It's Time to Say Goodbye

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

the 200 music video tapes from the 80’’s & 90’s.

YES!!!!!
I still have one 6-hour VHS tape with videos from the 83-86 era, including an entire 90-minute 1984 episode of "Friday Night Videos" that used to air on NBC after the 11 pm news.... from Van Halen to Lionel Richie to early Motley Crue!

[wayner]

Do you have the uncensored Girls on Film? That was pretty awesome for a teenage boy!

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by wayner

Do you have the uncensored Girls on Film? That was pretty awesome for a teenage boy!

Of course - my source was MuchMusic, not MTV. Probably have Helix’ ‘Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’ as well, which outdid Duran Duran…

[jchiso]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

... Still haven’t got around to digitizing the 200 music video tapes from the 80’’s & 90’s ...

That's funny. Back in January 1 through mid April 2000, MTV did a
'complete" A-to-Z playback of its video library. Virtually every song, sorted by song title. MTV had four six-hour blocks that it repeated, per day. I used a high-quality VHS recorder to tape each of the blocks, and then encoder the videos I wanted using at least three types of capture devices.

The result is that I had (and still have) close to 1,000 videos archived. Unfortunately, they are encoded in VideoCD (352x240 mpeg1, 30fps, stereo mp2 44.1KHz) format. Still, very watchable, and great sounding, but now, YouTube exists.

I still have the 15 original tapes I used. So if I got really bored I could reproduce everything from 'Until You Come Back to Me" to "[I]Zoot Suit Rio[t/I]" in h264 or hevc.

I don't think I'm going to ...

[VCRUser]

While we're confessing our obsessions, I'm currently working on some multi-generational tapes of Dark Shadows festivals from the 80s and 90s - so video quality is already pretty low. Back in the day, if you couldn't attend in person you found someone who had a copy of a copy of a tape, and got them to make you a copy of their copy. And yes, there is also a fair bit on youtube.

[wayner]

There used to be videos that would go viral and people would make tape to tape copies. Winnebago Man is an example of such a video, which became the subject of a documentary that I would highly recommend. If there was a Nobel Prize for profanity the Winnebago Man would be a recipient.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by jchiso

Unfortunately, they are encoded in VideoCD (352x240 mpeg1, 30fps, stereo mp2 44.1KHz) format.

Ah yes, I used to record shows for my kids like SpongeBob, in the early days, and make VideoCD's for them to watch in the car. It took a lot of time to encode those with the cpu's we had 20 years ago!

[jchiso]

Originally Posted by Zogg

... It took a lot of time to encode those with the cpu's we had 20 years ago!

I started out using an ATI All-In-Wonder card, that had capture capability, but eventually moved up to three different generations of Dazzle Video Creator devices. The first one was Parallel-Port-based, but the later variants were PCI cards. Each of these devices could do realtime capture, via their onboard encoders.

The bigger issue was using the accompanying editing software to trim the clips. That took a lot of time ...

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by jchiso

I started out using an ATI All-In-Wonder card, that had capture capability, but eventually moved up to three different generations of Dazzle Video Creator devices. The first one was Parallel-Port-based, but the later variants were PCI cards. Each of these devices could do realtime capture, via their onboard encoders.

The bigger issue was using the accompanying editing software to trim the clips. That took a lot of time ...

I think a lot of us started out with an All-In-Wonder. I may have had a Dazzle card too, that seems familiar. I eventually wound up with 3 Hauppage cards. Good times.

[mlcarson]

The only way that Channels DVR supports DirecTV is via TVE (TV Everywhere). That's true for every service EXCEPT the HDHomerun Prime/Connect hardware. Their entire gimmick is really the ability to record the TVE streams. If you don't need that and are just recording HDHomerun or IPTV streams then you could go with Emby or Jellyfin or even Plex. They could also do Locast (when they still existed) and can do Pluto streams but that's not an exclusive.

