Important Version 6 Upgrade Information

[dagar]

Holy Batfat Crapman! Or is that Holy Batcrap Fatman? I just 'read' the upgrade policy!

I was thinking $30 x 5 (2 clients + 2 MVPs + 1 Server) but wow, only $30 total ...

I suppose reading is a 'good' thing

[geogecko]

Must have been that Charlie Brown teacher talking about the upgrades, huh?

[rfutscher]

Originally Posted by Narflex

There won't be a V5.1 release.

We're still supporting V5.0...it is our current release product. But there will probably not be anymore updates to it released.

The earlier versions of Sage were of no use to me because Sage was stuck in an analog world. I waited to buy Sage until it supported Digital reception. My problem is that it never worked correctly. Lots of wrong recordings for two reasons.

The first reason being the local PBS station broadcasts four sub channels (1, 3, 4, 5) during the day and two (1, 2) in the evening. Sage just can't handle this.

The second reason is that I receive stations from three markets. The last time I installed there were 20 channels/sub channels that did not have program guides. By jumping through hoops I got guides for some but not all.

[larryf]

while I understand charging for upgrades, I disagree on the 'timeframes' involved... people that have had versions 2, 3 or 4 are paying the same upgrade fee as those that have had the product less than one year. I really feel anyone that purchased since January 2006 should be allowed a free upgrade. Hey, you bought a product 10 months ago and now your key doesn't work for upgrades?

It would be great if Sage would allow a minimum time for your license to be valid (ie, buy one now, and get free upgrades for a specified time).

that being said (venting a bit), I'll do what I have to do to support Sage... Love the product, just disagree with the upgrade policy.

[dagar]

Originally Posted by geogecko

Must have been that Charlie Brown teacher talking about the upgrades, huh?

LMAO hehe. Yep Touche

[jominor]

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).


Best Regards,
Stéphane.

That's a shame, but the cutoff has to happen somewhere and someone is going to be upset. And many software companies don't give a year, they give 30-60 days notice.

And its only $30 dollars. How do these guys eat?

Remember, its not like your version stops working.

[hemicuda]

Seems the "sunny" and "partly sunny" images in the weather pages are broken somehow. It displays some kind of garbage image. "Mostly cloudy" and "cloudy work." I saw similar thumbnails in the Google videos OSD when a clip started; I figure this is a beta "feature."

[jominor]

Originally Posted by 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...

What principle? Your purchased a product and got value. They worked and added new features and if you want them, you buy it.

How often do you work for free? These guys have homes and families and the software your purchased still works? Right?

New stuff costs money. Do you go to a car dealership trying to get a upgrade to a car because a new model was released a few months after you purchased your car?

[jominor]

Originally Posted by 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.

It won't help. For example, the Java tool I used just released ver 6. When they announced the cutoff date for v5 purchases to get free upgrades, dozens of people chimed in about the cutoff date.

The updated is $250.

I use a product called comicbase. They just released v11. The update from v10(Archive Edition), no matter when you purchased it is $100.

Each year its $100. I paid $300 for v9, $100 for v10.

Intuit wants $60 bucks for Quicken.

Sage is a steal.

[dagar]

Originally Posted by jominor

What principle? Your purchased a product and got value. They worked and added new features and if you want them, you buy it.

How often do you work for free? These guys have homes and families and the software your purchased still works? Right?

New stuff costs money. Do you go to a car dealership trying to get a upgrade to a car because a new model was released a few months after you purchased your car?

Nail on the head jominor, excellent!

[blade]

Of course I'd rather have another free upgrade, but I don't see it as any different than purchasing MCE, Windows XP etc... When the new version comes out your going to pay for those products even if you just purchased the old version the day before.

[govgeek]

Originally Posted by jominor

What principle? Your purchased a product and got value. They worked and added new features and if you want them, you buy it.

How often do you work for free? These guys have homes and families and the software your purchased still works? Right?

New stuff costs money. Do you go to a car dealership trying to get a upgrade to a car because a new model was released a few months after you purchased your car?

Okay - I will try one last time and then shut up

The principle I was refering to was that something appears to be ok because it is just a small increment and therefore should not be worth bothering about.

