Important Version 6 Upgrade Information

[insomniac]

Alhtough I am slightly dissapointed that I need to pay for an upgrade, I feel that I got more than my fair share of miles off of sagetv. I can say that my biggest fear is that I will have to pay for all future version upgrades. This would really torque me if the version upgrade was like the 2 to 4/studio upgrade in the recent past. Time will tell...

No one is forcing you to try/purchase beta. Even if you try it out, you can use the trial period to see if its worth it.

Just my thoughts...YMMV

I.

Originally Posted by toddyus

Let me first say that I think Sage TV is a great product. I've paid for the original license and a couple of client licenses along the way. Here's what bothers me about this new policy: when I bought Sage V 1.4 back in 2003, one of the significant reasons for the purchase was a guarantee from Frey that ALL future upgrades would be provided free. For life.

I assumed that this was a way to entice early adopters. I certainly did not expect them to continue this policy forever. I assumed they would alter the policy beginning at V 2.0. Version 1.4 was a great start but had plenty of bugs and limitations. In fact, when I bought 1.4 it was almost unusable for everyday mainstream use, but the promise of Version 2.0 was enough to get me to bite.

What bothers me is not the upgrade fee. Like any software product, if it offers me something useful, I'll pay it. What bothers me is the broken promise. In fact, if I could find a reference to the original promise it would be arguable as a breach of contract. What bothers me more is that to get this "generous discount" that everyone is talking about in this thread, I have to buy it now while the product is in beta. Unfortunately, my wife has a policy on beta software, and you can guess what it is.

I think Sage is great, but this is a very questionable business practice and quite possibly only feasible without repercussions in the software industry.

[blade]

Originally Posted by toddyus

Here's what bothers me about this new policy: when I bought Sage V 1.4 back in 2003, one of the significant reasons for the purchase was a guarantee from Frey that ALL future upgrades would be provided free. For life.

I see nothing in the links you posted that states you get free upgrades for life. I have purchased software in the past with lifetime upgrades and it always specifically stated lifetime. The link you posted said all upgrades to the current versions of SageTV and SageRecorder. Personally I take that as current version as of the time that statement was written or still present on the website.

Also you can always purchase Sage at the discounted price and wait to install v6 when it comes out of beta.

[geogecko]

Yep, Sage usually runs a discount special around the holidays...

[JUC]

Originally Posted by blade

I see nothing in the links you posted that states you get free upgrades for life.

Maybe i'll get this one right I agree with Blade on this one--the policy only refers to upgrades to the current version at that time. Not the life of the product.

[mightyt]

I ordered my v.6 upgrade last Saturday ... Immediately got an invoice email stating that I would get my "license key" shortly ... Have't seen it yet ...

Anyone know how long it takes??

Already sent an email to orders@sagetv.com, but just curious about what I should expect...

Thanks, T.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by mightyt

I ordered my v.6 upgrade last Saturday ... Immediately got an invoice email stating that I would get my "license key" shortly ... Have't seen it yet ...

Anyone know how long it takes??

Already sent an email to orders@sagetv.com, but just curious about what I should expect...

Thanks, T.

Almost immediately. Check your junk mail folder. And make sure it wasn't an old email address Sage had on record.

Gerry

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Almost immediately. Check your junk mail folder. And make sure it wasn't an old email address Sage had on record.

Gerry

Thanks Gerry ... I checked my Junk Folder ... nothing ... Also same email address for many years ... Strange, I got the Invoice ACK in my email??

Thay haven't replied to my email ... Hmmm ...

T.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by mightyt

Thanks Gerry ... I checked my Junk Folder ... nothing ... Also same email address for many years ... Strange, I got the Invoice ACK in my email??

Thay haven't replied to my email ... Hmmm ...

T.

I had the same thing happen to me. I emailed support and George sent me the new serial. Also got it again the next day after George sent it to me and that one looks like it came the regular method not directly from a person. It was almost a week late if that was true. Note it took a day or two for George to respond to my email.

