Windows 7 Media Center

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Most of the things you highlight as easier in 7MC are easier because you started on 7 (i.e. the driver stuff).

Sage can be harder to configure than MC, but if you've spent anytime on TGB you'd find that the experience is far from easy for many users. Stutter, tuner and PQ issues are pretty common issues for both applications.

If all you want to do is watch TV, and you're OK with the restrictions MC places on sources and content, then MC is probably the right choice for you (although Tivo is probably a better one).

If you want the real value add for having a PC serving your media (commercial skipping, placeshifting, flexibility, dvd bookmarks, etc) and extenders that work it's hard for me to see MC being a better choice long term.

Just for the record, I did not start on 7. I used XP MCE back in the day and then VMC but gave up and decided to get the cable co DVR to get premium HD content. I am now dumping the DVR and going back to a pc based system. I wanted something lighter than VMC and tried Sage. It has been one forum search and workaround after another to get things to work right. The Sage codecs are poor, it didn't like nor support my Asus E9400 tuner, the MCE remote kept opening VMC, the EPG wasn't getting data for all channels, the video stuttered, the overscan needed to be set, the interface was not that great so I installed SageMC and so on. With MC, I pressed the green button and scanned channels, done. This was the same for XP MCE, VMC and W7MC. No need to add-on anything to have a very nice looking media center with excellent tv picture. To me, there is no way SageTv could be easier than that to setup.

Also, BTW, there are tweaks/addons for MC as well for many things. You can get commercial skipping to work, there are caller id apps, home automation, etc.

[MitchSchaft]

What are your hardware specs, btw? Are you using onboard video?
I just moved over from MCE2005 where you have to configure the registry if you want more than 2 tuners and such. I think that stuff is fun, so I'm not going to complain about it.
Trust me, babgvant knows all about Microsoft's media center . If it wasn't for him, MCE would not have commercial skipping. He wrote it!

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by heatvent

Just for the record, I did not start on 7.

I mean you started using 7MC on windows 7, baked in driver support is much better in 7 than vista and xp.

That said the first time I setup 7MC my PC BSOD'd, had to pull down updated drivers for my tuner. I still can't get QAM tuning to work perfectly for all channels...

One problem with HTPC is that everyones experience is unique, what's crazy easy for you could be a PITA for me.

Originally Posted by heatvent

I used XP MCE back in the day and then VMC but gave up and decided to get the cable co DVR to get premium HD content. I am now dumping the DVR and going back to a pc based system. I wanted something lighter than VMC and tried Sage. It has been one forum search and workaround after another to get things to work right. The Sage codecs are poor, it didn't like nor support my Asus E9400 tuner, the MCE remote kept opening VMC, the EPG wasn't getting data for all channels, the video stuttered, the overscan needed to be set, the interface was not that great so I installed SageMC and so on. With MC, I pressed the green button and scanned channels, done. This was the same for XP MCE, VMC and W7MC. No need to add-on anything to have a very nice looking media center with excellent tv picture. To me, there is no way SageTv could be easier than that to setup.

Sage can be harder to configure, mostly because they want you to do it all up front. The express install is nice on MC, when it works. Trying to get more advanced stuff going is about the same.

Bottom line, if it works better for you and meets your needs - go for it.

I think most of us who are here value the flexibility and features that Sage offers over some incremental setup pain.

Originally Posted by heatvent

Also, BTW, there are tweaks/addons for MC as well for many things. You can get commercial skipping to work, there are caller id apps, home automation, etc.

I wrote 2 of the 3 applications you mentioned (along with some others); so I'm very familiar with the platform both as a user and developer. It wasn't easy to switch, but I'm really glad that I did

[PLUCKYHD]

Alright I always love to throw my hat in this argument

I have used media center since day one when the made me by a oem pc to get it mother:$;&!!

It takes allot of tinkering to get it like I liked it then I decided nothing but hd would do so I had to buy another oem pc for cablecard mother:&:!!

