Telewest TVDrive over Sage

[ukmgranger]

Hi People,

I have been using Sage now for ages (over 2 years). I think that this time is now coming to an end!

I'm about to move home, which is the main reason for the change. The area that I'm moving to can't get freeview (I use 2 x Freeview STB's into Sage), and it's a gradeII listed building - so no sky dish. This made me look at what telewest/NTL had to offer in the line of STB's and I found this.

The TVDrive has three tuners and receives HD! MY current system only has 2 tuners and this does me fine!

I know that the software will be a little more clunky and won't have as many features - but to be honest, on the TV side of things, all I do is set up series records and do the odd manual record.

I think that the WAF will be much higher with a unit like this too, as others in the family have Sky and NTL so they will all 'understand' the new system more. I am also getting sick of the "It's the most complicated TV in the world" comments (however, I think that this is just the remotes fault - that's another story).

Yesterday pushed me even further to this decision.
I had my in-laws 'round to watch England in the world cup. I was as edgy about my system functioning well as I was about the score. Sure enough, not long into the game things started to go awry. The screen just paused at one point, then came back to life but played double speed until it caught up to realtime. At this point I flicked over to 'analogue' on the TV. Everyone in the room immediately said "wow - the picture looks so much better now" - and it did. I have not watched analogue for so long now that I had forgot what it looked like.

Sage has a habit of letting me down and crashing at the MOST inopportune moments! I think generally I will be happier with a dedicated box for TV.

As Sage's best point is the TV side of things, I don't even think that I'll bother keeping it for playing my online DVD collection / music collection. I guess I will look at meedio or Microsoft MC for these purposes as the UI's are far more advanced than that of Sage.

I just think that it's about time that I / my family could actually watch some TV without it flunking out on me. I am getting really tired of making excuses for my system.

Please don't take this as a Sage bashing. I have used it 'fairly' happily for 2 years now. I just think that dedicated units are now catching up to the HTPC's.

I'll still be using SageTV for the next couple of months, and knowing my fickle tendencies, I'll change my mind and decide that Sage is the way forward again! Who knows?

I'm guessing that this will not be the case though and I will just have a 'project' PC that has Sage on it just to keep my tinkering hands happy.

[Hades]

I know what you mean ukmgranger
All my common sense tells me just use the HTPC for playing back media..and get a Sky+ digibox for TV..This is not a Sage Issue per se ,just a quality of image issue because of how i have to capture signal.

Sure, i would have to pay +£10 p/m + New digibox ,but in the greater scheme of things £10p/m is good value,compared to the poorer quality of my current recordings because i have to route the signal via multiple s-video connections

I have already spent out on getting an OLDER skydigibox that has an S-VHS output ..so now its Sat>Digibox(s-video out)>Capture Card>Video Card(s-video out)>CRT TV,you can imagine with 2x s-video connections,the picture aint great.

Where as i could Sat>Sky+Digitbox>TV(scart) = great picture on my aging CRT TV

I guess DVB-S would be the way for me to go (No freeview reception),but that would mean i would lose certain channels (Eurosport),also i note DVB-S is still in its infancy on the whole PVR front.

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by Hades

I guess DVB-S would be the way for me to go (No freeview reception),but that would mean i would lose certain channels (Eurosport),also i note DVB-S is still in its infancy on the whole PVR front.

Mahoney (fellow uk user) is going to have a crack at Anders SDBARecorder to get DVB-S support working, so there may be light at the end of the tunnel. People have got DVB-S with premium channels working in MCE and it is apparently possible to use MyTheatre and a plugin for Sage to get it working.

I've gone as far as getting hold of an SDI modified Sky+ box and capture card which gives fantastic pq in DScaler but not as good in STV. Part of the problem appears to be the Purevideo codec not detecting the content type properly and getting the deinterlacing wrong, part seems to be lack of configuration for the WDM driver through sage. Sage support responded by telling me DVB wasn't supported i.e. completely misunderstanding the setup.

[Alfiegerner]

Using the Nova-t card via the SBDA Recorder and the MVp under sage 5.x.x my system is now rock solid. I still have a few WAF issues with the complexity of it (not that this is a fault of Sage so much - just an indication that my wife is much less of a geek than me) but I think we're just about winning out on that front.

The MVP has been a real boon for me. I see a lot of the stability complaints are to do with the Sage Client which the MVP - in my experience of the 5.x.x range - now misses. Also, for me the picture quality was pretty much unacceptable using the s-video out of my pc. Now the picture quality of my dvb-t card going through the MVP is much better than analogue TV and worlds apart from my s-video out. I would say it might be worth trying one out.