Windows 7 Media Center

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Keith

Well here's the showstopper for me.

Dolby is not working with DVD's either physical or ripped.

So I give up. Media center does what I need out of the box and it's "good enough".

I'll check back in a few months and see if Sage decides to get in the game at all (in my opinion only of course).

I'm sad. It had so much promise but in it's current state in my personal opinion I think it's far from user friendly.

That's not really a fair comparison. Keep in mind that MS has had a lot of time to polish the experience behind closed door before the beta and then b/w beta and RC.

It's not realistic to expect Sage to work as well on 7 as MC given that the bits have only been out for a couple weeks.

BTW, if you want to get DD audio in 7 you should be able to edit the properties file to set the audio decoder to "Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder"

[Keith]

Originally Posted by babgvant

That's not really a fair comparison. Keep in mind that MS has had a lot of time to polish the experience behind closed door before the beta and then b/w beta and RC.

It's not realistic to expect Sage to work as well on 7 as MC given that the bits have only been out for a couple weeks.

BTW, if you want to get DD audio in 7 you should be able to edit the properties file to set the audio decoder to "Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder"

Hi,

Well here's where I'm coming from.

The beta has been out for a very long time! I have been running various developer builds since at least November of '08. Anyone could get them -there were torrents everywhere.

So Sage has had plenty of time to do test drives - in my opinion.

6 months is plenty of time to say "hey, lets spend 15 minutes to install Win 7 and see how our flagship product runs on it, while we have time to address any serious issues and not make our customers have to do our jobs for us".

Isn't it??? Just asking.

Second, I have installed a lot of other media players including my favorite, Winamp, before deciding to go buy the USB HDTV tuner.

In my "testing", anything I downloaded that was listed as a "Vista version" or "Vista compatible" would work flawlessly in Win7 - also Vista is 3 years old. No excuse in my never humble opinion (LOL) to not be totally Vista compatible. None I can see anyway.

Sage is acting to me like an Alpha, not a released Vista rated program.

Everybody is telling me "add this" or "download that " or "just unzip extract and import" or "just go edit this obscure file you'd never have had a clue about otherwise".

Now think about all that in the context of a product that I paid money for (at one time I did).

I compare it to a VCR.

Take it home from the store, open the box, and find that to get it to work as advertised, I have to take it apart, do some surface-mount soldering rework with components I had to special order.

That's how I see this state of affairs.

I deleted the trial version. I'm glad it's been several years since I paid for it, but it's like it's been stuck in a vacuum, a time warp. Sorry guys. Not meaning to be flame-bait, that's just my honest experience the last 24 hours of mucking with it and wanting it to work before giving up.

This is acceptable in my opinion for open source, but Sage wants people to pay for this.

There is no way - none - that a new user is going to try this on Win7 any time soon and decide to pay a dime for it. Not that I can see anyway. I mean it's been out for longer than Vista. None of this should be new to the development or planning or validation teams. Or management.

But that's just my 2 cnts worth. I wish Sage the best and if they fix all this stuff and make it as easy as Media center without making me edit scripts I might try it again.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Keith

Hi,

Well here's where I'm coming from.

The beta has been out for a very long time! I have been running various developer builds since at least November of '08.

And SageTV was working just fine until the release candidate of W7 - I'm pretty sure SageTV will have a multitude of updates compared to the few public ones W7 releases - and after W7 is out officially good luck getting any real updates or bug fixes out of them for MediaCenter. If you want a stable HTPC put it on a OS that is out of beta. Windows 7 is set to release about Christmastime. I expect SageTV will work just fine on it well before then just as it does with XP, WHS, Vista, Mac, Linux etc.

But that's just my 2 cnts worth. I wish Sage the best and if they fix all this stuff and make it as easy as Media center without making me edit scripts I might try it again.

I really think you'll be happier with Media Center. As I said in my first comment above your needs seem to be pretty simple so you probably don't need all the things SageTV brings to the table. Either that or a get a cablebox DVR - no addons required there either.

I really thought you were trying to be constructive, but its pretty obvious your posts were nothing more than flame-bait as you called them.

[Keith]

I *was* trying to be constuctive, you *** . ***. There I said it. Ban me. I'm so out of here.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Keith

Hi,

The beta has been out for a very long time! I have been running various developer builds since at least November of '08. Anyone could get them -there were torrents everywhere.