I used custom rigs extenders and all the bells in whistles

Babgvant got me started testing sage by his blogs

You will never see DVD or bluray streaming to extenders from media center IMHO
That and drm brought me over to sage and I haven't looked back sense

But to each his own

[hockeyfan]

Well I'm gonna throw my 3 cents out there (and as I look back on my post apparently I'm gonna be a windbag).

I used mce then vmc. Loved it! It worked, did what I wanted. Was a lot more configurable than the Bell ExpressVu boxes I had.

Then HD became an issue because I really wanted it in my media server. HD-PVR was coming out and VMC was not gonna support it. At the time they said windows 7 might support it *when* it comes out. A little bleak. Not to mention the hostility I saw from TheGreenButton users towards users who wanted HD-PVR cababilities.

So I switched to Sage, around Aug 2008. It was rocky for the whole family. Not as smooth as I envisioned but we made a go of it. Don't get me wrong, I found VMC a lot more stable than Sage, when Sage has problems it goes down hard. But, then again I'm doing a lot more with it than I ever did with VMC.

I love sagetvclient, the equivalent WebGuide for VMC would throttle the server to 100% usage due to transcoding (2.13GHz core 2 duo). Plus now I have a USB-UIRT w/remote so now my 24" monitor can act as a TV on the fly if I want it to.

The extenders are slick. No longer when you turn on an extender (xbox 360) it becomes the focal point of the room. Love the blu-ray support, although I only got into blu-ray since I setup Sage.

One thing that people may not consider or think of is the configurability of commercial skip. I love it, my wife *hates* it. With Sage we get the best of both worlds. By default I turn it off, then on my shows I toggle it on.

I intend to make my own pet project of developing, from the ground up, interface that suits my family needs. This kind of thing is just not possible with MS.

With all my blabble above I am just pointing out what *I* see differences between the two. And, I'm not trying to say MS is BAD and Sage is GOOD, but just look beyond the shiney objects to the real application.

And remember, when MS released the 'TV pack' they alienated all of their VMC user base because you could only get it (legally) through OEM.

And finally "down with NBC", hehe, that's personal.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

Trust me, babgvant knows all about Microsoft's media center . If it wasn't for him, MCE would not have commercial skipping. He wrote it!

I missed your comment earlier wouldn't have gotten all "two out of three..."

BTW that is a seriously scary look cat!

[MitchSchaft]

He just looks that way. He's the sweetest cat ever .

[OldPCGUY]

It took me a while to make my PC Server - TV work well but it always crashed every couple of days. Then I purchased 2 Sage HD200 extenders.
WOW! After a few beta release updates I ran for 3 weeks with not a single hangup.

With Sage I have 2 ATSC cards, 1 HDPVR plus I have DVDs, Blue Rays and Home HD Movies on my hard drive.

We can Record HD-OTA or HD-Dish Content (Convert with Sage) and burn to DVD backup or Blue Ray(too expensive now).

We can watch DVDs and Blue Ray with Sage HD200 from Server(Running Sage) on HardDisk.

I am still running WinXP and recently did a manual Windows update that killed several web sites in explorer and made Sage TV very unstable.

Fortunately I am running Norton Ghost and was able to install a previous image. I then turned off windows update.

Sage Responds to user requested Features. Maybe not as quickly as we all would like but they are striving to improve features and extend wider support with every release. Try to get microsoft to support the HD-PVR and see where you get.

Any Windows VRM, MCE etc would take me back to where I was 4 years ago before Sage. Who cares about the UI? Apperently the other 90%.

Someday the Windows MCE users are going to try to watch an HD OTA show and get a message that they do not have permission to record the show. Just wait it is coming. Has any one ever tried to record HD Radio?

Now after 2 Hardware products HD-100 and HD-200. I am now ready for the Sage Do it All PVR Server Box.

