Poll: What do think of the new HD extender

[sam99]

Mine found my server fine and i set it to auto log on to the last conencted server on reboot.

As to pic thumbnails, my pc client used to have fits and freeze up for a couple minutes sometimes when viewing thumbnails. The HD extender was actually downright snappy in doing it.

Had not heard about the open ports and no password thing, but not too concerned anyway as I do not connect to my network from outside (on the other side of my firewall) so my firewall is locked down tight.

[unkyjoe]

I have never been as pleased with a device right out of the box as I have with this product.

I finally moved it into position replacing the PC I had setup to serve the living room. It is working great "the wife is at a christmas party tonight" so this was the perfect time.

I also spent about 2hrs programming my Harmony 880 remote and am very happy with the unit, it is quick and responsive, much better than the SDTV extender we allready have. I cant tell the difference between the HDTV extender and the PC other than the pc was a little less reliable. It is now unhooked and sitting waiting to do something else.

DigitalMan: There is a way to hardcode an IP address and all of the other settings into the unit. When booting up go into setup, and there is where you can harcode the IP along with a lot of other settings.

My understanding is you can also turn off the extender with the remote, then press the HOME button on the remote and it will take you into setup.

Hope this helps!

[DigitalMan]

Originally Posted by unkyjoe

DigitalMan: There is a way to hardcode an IP address and all of the other settings into the unit. When booting up go into setup, and there is where you can harcode the IP along with a lot of other settings.

That's not the IP address I was talking about. I have no problems with the address of the unit whether static or dynamic. I have multiple network segments and there were difficulties with a certain packet getting from one to another.

[flavius]

The extender is pretty much what I expected it to be: a must-have for almost any Sage user.

[Polycron]

Love mine. No more fighting with drivers on the PC!!! As you can tell I had nothing but problems with my client running on a PC with a Geforce 6150 in it. This is WAY BETTER.

Like others, I'm very frustrated with the whole remote IR issue. But I'm still loving the unit!

[autoboy]

Most of my issues I talked about have sorted themselves out. I'm not sure why, but everything seems to be working smoothly except for the poor IR performance. I found the reason the UI did not pop as well and it was because I had the 480p menu system loaded. Loading the 1080p menus look much better. The lag in the menu is so small it does not affect me, and the skipping on the fast forward and rewind has not popped up again. I'm getting happier every time I use it.

[bialio]

Originally Posted by autoboy

I'm getting happier every time I use it.

I've noticed the same thing - it's almost like it's breaking in. It seems to work better as it ages

btl.

[bialio]

I've had some time to play with my two units now.

Picture quality : Almost over saturated and has a bit of a red push by default. I think I'll end up with a custom color preset on my TV that will be for the extender, and another for other components.

HD quality : Great HD performance. Nice to forget about codecs and filters and all that crap.

IR : OEM remote is pretty weak - I get better response from my Harmony 520s (scored 2 for $40 each on ebay), however they are still pretty picky about being at just the right angle / height. I'll be getting out the drill if Sage doesn't offer some other solution in the next few weeks.

Video Resolutions : I'm very confused about the video resolutions that you set in the Settings menu (before connecting to the Server) vs the ones that you set while connected to the server. I kept initially getting black screens and had to switch the video output to get any picture at all. Finally I just enabled the one resolution I need for each TV in the initial Settings menu, and those problems went away.

Aspect Ratios : They aren't sticky. Seems like every time you change the channel it reverts to Source. But you can add custom onces, once you decipher the somewhat cryptic instructions. I think this will be really nice once it all shakes out. Non linear stretch is even supported!

--- main problems that I have with it ---

• Audio is lost sometimes when playing live HD TV - workaround is to skip back once and watch "almost live" TV I can live with this one for a while.
• IR issues - hopefully Sage will step up and offer some kind of solution for this. At least there is a warranty voiding work around if they don't.
• Aspect Ratio stickiness. I don't want to always use Source.

[autoboy]

It is like speaker's "break in period"

[TimmyToo]

Originally Posted by bialio

I've had some time to play with my two units now.

Picture quality : Almost over saturated and has a bit of a red push by default. I think I'll end up with a custom color preset on my TV that will be for the extender, and another for other components.

That is what I see on my unit also. I haven't had the time to correct it yet.

My goal is to use the HD Extender exclusively if I can rid of the glitches. Right now I find myself switching to the interal QAM tuner on the TV when things start acting up with the extender.

[reggie14]

Here are my thoughts on the extender-

Appearance:
The extender has a pretty low-key look, which is good. But, you can tell it was designed quickly and without much thought. For instance, why isn’t the “UP” button above the “Enter” button? The front panel has a bump right there seemingly to support such a design, but instead the UP/DOWN buttons are to the sides of the LEFT/RIGHT buttons. Also, after looking inside the case, the extender is quite a bit larger than necessary. I would have preferred that it be as small as possible or that it have the same width as an A/V receiver. Also, I don’t particularly like the data activity light on the front panel, as it is a little distracting. In spite of these things, I’m relatively happy with the appearance.

