Newbie needs guidance (simplified)

[ralfeez]

Thank you Webwalker. This is much closer to what I was looking for. I am sorry for not being able to get my point across to everyone. Just blame it on my ignorance of the subject. I do realize that there are endless numbers of options and combinations. I also realize that some have built reliable and simple systems that have few, if any, bells and whistles.

A wiki is exactly what I was making reference to, SWKerr. For those who have not used a wiki before, ideally it is added to and maintained by the users. Users add the info, manipulate the info, and keep everything up to date. Yes, many opinions are written as fact and there are other drawbacks too, but in general you get a really informative document this way.

Thanks for the help everyone,
Ralph

[webwalker]

You're welcome. Part of the difficulty of the forum format is you get many kinds of folks come wandering in asking questions when some of the answers have been long documented. I trod on many toes here when I started with exactly that kind of thing; it isn't uncommon, and it doesn't mean the requester isn't smart, merely that it is a limitation of the format.

Unfortunately, I find that wikis are prone to the same thing: they always seem to totter under a load of their own out-dated material that was true at the time it was written but is never updated, merely replaced...but the old info stays in place. So you wind up trying to apply very dated information against software that has moved on and get a mess in your lap.

I think the biggest bugaboo with Sage and other apps like it is that it requires you to become an expert (or at least a VERY informed user) about not just WHAT your system does, but HOW it does it.

My mother drives a Tivo, identical to my Pioneer DVD playback/burner/Tivo that I enjoyed for years. She can pick up programming and even burn programs to DVD-Rs. My mother is a techno-phobe and doesn't know the difference between mpeg and Mumbletypeg and doesn't much care.

If you're running SageTV or any of its rollyourown brethren, you need to care.

M