Hopes for a one box solution

[PhillJones]

With no support for QAM internal cards possible and HD rendering in sage being so flaky, it seems that to make sage act as an HD tivo for cable reliably, you need three boxes, the PC, a media extender and a separate HDHomeRun. Am I the only one who thinks that this is a ridiculous state of affairs?

One of the reasons I'm into HTPC is because it's a one box solution for music TV and DVD, at least in principle. Does anybody else think that there should be more focus on makeing sage work standalone without having to buy extra boxes to put under the TV? Simple is best IMHO, and certainly for the WAF.

As an aside? what actually is the problem with QAM, I've searched but all I can find is references to the drivers being a brick wall. If it's such a brick wall I guess cablecard is a bit of a false hope if we can't even view unscrambled QAM.

[salsbst]

I have no complaints about Sage's support of HDTV recording. I think it's great, and don't know what more I could ask of the company at this point on that front. I'm hoping that if cablecard shakes itself out, that SageTV will be able to play in that game, but this is still a vast gray area, and don't expect the industry to make a whole lot of visible progress any time soon.

However, I'm not happy with the state of SageTV's HDTV rendering in Windows, and do feel that resources being devoted to extenders and other non-PC devices are taking away resources that could be devoted to making HDTV rendering in Windows more reliable for all users.

[tmiranda]

I'd say you need a fourth box, a NAS or some other type of external storage. In my experience if you cram too many drives in the same box that has a decent processor and several SD tuner cards, the thing quickly overheats. You can always load it up with fans but it becomes way too noisy.

For the time being I've given up on a "one box" solution. It's doable, but you have to make compromises with the CPU and storage and it is expensive. I use the "four box" solution and have spread the machines out over the house in a futile attempt to hide them all from the wife. (The server is in my office, the NAS is in the spare bedroom, the HDHR is hidden behind the TV leaving only the extender on top of the TV.) On a positive note, she has asked me "when are we getting one of the Sage things on the TV in the spare bedroom?"

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

With no support for QAM internal cards possible and HD rendering in sage being so flaky, it seems that to make sage act as an HD tivo for cable reliably, you need three boxes, the PC, a media extender and a separate HDHomeRun. Am I the only one who thinks that this is a ridiculous state of affairs?

Firstly, what's wrong with an external tuner? Why would a PCI tuner be better than the HDHR?

Second, I'm a bit lost by your comment about the need for an extender. Sage's "Windows" playback is fabulous and further, at the moment there's no way to view HD on an extender, so at worst it seems you're looking at a "two box" solution. Of course I wouldn't consider the HDHR a "box" any more than a USB hard drive or USB tuner.

Now there's a lot of excitement about extenders because they are awesome at "extending" the SageTV system in an inexpensive yet high-quality way. But that's very different from saying they're required.

One of the reasons I'm into HTPC is because it's a one box solution for music TV and DVD, at least in principle.

In principal I agree, but I think the real beauty of HTPCs and especially Sage is that they can have the "one system" solution but distribute the work across many devices that do their part very well. I think the thing people dislike about "many box" solutions is not the number of boxes, but that they have to interact with each one separately with different interfaces.

It's just like a reciever vs a Pre/pro + Amp. Yes the later is two boxes, but they are functionally equivalent since you never deal with the amp directly.

Does anybody else think that there should be more focus on makeing sage work standalone without having to buy extra boxes to put under the TV?

First I want to say that it's distributed nature and flexibility specifically that keeps me with SageTV. Windows MCE is very attractive especially with stuff like cablecard support, but MCE is very much a "one box" solution and a such is very, very limiting IMO.

However I still don't see what you're getting at about "having" to buy extra boxes. Extenders are not required, current ones are not even optimal for some things (no direct HD support). Extenders are just an option, the current ones are a great way to extend Sage to secondary TVs.

I use an HTPC for my primary display wouldn't consider replacing it with an SD extender (the upcoming HD extender may be a different story).

Simple is best IMHO, and certainly for the WAF.

"One box" is not always the simplest solution.

