Important Version 6 Upgrade Information

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by insomniac

haha...im with stranger. Jeff stole me from the x-epg.net forums in the 0.x beta days!

I'd have been in then too, but at the time I didn't have a supported card, and they didn't provide EPG for the whole US, so I couldn't have used it if I got it

Ah well, all's good now

[StephaneM]

Hello All,

I'm certainly not opposed to an upgrade fee, and it seems to me that the price is right (current discounted and normal price).

However in my case : I purchased SageTV in April 2006, so it is a version 4 key, and as such I will need to purchase an upgrade key. It seems to me that it is way to soon for an upgrade fee. I'll purchase the upgrade key without problems but I think that for each major update, the upgrad should be free if you purchased SageTV within the year... (Again in my case I purchase V4 because V5 was under beta testing with DVB-T preliminary support).

Althoug does the purchase of the V6 upgrade key invalidate the previous key. That is : if I bought the upgrade key and play with the beta (on another PC that my HTPC), will I be able to still use my previous key on my HTPC until I upgrade it (of course when I use my test PC I always shut down SageTV on my HTPC).

Best Regards,
Stéphane.

[justme]

Long time no see guys.

I'm not even sure when exactly I came in but I know my Server(although I'm not even sure there was aclient back then) license was for 1.x. I also tried an early build as a trial that I didn't like, told Jeff about my complaints and... low and behold they were addressed in a future release. That is what brought me over to Sage. I bought my client license years later. Most likely 3 something, maybe even 4.

As for the cost of an upgrade I don't mind. I knew they couldn't do this free situation forever, and the price/policy is reasonable. At least my quick scan of it makes me think it is. Still I do agree with one of the early posts about adding more to SageTV. I'm going to pay(right after this post) for a V6 upgrade more as a way of supporting Sage for all they've done over the years for me. That said I'm actually using MCE2005 as my main PVR for quite a while. I keep watching Sage as I want to be won back to them, and remove that foul piece of M$ software from my system. However CC(Closed Caption) has become a absolute must for me(due to some medical issues that have worsened in the last 2 years).

I want to suppoprt Sage and I will(buying an V6 upgrade I likely won't really use), but please get CC(on all cards not just old PVR250/350s) working or I will be unable to justify any future upgrade costs. I've already lost 2 of my pvr 250 cards and the cost of replacing them(with another 250) compared to a good dual tuner card was actually more. Since the new card only has CC in MCE I was drug away from Sage kicking and screaming. I even tried to run the 2 setups together(some kludged scripts) for a while but finally the ease of one setup caused me to drift away from Sage and even pull the majority of it's tuners.

Anyway enough whining and OT by me. But anyone who knows me knows it's nearly impossible for me to do a short post. Glad to help Sage and Glad to see it still going strong. You(Sage) have my info if you ever want me to beta a Version of sage with CC support for nonHauppauge cards. I know I haven't provided any feedback(reason above) on betas for quite a while but I would setup a machine for CC testing.

Peace.

/justme

[SHS]

but please get CC(on all cards not just old PVR250/350s)

I have all READY said this min time before it not possable with PVR 150/500 model due to it design.
The reson why MCE can do this it becuases it take the MPEG and DeMultiplexer the stream and then enbeded the VBI data and Re-Multiplexer the Audio/Video before dump the file unlike PVR 250/350 which dose it in REALtime Hardware.
And I have bee asking hauppauge for a few years to add CC to 150/500 and USB2 like the way the 250/350 works but as you can see nothing has happing.

[govgeek]

I'm in your boat- just checked my old CC charges. I bought Sagetv on April 12th, 2006. Paying for an upgrade after owning a product for 5 1/2 months is not gonna fly with me. I love all that this community provides and the work the sage people put into this product, but I personally can't afford getting zinged twice a year for one product. It's kinda dissapointing to me to hear how great everyone had it along the upgrade path, and then as soon as I buy it, things change. You really need to look at purchase date as a validation for requiring an upgrade.

That said, I like what your doing with the upgrade, just don't agree with the policy behind it.

Originally Posted by StephaneM

Hello All,

I'm certainly not opposed to an upgrade fee, and it seems to me that the price is right (current discounted and normal price).

However in my case : I purchased SageTV in April 2006, so it is a version 4 key, and as such I will need to purchase an upgrade key. It seems to me that it is way to soon for an upgrade fee. I'll purchase the upgrade key without problems but I think that for each major update, the upgrad should be free if you purchased SageTV within the year... (Again in my case I purchase V4 because V5 was under beta testing with DVB-T preliminary support).

Althoug does the purchase of the V6 upgrade key invalidate the previous key. That is : if I bought the upgrade key and play with the beta (on another PC that my HTPC), will I be able to still use my previous key on my HTPC until I upgrade it (of course when I use my test PC I always shut down SageTV on my HTPC).

Best Regards,
Stéphane.

[Mark SS]

Its $30. You probably spend more than that a year by not turning your TV off when your not using it

[justme]

Originally Posted by SHS

I have all READY said this min time before it not possable with PVR 150/500 model due to it design.
The reson why MCE can do this it becuases it take the MPEG and DeMultiplexer the stream and then enbeded the VBI data and Re-Multiplexer the Audio/Video before dump the file unlike PVR 250/350 which dose it in REALtime Hardware.
And I have bee asking hauppauge for a few years to add CC to 150/500 and USB2 like the way the 250/350 works but as you can see nothing has happing.

