Thinking of converting from XP MCE to Sage - a few questions?

[wayner]

I have had an HTPC for about 16 months now. It is running XP MCE and I have bought 5 V1 extenders that I have placed throughout my house (they are pretty cheap on eBay these days). I am now thinking of moving from XP MCE to Sage for 2 reasons: 1) Hauppauge HD PVR support which likely will never come to XP MCE and 2) the CGMS-A problem on XP MCE and VMC.

Note that I live in Canada and therefore do not have the CableCard option, nor would I have the DirecTV option although there are grey market workarounds for that. I do have access to OTA HD and I have a tuner to record all US networks from Buffalo plus some local Toronto stations. However the need for this will diminish in the near future once the HD-PVR is out.

Here is my current system: E6600 CPU w 2GB of RAM, 7600GS video card (may soon move to HD 3650), PVR-150 analog tuner connected to a SA3200 Rogers Digital Cable box, PVR-950 OTA tuner, MCE remote and IR receiver/blaster. OS is XP MCE RU2. I have about 1.25TB of media storage on the HTPC and I have a WHS box with 2TB of permanent storage of movies, kids shows, music, photos, etc. I will likely be adding a BluRay drive in the near future as they now are down to around $155.

Now my questions:
Do I need any hardware to run Sage? (Can I use my MCE remote and IR receiver with Sage)
Will the Sage HDExtender work with live and recorded TV from the Hauppauge HD tuner?
Would it be feasible to watch Sage Recorded TV as "My Videos" in MCE, particularly on my MCE Extenders? Or are you hosed since you don't have metadata identifying the shows? Or has someone written an app to turn Sage metadata + MPEG-2 files into dvr-ms files?
How much is the change in UI? More importantly is this going to get my wife mad at me?

[DOS64K]

Originally Posted by wayner

I have had an HTPC for about 16 months now. It is running XP MCE and I have bought 5 V1 extenders that I have placed throughout my house (they are pretty cheap on eBay these days). I am now thinking of moving from XP MCE to Sage for 2 reasons: 1) Hauppauge HD PVR support which likely will never come to XP MCE and 2) the CGMS-A problem on XP MCE and VMC.

Note that I live in Canada and therefore do not have the CableCard option, nor would I have the DirecTV option although there are grey market workarounds for that. I do have access to OTA HD and I have a tuner to record all US networks from Buffalo plus some local Toronto stations. However the need for this will diminish in the near future once the HD-PVR is out.

Here is my current system: E6600 CPU w 2GB of RAM, 7600GS video card (may soon move to HD 3650), PVR-150 analog tuner connected to a SA3200 Rogers Digital Cable box, PVR-950 OTA tuner, MCE remote and IR receiver/blaster. OS is XP MCE RU2. I have about 1.25TB of media storage on the HTPC and I have a WHS box with 2TB of permanent storage of movies, kids shows, music, photos, etc. I will likely be adding a BluRay drive in the near future as they now are down to around $155.

Now my questions:
Do I need any hardware to run Sage? (Can I use my MCE remote and IR receiver with Sage)
Will the Sage HDExtender work with live and recorded TV from the Hauppauge HD tuner?
Would it be feasible to watch Sage Recorded TV as "My Videos" in MCE, particularly on my MCE Extenders? Or are you hosed since you don't have metadata identifying the shows? Or has someone written an app to turn Sage metadata + MPEG-2 files into dvr-ms files?
How much is the change in UI? More importantly is this going to get my wife mad at me?

As a recent MCE/VMC convert myself I can appreciate your reasons for joining the Sage team. To answer your questions:

Do I need any hardware to run Sage? (Can I use my MCE remote and IR receiver with Sage)

Yes, the MCE remote and receiver work. I actually prefer my Harmony 550. Better WAF!

Will the Sage HDExtender work with live and recorded TV from the Hauppauge HD tuner?

The HD100 streams/decodes whatever your server records, including live tv. It is the opinion of the forum members that Sage will support the new Hauppauge HD PVR. They better, as many of us have already pre-bought!

Would it be feasible to watch Sage Recorded TV as "My Videos" in MCE, particularly on my MCE Extenders? Or are you hosed since you don't have metadata identifying the shows? Or has someone written an app to turn Sage metadata + MPEG-2 files into dvr-ms files?