Now taking your car dealership example - Lets say I visited the forums researching a great automobile (call it the sage 400), and over a year of reading and learning discover that one of the reasons this is such a great product, is that they participate with community help to make a better product, and have not charged the original purchasers when giving them the resulting upgrades. This appears to have been going on for several years, then I go and buy the sage 400 which they imediately upgrade to a sage 500, and while working and promising beta's with new features and corrections, they all of a sudden change their strategies and decide to charge for the next upgrade.
Right or wrong, I feel like I got on the bus at exactly the wrong time (Technically 12 days too early). If you've read this whole thread you will see one true commonality, anyone that purchased this product less than one year ago (in most cases less than 6 months) feel like they lost out and have mentioned it. Of course someone that has had the product for several years is going to defend the charge and feel it is worthy. So we really could keep going back and forth between the new owners and old. I don't think the the sentiment is going to change. I know it sounds just silly to be going back and forth over $30.00, but knowing how great the support has been, made it worth my time to at least plea my case (and to not totally flip out over it).

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by rfutscher

The earlier versions of Sage were of no use to me because Sage was stuck in an analog world. I waited to buy Sage until it supported Digital reception. My problem is that it never worked correctly. Lots of wrong recordings for two reasons.

The first reason being the local PBS station broadcasts four sub channels (1, 3, 4, 5) during the day and two (1, 2) in the evening. Sage just can't handle this.

The second reason is that I receive stations from three markets. The last time I installed there were 20 channels/sub channels that did not have program guides. By jumping through hoops I got guides for some but not all.

This has specifically been fixed in V6. It now scans and finds all ATSC channels and can extract the EPG data from the streams when the channel provides it.

[jbuszkie]

Originally Posted by jominor
What principle? Your purchased a product and got value. They worked and added new features and if you want them, you buy it.

How often do you work for free? These guys have homes and families and the software your purchased still works? Right?

New stuff costs money. Do you go to a car dealership trying to get a upgrade to a car because a new model was released a few months after you purchased your car?

I think my biggest complaint is that there aren't enough new features to justify an major release. It's not so much about the amount of money. I agree that $30 isn't a big deal. It's also the fact that they gave no warning about this. This is coming out of the blue! A couple of posts back there are some users that bought a license just before V5 came out and now they have to pay up again. If V5 was just in april/may?? time frame are they going to do new releases every 5 or 6 months? That's not right.

And sage is a different kind of software... A good part of the development is done by the end users! That's make feel almost like open source. You don't see nielm charging for his latest versions, do you?

Now maybe if you say any pre V4 folks need to pay to upgrade, I might be less irritated. (I'm in that bunch - 1.x when I started) Since my start there have been probably enough major changes to justify 2 or so releases... but not 5 releases! So fine.. I guess I can throw them some money since I started so long ago.. But that doesn't work for the people that just joined right before V5

Now did sage do this because this is what beyondTV is doing?? Suspiciously.. they have the same upgrade pricing and a similiar $29 -> $39 after a certain time period. I also don't see BTV jumping revs too quickly. They are still on V4.

Also.. what's the deal about paying to upgrade to a beta? If they really want to be fair, they should extend the upgrade discount window for a month or so after the non-beta version is released... Or make the trial period longer if you have a valid server key. I am very hesitant to upgrade my whole sage system until I know its really stable. If I was to lose all my recordings due to some bug, I think my wife would divorce me. That's why, in the past, I've waited until the releases stopped being betas. But if I do that now wait to try it out... I might lose the window of discounted upgrades. Who knows how long it will take before they release the stable non-beta version.

Jim "My other 2 cents"

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Homebuilder

Oh.. one more thing... What if you run a server as a client? I use one of my server licenses as a client/sage recorder. I am updating my test machine on my other license to check it out!

A network encoder is still using a full installation of SageTV server, and thus a server license, not a client license.

- Andy

[sunray]

Two questions,

I bought a key to Sage through PC Alchemy not from Sage directly. Can I get the upgrade? I bought my key when 2.xx was the current version. Second question, can I buy the v6 upgrade key now for $30 and simply not install the beta or the key until the final version of v6 is released? I have a v5 setup that works fairly well and I dont want to disturb it especially now during fall TV season.

[sunray]

One more question. Will there ba a new manual with v6? And will it have info (with examples!) on setting up Placeshifting, setting up the MVP with static IPs instead of DHCP, and most of all an index? I get the Sage manual printed and bound and the lack of a index is a killer.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by govgeek

Okay - I will try one last time and then shut up

The principle I was refering to was that something appears to be ok because it is just a small increment and therefore should not be worth bothering about.

