Time article on what happens when Google buys a small company

[srothwell]

Intersting read.... Basically, don't believe the "we're going to do great things..." line.

http://techland.time.com/2012/07/20/...robably-toast/

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by srothwell

Intersting read.... Basically, don't believe the "we're going to do great things..." line.

http://techland.time.com/2012/07/20/...robably-toast/

Gospel...

[Skirge01]

A very similar article.

[toony]

It's over, let's face it Sage is gone into the Gether.

[darcilicious]

Don't know if any of you ever used "Simplify Media" but that is the one acquisition by Google I miss the most (until SageTV finishes dying what I must now admit looks to be a long, lingering death).

Simplify Media cataloged all your music and then let you share/stream any/all of your (non-DRMed) music to up 10 folks and you could stream theirs. For free. I have friends (online and those that I have met in person) all over the world and sharing music collections like this was (pardon the wording) simply amazing.

I suspect that if Simplify lives on at all, it is only in the streaming aspects of Google Play.

[nycjoe]

Don't do evil, excel at it

[cncb]

SageTV seemed to have a different step 5: Instead of thanking your loyal users/supporters call them pessimistic, ungrateful whiners...

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by cncb

SageTV seemed to have a different step 5: Instead of thanking your loyal users/supporters call them pessimistic, ungrateful whiners...

But that's coming from other users, not SageTV/Google...

[cncb]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

But that's coming from other users, not SageTV/Google...

I guess you missed when this thread was created by Sage and titled "Pointless Dribble" (their words not mine). Also read the first post. And maybe you've seen something but I haven't seen one word of thanks in any of the announcements.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by cncb

I guess you missed when this thread was created by Sage and titled "Pointless Dribble" (their words not mine). Also read the first post. And maybe you've seen something but I haven't seen one word of thanks in any of the announcements.

Yeah, I thought what Jeff did in that thread was incredibly inappropriate. It was fine to do the thread merging, but re-titling it "Pointless Dribble" was childish and insensitive. He eventually changed the title, presumably once he calmed down, but never made any sort of acknowledgement of doing anything improper.

I think Jeff might have a bit of a temper, or at least doesn't take negative comments well. A few years ago I had an exchange with him when people were having problems with HD100s failing due to bad capacitors. After a bunch of people reported failures on the forums, Jeff posted a message saying there was no problem and that the the failure rate was about 1%. About the same time, I had compiled a list of failures which strongly suggested the failure rate was significantly higher. So, I asked Jeff to clarify if the 1% figure included out-of-warranty items that were sent in for repair. He refused to answer that question, and seemed to get pretty mad at me. He (and/or Andy) modified thread titles, and went on to lock or delete threads related to HD100 failures after that point. Months later they were still very nervous about hardware failures. Once I caught them deleting a thread on a hardware failure in one of the Sage-branded MediaMVPs.

And, to be fair, Jeff did thank people in this thread. But, I had to search to find that. It was a bit surprising that the initial announcements didn't include any sort of "thank you," although I attribute that to a simple oversight. In spite of my previous run-in with Jeff, for the most part he seems like a nice guy trying to help out the community as much as he can (given his current corporate constraints).

[stanger89]

The thing I find interesting/different with SageTV, is the SageTV team "seems" to still be together at google, and they're still willing, able, and allowed to do updates. Look at the SageDCT thread, they've gotten a few new demuxes from Sage/Google. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it seems more promising than if they'd gotten nothing.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The thing I find interesting/different with SageTV, is the SageTV team "seems" to still be together at google, and they're still willing, able, and allowed to do updates. Look at the SageDCT thread, they've gotten a few new demuxes from Sage/Google. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it seems more promising than if they'd gotten nothing.

I seem to remember a demux thread that had lots of beta demuxers trying to fix a certain issue (can't remember what), but that was there right up to the v7 release. With that said, this is interesting.

[reggie14]

I sort of assumed the recent demux updates were just one or more ex-Sage employees doing some work in their off hours just to keep Sage working. We've seen some other minor updates to Sage that were necessary to keep certain functionality working. Basically, they seem to be trying to fix things that we couldn't fix or work-around ourselves.

But, Jeff's previous statement about working on Sage every day was more promising. That suggests that Google's acquisition of Sage might work out sort of like Google's acquisition of Grand Central. Of course, the problem there was that it took them almost two years to come out with a product that was very similar to Grand Central. It would be pretty disappointing if Google came out with GoogleDVR in 2013 with basically the same features as Sage v7, just using GoogleTV boxes instead of the extenders. I still might buy it- it would just be disappointing.

Still, I'm pretty skeptical that Google would actually launch any sort of DVR product. They don't seem interested in their STB division from Motorola, and over the last year Google has shown a strong desire to push their cloud offerings and the Play store. I don't see a DVR fitting into that very well.

[Skybolt]

I can't remember where I read this, but I read a rumor about Googles new STB possibly supporting local IPTV streaming (HDHR Prime ETC.)

Just conjecture on my part but, perhaps there looking into supporting DRM for Live tv with an Ceton device or Prime. It would make a lot of semse if they were.

[ckewinjones]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

A very similar article.

