Have Tivo, but looking for options

[JeffreyNYA]

Hey Everyone.

I have been research HTPC options for a bit now and ran across Sage, and was wondering what it does more than Tivo and what it does less. cost is not an issue at the moment, so we can leave out the subscription cost and equipment costs.

Right now we have 2 standard HD tivos. They work great for what they do. Can record 2 shows and watch a recorded show at the same time. So if we want we can record 4 and watch 2. Is that possible with the Sage setup?

We have some cable issues that we are not able to fix due to complexity of the wiring in the house. But I do have Cat5e ran to all locations. Would love it if we could use just that for all live TV and recorded stuff. Possible? Or do we still need to Have the cable boxes at each location? Right now the Tivo uses the cable card. My Playstation3 gets all my movies from a server and works well, however its to only one location at the moment. Tivo's are pretty slow when pushing movies to them.

So basically in an ideal world what I would want is one server, with all the tv tuners (4+) and be able to connect to the extender to watch and control all content from any location in the house where there is an extender or PC. The only Coax that I would want to have is just the main connection for cable and OTA that are coming in. Disconnecting the rest would be ideal

Hopefully this all makes sence.

Thanks.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by JeffreyNYA

So basically in an ideal world what I would want is one server, with all the tv tuners (4+) and be able to connect to the extender to watch and control all content from any location in the house where there is an extender or PC. The only Coax that I would want to have is just the main connection for cable and OTA that are coming in. Disconnecting the rest would be ideal

Yes, that's exactly how Sage is meant to work. You connect all your tuners (as many as you like, in any combination of sources) to one server, and all the recording happens centrally on that server. Extender appliances and/or PC clients can administer the server, set up recordings, and view recorded content from anywhere on your LAN. The LAN cable is the only connection needed between server and client.

The catch is going to be in deciding what kind of tuners you need. OTA tuners are fine, QAM cable tuners work but are limited to unencrypted channels. Cablecard does not (currently) work in a DIY Sage system. To capture HD content from encrypted cable channels, your best bet is the Hauppauge HD-PVR component capture device.

[sic0048]

It does make sense and you should be able to do exactly what you are looking for using SageTV and the HD Theater. You will set up one main SageTV server which will record your shows and store them on hard drives. You can add as much storage as your computer allows (and with external drives, that can be a lot), so you are not limited in storage space.

Then you will have a HD Theater at each TV location. It needs a network connection and power. You can connect it to the TV via composite, S-Video, Component or even HDMI. It comes with its own remote control, and you will have access to all your Sage media. This obviously includes any recorded TV, but you can also have it scan your music, pictures, and videos on your computer as well. You'll have access to all that media at the TV and can browse, choose and play media at your discretion. Any TV can be watching any media at the same time. So everyone in the house could be watching something different.

The only unknown part is how to capture your broadcasts - ie what tuners you need to buy to record stuff. You mentioned a cable card and SD material. If it is analog cable that you are receiving, then and NTSC capture card will be able to record the cable broadcasts simply by plugging the coaxial cable directly into the tuner. Since you are using a cable card however, I assume you have digital service as well.

To record digital cable broadcasts, there are a couple of options. If you have/request a STB that has an active firewire port, then you could probably use that to record the raw digital stream. However, some content may be 5C flagged and will not allow it to be recorded. Many times the paid movie channels (like HBO, etc) will be flagged like this. But most channels (even "encrypted QAM" stations) can probably be recorded via this method.

Another option is to buy a Hauppauge HD-PVR which will record the component output of your digital STB. The STB decrypts the broadcasts, so the HD-PVR can record anything that is outputted from the STB.

If your cable company still broadcasts some digital channels unencrypted, then you can use a QAM tuner to record those channels. The HDHomeRun is a popular choice. It has two QAM tuners, so by plugging in the cable coax directly to the tuner, you can record two concurrent non-encrypted QAM stations at the same time. The drawback is that your cable company probably has very few unencrypted QAM stations - perhaps just your local stations, and sometimes not even those are unencrypted.

With both the firewire and HD-PVR option, you'll need 1 STB per concurrent recording you want to make. So if you want to record two shows at once, you'll need 2 STBs.


Welcome. Hopefully all this information is easy to understand. Keep asking questions - we were all new at one time

[Serra]

Originally Posted by JeffreyNYA

I have been research HTPC options for a bit now and ran across Sage, and was wondering what it does more than Tivo and what it does less. cost is not an issue at the moment, so we can leave out the subscription cost and equipment costs.

