New prospective user...

[GovtMule]

Hello,
I am a long-time Windows MCE (since about 2004) user with multiple extenders (1 Linksys DMA2100, 1 HP X280n, and 1 Xbox360). I am thinking of switching to SageTV but I would like others who have switched to chime in. I would like to know any caveats that might be relevant. Any issues I might run into? Any functionality I might lose/miss? Basically general thoughts about the switch and how difficult the transition was. I have to make this as seemless as possible since my wife has gotten used to the MCE interface and will obviously have to adjust a little.

Thanks,
Newbie

[Clift]

I made the switch almost 3 years ago. I was running Widnows XP MCE. Some things to expect:
-Your MCE remote (if you use one) will want to launch MCE or VMC or 7MC, whichever). In Windows 7 you can turn off Media Center as a service). In XP and (i think) Vista, you have to use a program to suppress MCE calls from your remote (www.babgvant.com)
-There can be a pretty steep learning curve with setting up SageTV, but once you have it you will never go back
-SageTV accepts way more tuners than VMC
-There is another tool that allows you to import your MCe recordings into SageTV (www.babgvant.com)
-The HD300 is way more powerful than the VMC extenders. You won;t have trouble playing very many files like you would with the linksys)
-The extenders don't play DVD's from the server unless they are ripped
-You can also rip your Blu-rays and the extenders will play them (not the menu, just the movie)
-Since SageTV is more powerful and flexible than VMC some of the on screen options can be a bit intimidating at first. Make sure your wife has an open mind.
-You will lose funtionality of your Xbox 360, but you will gain silence
-The cost of the SageTV license + 3 extenders may be steep.
-The extenders are remote programmable, so you can use your MCE remote or linksys remote to make the transition easier. The power button is not programmable though.

There is a ton more and I'm sure others will chime in.

[GovtMule]

OK... thanks so much for the input!!

[bits]

I made the switch about 1.5 yrs ago from Vista/W7 MCE (x280n, Ziova 610, Linlplayer2) to STV and (1)HD200, (2)HD300. WAF is way up and stress is way down!

I agree with everything that Clift posted except that IMHO the learning curve is not really all that steep; especially if you have been using extenders and MCE for as long as you have been. With V7 and the new and improved plug-in system it really is very straight forward.

There is nothing that I miss from MCE or any of the extenders I used to have.

[GovtMule]

Good stuff. Thanks guys. I am gonna try to get my extenders on eBay this week to help fund the STV purchase. Anyone else please feel free to chime in. The more info I have ahead of time the better.

[Clift]

Originally Posted by bits

I made the switch about 1.5 yrs ago from Vista/W7 MCE (x280n, Ziova 610, Linlplayer2) to STV and (1)HD200, (2)HD300. WAF is way up and stress is way down!

I agree with everything that Clift posted except that IMHO the learning curve is not really all that steep; especially if you have been using extenders and MCE for as long as you have been. With V7 and the new and improved plug-in system it really is very straight forward.

There is nothing that I miss from MCE or any of the extenders I used to have.

Agreed, the plugins do make things a LOT easier. I forgot about that. I remember manually configuring commercial skip, then the Batch Meta Tools, SageTVTray, and the old nielm webserver. Now you young whipper snappers, get BMT, Jetty, Commercial Skip, all as plugins. In my day we had to configure SageTV using the command line while walking in the snow uphill both ways!

[PLUCKYHD]

I made the switch almost 3 years ago and haven't looked back one bit. WMC is a fail at this point in time IMHO.

The only comment I will say is below

Originally Posted by Clift

-The extenders don't play DVD's from the server unless they are ripped

You can with anydvd installed and the drive accessible as a video path

[Clift]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

I made the switch almost 3 years ago and haven't looked back one bit. WMC is a fail at this point in time IMHO.

The only comment I will say is below



You can with anydvd installed and the drive accessible as a video path

Facts > me

I didn't know that.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Clift

Facts > me

I didn't know that.

Lol love the image. Makes me think of reading rainbow....

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Makes me think of reading rainbow....

I hope you saw "Community" this past Thursday. If not, go watch it online.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I hope you saw "Community" this past Thursday. If not, go watch it online.

I would comment on that, but I'm struck speechless by the reference.

- Andy

[GovtMule]

OK... I just bought SageTV and 2 HD300 extenders. Sold one of my Win 7 extenders and the other is up for sale. The requirement showed that a 3.0 GHz PC would be required to stream HD content. Does this include dual cores? I have an Athlon X2 in my media PC that's probably around 2.4 GHz per core. Will this work or do I need to look at upgrading to like a Phenom II 840 or something (those are on sale at Newegg today)?

[mikejaner]

If you are going to stream MPEG2 based content, like OTA/ATSC or QAM, you should be fine. It's when you get to MPEG4 like from an HDPVR, that I gets difficult for processors.

[bcjenkins]

Keep in mind that streaming to an extender doesn't require a beefy processor. B

[GovtMule]

ahhh.. that should not be an issue then. The only HD content I would be streaming would be Blu-ray and HD-dvd rips

[mikejaner]

To be clear, by streaming you mean to the Extenders, right?

[GovtMule]

...sure... is that the wrong term?

[mikejaner]

Streaming (as I define it) is meant more as a term for sending video/audio to a non native device and or with transcoding involved. Since the extenders do receive the video natively so to speak, they don't require any significant resources to play content in SageTV. Thats why I was making sure you meant you were "streaming" to the extenders. No CPU is needed to do that, relatively speaking.

[Clift]

streaming is streaming, and transcoding is transcoding. They are different.

[GovtMule]

Noted... thanks for the clarification. So you're saying transmitting content to an HD300 requires little or no CPU cycles?
Let me just tell you guys what I am using and you can tell me how you think it will fare.

AMD 785G chipset board
AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz cpu
Hauppauge PVR500 and PVR150 tuners
Blu-ray/HD-DVD drive
Windows 7 64-bit
4Gb DDR2-800 ram

I will likely install Arcsoft TMT3 for playing HD-DVD's until I can figure out how to rip them all to H.264. I am under the impression that Sage plays Blu-ray natively with the proper codec. Is that correct? Which codec is most used? Otherwise, most of the activity will happen at the PC where the SageTV software is installed. Live/recorded TV, ripped media, and DVD/BR will be played at the 2 extenders. I also plan to add a 3rd extender and SageTV client to a desktop PC once the sting of the initial purchase has wore off.