Comparison Apple iTV vs SageTV...

[hedlung]

I've been (since Sage announced the HDExtender in Jan) keen on taking the build of a "tv-server".
But my friend, who's ALL into Apple things says I have to look at iTV... I own a couple of Macs, so I don't have to be convinced about "Apple things", but I believe SageTV does "more" than iTV.
Anyone that could help me out on this...?

[Taddeusz]

Yes, SageTV does much more than AppleTV. AppleTV is more or less an extender for iTunes. However it's more like an iPod in that it has local storage where you can copy stuff locally from iTunes or rent movies directly from the iTunes Store.

SageTV on the other hand is a complete PVR/media center solution. Not only will it allow you to access all your (unencrypted) media but it's primary function is to be set up to record TV much like a Tivo. In that way it can be used to time-shift live TV. Not only that but it can also be used to "place-shift" TV. Meaning you could be away from home and if everything is configured correctly you could watch your recordings from anywhere you can get internet access.

The HD100 extender is another excellent addition to SageTV. Previously with the Hauppauge MediaMVP if a video was not already in MPEG2 SageTV would need to re-encode it in real-time so it could be played on the device. The HD100 can play almost anything natively and so lifts that burden from SageTV.

IMHO, there is no solution quite like SageTV. Not even Vista Media Center can even come close to what you get with SageTV.

[lobosrul]

I'd have to point out that Apple iTV and SageTV aren't really competing products. If you wanted to shop around, SageTV's direct competitors are MythTV, BeyondTV, and Microsoft MCE.

The Apple iTV is not a DVR system, its essentially an extender for a pc with itunes, its also very limited on what types of files it can playback.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

I'd have to point out that Apple iTV and SageTV aren't really competing products.

It's like comparing apples and oranges.


(couldn't resist.)

Gerry

[hedlung]

So, what you all sat, is that iTV isn't suitable for, or maybe even cannot be used for recording tv? And as a "computer" then not be able to timeshift and such? It isn't implemented in the product? Why the name then, iTV...? Or should I ask Apple...?

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by hedlung

So, what you all sat, is that iTV isn't suitable for, or maybe even cannot be used for recording tv? And as a "computer" then not be able to timeshift and such? It isn't implemented in the product? Why the name then, iTV...? Or should I ask Apple...?

With the slight exception of having it's own storage the AppleTV is kind of like the HD Extender that's made for SageTV. Even though AppleTV can have it's own media stored locally it's basically worthless without a computer to serve the media. The AppleTV is not designed with time-shifting in mind. It does not interface with any kind of PVR software. Only what you feed it from iTunes or purchase from the iTunes Store.

Conversely the HD Extender is explicitly an "interface extender" for SageTV. With the exception of add-ons that need to be run directly on a computer it has all the interface functionality as if it were running full screen on an actual computer. SageTV is designed to work as a PVR to time-shift live TV. It has the functionality to pause live TV as you're watching it. AppleTV has no such functionality because it only interfaces with iTunes for it's media.

[hedlung]

Thank you all for your answers! I'll better get in the line and order an extender or 2... :-)

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by hedlung

Thank you all for your answers! I'll better get in the line and order an extender or 2... :-)

Get two, I'm really glad I did. No fuss, no muss, no support calls from the wife.

[meep]

I'm a big apple fan but had to look elsewhere for PVR as apple Tv does not cut it.

I've invested in SateTV server and a couple of clients and am about to pull the trigger on one or two HD extenders. However, this has made me reevaluate;

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...t_filings.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._business.html

I'm imagining an apple device with PVR, iTunes integration, HD on demand movies and, possibly, Blu-Ray. From apple, it would be easy to set up and work very very well with excellent WAF etc.

Sage really needs to address this. For me, my Sage gripes are;

-Very difficult to set up UK/Ireland Sat TV Listings (a real pain)
-Clunky Interface (particularly music playback)
-No on-demand movie download service
-Patchy online video materials

I'm holding off diving headlong into Sage until I see what apple come up with in next 6 months.

Peter

[Tinpanharry]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

With the slight exception of having it's own storage the AppleTV is kind of like the HD Extender that's made for SageTV. Even though AppleTV can have it's own media stored locally it's basically worthless without a computer to serve the media. The AppleTV is not designed with time-shifting in mind. It does not interface with any kind of PVR software. Only what you feed it from iTunes or purchase from the iTunes Store.

Conversely the HD Extender is explicitly an "interface extender" for SageTV. With the exception of add-ons that need to be run directly on a computer it has all the interface functionality as if it were running full screen on an actual computer. SageTV is designed to work as a PVR to time-shift live TV. It has the functionality to pause live TV as you're watching it. AppleTV has no such functionality because it only interfaces with iTunes for it's media.

