How many Sage Users are there?

[OldPCGUY]

I saw 56000 views on one of the posts and it makes me wonder how many Sage Users there are.

Does anyone know?

[will]

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

I saw 56000 views on one of the posts

Perhaps that post received a lot of search engine traffic.

I have no idea how many Sage users there are, but 56,000 seems VERY high. I would be surprised if Sage had over 10,000 paying customers. I'm willing to guess somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000.

[reggie14]

I don't think anyone really knows, except for Sage (who know their sales numbers and can see the EPG traffic). But, a while back I tried to make an ever-so-slightly barely-educated guess based on the number of people reporting problems with the HD100 and some really vague revenue estimate on the Manta website (which was complicated by the fact that Manta's two estimates were off by an order of magnitude, going from $250k to $2mil). It's hard to make any sort of guess based on that information, but my wild guess in the end was probably 10,000+/-5,000 users. I'm guessing there's fair number of people that just got the server license and use it rarely, if at all.

Alternatively, consider how long they've been in business- about 10 years. You need quite a few sales to keep going that long. They didn't have a steady revenue stream. They made some money on the extenders, and every once in a while they charged an upgrade fee.

So, what does that mean? Beats me. I'm still guessing 10,000 +/- 5,000, although that's admittedly a wide range. I'm guessing the number of active users has been dropping for a while, sped up by the Google sale. Revenue might have stayed roughly the same (or possibly gone up), as the remaining and new die-hard users bought more extenders and paid the upgrade fees.

[Fuzzy]

Look at the numbers. Even if you assume sage had no operating costs, and even if you consider they only had 3 employees - 10,000 purchases of the server would only be $80k. That isn't a lot of money for 3 people over 10 years, and that's not including the fees for the web servers, and most importantly, the fees for the guide data to zap2it. I'm betting the actual number of sales is FAR higher than that - it would have to be for them to have stuck with it this long.

[Slugger]

10,000 x $80 = $800,000

Even $800K doesn't seem like it'd go very far over 10 years. Tribune alone would probably have sucked up a good chunk of that.

If that's even remotely close, then you really have to wonder what kind of multiplier Google paid on approx. annual sales of $80,000. Let's say even $100K annual gross revenue. For Google to pay $1M for Sage, they'd be paying a 10x multiplier on gross sales (and closer to a 100x multiplier on net income)? Probably not. Just some food for thought, because I had a few minutes between meetings to browse at this particular moment and came across this particular thread...

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Slugger

10,000 x $80 = $800,000

Hey man, nuclear engineers don't need real math...

[Dargason]

Reminds me of my first electromagnetics course.

It was the first class after a midterm exam. The professor walked in with the exams in his hand and wrote on the chalkboard: 20 x 30 != 60

[wayner]

EM theory was a pretty rough course. I think it is the only course I ever took where the mid-term exam average was below 50. Somehow I ended up with a 50 in the course which must have been a gift. Maxwell's equations are pretty tricky.

[tmiranda]

When a new version of CommercialDetector was released it was typically downloaded about 3,000 times. It's hard to say the percentage of people using that plugin, but it's probably fairly high.

Or, we can go with the default and say there are 42 users.

Oh, and for me Probability and Differential Equations were the most difficult.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Oh, and for me Probability and Differential Equations were the most difficult.

Wow, I took both of those as a sophomore, that was when I thought college was easy!

I found statics and dynamics to be hard, not so much the statics, but the dynamics, worst was Signal Analysis in Linear Systems.

[dstanley]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Or, we can go with the default and say there are 42 users.

You forgot to count ME - so that would be 43 users.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Serra

Wow, I took both of those as a sophomore, that was when I thought college was easy!

I found statics and dynamics to be hard, not so much the statics, but the dynamics, worst was Signal Analysis in Linear Systems.

Cut that out! You're giving me flashbacks.

Of course, life was simpler then... no wife, kids, mortgage... sigh.... maybe those classes weren't SO bad after all....

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by dstanley

You forgot to count ME - so that would be 43 users.

How can you change the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

[Smiley]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

How can you change the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

Well I, for one, am more amazed that you were able to pose the question

Maybe that was why Google purchased SageTV in the first place - they finally found the ultimate question...

[Serra]

Ultimate answer? Number of months SageTV worked after Google bought them: 42

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Serra

Ultimate answer? Number of months SageTV worked after Google bought them: 42

I suspect not a lot of people here expect to still have their Sage system working in December of 2014.
(I hope to)

[Fuzzy]

I see no reason why I should spend any money on moving away from sage in the next x years..

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I suspect not a lot of people here expect to still have their Sage system working in December of 2014.
(I hope to)

I certainly hope you are wrong. Heck, my old ReplayTV's are still working away recording SD content.
The first one was bought in November of 1999!! $700 for a ReplayTV 2020 20 gig model. About 7 months later I bought a ReplayTV 3030 30 gigger, and a few years after that I bought 2 ReplayTV 5040's.
Over the years I've had a couple HD's in the ReplayTV's die, but I simply re-imaged a new drive and the unit(s) were up and working again. Luckily each time the drive would give me plenty of warning and I never lost any content.

Just last month I had to replace the main drive in my old HTPC which had been running 24/7/365 since 2005! Again, I lost no content. That machine is still chugging away serving up content. One of these days I've got to port its recordings over to the new HTPC.

The ReplayTV's may become boat anchors for me next month. Comcast has sent out a notice that they will be requiring an STB or DTA to tune even the analog channels starting sometime next month. If that is truly the case (they've threatened that several times in the past few years) then the ReplayTV's will be shut down for good and I'll post them for sale.

I hope to get at least that much longevity out of my SageTV setup!

[phareous]

So the forum says 16,701 members, most ever online was 6,103 on 8/3/2011 and there are 740 active members. But who knows since there are customers who wouldn't register, non-customers who would, and possibly spammers

[drewg]

Originally Posted by phareous

So the forum says 16,701 members, most ever online was 6,103 on 8/3/2011 and there are 740 active members. But who knows since there are customers who wouldn't register, non-customers who would, and possibly spammers

There are probably way more more customers who never registered for the forums than those who have. I've got a co-worker who has had SageTV since v4 or v5. AFAIK, he never upgrades it, he uses it w/analog cable, has never had a problem, doesn't use any extensions, etc.
Drew