As an aside? what actually is the problem with QAM, I've searched but all I can find is references to the drivers being a brick wall.

There's no standard QAM driver model for Windows. Unlike ATSC and DVB which use the standard BDA driver model, QAM tuners each use their own proprietary drivers. It's up to the application to support each and every tuner for QAM tuning, and many of these companies require developers to pay (not insignificant fees) for access to their driver SDKs.

If it's such a brick wall I guess cablecard is a bit of a false hope if we can't even view unscrambled QAM.

Cablecard should be better on the driver front because there should be standard driver interfaces for it, but the security requirements are completely rediculous.

[paulbeers]

I am really confused by your post PhilJones. My first Sage box was a single box solution. Just a simple 766mhz celeron with 2 Avermedia M150's and an FX5200 to output. I used the integrated sound. I had one hard drive for the operating system and the recording drive. Worked flawlessly. It isn't until you add QAM that it becomes more than "1 box". Heck, even if you only use OTA HD, it can still be a "1 box" solution. Personaly though, I wouldn't be using Sage at this point if it WASN'T a multiple box solution. My wife and I have 4 clients throughout the house (see sig) and we love to start watching a show at late at night in the living room, stop it, and start watching (where we left off mind you) in the bedroom. This is Sage advantage. I have said it many times to my friends, if all you want to do is record and watch on one tv, then rent the pvr from your cable company/buy the pvr from your dish provider. It will work fine with no complaints, but if you want a whole house distribution system for video and audio, then go with Sage (or if you prefer MCE/Beyond TV/etc).

Sage isn't for everyone. It has some limitations. Since it isn't being bought/sold by our cable/dish providers, it can't do everything (it doesn't have their "blessing" so to speak).

I also agree with Stanger (as usual) that I wouldn't really call it mutliple boxes as really you can do it with a single machine and the HDHomerun directly connected to the NIC. It is more like 1 box and a small add on. That doesn't seem bad to me.

[PhillJones]

The thing wrong with an external tuner is that it's an extra box. As I say, I like many other people want an HTPC that's a simple one box solution that provides music, video and photo's all with a single box. Also, it's expensive.

So if the problem is that drivers are proprietory, that seems a bit weak. Even if sage only supported 1 card, that would be better than no cards.

As for Sage's HD rendering being superb, the two large threads on HD playback in sage offers evidence to the contrary. For my part, my playback is pretty good at the minute but many people are having serious problems, exactly as salsbst says.

It seems to me that the sage community is pretty divided on this issue. On the one side, we have the multi-room streaming media people who are as pleased as punch to have a centralized PVR for thier household. On the other side, the videophiles, who want a best quality viewer experience are a little dissapointed.

Obviously sage can't be all things to all men so perhaps a rift was only to be expected because sage had to choose a direction to go.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

The thing wrong with an external tuner is that it's an extra box. As I say, I like many other people want an HTPC that's a simple one box solution that provides music, video and photo's all with a single box.

Maybe I'm thick, but why does it matter? You never have to interact with the box directly. As far as the user is concerned, it's just another tuner, users can't tell where a given tuner is located (either internal or external), it's totally seamless.

From a user perspective, all you've got in one remote and one display, and you can get at all your media from that one remote, one interface. What's the problem? What else do you want?

Also, it's expensive.

It's on par with the nVidia DualTV, and all the other dual-tuner options out there, and this one does HD.

So if the problem is that drivers are proprietory, that seems a bit weak. Even if sage only supported 1 card, that would be better than no cards.

They support two QAM tuners: the HD Homerun and Autumnwave OnAir GT for QAM tuning.

As for Sage's HD rendering being superb, the two large threads on HD playback in sage offers evidence to the contrary.

I suspect (from my experience) many HD "playback" problems are in fact reception problems.

It seems to me that the sage community is pretty divided on this issue. On the one side, we have the multi-room streaming media people who are as pleased as punch to have a centralized PVR for thier household. On the other side, the videophiles, who want a best quality viewer experience are a little dissapointed.