The TVE thing is really nice if you have a family member or somebody that has a Cable/Sat service that you can use their TVE login for. You can get a nice group of channels that you can record that way and can even get the basic networks in markets where they are part of TVE (that market is where your server is -- not where the Cable/Sat service is that was subscribed to). If I was the actual cable subscriber, I'd want a cable card and a HDHomerun Prime rather than TVE though assuming that the channels aren't DRM'd.

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

I see DirectTV on their list, so there must be a way via IR to control a set top box, but I donÂ’t see Dish, or any of the Canadian satellite providers. IÂ’ll try and understand that link you sent, which at the moment, I donÂ’t. But anything that isnÂ’t native from the manufacturer to begin with is usually a no-can-do for me

Note: I checked here, https://www.digitalhome.ca/ , for the words “ChannelsDvr”, or “Channels DVR” - nada. This is Canada’s foremost TV nerd site. So it doesn’t look like CDVR is in use there.

[nyplayer]

All the other apps you mentioned are ok .. But none of them gives you the ability to Share streams from IPTV and Tuners to other Apps ... they support M3U in but not M3U out.. Channels DVR has that ability.

Channeles DVR > M3u > [Sagetv/Emby/Plex/NextPVR/Kodi] ability to share 1 stream/tuner between all at the same time.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by wayner

Do you have the uncensored Girls on Film? That was pretty awesome for a teenage boy!

My friend in 7th grade had an older brother who had a Laserdisc (yes, a Laserdisc! The only person I ever knew who had a player) of Duran Duran's videos (as of like 1984 or 1985). I remember seeing that when I was over at his house one time (after he made sure his parents weren't going to suddenly come down to the basement). Talk about eye-opening for a 13 year old! That ice cube...

[tvmaster2]

Laserdisc? That reminds me - I never sold my DAT machine…

[jchiso]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Laserdisc? That reminds me - I never sold my DAT machine…

Don't get me started ... okay, someone got me started on another forum a couple of weeks ago, but I still have two MiniDisc systems. Three, if you include a non-functioning four-track recorder ...

[nycjoe]

Piggybacking on this thread; my SageTV setup has also reached the end of the line a few months ago.
Looking through some of my old posts here - boy I did a lot of complaining over the years! I do want to express my gratitude to the Frey folks and the community.
A quick recap — I’ve been ‘using’ since late 2005 (I would reinstall OS and trials over and over for Sage, BeyondTV, GB-PVR, etc, but settled on Sage pretty quickly, obv reasons). I can’t think of any software or hardware that lasted this long - a couple of lamps, maybe?
I probably would still be on the platform except that I spent extended periods of time away from home during the pandemic using just streaming services and.. it’s good enough. I don’t think I’ve added new favorite shows in years! Not to mention 4K > HD (all those years watching SD! How did we do it?).
So, thanks for everything - lots of equipment left over to unload! Marketplace post coming - I have lots of stuff (extenders, hauppauge, silicondust, etc).

[CanadianEh]

I left a long time ago (looks like I started out using SageTV back in 2004!) at some point after SageTV was sold, but have always come back every now and then to see how the product is doing. I can't remember the specific reasons I left, but I moved over to MediaPortal and used Raspberry Pi's as clients via Kodi. MediaPortal seems to have died off, and I was kind of sick of maintaining all of the Pi clients.

I moved over to Plex and for a while integrated my HD-PVR via NextPVR via xteve. I finally realized we were really only watching the local channels and streaming services (Netflix, Hulu), so I dropped Comcast and went OTA-only via Plex to reduce complexity and an unnecessary expense.

It still lacks some of the DVR capabilities of SageTV, but the simplicity of using Roku's, GoogleTV (Firesticks also work), make it such a simple solution for the wife and kids.

This year, I went a little crazy and threw a PC in the camper, which syncs all of Plex's recordings to its HDD while sitting in the driveway via Syncthing. I chose Jellyfin for the camper because it's free and does not require internet access for authentication - ever.

I'm glad to see that after all these years, SageTV lives on again. Good luck to all of you!