- Consumer PVR with 2 TB and closed (Linux OS, or WHS) with Sage GUI
- Expandable High Speed Storage (USB or ESATA)
- Hauppauge Dual Tuner ATSC card
- New Sage Dual Tuner HD-PVR like Card (Component Video Encoder)
- Firewire Support for external box control
- Integrated USB UIRT Support VIA USB
- 2 X 1 Gbps Ethernet Port
- HDMI, DVI, VGA, Component out
- Key Board support (for the tweaker inclined)
- 6 USB ports, 2 Component IN, 2 Coax In (ATSC )

[heatvent]

For those interested, geektonic reports that Windows 7 can use the HD-PVR through some workarounds:

http://www.geektonic.com/2009/02/hau...ia-center.html

Now this was posted in Feb and I know nothing about whether or not this actually works. I just noted the article and thought I would pass along.

[MitchSchaft]

What are your hardware specs?

[tmiranda]

I tried VMC7 on my test machine, which is fairly low end. It was easy to install and visually looked wonderful. Then I tried to play some videos and it crashed and burned. Experiment over.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

What are your hardware specs?

Are you asking for my specs? If so, Pent D 2.8ghz, 4GB ram, HVR-2250 and a Radeon HD 4350 512MB video card (recently upgraded from a Radeon HD 3400; got the new card from Newegg for $25 after rebate). With W7MC playing HDTV, cpu usage is about 10-20%. No issues to report with crashing and the video card handles HD very well...channel changing is smooth, playing new video starts quickly and there is no stutter. Also, the picture I get with the same hardware and W7MC is clearer than what I get with Sage using the PowerDVD 9 Ultra codecs, which tend to use a little more CPU horsepower than W7MC. There are also a couple of analog channels (CBS and NBC) that using Sage I got some distortion (ghosting and lines in the picture) that I didn't get with the cable box I am returning and I don't get with W7MC. Not sure how W7MC picks up the signal better and/or fixes the video but it does.

So for what I am using it for (no blue-ray, no encrypted cable, media center extender for TV in the den), W7MC works very well...thus my [unpopular] vote for "kicks ass."

[Brent]

Originally Posted by heatvent

So for what I am using it for (no blue-ray, no encrypted cable, media center extender for TV in the den), W7MC works very well...thus my [unpopular] vote for "kicks ass."

I don't think your vote is unpopular really - I know many who are really happy with what W7 gives them (thus far since its still beta of course).

It's pretty likely that you'll get more who disagree with you though on these forums because many (or most) who are using SageTV know what MS Media Center can do and decided against it because of certain limitations. Probably some of those limitations have been "removed" with the improvements of W7, but many have not. That doesn't mean W7 MC isn't a great software and it also doesn't mean MS won't steal away a few more HTPC users - it just means SageTV still has many advantages (some disadvantages also of course) for the HTPC user and many of those people who prefer SageTV happen to spend some time on these forums I'd be interested in what kind of response you'd get if you posted the same sort of forum post on the GreenButton Forums...

[defilm]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

I'm disappointed in Vista and only run it for the EVR support. If Windows 7 is indeed more stable than Vista, it will make an excellent platform for SageTV. I don't think MS will ever give us the freedom of use (I'm thinking DRM) that we get from Sage.

My sageTV PVR is the ONLY pc in the house running Vista. All gaing systems XP Pro, my notebooks are MacBooks and MBP's. (They have parallels on there that actually runs Win XP Pro faster than it runs native on the dual intel processors, but that is beyond the scope and point of my message).

I have no plans on going to Windows 7, or MC until the normal year plus of hell is over. I was running vista on 1GB, but found that the page swapping was so bad it was unusable. With 4GB I can record one Mpeg2 HW assisted encoder while watching a recorded one. (Linux version runs well on 2GB).

I am not using EVR, I am using the Direct X, but EVR is supported. If that is the only reason for using Vista, I would gladly go back to XP. Can someone exucate me on EVR, and if I am good without it now, i figure I will get even better performance out of XP than Vista.