BobP.

[ChePazzo]

I purchased the 6.0 upgrade for Windows, then soon thereafter, I realized I would prefer to switch to Linux. So I bought the Linux key.

I assume that the 6.0 Windows key that I purchased will hold me for a while (just as the v5 key was good with v6).

Here's my question: Which key did I purchase for Linux? v5 or v6? Obviously, since I am running Linux v6, I would prefer to have a v6 key. I just don't know what I have....

any ideas?

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

I had the same thing happen to me. I emailed support and George sent me the new serial. Also got it again the next day after George sent it to me and that one looks like it came the regular method not directly from a person. It was almost a week late if that was true. Note it took a day or two for George to respond to my email.

BobP.

Thanks Bob ... You nailed it ... Got my reply from George today ... !!

Cool ... Now I'm off the the races ...

T.

[sesummers]

Originally Posted by justme

... CC(Closed Caption) has become a absolute must for me(due to some medical issues that have worsened in the last 2 years).

I'm in a similar situation. My wife and I have some high frequency loss that makes it hard to understand speech, so we need captions to work.

I've researched PVR software and REALLY want to be able to use Sage... But without caption support, my only choice seems to be Myth (and the need to become a Linux guru), or caving in and renting crappy Scientific Atlanta boxes from Time Warner Cable, with their anemic 20 hours of HD recording time. Neither choice is very appealing.

I understand the technical reasons why this only works with specialized video card hardware (the H-150 and 350) for analog TV, without decoding the captions directly from the tuner chip and recording them in a custom file format.

What I don't understand is why this can't be made to work for ATSC video by extracting them from the transport stream. In fact, I'm not sure that it doesn't just work - I've asked before and nobody has ever replied, and I'm not ready to invest in the hardware to do the experiment myself. (If it doesn't work, then what?)

Again, I agree that it doesn't make sense to put a lot of development effort into making this work with NTSC, since that will be obsolete within a few more years. But maybe it wouldn't be difficult to make it work with ATSC?

I'd be willing to pay as much as a couple hundred dollars more for a version that supports this. It will cost me far more than that in terms of time, to have to learn Linux to use Myth TV.

[mj_wood]

It's a shame that an e-mail wasn't sent to users of earlier versions to tell them that a new beta was out and that they had until 1st November to upgrade at the special 29.99 rate.
I only saw the forum this afternoon and now it's going to cost me another 10 dollars.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by sesummers

I'm in a similar situation. My wife and I have some high frequency loss that makes it hard to understand speech, so we need captions to work.

I've researched PVR software and REALLY want to be able to use Sage... But without caption support, my only choice seems to be Myth (and the need to become a Linux guru), or caving in and renting crappy Scientific Atlanta boxes from Time Warner Cable, with their anemic 20 hours of HD recording time. Neither choice is very appealing.

I understand the technical reasons why this only works with specialized video card hardware (the H-150 and 350) for analog TV, without decoding the captions directly from the tuner chip and recording them in a custom file format.

What I don't understand is why this can't be made to work for ATSC video by extracting them from the transport stream. In fact, I'm not sure that it doesn't just work - I've asked before and nobody has ever replied, and I'm not ready to invest in the hardware to do the experiment myself. (If it doesn't work, then what?)

Again, I agree that it doesn't make sense to put a lot of development effort into making this work with NTSC, since that will be obsolete within a few more years. But maybe it wouldn't be difficult to make it work with ATSC?

I'd be willing to pay as much as a couple hundred dollars more for a version that supports this. It will cost me far more than that in terms of time, to have to learn Linux to use Myth TV.

This should *just work* for ATSC if you've got playback of NTSC captioning working because ATSC captions are stored the same way as the ones that the 150/350 insert themselves. We haven't tested this yet though...but that should be a rather easy test to perform.

[sesummers]

Originally Posted by Narflex

This should *just work* for ATSC if you've got playback of NTSC captioning working because ATSC captions are stored the same way as the ones that the 150/350 insert themselves. We haven't tested this yet though...but that should be a rather easy test to perform.