So Sage has had plenty of time to do test drives - in my opinion.

You know that's illegal right? There have been two releases - beta and rc, everything before that (unless you actually went to PDC) and b/w was something you weren't supposed to have.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Keith

Hi,

Well here's where I'm coming from.

The beta has been out for a very long time! I have been running various developer builds since at least November of '08. Anyone could get them -there were torrents everywhere.

So Sage has had plenty of time to do test drives - in my opinion.

So has McAfee and who knows how many other companies that don't have working W7 solutions.

6 months is plenty of time to say "hey, lets spend 15 minutes to install Win 7 and see how our flagship product runs on it, while we have time to address any serious issues and not make our customers have to do our jobs for us".

You could try reporting the bug. Maybe Sage works fine for the devs on W7 and your config is different and uncovered something they didn't find.

Isn't it??? Just asking.

It's a beta OS, with significantly changed Media playback layer. No I don't think it's unreasonable for there to be issues. That's why it's a beta (OK, "RC") and beta application.

Second, I have installed a lot of other media players including my favorite, Winamp, before deciding to go buy the USB HDTV tuner.

How many were video intensive?

In my "testing", anything I downloaded that was listed as a "Vista version" or "Vista compatible" would work flawlessly in Win7 - also Vista is 3 years old. No excuse in my never humble opinion (LOL) to not be totally Vista compatible. None I can see anyway.

W7 changed media playback significantly, including some rather large changes before the RC.

Sage is acting to me like an Alpha, not a released Vista rated program.

W7 isn't Vista, not by a long shot when it comes to media/video.

Everybody is telling me "add this" or "download that " or "just unzip extract and import" or "just go edit this obscure file you'd never have had a clue about otherwise".

Now think about all that in the context of a product that I paid money for (at one time I did).

Try running it on a released OS that you payed for

I compare it to a VCR.

Take it home from the store, open the box, and find that to get it to work as advertised, I have to take it apart, do some surface-mount soldering rework with components I had to special order.

PC DVRs are not VCRs, that's what a Tivo or Cable DVR is. PC PVRs are for people who want more functionality/configurablity and are willing to accept more involved setup.

I deleted the trial version. I'm glad it's been several years since I paid for it, but it's like it's been stuck in a vacuum, a time warp. Sorry guys. Not meaning to be flame-bait, that's just my honest experience the last 24 hours of mucking with it and wanting it to work before giving up.

Again, what do you expect on a beta OS. That's the last thing you should do if you've got no experience with a program like Sage.

This is acceptable in my opinion for open source, but Sage wants people to pay for this.

Yeah, people pay for the released version to run on released operating systems.

There is no way - none - that a new user is going to try this on Win7 any time soon and decide to pay a dime for it. Not that I can see anyway. I mean it's been out for longer than Vista.

What are you smoking? The W7 RC has only been out a couple weeks, and again, the RC had some MAJOR changes to how it handles media. The OS is beta/RC for a reason, it's not done yet, and developers can't be expected to have all their apps ready for an OS that's not even released yet.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Keith

There I said it. Ban me. I'm so out of here. Go f... yourselves.

Keith, this and the rest above were way over the line. I think you're going to need a mirror to find your problem, man.

[tahoetim]

I'm an everyday consumer that loaded WHS per the guide, loaded Sage and three HD200 extenders without an issue. I have a few plugins working and love the system.

Let him go.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Keith

I *was* trying to be constuctive, you *** . ***. There I said it. Ban me. I'm so out of here.

After telling me you are an adult, you post this (heavily edited) stuff?!?

I can't remember anyone asking me to ban them before, but I'm willing to go along with that since you asked so nicely. Bye.

- Andy

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by Opus4

After telling me you are an adult, you post this (heavily edited) stuff?!?

I can't remember anyone asking me to ban them before, but I'm willing to go along with that since you asked so nicely. Bye.

- Andy

'nuff said.

[heatvent]

Wow, go away for a day and look what happens. Maybe we would be better served by deleting the last page or so of the thread and pretending it never happened.