BTW, Thanks to the support Guru's on this site. I have a fully functioning SageTV, with the Dyanmic menu STVI installed and Multi-pane menu's enabled and I love it. It would be very very hard to top SageTV IMHO.
(I just got $135 for my Dlink DSM-520 on Ebay... Geez did that suck! That was a $100 loss, but sticking with SageTv really paid off. I love it.)

I wish I could replace my Fios DVR with another SageTV PVR. The Fios DVR is horrible after being used to the Direct-TV R20, and its predecessor Sony SAT-T60 Tivo unit. I compare the SAT-T60, which was very very popular to the SageTv PVR. I think it is right up there. . Thanks to the team and community for the help provided to get me there!

Mark
PS. Has anyone replaced their Fios (160GB Drive/20 Hours of Hi-Def Sad POS PVR) with SageTV? I was thinking perhaps I can connect the Fios PVR output to a second SageTV, and control it via a Blaster? Anyone? There is nothing I like about the Fios DVR. Even the guide is gross. Worse.. It has very buggy. Like you pause channel 4 news at 11pm at 11:15. The PVR kicks in to record on the SAME or Different channel at 11:30, you lose your buffer. So if you were watching a 2.5 hour movie and you paused it with 25 mins ot go to the end climax, and the system kicks in to record on the other tuner, it wipes your stored buffer out and brings you to live on the channel you are on!! What a POS!! Many updates and they can't fix it!

Thanks!

[heatvent]

defilm, I understand your frustration. W7 is kinda like the Vista MS should have released. Like when Win 95 was issued, it was such a piece of crap, Win 98 was really the release of the stable Win 95. XP, I think was MS's greatest success story. More stable from the getgo and lived on for several years and is still the preferred OS for many. Vista's release certainly had its issues and critcisms. One of the fixes of W7 is to be a little more efficent on the use of RAM and other resources. My expectation is people will be happier with W7 than they were/are with Vista. From what I can tell, it is using the Vista drivers without issue so there should be some good/stable compatibility out of the gate that Vista did not have when it was released. Some people wait until SP1 is out before they move to a new OS so that many of the bugs are worked out so that may be a good option for you.

I am using the RC of W7 and have to say, I haven't had any issues, runs like it was intended to...although mileage may vary for others.

[ncohafmuta]

i'm testing out the Win7 RC x64 now, and even though haven't gotten my HDPVR to work with it yet, gotta say that i'm not overly thrilled with the MC interface yet, though i haven't played with it in-depth.
Granted, I do have my share of SageTV problems (playing DVDs (real and from VIDEO_TS on my hard drive) and getting no-playback region code errors, the UI crashing at random when minimizing/maximizing, seeking problems, long delay on changing channels), some of which i'm sure aren't necessarily SageTV's fault..at the moment I don't think I'd pick MC over SageTV.

-Tony

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by defilm

My sageTV PVR is the ONLY pc in the house running Vista. All gaing systems XP Pro, my notebooks are MacBooks and MBP's. (They have parallels on there that actually runs Win XP Pro faster than it runs native on the dual intel processors, but that is beyond the scope and point of my message).

I've got Vista on my laptop, and I don't really have any issues with it, but I never upgraded any of my other PCs, mainly because there was nothing compelling in Vista to make me do it. EVR would be nice, but not for the cost of a whole OS.

I have no plans on going to Windows 7, or MC until the normal year plus of hell is over. I was running vista on 1GB, but found that the page swapping was so bad it was unusable. With 4GB I can record one Mpeg2 HW assisted encoder while watching a recorded one. (Linux version runs well on 2GB).

FWIW, I'm running 7 on my desktop, which is a Athlon 64 X2 4200 with 1GB of RAM, and I can tell that 1GB isn't really enough. But at the same time, at least the way I use it with what I run, 1GB wasn't quite enough with the XP install I had before. They're actually remarkably close.

