit of time.Many thanks

[mdnttoker]

SageMC w/Commercial Skip.

Priceless.

[wrems]

The support from this forums members!

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by wrems

The support from this forums members!

And, more importantly, the support that you purchased from the developers.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by sainswor99

And, more importantly, the support that you purchased from the developers.

I agree that the folks at SageTV provide good tech support, and that's an important selling point. But if you want to get nitpicky, you didn't actually purchase that support, in the sense that there's nothing in the EULA that obliges them to provide it. All you purchased was the license key. Post-purchase tech support is something they provide gratis out of their own self-interest, because it's better to have happy customers than disgruntled customers.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by wrems

The support from this forums members!

Good one! This is very important. It doesn't matter how great a product is or how many features and plugins it supports. They're useless if Joe User can't get it working. A friendly forum where experts are willing to help makes all the difference in the world between a good, bad or great product.