I guess the big difference would be that SageTV, as an HTPC solution, isn't an out of the box solution. You don't buy a Sage and drop it under the TV, hook up the wires and start using it. This is a huge difference, because people who are not interested in spending the time and effort to get Sage setup with all of its components, are going to be disappointed.

Speaking for myself, I wanted an out of the box solution. After leaving SD and getting rid of my Tivo and Replay, I wanted a better solution than HTPC, but my list of requirements couldn't be met by HD Tivo or a DirecTV HD PVR, so I decided to go the HTPC route with Sage. (commercial skip being one)

Of course, I'm happy with Sage, but I dislike the little hassles that HTPC has, such as general PC issues and greater complexity, for example, I lost a drive a few months ago, that sucked, but I haven't seen anything I'd rather be using.

If you are using extenders, then that does greatly reduce the issues and the WAF is much higher as the family only has to deal with the extenders and rarely even thinks about the PC part of the system.

So, the question for you is do you think you want the hassle of setting up a HTPC, Sage, tuners and extenders. If you can put up with that hassle, then the solution should work great. I have some of the same issues that you are facing with indoor wiring and the CAT-5 works great. I even changed Internet providers, routers and things like that and Sage hardly noticed. In fact, I just added Playon and I'm very happy with the way that works.

If the idea of setting up and then tweaking the setup sounds like something you are not interested in, then Sage can be taxing and annoying to use.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Serra

Of course, I'm happy with Sage, but I dislike the little hassles that HTPC has, such as general PC issues and greater complexity, for example, I lost a drive a few months ago, that sucked, but I haven't seen anything I'd rather be using.

I'm not sure why you count this as a liability of PC-based solutions. Prefabbed DVR appliances certainly aren't immune to hardware failure. I had a drive fail on a DirectTV DVR, and had no option but to ship the box back and lose everything on it. At least with a PC DVR you have some hope of backing up and recovering your content.

[stanger89]

Looks like I'm going to be rehashing all the answers but oh well....

Originally Posted by JeffreyNYA

Hey Everyone.

I have been research HTPC options for a bit now and ran across Sage, and was wondering what it does more than Tivo and what it does less. cost is not an issue at the moment, so we can leave out the subscription cost and equipment costs.

Right now we have 2 standard HD tivos. They work great for what they do. Can record 2 shows and watch a recorded show at the same time. So if we want we can record 4 and watch 2. Is that possible with the Sage setup?

Sure, but it's better in a Sage setup because all the tuners are in one pool, and Sage can manage them all. That means you don't have to plan ahead on where you're going to watch things or what's going to get recorded where.

I assume you have to do this to a degree now, set up your Season Passes so they don't try to record 4 shows on one Tivo?

We have some cable issues that we are not able to fix due to complexity of the wiring in the house. But I do have Cat5e ran to all locations. Would love it if we could use just that for all live TV and recorded stuff. Possible?

Yup, generally you centralize the server and all the tuners (and STBs if necessary) in one location, ideally (IMO) a utility room. Then you run clients or extenders throughout the house to access the system.

Right now the Tivo uses the cable card. My Playstation3 gets all my movies from a server and works well, however its to only one location at the moment. Tivo's are pretty slow when pushing movies to them.

FWIW, cablecard is going to be tricky, Sage doesn't support it, so the best you can do with that today is babgvant's SageMCTuner plugin that lets Sage control the Win 7 recording engine which does.

So basically in an ideal world what I would want is one server, with all the tv tuners (4+) and be able to connect to the extender to watch and control all content from any location in the house where there is an extender or PC. The only Coax that I would want to have is just the main connection for cable and OTA that are coming in. Disconnecting the rest would be ideal

Should be fine. I've got two Dish STBs and a dual tuner HDHR in my utility room. Only access to the system is through clients and extenders over the LAN.

[nick_l]

Just to expand on what Serra said, Sage is very customizable. With TiVo customizing is limited to some sorting options and whether or not it goes beep boop beep (admitedly its been years since Ive had TiVo. With Sage EVERYTHING can be changed, and I mean everything. Different clients can even had completely different "skins", or STVs in Sage parlance.

The other thing to consider is "Live TV". Sage was not really designed for the casual channel flipper, so if that fits your family you should probably do a search here and read some of the topics about it (there are many). Do a search for "pause". My personal feeling is that once you get used to a different way of watching tv (and as you are already using TiVo you might be there) channel filpping becomes unnecessary and even annoying, but everyone has their own opinion.

Bottom line, Sage is designed for exactly what you describe, and if you go into it with an open mind and are willing to fuss with it a little bit you will probably LOVE it. I know I'd have a hard time being without it!

Nick