Good article, but as regards SageTV not entirely accurate. Describing the fate of various Google-acquired products, the article says that SageTV has been

merged into the ill-starred GoogleTV platform

As far as I know, there is no trace of SageTV functionality in the GoogleTV platform. To me, if SageTV really had been merged into GoogleTV, that would be good news compared to what we have given so far.

Google's acquisition of Sage might work out sort of like Google's acquisition of Grand Central

That would be a great outcome. I was never a Grand Central user, but I have been happily using Google Voice for some years. It's my understanding that Voice is pretty much a simple re-branding of Grand Central, and if we can get SageTV back as a re-branded Google product, I'd be very happy with that.

I'm sure it was disappointing to Grand Central users to wait a couple of years for a re-branding of the same product; but at least they got a beloved product back at the end of that time. The Grand Central/Google Voice example suggests that the long silence from Google about SageTV does not necessarily mean that the product is being abandoned. There is still hope.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by ckewinjones

I'm sure it was disappointing to Grand Central users to wait a couple of years for a re-branding of the same product; but at least they got a beloved product back at the end of that time. The Grand Central/Google Voice example suggests that the long silence from Google about SageTV does not necessarily mean that the product is being abandoned. There is still hope.

Here's one difference for Sage users (compared to Grand Central users): how would you feel about spending another $150 per TV to replace your extenders with Google boxes, just to get the same functionality that you currently have? In the case of Grand Central, the migration was free to the user.

I agree that we shouldn't be taking the silence to mean the product is abandoned. I think it was and is unrealistic to expect anything from Google for about two years. Maybe it is reasonable some type of announcement of intentions after 18 months, but I really suspect Google as a company hasn't decided what they want to do in this space yet.

[ckewinjones]

Originally Posted by reggie14

... how would you feel about spending another $150 per TV to replace your extenders with Google boxes, just to get the same functionality that you currently have?

I'm sure I wouldn't care for it. However, I don't think it is that likely. I don't think it would be that hard to make a new product based on SageTV technology backward-compatible with SageTV extenders (it's more a matter of not doing anything to break the existing extender support than of affirmatively adding extender support); and I don't think the SageTV installed base is so big that $150 or $200 per extender represents a revenue stream that would have Google salivating.

If we did have to replace our extenders, it wouldn't be "just to get the same functionality"; it would be to get existing SageTV functionality plus whatever cloud-based functionality Google has to offer.

If I have to spend $150 per TV to preserve my investment in SageTV technology, so be it. After all what exactly is in second place?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by ckewinjones

I'm sure I wouldn't care for it. However, I don't think it is that likely. I don't think it would be that hard to make a new product based on SageTV technology backward-compatible with SageTV extenders (it's more a matter of not doing anything to break the existing extender support than of affirmatively adding extender support); and I don't think the SageTV installed base is so big that $150 or $200 per extender represents a revenue stream that would have Google salivating.

I'd be absolutely astonished if a future Google DVR based on SageTV was backwards compatible with Sage extenders. For one, they'll be pretty old at that point. The HD200, and particularly the HD100, might be limited by RAM, ROM, or processing power. Even the HD300 appears to be significantly less powerful than the upcoming Echo box (according to statements a Ceton employee made over at AVS).

But, more significantly, I just don't see Google releasing something that close to SageTV. It might have similar features, and share quite a bit of code, but there's going to be a different twist to it. I don't know what that is likely to be (assuming it ever happens).

In the end, it could be something as simple as DRM. Maybe Google would want to roll out support for CableCard, and they'd need a new DRM system to go along with it.

Originally Posted by ckewinjones

If I have to spend $150 per TV to preserve my investment in SageTV technology, so be it. After all what exactly is in second place?

I'm mostly with you on that. Currently there aren't any good replacements. But, the Ceton Echo extender might be it. We'll see in a few months.

[nycjoe]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Yeah, I thought what Jeff did in that thread was incredibly inappropriate.

I had an issue once getting my HD-PVR to work for some reason.. Needed to extend the tuning delay or something like that. I emailed support a few times and never heard back - I got really pi**ed and was all set to call it quits, when my wife somehow dug up Jeff's phone #. She called him and she said he was very nice and had George reach out to me right away - my emails were caught in a spam filter or something. They were very helpful afterwards.

Honestly, I dont know what kind of service we should all be expecting... Totaling all the gear I bought from Sage over the years is, what, $600? $700? It's not like I put their kids through college, and I'm not expecting them to name their yachts after me. They don't really owe me anything, and I'm sure %99 of Sagetv users would have done the exact same thing if offered the chance to sell the company.

Doesn't change the fact that it sucks for us... Take it as a compliment that people are passionate about the products you made.

Let's go CETON! Super excited to be in their beta. Kinda sucks to go to windows.

[traker1001]

You guys got it easy though. The problem I am facing is my wife and child are both visually impaired. I was able to alter sage in such a way that they could set up recordings, play them back on any tv, Use playon, use the web guide to see what was on, change the sap on the DTV boxes easily so that the descriptive video played, among other things.

While I know it wasn't intentional on Jeffs part, He actually made what is the first truly accessible DVR, and probably what will be the last. (Other than apple TV and that doesn't count)

I have email other companies such as Ceton, Google, directv, you name em, And none of them really give a crap.

However, Sage was open enough so that it solved a large pain in my behind. Now google, has destroyed that in a single careless act.