I am not using EVR, I am using the Direct X, but EVR is supported. If that is the only reason for using Vista, I would gladly go back to XP. Can someone exucate me on EVR, and if I am good without it now, i figure I will get even better performance out of XP than Vista.

Best way I understand it is EVR is all the benefits of VMR9, without the issues (like not working well except in Fullscreen Exclusive mode).

I wish I could replace my Fios DVR with another SageTV PVR. The Fios DVR is horrible after being used to the Direct-TV R20, and its predecessor Sony SAT-T60 Tivo unit. I compare the SAT-T60, which was very very popular to the SageTv PVR. I think it is right up there. . Thanks to the team and community for the help provided to get me there!

Mark
PS. Has anyone replaced their Fios (160GB Drive/20 Hours of Hi-Def Sad POS PVR) with SageTV?

Sounds like you need an HD PVR.

I was thinking perhaps I can connect the Fios PVR output to a second SageTV, and control it via a Blaster? Anyone?

All you need is another tuner and an IR blaster, you don't even need a "second SageTV", Sage works with as many tuners and sources as you care to set up. And if you're just using SD, then any old tuner would work.

Originally Posted by heatvent

defilm, I understand your frustration. W7 is kinda like the Vista MS should have released.

I agree, but even then, the main reason I'm really giving 7 a serious shake is because I'm moving up to a 64bit OS (went overboard and ordered 12GB of ram with my Core i7 ), and I just can't see buying a Vista or XP x64 license when they're both about to be thrown under the Windows 7 bus.

Like when Win 95 was issued, it was such a piece of crap, Win 98 was really the release of the stable Win 95.

I'd been thinking Vista was more like Windows ME, though Vista's hatred is much less deserved.

XP, I think was MS's greatest success story. More stable from the getgo and lived on for several years and is still the preferred OS for many.

Well when you basically just skin an OS that's been beat to death in the business world (Windows 2000/NT) for years, that's what you get.

Vista's release certainly had its issues and critcisms. One of the fixes of W7 is to be a little more efficent on the use of RAM and other resources. My expectation is people will be happier with W7 than they were/are with Vista. From what I can tell, it is using the Vista drivers without issue so there should be some good/stable compatibility out of the gate that Vista did not have when it was released. Some people wait until SP1 is out before they move to a new OS so that many of the bugs are worked out so that may be a good option for you.

Yeah, overall W7 is working quite well for me.

I am using the RC of W7 and have to say, I haven't had any issues, runs like it was intended to...although mileage may vary for others.

Me too, and to get back on the topic of the thread, I tried 7MC, and there was noting in it that made me want to switch. Guess I'm just over the pretty UI phase

[kingwr]

I know many of you like the horrible stock SageTV UI. Put in one more vote for a revampled UI in SageTV 7. As I said before, just rip-off the Windows 7Media Center UI. Don't have to put a lot of time researching or designing. Just code it up.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by kingwr

I know many of you like the horrible stock SageTV UI. Put in one more vote for a revampled UI in SageTV 7. As I said before, just rip-off the Windows 7Media Center UI. Don't have to put a lot of time researching or designing. Just code it up.

Probably easier said than done. W7MC has a lot of nice overlays, transitions, graphics, etc. I would think these would be difficult to replicate and the cost of doing so may have little benefit for if it's the UI that's important, MC probably already has them beat. I think the focus on doing the things MC can't/won't is probably the best strategy, although easier "skinning" of Sage might be a good idea. Would be nice if you don't like blue to go with a different color scheme, etc.

[samgreco]

To me, the only place that Windows 7 has it over Sage is in the setup of tuners. I was quite amazed at how easy it was. I had 2 dual tuners (analog and digital) and it found all four, scanned for channels, and got the guide right for all tuners, with only a couple of clicks from me.

But that's it. While the UI is slick, I find it cumbersome.

So while I would love a new UI choice for Sage, VMC/W7 ain't it.

Now if Sage could copy the tuner setup mechanism, THAT would be cool.