SageTV media extender review on Extremetech

[olyar15]

Extremetech just posted a review of the HD media extender. Having never used this device, I'm not sure how accurate the review is, but they say that you require a placeshifter license to use this device. I thought that placeshifter was to access your sagetv media across the web?

Also, they mention that WMA lossless is not supported. I believe that SageTV itself plays that format fine, since I have many of my CDs ripped in WMA lossless. Again, don't know if that is a limitation of the hardware.

Any comments?

Link:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2331054,00.asp

[Brent]

Setup Time: They say setup took several hours. The review was of the extender which does not take several hours unless they are including time to walk the dog and such. They're probably talking about the time to get SageTV set up & configured on their PC. Then the time (20 minutes tops) to plug in SageTV, go through the setup screens and start using the extender.

Lossless: The extender does not support WMA Lossless as the review says. It does support FLAC Lossess though.

Placeshifter License: The extender ships with a license so you don't need a separate one to use it. And as you said, the placeshifter license is totally unrelated (it's like Sling for SageTV) so the reviewer was obviously confused there.

[Fluffdaddy]

Several hours to install Sage's media extender???? What was he smoking?

[stuckless]

* Install a TV tuner, plus SageTV and Placeshifter software on your PC.
* Configure SageTV to work with the TV tuner
* Register the extender with the SageTV server
* Set up Placeshifter so it sees the networked HD extender

All this took several hours, but once done, there's not really a lot of tweaking you need to do

It would appear that he's talking about the full "package" which includes SageTV, so I think several hours is probably a fair and resonable estimate.

Either that or he's factoring the time it takes Vista to boot for the first time on a OEM install

[stanger89]

* Set up Placeshifter so it sees the networked HD extender

WTF?

Nice to see Sage getting some press, would be nicer if the reviewers had a clue.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by Brent

Setup Time: They say setup took several hours. The review was of the extender which does not take several hours unless they are including time to walk the dog and such.

It is fairly obvious that the author intended to say "several minutes" and accidentally typed "several hours".

EDIT: 3 of 5 stars? I don't know anyone who doesn't give it 7 out of 5 stars.

[Brent]

Truth is, what we are seeing with most HD Extender reviews is this. A personthinks they are reviewing the extender, but instead they review the install and setup of SageTV AND the extender as an all-in-one setup.

This is not how they (the big-shop tech blogs) are reviewing VMC extenders so I say its very biased, but that is what we have to deal with here.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Brent

Setup Time: They say setup took several hours. The review was of the extender which does not take several hours unless they are including time to walk the dog and such. They're probably talking about the time to get SageTV set up & configured on their PC. Then the time (20 minutes tops) to plug in SageTV, go through the setup screens and start using the extender.

The article says they are including SageTV setup time. From the article:

To summarize, here's what you need to do to get the SageTV HD Media Extender working:

* Install a TV tuner, plus SageTV and Placeshifter software on your PC.
* Configure SageTV to work with the TV tuner
* Register the extender with the SageTV server
* Set up Placeshifter so it sees the networked HD extender

All this took several hours, but once done, there's not really a lot of tweaking you need to do.

Ignoring that step #4 doesn't make sense, it doesn't surprise me that it would take someone a couple hours to do all of that, particularly when they haven't done it before. It would probably take me close to a couple hours to do that. Setup is quite daunting, particularly when any kind digital TV is involved.

But, it is true that this was really a review of SageTV, not just the extender. At least this guy seemed to understand that SageTV and the media extender were more about creating a DVR than streaming downloaded videos. If I remember correctly, the PC Magazine review from a while back missed that entirely.

[lotusvball]

My questions is, Where did he get the extender. They haven't been in stock for a while.

[Steve52]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

My questions is, Where did he get the extender. They haven't been in stock for a while.

Yes. I sent an e-mail to sage a few days ago asking about when they were going to have them in stock. The reply was "We hope to have some of them in a month or two". "Hope"? 1 to 2 months is a long time and it sounds like they really are not sure when they will be getting more.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Steve52

The reply was "We hope to have some of them in a month or two". "Hope"? 1 to 2 months is a long time and it sounds like they really are not sure when they will be getting more.

Actually, what ought to make you concerned is that someone else got the exact same response to that question about 3 weeks earlier.

[pjpjpjpj]

While I agree that the reviewer was probably meaning to say that it took hours for the whole thing... the firmware update (which you are instructed to do when you first install the extender) does take a while. I think my first one took at least 45 minutes.

But nonetheless, this guy has a lot of errors in his review that could scare away potential buyers. Is there any feedback link that someone could straighten him out (I would think the Sage reps themselves would want to!)? I admittedly did not read the article ().

[Opus4]

There's a small discussion link right above the article.

He's already changed the part about requiring Placeshifter to be installed & configured on the server in order to use the HD extender based on my email to him yesterday. But, I still think there are other issues with the entire review.

- Andy

[jakep_82]

It amuses me that he makes a point of noting that newer Media Center Extenders have gigabit ethernet. He apparently doesn't realize that broadcast HD tops out around 19Mbps. Heck, even 1080p blu-ray with uncompressed audio tops out around 50Mbps.

[stanger89]

And they don't have GigE do they?

[emveepee]

The Microsoft Mediaroom announcement said that the Sigma SMP8654 supported gigabit, but I think that turned out to be wrong.

Martin

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by Opus4

There's a small discussion link right above the article.

He's already changed the part about requiring Placeshifter to be installed & configured on the server in order to use the HD extender based on my email to him yesterday. But, I still think there are other issues with the entire review.

- Andy

I added a couple of comments to his discussion chain myself; hopefully others here will do the same.

[Brent]

I put in my 10 cents worth in the comments also.

[lobosrul]

Added some comments myself. We should flood their board (by that I just mean 1 message from everyone not a bunch of spam).

[Brent]

Oh Crap.

DL.TV even had Loyd Case (the reviewer in this article) talk about his review on the DL.TV podcast. Haven't watched it yet, but expecting it to be at least as inaccurate as the review he did....
http://dl.tv/2008/09/dltv_ep_251_our...f_tech_l_1.php