Now taking your car dealership example - Lets say I visited the forums researching a great automobile (call it the sage 400), and over a year of reading and learning discover that one of the reasons this is such a great product, is that they participate with community help to make a better product, and have not charged the original purchasers when giving them the resulting upgrades. This appears to have been going on for several years, then I go and buy the sage 400 which they imediately upgrade to a sage 500, and while working and promising beta's with new features and corrections, they all of a sudden change their strategies and decide to charge for the next upgrade.
Right or wrong, I feel like I got on the bus at exactly the wrong time (Technically 12 days too early). If you've read this whole thread you will see one true commonality, anyone that purchased this product less than one year ago (in most cases less than 6 months) feel like they lost out and have mentioned it. Of course someone that has had the product for several years is going to defend the charge and feel it is worthy. So we really could keep going back and forth between the new owners and old. I don't think the the sentiment is going to change. I know it sounds just silly to be going back and forth over $30.00, but knowing how great the support has been, made it worth my time to at least plea my case (and to not totally flip out over it).

I've read the whole thread. Sage is cheap. They have to earn a living and they have to cutoff somewhere.

If the features are compelling, you buy it. If not, upgrade to version 7.

I would argue that anyone who based their decisions on free upgrades in perpetuity are simple not being realistic. Or are being, no offense, cheap.

If they said, we are cutting off say, EPG data, I would say you've got a case. Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but I don't think charging a very low price for a tool I use EVERY DAY is outrageous.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I think my biggest complaint is that there aren't enough new features to justify an major release. It's not so much about the amount of money. I agree that $30 isn't a big deal. It's also the fact that they gave no warning about this. This is coming out of the blue! A couple of posts back there are some users that bought a license just before V5 came out and now they have to pay up again. If V5 was just in april/may?? time frame are they going to do new releases every 5 or 6 months? That's not right.

And sage is a different kind of software... A good part of the development is done by the end users! That's make feel almost like open source. You don't see nielm charging for his latest versions, do you?

Now maybe if you say any pre V4 folks need to pay to upgrade, I might be less irritated. (I'm in that bunch - 1.x when I started) Since my start there have been probably enough major changes to justify 2 or so releases... but not 5 releases! So fine.. I guess I can throw them some money since I started so long ago.. But that doesn't work for the people that just joined right before V5

Now did sage do this because this is what beyondTV is doing?? Suspiciously.. they have the same upgrade pricing and a similiar $29 -> $39 after a certain time period. I also don't see BTV jumping revs too quickly. They are still on V4.

Also.. what's the deal about paying to upgrade to a beta? If they really want to be fair, they should extend the upgrade discount window for a month or so after the non-beta version is released... Or make the trial period longer if you have a valid server key. I am very hesitant to upgrade my whole sage system until I know its really stable. If I was to lose all my recordings due to some bug, I think my wife would divorce me. That's why, in the past, I've waited until the releases stopped being betas. But if I do that now wait to try it out... I might lose the window of discounted upgrades. Who knows how long it will take before they release the stable non-beta version.

Jim "My other 2 cents"

SO DON'T BUY IT. No one is forcing to purchase the thing. They aren't cutting off v5, and they aren't twisting arms.

In addition, the feature set is subjective. I personally think it is impressive. If I don't, I won't buy it. I'm upgrading for two reasons. Several of the features look useful and it is cheap. I have no problem throwing a few bucks at the cause as both a software developer and user.

Also, the plugin guys don't write plugins for a living.

Do you work for free? If so, share your secret with the rest of use.

[mightyt]

I've had SageTV since v.2.0 back in July 2004 ... So, for 2 years and 3 months of use, asking for $30 seems very fair to me, especially with no cost client upgrades ... Where can you have this much fun for that amount of time for an incremental cost of $30! Heck that’s only 3 trips to Starbucks for me and my wife! And my Frappuccino satisfaction only last a half hour.

Now, mind you I do question "just a bit" having to pay for pre-release software. Beta code is naturally buggy and can consume lots of my time. The trade is I deal with that and get to be the first on my block to see what's behind the curtain! Sage wins because they get my feedback. In the end you'd want to rebuild yourself a clean install when the real deal arrives anyway.

The other thing … and I believe someone alluded to it ... is the notion of being teased in to a buy now and save $10 deal that will likely not last through the final release is a bit much. I think a "target" release date would help. If it's mid-November or early December, I'd latch on to the $30 deal. But, with the last major upgrade it went through beta for something like 9 months. If that were the case again, I might check out the 15 day trial to get it out of my system, wait and pay the extra ten bucks 9 months from now ...

Any chance of getting a target release date Sage?

Problem with everything I said is when you need your fix, none of that matters!

T.