Could the Apple TV run a version of the Mac Sage Client? I would pay for that.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Tinpanharry

Could the Apple TV run a version of the Mac Sage Client? I would pay for that.

Maybe there's a way you could hack it but I'm not real sure. Don't have one myself and don't really want one. That's what I have my HD Extender for.

[mohanman]

I am actually the opposite and may switch from my HD extender to an Appletv. The reason.. several:

1) Interface is sooooo much better. Cover art/box art, easy interface. My girlfriend had trouble with sage.. girls.

2) I am sick of updating my sagetv software just to have one thing to stop working for another new thing to work. That is why I love Apple products.. one update, that is it, and they tend to fix bugs rapidly. For example with the latest update, now I can't play mkv files, wmv etc.

3) I don't need to leave the computer on all day.. granted my mac Pro is quiet, it does consume a lot of electricity.. with syncing to the appletv I don't need to

4) Yeah, it doesn't support many formats, but can be hacked with a patchstick to support divx/xvid etc easily. Also ripped DvDs.

5) The music section in Sagetv is simply horrible. Some songs show up, other dont, it feels very "cheap"

6) For the TV, I got so sick of spending many, many hours trying to get different tuners to work, the computer freezes, hard drive space, the expensive hardware.. so much wasted time when a TIVO does similar things.

Not to trash Sage completely, I was a BIG fan of sage, and I still am, anyone who asks me what the best HTPC stuff is, it is Sage hands down. But for me, who wanted simplicity, and didn't have time to deal with all the above I find an AppleTV/TIVO combination may work flawlessly.

Just my thoughts
Thanks
Mo

[bastafidli]

5) +1

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by mohanman

Not to trash Sage completely, I was a BIG fan of sage, and I still am, anyone who asks me what the best HTPC stuff is, it is Sage hands down. But for me, who wanted simplicity, and didn't have time to deal with all the above I find an AppleTV/TIVO combination may work flawlessly.

I've pretty much been an apple hater since I had to install ethernet cards in 30 original Mac SEs at my first job. Anything that hostile to modification didn't deserve a dime from me, especially considering their original roots with the Apple 1 & 2. That and Steve Jobs' foolish consistencies. For all the grand vision and wonderful stuff they've done he's not going to admit that people are finally intelligent enough to manage more than one button.

Anyway, the AppleTV seemed interesting at first, but I got rapidly turned off by the requirement for iTunes. I may be one of the only ones, but I can't stand iTunes' UI, and I really can't tolerate how much they try to lock you in. I do not want to give up control of my media to Apple or anybody else, which is why I've finally ended up here with SageTV and the R5000.

Lastly, doesn't the HMO option in Tivo alleviate the need for the appleTV? Or is the UI bad...? I haven't used it, so I don't really know the limitations.

Cheers,
Slipshod

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

I've pretty much been an apple hater since I had to install ethernet cards in 30 original Mac SEs at my first job. Anything that hostile to modification didn't deserve a dime from me, especially considering their original roots with the Apple 1 & 2. That and Steve Jobs' foolish consistencies. For all the grand vision and wonderful stuff they've done he's not going to admit that people are finally intelligent enough to manage more than one button.

To each their own but a whole lot has changed since those days of Apple. Those were actually the Sculley years when Apple took kind of a nose dive. Apple bought NeXT along with Jobs and he practically saved the company. OS X is quite a different beast compared to the OS 8.5 or 9 you were running on those Mac SE's.

I used to be kind of a Mac hater. I now have an Intel Mac Mini and love it. It's one of the best machines I have. I'm going to eventually get a MacBook.

Originally Posted by Slipshod

Anyway, the AppleTV seemed interesting at first, but I got rapidly turned off by the requirement for iTunes. I may be one of the only ones, but I can't stand iTunes' UI, and I really can't tolerate how much they try to lock you in. I do not want to give up control of my media to Apple or anybody else, which is why I've finally ended up here with SageTV and the R5000.

One thing you have to remember is that AppleTV isn't really trying to compete with PVR technology like SageTV. There is no way to record live TV without extra software.

I honestly can't understand how anyone would prefer SageTV's music organization. Probably the least usable part of it. SageTV's music library is quite abhorrent compared to iTunes. This is one area of SageTV that needs a whole lot of work.

But as I said earlier, to each their own.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I honestly can't understand how anyone would prefer SageTV's music organization. Probably the least usable part of it. SageTV's music library is quite abhorrent compared to iTunes. This is one area of SageTV that needs a whole lot of work.

But as I said earlier, to each their own.

While I agree that SageTV (hmmm, wonder what the TV part is for???) needs to work on the music library, or better yet, someone needs to make a good add on, I have to disagree with iTunes. It is worthless , unless you use the store or have an iPod.

But yes, to each his own.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

While I agree that SageTV (hmmm, wonder what the TV part is for???) needs to work on the music library, or better yet, someone needs to make a good add on, I have to disagree with iTunes. It is worthless , unless you use the store or have an iPod.