That would be AWESOME. Unfortunately, I can't do the test, because I don't have anything working yet. I have a pair of aging Sony Sat-W60's (Microsoft Ultimate TV boxes for DirecTV). I'm ready to upgrade to HDTV, but I MUST have captioning.

I'm just about ready to build a Vista media server and buy an XBox-360, but if you can tell me for SURE that Sage can handle this, I'd much rather go that route.

[corykim]

Originally Posted by Narflex

This should *just work* for ATSC if you've got playback of NTSC captioning working because ATSC captions are stored the same way as the ones that the 150/350 insert themselves. We haven't tested this yet though...but that should be a rather easy test to perform.

What do you have to do to make it "just work?"

[bbobbo]

Originally Posted by mj_wood

It's a shame that an e-mail wasn't sent to users of earlier versions to tell them that a new beta was out and that they had until 1st November to upgrade at the special 29.99 rate.
I only saw the forum this afternoon and now it's going to cost me another 10 dollars.

i agree. i'm a loyal user of sagetv since v1.4.10, and i have no problems paying for an upgrade.

i am annoyed however, that i wasn't notified via email about the new upgrade policies and the limited discount period. i know sagetv has my email address--i received a promotional email as recently as 6/16/2006 ("sagetv father's day specials"), and i bought the sagetv placeshifter license on 6/29/2006.

was the discount meant only for users who frequent the "sagetv beta test software" forum? it seems unreasonable for sagetv to expect users to actively seek out this information on the forums, just as it's unreasonable for users to expect sagetv to provide technical support via the forums.

$10 is not a big deal, but i feel that sagetv should be more proactive about notifying users about policy changes, and offer everyone a chance at the discount--not just frequenters of a specific forum.

[OttoNP]

I'm currently using version 5, If I want to use version 6 with place shifting, should I buy the license upgrade for version 6 only or is there somewhere to buy the version 6 placeshifting as well?

Thanks!

[chadman]

Originally Posted by bbobbo

i agree. i'm a loyal user of sagetv since v1.4.10, and i have no problems paying for an upgrade.

i am annoyed however, that i wasn't notified via email about the new upgrade policies and the limited discount period. i know sagetv has my email address--i received a promotional email as recently as 6/16/2006 ("sagetv father's day specials"), and i bought the sagetv placeshifter license on 6/29/2006.

was the discount meant only for users who frequent the "sagetv beta test software" forum? it seems unreasonable for sagetv to expect users to actively seek out this information on the forums, just as it's unreasonable for users to expect sagetv to provide technical support via the forums.

$10 is not a big deal, but i feel that sagetv should be more proactive about notifying users about policy changes, and offer everyone a chance at the discount--not just frequenters of a specific forum.

I got lucky and just happened to stumble to the board and saw the offer. I was about 1 month late, but still got the cheaper price. It does seem strange that an email would not have been sent out, but maybe they did not want a bunch of people upgrading to a Beta version with the expectations of a release version. Version 6 is still unusable for me (and maybe others). I am having crashes with this version and still can not get it to read my wma tags when I import my music. I have tried version 6 twice now and I am going to re-image my system back to 5. I do like your point how we are expected to read the board to find this special offer, but I do not remember customer support ever looking at this board to help beta users. Chad

[nielm]

Originally Posted by OttoNP

I'm currently using version 5, If I want to use version 6 with place shifting, should I buy the license upgrade for version 6 only

If you have a V5 licence, then you don't have to upgrade anything

If you have a V4 or earlier licence, then you only need to upgrade the SageTV (server) licence, not the Placeshifter/extender (nor client) licences.

The V6 beta will tell you on first run whether you need to get an upgrade licence if you do not know.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by chadman

I do not remember customer support ever looking at this board to help beta users. Chad

Look for posts by Narflex, Opus4 and Donkey in the beta forum. Admittedly, these are not Sage customer support, but they are the developers, and they are usually asking people to submit bug reports