SageV3.0 or MCE2005?

[Jason]

Originally Posted by jhh

One thing which kept me away from MCE is this:



At one time I thought having three tuners was overkill but now I'm glad I have them.

I have to admit that eye candy is nice too and that's probably why I have tried most stv's already.

Jan

The two tuner issue has been 'taken care of'.

Over on the TGB (The Green Button) forums, there are four tuner setups working...

-Jason

[ukmgranger]

Originally Posted by Jason

The two tuner issue has been 'taken care of'.

Over on the TGB (The Green Button) forums, there are four tuner setups working...

-Jason

This may be so - but it's the fact that you can't have more than one lineup that stops most people in their tracks

[mkanet]

ukmgranger, what do you mean by not having more than one lineup for MCE? How would that affect somebody like me who has 2 Fusion 5 cards and 1 Hauppauge PVR USB2 (used for direcTV). Would I be able to see OTA ATSC programing + DirecTV programing all in the same line up in one guide; like in SageTV?

MCE's muslc jukebox, picture viewer, CD/DVD burning support (with sonic encoder) is much more mature than SageTV 3's (most probably even when SageTV 3 is out of beta).

On the other hand, I think SageTV 3's UI is much better looking.

[ukmgranger]

Basically I have two linups in Sage at the moment. lineup 1 is for my terrestrial i/p (channels 1-5) and lineup is for my 'freeview' input on card 2 (channels 1-5 + about 30 other channels).

With MCE2005 you can't have differing linups, so it is certainly out of the question for me.

[mkanet]

ukmgranger, can you please explain to me again what this channel lineup limitation is that everyone keeps talking about in MCE? I currently have 800 satellite channels and 20 over-the-air HDTV channels in sageTV 3.0 They listed in numeric order.

How would it look on MCE's guide?

[blade]

Originally Posted by mkanet

ukmgranger, can you please explain to me again what this channel lineup limitation is that everyone keeps talking about in MCE? I currently have 800 satellite channels and 20 over-the-air HDTV channels in sageTV 3.0 They listed in numeric order.

How would it look on MCE's guide?

With Sage you select a channel lineup for each capture device. So if you're using a satellite and an antenna you select the lineup for each capture device and all your channels are displayed in the guide and are available.

I've never used MCE, but from my understanding you can only have 1 channel lineup. You'd have to select the channel lineup for the satellite and then your antenna channels won't be listed in the guide and won't be available for use because you have no guide info for them.

Like I said I've never used MCE, but that's my understanding of how it works.

[mkanet]

Hmmm... that doesn't seem to be right. That would mean that nobody could feasibly schedule recordings from both sources. I'm not even sure how somebody would change from an satellite channel to digital since the guide is what is used to tune into channels.

The funny thing is that nobody on the greenbuttonforum seems to know the answer either LOL!

[blade]

I assumed that's why many people said it was a deal breaker for them.

Here's a link describing the limitation.

http://blogs.msdn.com/adamga/archive...07/278044.aspx

[mkanet]

I must have read what's in the article 3 times and I still don't understand what it's trying to say regarding tuner inputs being the same or different. It doesn't say anything about the guide.

I know there are dozens of people who have both Hauppauge and Fusion/Avertmedia with MCE ....I would love to know how they actually use MCE that way.

[blade]

Originally Posted by mkanet

I must have read what's in the article 3 times and I still don't understand what it's trying to say regarding tuner inputs being the same or different. It doesn't say anything about the guide.

Yes, it does. I don't really know how it could be explained any clearer. Maybe someone else can come along and explain it a little better. I am curious as well, but from all that I've read you can only setup 1 source for all the tuners.

[salsbst]

SageTV: all sources are reconciled into one set of listings for the user, who does not have to worry about which source is providing a given airing -- the system handles conflicts/duplicates

MCE: please, someone fill in the blanks succinctly, or at least clearly

[mlbdude]

With MCE you can only use one source - except for OTA HD. For example, with two 250's in my system I have to use RF cable or SVideo w/cable box on BOTH 250's. The HD card is capable of adding the additional antenna source for its channels. Conflicts and duplicates are then taken care of just like in Sage.

[salsbst]

So, it's more or less like SageTV except that there is a maximum of one non-HDTV source and a maximum of one HDTV source?