[reeven]

yes, WIn7 Mediacenter, crap, after sometime of live TV a message with No Tv Signal appear, i have analog cable, semnal is perfect.
For this problem i need to find another Pvr,
ChrisTV work Ok with my PVR3000 LEadtek, but disabled Aero.
BeyondTV freeze 5-6 seconds when i switch channels and Aero disabled.
My original PVR from tuner is crap.
And i found Sage, is good, almost perfect, i find 2 bugs but maybe i could use Sagetv for a long time, it's genial.
Change remote buttons, EVR is implemented, all decoder install work, sound ok from the first time, footprint memory loo, <100mb.

[LehighBri]

Very interesting: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/win...ia-center.aspx

This is probably the #1 item I've been wishing for in Sage. Specifically, I'm looking for the ability, natively in Sage, to 1) view Netflix streaming movies on my Sage clients , and 2) view Netflix streaming movies on my extenders. Native Netflix support seems to be everywhere these days..... VMC, Blu-ray players, Xbox, Tivo, Roku. Looking forward to the day it arrives in Sage

[Brent]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

Very interesting: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/win...ia-center.aspx

This is probably the #1 item I've been wishing for in Sage. Specifically, I'm looking for the ability, natively in Sage, to 1) view Netflix streaming movies on my Sage clients , and 2) view Netflix streaming movies on my extenders. Native Netflix support seems to be everywhere these days..... VMC, Blu-ray players, Xbox, Tivo, Roku. Looking forward to the day it arrives in Sage

Note that the new Netflix support in MediaCenter does not support extenders or the XBox360. It also doesn't support Windows 7 yet.

But you can do all of this in SageTV with your clientPC's. And you can do it whether you use the old netflix viewer or the Silverlight viewer. The big downside for both SageTV and Windows MC is no extender support...

But It's always better to have official, native support of course.

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by Brent

Note that the new Netflix support in MediaCenter does not support extenders or the XBox360.

Yeah but who cares? MS and its partners as of late have pretty much ditched all of the extenders out there. And what's left, the Xbox360, has had Netflix support on its own for a while now (I guess you need a gold acct but at least it's possible).

Originally Posted by Brent

But It's always better to have official, native support of course.

Amen. Trust me, I'm a hardcore tinkerer and could care less if native support is there... but the Netflix SageMC has it's faults and Morgan has been MIA lately so no real progress seems to have been made on that front.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by Brent

Note that the new Netflix support in MediaCenter does not support extenders or the XBox360. It also doesn't support Windows 7 yet.

But you can do all of this in SageTV with your clientPC's. And you can do it whether you use the old netflix viewer or the Silverlight viewer. The big downside for both SageTV and Windows MC is no extender support...

But It's always better to have official, native support of course.

Why can't extender's play the movie? Doesn't it just download a video file somewhere on the PC. I know Movielink files could be played directly with media player. Seems like this would be easy to support. Oh well.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by heatvent

Why can't extender's play the movie? Doesn't it just download a video file somewhere on the PC. I know Movielink files could be played directly with media player. Seems like this would be easy to support. Oh well.

Because it was written with Silverlight which will not work on any of the existing extenders. They could support the extenders with alternative means, but probably can't due to licensing agreements. MS would also rather you pay for the Gold Live service on the XBox360 I guess.

[stanger89]

I was going to post a comment about how I think MS has continually mishandled and/or missed opportunities with Media Center, but I see Ben at Engadget was thinking the same thing, and has a much better writeup than I would have:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/05/22...readercomments

I think that's really the nail on the head there. I just don't think traditional 'HTPC's have a hope of gaining mainstream adoption. But I do think PCs bring a lot of significant advantages over standalone DVR solutions, and I'm with Ben that I think using the PC for it's strengths (mass storage, scheduling, data management, configurability/expandability) and extenders for their strengths (robust media playback, simplicity).

[loomdog32]

Ive been using W7 RC on a laptop and love the media support (native Divx 7.. About time MS did something good).. Only needed a spliter to playback mkv files..

When Sage is able to use native W7 codecs, Ill use it no question as the base OS

As far as 7MC, it pretty much looks and feels like VMC.. There is things changed behind the scenes (support upto 24 tuners, 4 of each type (analog/NTSC/PAL, digital OTA/ATSC, digital cable/QAM, DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-C) in Ultimate, use of different EPG data per tuner type, adds online media to EPG), but nothing thats convinced me to change (I thought about it - DRM ridden and simple or overly coplex and always tinkering, but able to do most the things I want)..

--edit--
I just noticed there are alot of v7 comming out right now...spooky