But yes, to each his own.

Yes, I do have an iPod.

Out of curiosity, what's useless about iTunes? Really, I think the only area where iTunes falls flat is with people who have absolutely insanely large libraries of music. We're talking 5+ figures here. iTunes just wasn't meant to organize that much stuff. This also begs the question of why anyone would need that much in the first place. That being said my library currently consists of about 8200 songs and iTunes runs fine. No slowdowns that I can detect.

As long as all your tags are in some kind of order smart playlists are one of the best features of iTunes.

What do you use to organize your music?

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Out of curiosity, what's useless about iTunes?

When I tried iTunes briefly many moons ago (I wanted a quick streamer to test the Roku soundbridge) it left a really bad taste in my mouth:

1. The interface is all Apple, which is out of place to an experienced windows (or Unix for that matter) user. All the buttons were labeled using Mac terminology and it looked like a Mac application. If I wanted Mac applications I would buy a Mac. I understand the marketing reasons to do this, but I'm not the target audience so it falls flat for me.

2. I didn't do it's basic job (play my music) correctly. I pointed it at my music dir on the NAS, and it proceeded to scan and import all of my MP3s. Unfortunately, it also scanned and imported my m3u playlists seperately, which caused massive duplication in my library. I had multiple entries for damn near every MP3 I own, once for itself and once for every M3U the song was in. This was completely unacceptible.

3. To add insult to injury, when I first tried to delete some of the duplicates I couldn't use the first method I tried because right-clicking didn't do anything on items in the library. This was the last straw and I uninstalled it and never looked back.

Unfortunately, for quite a while Apple kept trying to shove it down my throat. You used to have to carefully read the fineprint to find the link to download quicktime without iTunes bundled. THAT just ticked me off more. Thankfully they've stopped doing that now and it's nice and direct.

What do you use to organize your music?

That all depends on what I'm using to listen to the music. Everything is tagged with ID3 tags when I rip it, and I use my own Genre tags as basic playlists in addition to playlists generated on my Linux server (it scans and regenerates my custom playlists nightly based on id3 info)

For the Car I have a Phatbox which provides voice navigation based on MP3 tags (no recognition, it just speaks to you so you can keep your eyes on the road while selecting music). It also has it's own music manager for syncing the hard disk, and that has the equivalent of smart playlists in it. I don't buy as much music as I used to, so I don't end up syncing all that often.

For home I use TwonkyVision as a UPNPAV server, which is fine for what I need. (Streaming to a Roku soundbridge).

For "on the go" I have my favorite songs on my chocolate (4GB microSD) and everything on an Archos 705 (160GB HD).

I rarely use the Audio interface in SageMC, but the wife does and thinks it's "OK but not great."


My Phatbox won't playback protected AAC, and I doubt anything else I have will either. I despise DRM with a passion, and I do buy all of my music. Since the RIAA has gone on their witchunt I've stopped buying new albums completely, and dramatically reduced the overall ammount of music I buy. If I buy something now I only buy it used or from Amazon's DRM-Free MP3 store specifically because of the RIAA. If I want to support the band I'll go see the concert or buy crap from their website.

I didn't buy a first-gen iPhone specifically because of iTunes. I may buy a 3G one in spite of that. Apple does make good hardware, they just need to rethink some of the things they are forcing on people. Darwin was smart (there's a CLI finally!), but they really, REALLY need to drop the "one-mouse-button" fetish completely.

[OneThomas]

Maybe I am an oddball - but I really don't find the SageTV music interface to be all that horrible. I view Sage as a PVR solution first, with all other functionality as icing on the cake. For me - it handles my music needs quite well (4,000 + files and growing). And any issues I have usually end up being due to goofed up tagging info...

Outside of the hardware costs - which can be as cheap or expensive as the individual building their setup wishes to go - the software cost for SageTV is MINIMAL - and folks keep comparing it to much much more expensive solutions.

[Taddeusz]

I'm not sure where you're coming from about not being able to right-click on items in iTunes. It has all sorts of context menus through the right mouse button. Possibly something in the way you had your mouse configured or an odd compatibility problem?

I guess I've started to become less obsessive about things as I age. Now days I just want stuff that works. The less I have to tinker with something to get it to work the better. my iPod/iTunes combo just works and works very well to my liking. I do use music playback in SageMC. Sage is able to play all my AAC and now Apple Lossless files. Much better quality than any comparable MP3 I've ever heard.

Oh, and the previous comment about Mac mice not having more than one button is a little false now days. For one OS X has always had context menus. If you have a mouse with two buttons they are all accessible. Now with Apple's Mighty Mouse it may have only one physical button but it actually has three "buttons" via sensors in the surface of the mouse. It works quite well. I love my wireless Mighty Mouse.