Seems like an awful lot of work to keep using the MCE GUI. The replacement STV (SageMC) is a fantastic UI, highly customizable and there are more and more themes coming out for it.

How much is the change in UI? More importantly is this going to get my wife mad at me?

See above answer. My wife likes Sage and she can be pretty picky. I'm using the SageMC UI with bialio's CenterSage (pun intended) theme and it's as good as anything in VMC.
Here's a thread with some screenshots:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=220

Hope this helps.

[wayner]

Thanks for the answers DOS64K.

I actually do use a Harmony 880 in my setup - my question was more targeted at the IR receiver since if the MCE remote works then any remote that sends those codes will work.

My main reason to want to keep MCE somewhat alive is to allow me to continue to use the 5 V1 extenders that I have purchased - not just for videos, and photos but also for RecordedTV. I knew that they were obsolete when I purchased them but I was more thinking about moving to VMC in the future and I figured I could always keep a PC around running XP MCE to act as a server to the extenders. These are used most often for kids shows that my daughter watches so lack of HD hasn't been much of an issue so far.

A few more questions -

I am assuming that while my transition is in progress I can continue using MCE and just not run Sage unless I am configuring it.
Is there a way to convert my library of TV shows recorded on MCE into Sage? Can Sage playback dvr-ms files?
Will the MCE IR blaster work to change channels on my STB with Sage?

[DOS64K]

Originally Posted by wayner

Thanks for the answers DOS64K.

I actually do use a Harmony 880 in my setup - my question was more targeted at the IR receiver since if the MCE remote works then any remote that sends those codes will work.

My main reason to want to keep MCE somewhat alive is to allow me to continue to use the 5 V1 extenders that I have purchased - not just for videos, and photos but also for RecordedTV. I knew that they were obsolete when I purchased them but I was more thinking about moving to VMC in the future and I figured I could always keep a PC around running XP MCE to act as a server to the extenders. These are used most often for kids shows that my daughter watches so lack of HD hasn't been much of an issue so far.

OK, makes sense.

A few more questions -

I am assuming that while my transition is in progress I can continue using MCE and just not run Sage unless I am configuring it.

Sage and MCE can only co-habitate if you disable the MCE services when running Sage, otherwise you'll have very unpredictable behavior with the remote. See this thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17261

Is there a way to convert my library of TV shows recorded on MCE into Sage? Can Sage playback dvr-ms files?

Sage records in MPEG2 so conversion of your dvr-ms files should be a simple task with the MCE transcode plugins out there.

Will the MCE IR blaster work to change channels on my STB with Sage?

Yes, with 3rd party add-ins. There is a thread in the Sage FAQs that gives all the details.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6282

[CollinR]

I'm pretty sure for your current extenders to work you would need to run MC on a seperate box, it has services that hog your tuners too. Possibly the extenders will work with all theses services disabled but I don't know. You should probably test for that.

[DOS64K]

Originally Posted by CollinR

I'm pretty sure for your current extenders to work you would need to run MC on a seperate box, it has services that hog your tuners too. Possibly the extenders will work with all theses services disabled but I don't know. You should probably test for that.

Collin is correct. What I meant by "co-habitation" was that Sage will only work with the MCE operating system if the media center services are disabled. If he wants to use his V1 extenders, he'll have to either create a script or manually re-enable the services when not using Sage. Not a very elegant solution. A separate PC running Sage and handling recordings would be best, then he could use his existing MCE box and V1 extenders to stream the recordings.

[mickp]

Originally Posted by DOS64K

A separate PC running Sage and handling recordings would be best, then he could use his existing MCE box and V1 extenders to stream the recordings.

Maybe the whs box could run Sage.

Mick.

[Polypro]

Definitely upgrade the VGA card.

P

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by DOS64K

Sage records in MPEG2 so conversion of your dvr-ms files should be a simple task with the MCE transcode plugins out there.

The problem with this is that he is planning to use the HD-PVR which doesn't record in MPEG2, but in H.264. I supposed you could transcode that to MPEG2, but I know that I wouldn't want to.

[pat_smith1969]

If at all possible I would recommend setting up a second box for Sage, even if it is a weak one.. While setting up sage if pretty striaght forward, I found adding some of the 3rd party plugins to be very tricky and requires some tinkering before you get the hang of it. Things like the Firewire channel changing can take quite some time to get just right. During this tinkering time, if you have the television disabled, the WAF can go down pretty darned quick.