Come on SageTV share something about the future!

[alton987]

Hey @SageTV E3 and WWDC is hitting Monday why don't you join the fun and let use know what your working on? http://goo.gl/DQ5yL

[Fuzzy]

Why would they?

[stevech]

I'd say: Because lots of people may elect to go with the less-hassle solution of just caving in and renting a cable company HD DVR instead of the geek of the house migrating Sage SD to Sage HD.

To grow, and/or protect the base from the SD era, some hopeful carrot needs to be dangled. And this has to be cableCARD in the US, and quickly. To be on par then better than 7MC which lacks a cheap non-geek extender.

In my case, the best-priced Premium TV/Phone/Internet bundle includes a DVR - one cannot opt out of DVR and save money (Time Warner, So. CA).

The HD-PVR+Sage is just starting to work here, but the cable co. DVR has already been imprinted on household members, having previously (SD era) been Sage-only, and heavily used. The first argument of appeal is that when the cable co's DVR/box dies, which it surely will since it comes to us well-used, we lose all recordings and even the settings/favorites. The second argument is that the disk is small ( weak argument ). The third weak argument is the Guide cannot omit unwanted channels, but this is offset by the user-defined channel-surfing favorites push button on CableCo's remote. Changing channels in Live TV via HD-PVR is far too slow, but that's OK, the cable box does that fine. Just toggle over to Sage to view recordings. The resistance to that has been too many button pushes, too many remotes. Now I have the Logitech Harmony 300 with one-button TV input changing.
So it's pinned on the First Argument.

[alton987]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Why would they?

To convince me it is still a good idea to invest in a SageTV ecosystem at my house.

[Ericft]

Originally Posted by alton987

To convince me it is still a good idea to invest in a SageTV ecosystem at my house.

and that i shouldn't just convert to W7MC with hdhomerun prime and get some xbox extenders...

[Fuzzy]

If you feel you could do without the many things sage already has over any other option out there, then why haven't you switched already?

Sage already does SO much more than the product I originally bought, and none of those features were talked about ahead of it's release (with the exception of the yet to be properly utilized 3D UI features).

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Sage already does SO much more than the product I originally bought, and none of those features were talked about ahead of it's release (with the exception of the yet to be properly utilized 3D UI features).

Huh? The standard counterexample cited is Studio, although that might have been before your time.

More generally though, while Sage has been a little more careful about not releasing plans after Studio, it seems like we did get a heads up before most major features were introduced. We had a few months warning before the HD100, and, if I remember correctly, we had some idea something was in the works before that. We had quite a bit of lead time on the HD-PVR. We knew that there were plans to update the UI before the v7 beta cycle started.

While some of the smaller things, like PGS subtitle support on the extenders, came out of the blue, it seems like most of the major features that have been introduced have been discussed prior to their release.

Anyways, I don't particularly care if Sage shares their plans. While the extended beta cycle going on now makes me a little more curious than usual, I'd be pretty surprised if Sage has anything major up their sleeve, like Netflix or DRMed CableCard support. Yes, its true that if that continues to be the case I'll probably grow out of Sage in a few years, but that's true with most technology anyway. It's been a good 8 years, and I'm sure I'll make it to a decade. Not bad, considering in terms of server software costs I've only paid for one server license and two upgrades for the entire 8 years.

[Fuzzy]

Yes, there are off the record type discussions and rumor mills about upcoming features - like the playready license discussion referenced in the OP... but this thread seemed to indicate they wanted sage to make some announcements at trade shows - which is certainly not their style. Also, making such announcements won't make the features come any sooner, or more assuredly. I think most requests like this are because sage users want sage to be more mainstream, so they can say "psh.. I had that in version 2..."

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by reggie14

We had a few months warning before the HD100, and, if I remember correctly, we had some idea something was in the works before that.

This is actually the standard example of why they don't do that anymore. After announcing the HD100 with much fanfare at a trade show, their deal with the hardware supplier fell through, and (as I recall) it was close to a year before they were able to find a new hardware partner and bring the redesigned product to market. During that time, they took incredible abuse from disappointed users, with daily hate mail in the forums, people calling them liars and crooks, and lots of bad feeling all around. It was pretty ugly.

I don't think that's an experience they'll want to repeat any time soon, so I wouldn't expect any public speculation from them on when or if they might have built-in Netflix support or any other hot-ticket wishlist item. We'll hear about it when they're dead sure they'll be able to deliver, and not before. The grief they get for not preannouncing is nothing compared to what they got for preannouncing and being wrong.

[panteragstk]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't care less about things being announced. I'll only ever care about features when they're ready and not before. Any body remember DirecTV's "announcing" their pci satellite tuner? Lot of good the announcement did.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't care less about things being announced. I'll only ever care about features when they're ready and not before.

I wouldn't quite go that far. I'd certainly like to know what Sage's plans are. The infrastructure necessary to support a household Sage system is moderately expensive, and it would be nice to plan system upgrades years in advance. It's hard to do a good job with that, for instance, if Sage is secretly planning DRMed CableCard support (which they probably aren't).

This is an area that's moving- not terribly quickly, but not slowly either. I think we'd all hit a point eventually where if Sage doesn't add feature X we'd decide to switch to something else, just like any other technology. For some that might be CableCard. For others it might be online video streaming. And who knows what other potential features might become important down the line.

But changing systems is expensive too. So, it's nice to know what's coming down the line, so you don't change right before something big happens. As I've said before, big companies (other than Apple) don't tend to be very good at keeping upcoming products/features secret, so you tend to have a pretty good idea what Microsoft is planning several years out.

Still, I understand why Sage would be skittish about releasing product plans before they're almost ready to go out the door. So, while I'd certainly like to hear their product plans, I don't expect them to release anything.