Setup:
Setup was really easy. I didn’t have any problems upgrading the firmware, although it took about 30 minutes. One small thing: I wish the extender would have taken you to the settings menu when it started up for the first time. I completely missed that menu item and had to look in the booklet to find it.

Performance/Visual Quality:
I actually don’t have a high-def TV. I’ll get one at some point, but now I stuck with an SDTV. However, my cable company’s analog signals, particularly for network stations, are awful, so I’ve been using this to watch HD signals on an SD-TV. So, I’m not the best person to talk about picture quality, but I’ll throw in my 2 cents.

I know there are some complaints about color reproduction and saturation, but I haven’t noticed any problems. I also know there have been complaints about divx/xvid playback. I have some videos, mostly divx, and haven’t had any problems. I’ve really been impressed with the quality of the imported video playback, since I was previously transcoding them to the MVP on standard quality. I’ve played back mpeg2 and divx/xvid mpeg4, and in all cases playback has been smooth.

On a related note, the new animations are nice. They aren’t always completely smooth, but they’re usually pretty good. Also, I noticed the Sage menus look incredibly bright on my TV. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to the MVP whose s-video port seems to be rather dark. I think they are even a little too bright, but I’m sure I’ll get use to it.

Remote:
As many others have noted on the forums, the remote is junk. More precisely, the front panel obstructs IR signals. That, combined with a slightly underpowered remote, means you have to aim the remote directly at the unit for it to do anything. I find it extremely annoying when using the included remote, but my A/V receiver’s learning remote works quite a bit better. This is really disappointing, because it would be nice to have a remote that gives to you quick access to so many Sage commands. It’s a bit clumsy to use my receiver’s remote.

[Taddeusz]

I'm happy I bought it. I wasn't going to but decided at the last minute on the morning of the 10th after I'd woken up to buy one. I received it exactly one week later because of the weather as it should have arrived on Friday.

Had a little bit of trouble updating the firmware due to the server problems on the 17th. But it did finally connect and do the update.

Video quality to me is absolutely astounding! Even when compared to the MVP it replaced. I'm actually still on an SDTV. But I notice a difference even in the quality of SD recordings. I believe the decoder in the HD Extender is of higher quality than the one in the MVP. Of course there's no comparison in HD and MPEG 4 playback due to the fact that there's no longer any transcoding needed.

My only real problem is that I have a bunch of H.264/AC3 converted DVD's that were created with Handbrake that aren't able to play properly on it. I'm pretty certain that will be fixed fairly quickly. I'm not really worried that it won't. Being an early adopter I expected a few problems.

The only real damning problem is, of course, the IR issue. Someone really dropped the ball on the material for the front panel.

[oddjob]

Well, after reading all these bad articles in the forums, I was nervous about purchasing a HD Extender.

I have a analog tv and HD projector. I connected the HD Extender to my projector HDMI port and it upgraded. Looks great!

The digital sound is great coming out of my receiver.

I saved my video setting to s-video and connected it to my analog tv.
I hope to someday get a HDTV. The projector I use when I watch movies.

Anyways I get a great picture even with analog tv. Live TV works great too with my HDhomerun.

So far my remote is working fine .. I don't have any problems.

[flavius]

Originally Posted by oddjob

Well, after reading all these bad articles in the forums, I was nervous about purchasing a HD Extender.

I didn't read all of it, but a lot. All I saw was:

1. The IR issue. When you are used to point your remote anywhere while clicking, this must be truly annoying. I am.

2. HDMI output. The extender seems to be fairly picky as far as cables are concerned.

3. Some minor firmware issues where workarounds exist.

This list is probably not complete but the response is postive, overwhelmingly so. However, I'm not going to get another one, before I can be sure that I don't have to drill holes into it.

[iammike]

Originally Posted by flavius

I didn't read all of it, but a lot. All I saw was:

1. The IR issue. When you are used to point your remote anywhere while clicking, this must be truly annoying. I am.

2. HDMI output. The extender seems to be fairly picky as far as cables are concerned.

3. Some minor firmware issues where workarounds exist.

This list is probably not complete but the response is postive, overwhelmingly so. However, I'm not going to get another one, before I can be sure that I don't have to drill holes into it.

I'd add the following:

4. H264/X264/MP4 playback is kind of hit and miss. Although this is probabaly understandable due to the large variety of formats.

5. Transport stream playback is kind of flakey. This isn't as understandable as this is a very standardized format.

Will all the issues, I'm still quite pleased with mine. It's silent, produces a great picture, and plays most things I ask it to. For some folks I'd recommend the purchase for others I wouldn't. If you're into technical things and don't mind working through some issues that are in the end relatively small, then it's great. If you just want a device that you plug in and it works, then you may wind up being disappointed. For these folks I'd recommend waiting a few months until Sage gets some of the issues under control.