SageTV+HD Media Extender: 1st Impressions

[jamma]

At long last, I decided to organize my digital assets: hours of home videos, gigabytes of photos and a 300 disc CD collection. Time to get everything into some sort of media server. The goal was to be able to listen/watch anything via selection from my TV/stereo (and couch). Since I'm fairly happy with my Comcast DVR, I wasn't too concerned about replicating this functionality.

The requirement to access everything from the TV narrowed the scope to systems that involved a media extender. After much research, it became clear that the current crop of media extenders (especially the wireless ones) leave a lot to be desired. That left me looking at the v 2.0 MCE media extenders (expensive and still not shipping), the Popcorn Hour NMT (sold out immediately), and the new STX-HD100 from SageTV. I was lucky enough to get 2 SageTV units in the first shipment. Here are some details of my setup and my initial impressions.

Gear:
I started with a completely blank slate - no existing HTPC or any other dedicated gear. I ordered one of the new HP MediaSmart Home Servers since it was small, relatively cheap, fairly capable, and supported by SageTV (~$550 for .5TB which I'll expand to 3.5TB with the addition of 3 1TB internal drives). I heard that performance of this box improves if you replace the single 512MB DIMM with a 2GB one, so I spent an additional $26 at Newegg for this and installed it before ever turning the box on.

The downside of the HP WHS is that there is no way to install tuner cards. Not a big deal for me since I'm not concerned with DVR functionality, but I did go ahead and order a HDHomerun anyway. It hasn't yet arrived. I'll update this once I get it going. Personally, I think the tuner approach --including the HDHR-- is a dead-end, since the cablecos are always going to encrypt enough channels to make you frustrated. Somebody wake me when/if Cablecard v 2.0 is out and you can stuff multiples of them in a third-party box without undue involvement of the cableco. The firewire hack of the company-supplied STB isn't interesting to me.

The HD100 is connected via a 75ft run of cat 5e to a 100Mbps port on my linksys router and is in turn connected to my AVR (an older Yamaha) via optical audio and component video (no HDMI on the receiver). The Yamaha is connected to the TV via component.

Install:
Couldn't have been easier. The only real issues I had related to WHS, not SageTV. Summarizing them, you can access the Home Server via a console (simple but limited) or via a remote desktop connection (more powerful, but messing too much with things can actually damage WHS functionality). I wasn't sure which method was needed to install SageTV. Here's the answer: Console. Simply download the SageTV for WHS and save to the \Software\Add-Ins share. Open the Console, click settings and choose Add-Ins. Click the Available tab and then Install. A few minutes later, you'll have a new item in the console called SageTV Service (and the SageTV server will be up and running). From here you can enter the licenses you have for the software and extenders/placeshifters. The only other thing you can do is stop/start the service.

The SageTV service has a 156MB memory footprint, so I'm glad I added the extra RAM on this box (with nothing else running, total memory usage is 725MB).

Installing the HD100 is quite simple and has been covered in detail elsewhere. It automatically detected the WHS server and conveniently preconfigured the Photos, Videos, & Music directories to the corresponding shares in WHS. If you store your media in these default locations, there's very little you need to do to get things going.

Impressions:
Overall, I'm quite pleased with this solution. With very little effort, and a comparatively small outlay (~$850), I've got a system that allows me to access my media via my TV and remote control.

Yes, I've got the same problems with the remote sensitivity that everyone else has reported. You really do need to aim the remote directly at the extender from relatively straight on. I'll probably end up drilling a hole in the front panel as at least one other person did to remedy this.

Since I'm mostly interested in the non-DVR pieces of SageTV, I realize I'm wandering away from this system's traditional strength. However, I do think I'm representative of a new type of SageTV customer, one that they may need to service better as the product grows out of it's enthusiast roots. To that end, here is a list of issues I'd like to see SageTV address:

Music:
Visualizations:
I was heartily disappointed to see the sole "visualization" supported by the system when playing a song is simply information about that song (album, artist, title) jumping around on the screen. Are you kidding? With such a rich history of graphical music visualizations now behind us (see any media player, and for many years now), why can't I get something interesting to happen on my screen as I listen to music?

Song ratings:
Need to support this. See a system like JRiver's Media Center or WMP (most any music management software, for that matter). Ratings should be linked to genre, such that I can play top rated "Party" songs, or top rated "Chill out" songs, etc.

Playlists:
Really need to up the functionality here. Again, see any music management software.

Photos:
Why can't I play any song/playlist I want as I watch a picture slideshow?

Online Services:
- Internet Radio, please!
- Need to integrate with a place like Amazon's MP3 download service so I can buy DRM free songs from my couch.
- Can you integrate better with a service like NetFlix's instant movie watching service?

iTunes protected music:
I understand the (RIAA inspired?) decision to not allow protected content to be played on the extender. Fine. But please, just don't show any information associated with protected material. It's frustrating to see an album listed, but then to not see any songs (it appears as "Empty") because the songs are protected. This isn't an issue with the CDs I've ripped, but my wife has accumulated a lot of iTunes material, the vast majority of which will not play on the extender, so is just polluting the music interface if you ask me. BTW, as more people stream to their TVs with non-AppleTV extenders, people will run away from iTunes DRM'd music. My wife is now under instructions to download all MP3s from Amazon. The converse is true too, however: for houses with lots of iTunes DRM'd music, SageTV's inability to stream this content will make it an unattractive option relative to AppleTV.