[stevech]

There comes a time when a product seller needs to look hard at the competition and be proactive about retaining current customers who have a fork in the road - that being HD/DRM. And how to get it without a giant science experiment.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stevech

There comes a time when a product seller needs to look hard at the competition and be proactive about retaining current customers who have a fork in the road - that being HD/DRM. And how to get it without a giant science experiment.

I use SageTV primarily as a DVR.. and frankly, there is no competition to look at. 7MC does funtion as a DVR, but with the restrictions involved, I can't see it as any more competition than the cable-co's boxes. I don't think they'd be able to sell 7MC very well as a pay-for product.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stevech

There comes a time when a product seller needs to look hard at the competition and be proactive about retaining current customers who have a fork in the road - that being HD/DRM. And how to get it without a giant science experiment.

I don't think anything terribly interesting has happened recently on the HD video front that really forces a response. Sage has HD support via the HD-PVR and Colossus. It has always needed to be used with a capture card and a set-top box to access premium content. While I'd certainly like to see CableCard support, I don't think its likely to be a huge problem for them.

Sage is a rather expensive hobby, so at this point I'd really expect most of Sage's customers that really care about this have already gone HD, and then have an HD-PVR and/or an HDHR. Once you already have that equipment you're probably unlikely to dump a bunch of money on a Ceton card and Xbox360s.

Yes, I know the widespread availability Ceton cards is somewhat new. I just think the Sage community has largely grudgingly accepted using the HD-PVR, even if there's a fair number of users out there that would prefer CableCard.

I think online video is the next issue to overcome. And I'm not convinced they'll be able to come up with an acceptable workaround for streaming online video like they were able to do with recording HD via the HD-PVR. They probably have at least a few years, but I think that's ultimately what is going to make Sage obsolete.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

7MC does funtion as a DVR, but with the restrictions involved, I can't see it as any more competition than the cable-co's boxes. I don't think they'd be able to sell 7MC very well as a pay-for product.

I think that's quite a bit of an overstatement. We're still at a point where the DVRs for most cable companies are pretty bad. They're getting better, but most still have horrible interfaces, very limited recording space, and won't stream video throughout the home. That's changing a bit, but we're not there yet.

To me 7MC actually looks pretty good. I could easily live with the DRM restrictions- its actually more the little things that would bug me. I wouldn't want to have to do special processing on my video files to get them to be able to play back on the XBox360 extenders. That's a big enough deal to me that I can't imagine moving to 7MC.

[bits]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I use SageTV primarily as a DVR.. and frankly, there is no competition to look at. 7MC does funtion as a DVR, but with the restrictions involved, I can't see it as any more competition than the cable-co's boxes. I don't think they'd be able to sell 7MC very well as a pay-for product.

+1

I have used 7MC, BTV, and others with an array of network media players going back 8 years or so.....hands down SageTV + HD200/300 is the best DVR/PVR solution out there.

[bits]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I think that's quite a bit of an overstatement. We're still at a point where the DVRs for most cable companies are pretty bad. They're getting better, but most still have horrible interfaces, very limited recording space, and won't stream video throughout the home. That's changing a bit, but we're not there yet.

To me 7MC actually looks pretty good. I could easily live with the DRM restrictions- its actually more the little things that would bug me. I wouldn't want to have to do special processing on my video files to get them to be able to play back on the XBox360 extenders. That's a big enough deal to me that I can't imagine moving to 7MC.

And do not forget that the cable DVRs do not allow you completely skip over commercials! IMHO fast forwarding through commercials is not much different than watching them.

[sleonard]

The #1 feature of Sage, IMHO, is that it is a centralized DVR that plays to any extender or SW client on the network. Until other DVR's have this feature I won't even look at anything else.

S

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by bits

And do not forget that the cable DVRs do not allow you completely skip over commercials! IMHO fast forwarding through commercials is not much different than watching them.

In my mind, automatic commercial skip is a nice feature with Sage (and 7MC), but by no means a killer feature. As long as something could do 2.5 minute jumps I wouldn't be terribly concerned. I know other Sage users don't feel the same way, but that's my thoughts on it. If I had an all-HD-PVR setup instead of mostly mpeg2 via HDHR and firewire recording I'd think twice about using comskip at all. At least in my experience its much, much worse at processing H.264 files, particularly on some channels, to the point of seriously calling into question whether it does more harm than good.

I'm with sleonard that the killer feature in Sage (and 7MC, to some extent) is that it does centralized recording that can be streamed throughout the house. While software clients used to be important to me, I haven't used a software client for many, many months. I don't know exactly how long, but I know I upgraded to v7 on my server when it was released, but I never upgraded the software client on my workstation. I could never get firewire recordings or HD-PVR recordings to play back very well. I kept getting lock-ups requiring hard resets on my workstation, and after playing with it for a couple months I finally just gave up. That was 2.5 years ago I think. For a while I used it with the HDHR recordings, but I stopped doing that a long time ago too.

[bits]

Originally Posted by sleonard

The #1 feature of Sage, IMHO, is that it is a centralized DVR that plays to any extender or SW client on the network. Until other DVR's have this feature I won't even look at anything else.

S

I agree that Sage as a centralized DVR is a killer feature. My comment regarding skipping over commercials was by no means a ranking of Sage features but it IMHO is one that I think many take for granted. Most cable DVRs do not allow 1 min or 2 min skips, they effectively force folks to fast forward through the entire ommercial. When I first got my cable DVR it did not have a skip feature but there was a fix for that on the internet. About a month after the fix was posted there was a forced firmware update of the DVR and the skip no longer worked.

The only reason I got into network media players 8+ years ago was that it was a way to get around commercials. Hulu is no longer appealing to us because they have steadily increased the number and length of commericals.