Hi SHS. I understand the great info you provided in the past about CC and in particuliar on Hauppauge cards and their design. I'm interested in Sage making use of the VBI pin on all cards that expose it thru driver, not just Hauppauge. My newer dual card isn't even a Hauppauge. I realize this requires a change to Sage's basic handling of the output streams. I'm not suggesting Sage use a custom file format like MCE did. However the data could easily(only Jeff know true level of work, so it's likely not easy since he hasn't added it) be written to a sami or srt file by Sage with the same name as the mpeg. Good old Malore wrote a STV years ago that could display the srt/smi info from those files as "pseudo" CC using Sage's OSD. I've even played with unwrapping(demuxing and remuxing to a plain mpeg2) MCE files and saving the CC data to a srt file and watched some of them in SageTV. This was part of my old kludge effort to slam Sage and MCE together.

I'll stop there as I don't wish to further derail this thread. Just wished to make my desires,not demands clear. I'm very sorry if my last post had the tone of a demand it was only meant as a statement of my viable options without some kind of CC in Sage.

/justme

[govgeek]

If I had a nickel for everytime I heard that line this year, I'd have the $30.

Currently fighting with:
Ebay
Paypal
Charter Communications
Health Insurance
Mayo Clinic
Cell phone Company

Everyone seems to think that slipping small charges into a bill makes it okay because they are small.

Price does not change priniciple...

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Its $30. You probably spend more than that a year by not turning your TV off when your not using it

[geogecko]

Well, if it means anything, even though the time interval between when you bought it, and the upgrade was short, the improvements between versions 2-4 were really not that much of improvements. The greatest improvements came with version 5, and of course, 6. (Of course, I guess Placeshifter came with 4, but some people don't even use it.)

I guess I would agree, maybe a purchase within a year should get you a free upgrade, I don't see a problem with that, but Sage might...

[voidpt]

Just saw the 6.x beta info. Very, very happy But what nearly made me happier is that I finally can pay something to SageTV. They can't live on good comments alone So the upgrade price is fine with me. I'll pay again if it means better features. Keep up the good work

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by govgeek

Everyone seems to think that slipping small charges into a bill makes it okay because they are small.

What on earth has this got to do with paying for an upgrade?

You paid for a product from Sage several months ago. Should you wish you can continue to use the product without paying any additional fees. If however you want to UPGRADE to a new feature set, you can choose to do so and pay for the privelege.

[polen]

Doh!, I bought SageTV on 4-11-2006 and then v5 came out on 4-25-2006.

Maybe they will let me slide by, but v6 says I'm pre v5

-Polen

[geogecko]

I think no matter what the upgrade policy is, there will still be someone that is unhappy with it. I still think out of all the software I've bought and used, and upgraded, that Sage by far, has been the most liberal with free updates.

It looks like they are going to get serious about updates now, since they mentioned minor revision updates for free, and major revision updates will require upgrading. So probably every major revision, i.e., 7.x, 8.x, etc, will now require updates, not like it used to be...

I'm just a bit disappointed that we STILL didn't see a CD player with this release. Rather than start a whole 'nother off topic, topic, I'll just leave it at that, disappointed. For my $30, I would hope that at least a minor update will include this at some point...just do not understand why Sage is compeletly against making this feature a reality.

[blade]

The only thing that pisses me off about v6 is that I just upgraded my server and did a fresh install of windows Sunday. If it had only been released a few days sooner....

[geogecko]

LOL, but surely you kept hearing those rumors about 5.1, and saw the, "When is the beta going to be available" thread, right?

[govgeek]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

What on earth has this got to do with paying for an upgrade?

You paid for a product from Sage several months ago. Should you wish you can continue to use the product without paying any additional fees. If however you want to UPGRADE to a new feature set, you can choose to do so and pay for the privelege.

Sorry, I think you missunderstood me, my initial statement was an echo of frustration at the situation, my second post was inregards to the statement about it being 30 dollars. .

If Sage wishes to rectify the situation - great

If Sage does not, then so be it, still a great product and I don't regret the purchase, i'll just be stuck at 5 until money allows.

My wish was to publicly air my frustration in hopes that maybe someone will step up to the plate, not open a debate.

[thatdude90210]

Mine dates back to version 1.4 but I can understand where some of the newer buyers are coming from... especially those who bought this year.

A fairer way to go would be date based instead of simply version based.

[sleonard]

I bought in at V1.4 and have no problem paying the $30 upgrade. Just the ability to read the Album Artist tag in WMA files was worth it for me. Everything else is a bonus.

That being said, I have to say that if I had purchased V4 in April I would not be a happy camper, esp. with the skipped/accelerated version numbers over the last year.

Also, I am happy to pay for any future major revisions as well but the feature sets had better start justifying the major revision number. (Not talking about V6 but versions 4-5.)

Scott

[blade]

Originally Posted by geogecko

LOL, but surely you kept hearing those rumors about 5.1, and saw the, "When is the beta going to be available" thread, right?

Yep, I kept holding off on redoing my server until it was released. I finally gave up and the next day bam there it was.

[teknubic]

Originally Posted by blade

Yep, I kept holding off on redoing my server until it was released. I finally gave up and the next day bam there it was.

So it's you we have to thank for the beta release.
Like washing the car after months of no rain and then a thunderstorm.