I'm sure SageTV will eventually address these issues. Overall, I'm happy with the purchase and look forward to seeing how the system expands in the future.

[valnar]

Honestly, you listed everything that is not a Sage forte, nor for the most part, they don't care about. It's a PVR and video media front-end. That's the focus.

You might be better served by another package, although if you wanted a TV tuner, this definitely is the platform.

Robert

[bastafidli]

You can watch any song while you wathc playlist. Create playlist or start playing song, then hit back and go to your photos and start slideshow. I did it this weekend and it was great success in our family.

[jamma]

Thanks Bastafidli! I used your hint and watched a whole bunch of slideshows set to my own selection of music. Family loved it. Cross one off the list.

To valnar: If you know of additional affordable solutions to the "access all your digital media from the TV" problem, please let me know (BTW, I did take a long hard look at LinuxMCE/Fiire. Very promising, but not quite baked). I know SageTV's history is in PVR software, but I do believe that they rightly see themselves as a legitimate answer to this larger problem. To the extent they can smooth out the rough edges I mention (and others), they can significantly broaden their market. The fact that they beat the MCE crowd in delivering a next gen extender is to me a statement of both their seriousness to go beyond TV (no pun intended) and a positive reflection of their ability to execute on that vision.

As readers of this and similar forums know all too well, the long talked about "convergence" (TV, computer, internet, stereo, telephone/videophone, home automation) is finally upon us. As with most new technologies, it takes longer than you think to get here, but when it does, adoption is faster than you could have guessed. I firmly believe that the next significant revision of AppleTV is going to put "level one" convergence into the public's consciousness. IMHO, SageTV has an opportunity to not just ride this wave, but to be at its forefront.

[autoboy]

Jamma,

You hit on every weakness that SageTV currently has, and I hope the new proliferation of users telling SageTV that this is what they want will get Sage management interested in addressing these issues. Sage is usually good about listening to their customers and delivering product that addresses their concerns.

[Jesse]

Hi,

I hate to say this, but if you are not using, and do not need Sage's pvr functionality then you should take a hard look at JRiver Media Center. They have a "Theater View" mode that works great on an HD tv set. It will also support a remote control if you add an IR receiver (eg USBUIRT).

Jesse

[jerrypvr]

Most of my music is Itunes DRM'd.

There is a 3rd party MCE solution available to play iTunes with DRM: http://www.mcetunes.com/faq.php?oem=px&lang=en

There is also a solution that plays the songs via RSS: http://www.codewave.de/products/mytunesrss/

I have tried to play the RSS feeds though Sage with no luck.

[jamma]

Just installed the HDHR and am updating this post as I said I would. In sum, the install was mostly without issue, although quite tedious when it comes to channel remapping (this took about 2 hours). Some issues I encountered that may help others:

WHS-related: If you're using a headless WHS server like I am, you'll need to install the HDHR software from a Remote Desktop Connection (RDC), and not the console. The instructions on the SiliconDust website are pretty good. Follow them step by step. For Digital Cable, the instructions are here:
http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/hdho...s/sagetv_cable

The one issue I had came in the SageTV section. The HD Extender did not automatically identify the new tuners. Restarting the HD Extender does not help. What you need to do is stop and then restart the SageTV service on the WHS box (which you can do through the console via the SageTV add-in). BTW, at another point in the process, the HD Extender became quite sluggish with a big spike in CPU use on the WHS box. Stopping and starting the SageTV service cured this, too.

The other thing that isn't at all clear is that there is a limit to the number of remappable channels that the HDHR supports (I think it's 68). So, after the channel scan completes, within the HDHR channel mapping software, UNCHECK the Enable buttons for any channel that is listed as UNKNOWN. If your experience is like mine (I'm on Comcast in the SF Bay area), these channels won't show up when you try to watch them anyway. By unchecking them, you allow other potential channels to get a "remap" number assigned to them. You now have to go through the laborious process of entering these remap numbers into SageTV (in my case via the HD Extender).

Performance:
I do have lots of stuttering during live TV playback like others have described. If you hit the pause button briefly and then play, this problem goes away. I have yet to try setting the property mentioned in a different thread:
videoframe/local_encoding_to_playback_delay=1000

Overall, the HDHR provides about the "meh" experience I envisioned. Seems to work fine for what it is, but let's face it, tunable content is very limited: we're talking about network channels, public broadcasting, shopping and foreign language channels. Outside of the Discovery Channel (a welcome surprise!), there is very little of interest from my provider that doesn't require a cable card.

The only benefit I see to this and other tuner card solutions would be to clean out commercials from network channel recordings. I have yet to do this (pointers anyone?), but, like speech recognition software, 99% accuracy would likely still be annoying. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.