WOW

[unkyjoe]

I had to post this after trying out Sage for the first time last night.

I am a long time user of Windows MCE, in fact I sell this product in my business to customers looking for a PC based PVR/Home Media/Automation solution.

If you have ever dealt with Windows MCE you know it can be a real bear to setup/configure and to get stable.

Not so with Sage, I had it up and running within 1 hr. I have yet to find a single thing "other than the menu" that I do not like.

I am currently trying out the MCE interface to see if I can get this working today.

But I must say the program seems to be rock solid, uses very little in the way of resources, is a breeze to setup and has more custom features than you can shake a stick at.

Thanks Sage for this wonderful product, it looks like I will be selling this in my business in the future

[blade]

Welcome to the forums.

Originally Posted by unkyjoe

I have yet to find a single thing "other than the menu" that I do not like.

I am currently trying out the MCE interface to see if I can get this working today.

If you decide to go back to the default stv there is a dynamic menu plugin that allows you to move, rename, add, and delete items from the menu.

[stevech]

I've not used MCE, but how, pray tell, is the average non-techie user supposed to get MCE working with an out of the box PC that came with MCE?

My brother (non-techie) bought a new laptop. It came with MCE and a tuner. He didn't even realize MCE was not XP. The tuner and myrid of cables and bloatware are useless to him (he has TiVo) but did produce good profit dollars for HP and MS.

[unkyjoe]

Actually Windows MCE is simply put Windows XP with the MCE features added on to it.

In fact you can disable these features rather easily and use it as Windows XP only.

The idea behind keeping MCE with OEM system builders is that they would work out the compatibility issues before it got to the end user. A great idea if they followed the user home to see the myriad of different cable/sat boxes that are out there and how hard they are to get configured. That is where I would come in. I use it mainly for large home theater installs and it has been rock solid for me. But then I have been using it since it came out.

I like Windows MCE but it has some quirks I do not like, namely DRM. The interface is very propriatary and hard to write modules for.

Sage is a quick install and configure and seems to be pretty stable. I will run mine for a week or so and then hand it to the family for a month or so before offering this to my customers P.S The MC SVT is a must in my opinion

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by stevech

I've not used MCE, but how, pray tell, is the average non-techie user supposed to get MCE working with an out of the box PC that came with MCE?

My brother (non-techie) bought a new laptop. It came with MCE and a tuner. He didn't even realize MCE was not XP. The tuner and myrid of cables and bloatware are useless to him (he has TiVo) but did produce good profit dollars for HP and MS.

First off, MCE is XP, it's XP Professional in fact, with a couple features disabled after the MCE part of the software is installed (mainly domain login). As for setup, it's really a LOT easier than Sage (that could be arguable though, some people set up their sage boxes with minimal configuration, some people have a difficult time with MCE).

For the most part, a PC with MCE preinstalled, just plug in the tuner, tell the software what your input it set up for, and watch TV.