So, are you REALLY using sage?

[ybrew]

I know pretty much all of us use it to timeshift TV, but what else are you using it for?

I got fired up this week, and now I'm using it for DVD distribution and music distribution. Got a lot of work to rip all my dvds/CDs (and need a lot more disk space) but I've officially started this project and plan to keep at it till everything is ripped and accessible via every TV in the house.

And I'm getting hooked on Google Video as well.

What are you doing with your sage system?

[jbarr]

Mostly time shifting. Rarely do we watch Live TV.

Every morning, we check the Weather on the MVP in our bedroom.

We also listen to music occasionally, and when we rent a DVD we watch it through SageTV.

And we do use it to view digital pictures, but I eventually copy them to my laptop for tweaking with Picassa 2.

SageTV has become our primary TV viewing method. We're 100% committed, because our new 42" LCD HD monitor (Westinghouse W4207) does not have a tuner, so all TV content has to go through SageTV. SageTV has fulfilled my goal in our house: To bring together all of our media into a consolidated, yet distrubutable place. Overall, it really shines!

[ChePazzo]

I use SageTV as my own personal VOD. I record shows and pull out clips and funny commercials. I archive kids movies/tv shows. The TV recording was really just a side effect for me initially. My main goal was to do to my DVDs what I've done with my CDs: put them in a box so they can't be destroyed.

Also, it's nice to be able to sit down and watch the first 4 episodes of '24' back-to-back-to-back-to-back after stripping out the commercials.

[doc]

I record shows in the week when I'm away at work, then watch them on my mvp at weekends. The shows I don't get to watch I copy to an external usb hard drive to take with me in the week and watch on another mvp connected to my portable tv.

I use the web interface to schedule/monitor while I'm away.

I haven't used the music/pictures bit at all yet. I can't get the energy to convert my cd's to mp3.

[mayamaniac]

I primary use SageTV to record and timeshift TV shows. I hardly watch live TV except for sports, which I usually let it buffer first so I can skip the commercials. I use the SageTV Music playlist when I'm doing work around the house while listening to some tunes. The pictures stuffs I use a bit less, but its pretty nice. Overall, the MVP is great and I hope the new HD extender will work as well.

As for DVDs, I only rip movies that are new releases to the harddrive and use SageTV to watch them. I usually remove them from the harddrive to free up space after they have been watched.

I'm just curious for those that want to to put the entire DVD collection onto the harddrive, do you guys just like to re-watch the same movies over and over again? Because if you don't, it's a lot of wasted space and effort to store DVDs on harddrives if your collection is big (100+ DVDs). If you just rip them, then we are talking about 3-4gigs per DVD or more if you rip everything. And if you convert them to some MPEG4 formats, its quite a lot of work. Is it really worth all the trouble just to have old DVDs on the harddrive?

[dvd_maniac]

And if you convert them to some MPEG4 formats, its quite a lot of work. Is it really worth all the trouble just to have old DVDs on the harddrive?

So Maya,
Do you have any kids?
My wife got totally hooked on buying most of the new releases since the inception of DVDs. We have over 1500 of them now. I had to remove them from thier cases and place them in Slim cases just to fit them in one place. But that proved to be a mistake as everytime somebody wanted to watch a movie they had to take out a whole bunch to decide what to watch. They never put them back in alphabetical order if they put it back at all. Then came broken, lost and scratched discs.
They are now all ripped and compressed and all the originals are safely locked away. The average size for a compressed movie is around 700MB. The initial work over the last couple years to rip and compress have been a little hard (Trained oldest son to do it) but keeping up with a few a week now is easy enough.
I do not regret doing it either. I also use Sage for Music, timeshifting, pictures, but HATE watching LiveTV... All 4 of my TVs have PC SageClients attached to them with all STB's connected to server, so I am 100% committed to Sage as well.
I am also looking into adding an HDTV antenna with the HDHR.

[doc]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

My wife got totally hooked on buying most of the new releases since the inception of DVDs. We have over 1500 of them now.

Now I know why I'm single, I can't afford a wife

[ChePazzo]

Transcoding:
I keep everything as MPEG2. That way, I can burn a DVD to use in the car if I need to without the hassle of transcoding it back to MPEG2. Also, I only use the MVP to watch anything, so I don't want to transcode to some smaller format, just to have Sage transcode it back for playback on the MVP, esp now that disk space is so cheap.

Watching again and again:
Kids. 'Nuff said. Also, some DVDs can only be bought one time every 20 years or so. Kids break stuff. I like to shelve all DVDs to keep them away from grubby little fingers. Also, it is really nice to be able to watch any movie from the living room, or if we want to send the kids to bed early and let them watch TV in the guest room, we don't have to remember "Where did you put that DVD?" because every TV has access to every movie.

I used to try to keep our movies on the server, but like you say, I never watch a movie more than once, so I deleted them.

[ybrew]

My main goal is to get all the kids' movies on the server. Those will get watched multiple times.

New releases will also get put on the server. I'll probably have to remove them from the server occassionally to free up space, but like dvd_maniac, grubby little hands on the movies is a pain. I've just started ripping mine to disc and i've run across a few discs that are giving me trouble because they've been 'handled' too much.

If I can afford the disk space, I will copy everything to the server.

I'm still catching up on Season 5 of 24. I don't have a DVD player in every room so I was forcing myself to watch the Discs in one room all the time. Now with the discs ripped, I can watch from any room in the house whenever I have a chance. The convenience factor is sooooo worth it.

[ybrew]

Another nice benefit - WAF factor. If my wife has to 'learn' how to play a DVD on different DVD players in different rooms and remember which TV has to be on which input, she'll never put movies on for my son - it's too difficult.

With this, she knows how to put movies on and it's the same process regardless of where in the house she is.