[mlbdude]

Originally Posted by salsbst

So, it's more or less like SageTV except that there is a maximum of one non-HDTV source and a maximum of one HDTV source?

Exactly. Except that MCE only supports OTA HDTV so you don't really have a choice in that .

[stanger89]

I haven't actually used MCE, but I think I understand:

Forget OTA HD for a minute it's a special case.

In MCE you can only have one guide, one set of channels, and it's applied to ALL the tuners in the system. For example if you have digital cable (which includes analog) you can choose to configure analog OR digital, and your choice will apply to both tuners. You can NOT (for example) configure one tuner as analog, and connect a box to the other. Similarly, if you have cable and satellite, you can only use 1 of them in MCE as it won't let you configure sat on one and cable on the other.

Conversely, in Sage, if you've got say digital cable and satellite, you could connect RF (analog cable) to all tuners, and configure them thus, then (in addition) add a couple of cable boxes to the S-Video inputs, and a couple Sat boxes to other S-Video inputs, and have all configured simultaneously.

Now for OTA HD, in MCE, you can't actually configure it as a separate source. If I understand correctly, when MCE detects the HD card it retrieves the OTA listings based on your SD listings. So it's not really a separate "source" like it would be in Sage, more of an extension of the currently configured one.

FWIW, the lack of a software (PC) client, is what makes MCE a no-go for me.

[mkanet]

Okay, I think after 4 people trying to explain it to me, I "think" I understand...

MCE can only use the same input for all analog TV cards (either all of them have to be svideo or tuned via on board tuner on the analog TV card).

According to stanger89, MCE can still display all my direcTV listings AND OTA ATSC listings in one guide. This would mean there's no limitations for somebody that has 1 Hauppauge PVR and 2 OTA ATSC cards. I wish I could know this for sure.

[salsbst]

In MCE you can only have one guide, one set of channels, and it's applied to ALL the tuners in the system.

Sounds like a POS to me. I hope the little guys can stem the tide here. Microsoft is on its way to monopolizing TV, and the the public doesn't realize it. When you see an inferior product winning, you know there's a dearth of information.

[johnb41]

Does anyone know if a DVR-MS format (from Media Center) can be converted to a format compatible with an Archos PVR? (AV480, for example) I know the pocketdivxencoder is very good with converting video to it, but i don't know if it supports DVR-MS. I'm asking because i needed to buy XP for my new computer... i just went ahead and got the MCE version because it was only a few bucks more. Thought i'd at least see what the fuss is about!

Thanks!
John

[Griff]

Is anyone using Sage as a primary/workhorse DVR, and just using MCE2005 on another computer on the network as a client? In other words, can you simply point MCE2005 to your Sage video directory and have it access the videos there using the MCE2005 interface?

[g808]

The two tuner issue has been 'taken care of'.

Over on the TGB (The Green Button) forums, there are four tuner setups working...

Here's the thread over at TGB about adding more than 2 analog tuners to MCE.

According to stanger89, MCE can still display all my direcTV listings AND OTA ATSC listings in one guide. This would mean there's no limitations for somebody that has 1 Hauppauge PVR and 2 OTA ATSC cards. I wish I could know this for sure.

For the record MCE 2005 does not natively support 2 ATSC cards. There is a way to get this working if your ATSC card drivers support dual tuners. Here's a thread over at HTPCnews.com that describes getting 2 Fusion cards working in MCE.

In other words, can you simply point MCE2005 to your Sage video directory and have it access the videos there using the MCE2005 interface?

Yes, you could do this in MCE 2005's "My Videos", but it won't display the show metadata. You'll just see a thumbnail of a screencap from the video and the video title below it.

Does anyone know if a DVR-MS format (from Media Center) can be converted to a format compatible with an Archos PVR?

Not sure about this. I do know that MCE 2005 plays nice with Portable Media Centers since they are designed for exactly that. You can plugin a Portable Media Center to your MCE machine and transfer whatever shows you want and it will be reencoded to fit onto the device. This takes a long time though.

People complain about the dvr-ms format, but it is easy to edit the file. There are several programs to do this. You can even burn shows directly to a video DVD (playable on standalone DVD players and computers) via the MCE interface if you either have the free sonic encoders installed (floating around the Web and natively installed on most pre-built MCE machines) or Sonic Primetime.