I don't see it that way, I love the multi-room distributed media center (why I'm still with Sage) and at the same time, demand the best quality possible. I'm very satisfied with Sage, in fact, my demand for the best possible quality is one reason I run an an HTPC and SageClient for my HT instead of some extender.

I don't see how the distributed architecture and best video quality are mutually exclusive. I mean Sage offers Fullscreen Exclusive VMR9 which is (according to many) at the pinnacle of PC video playback.

I also look forward greatly to the upcoming HD extender and comparing it to my HTPC to see who wins. There's great potential with the HD extender, especially if it offers "native" output and is paired with a great scaler.

Obviously sage can't be all things to all men so perhaps a rift was only to be expected because sage had to choose a direction to go.

What rift? Sage is capable of producing superb audio and video quality, as well as running in a single PC. At the same time it can be broken up such that multiple devices are utilized according to their strengths and it can be easily and inexpensively extended throughout a home.

[PhillJones]

Well, I appreciate that sage works well for you and that you have a lot of loyalty to the product.

However, from mine and many other peoples perspective, HD cable is understupported compared to OTA and even sattelite and many people have problems with HD rendering that aren't broacasting issues. In my experience this is true because, as the large thread on the subject shows, I've participated in helping isolate these issues and develop fix's that minimize the number of steps that sage is involved in rendering video.

We could go point for point all night on this but that wasn't my intention with this thread. I try not to be a sage detractor but am trying to move the conversation forward. I was merely looking to start a discussion on the possibilities of having a simple 1 box solution for a cable PVR.

You're right about the price thing, for some reason I thought the fusion card was cheaper than it is.

The reason I want a 1 box soultion is that my system, like many people's is a veritable rat's nest, what with cable box, DVD player, receiver, cable modem, router, etc. I've certainly run out of places to put stuff and the back looks like an expolsion in a string factory. I got into HTPC on the promise of a simple system with minimum rat's nestyness. Maybe HTPC is best when you have a media closet.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

The reason I want a 1 box soultion is that my system, like many people's is a veritable rat's nest, what with cable box, DVD player, receiver, cable modem, router, etc. I've certainly run out of places to put stuff and the back looks like an expolsion in a string factory. I got into HTPC on the promise of a simple system with minimum rat's nestyness. Maybe HTPC is best when you have a media closet.

If you're really unhappy about having all that stuff in your living room, then certainly one option is to run some coax and Cat5 to another room so you can move some of the basic networking components out of there. To my mind that includes the HDHR, which when you come down to it is a lot like a router or cable modem. There's no reason it needs to be next to your TV unless you just plain don't have anywhere else to plug it in.

I think this is the part that has some of us puzzled: why an HDHR violates the one-box rule, but a cable modem doesn't, when they're equally necessary for proper SageTV operation, and equally easy to relocate to another room.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I suspect (from my experience) many HD "playback" problems are in fact reception problems.

I'd also offer poor HD performance can also be tied to an underpowered graphics adapter.

b

[Jesse]

Hi,

If you prefer digital cable then why not just buy yourself a Windows Vista box from Velocity Micro. They will be one of the first OEM's to have support for the occur cable card. That would give you exactly "one box" (except, of course, for the router/modem/switch). Of course, you could build a couple of machines for what that one would cost, but it sounds as if space and simplicity are the keys for you.

I am sticking with sage. I am fortunate enough to have a basement where I can store my giant, loud server, sat receiver boxs, usb OTA tuners and usb/serial port expander. Yes, that is a lot of boxs. I have an HD client in our bedroom closet, so noise is not a factor there. In the family room I built a small, very quite client pc for HD playback. I am also fortunate that after a good bit of tinkering I get very solid OTA HD reception.

We also have a Directv HD DVR. We got it because I had problems getting a solid OTA signal along with trouble getting sage stable. This caused problems with WAF. The right antennas solved the OTA HD problem. A dedicated sage server solved the sage problems. Now she prefers sage to the Directv DVR.

One thing the Directv DVR has shown me is that we really dont need an HD solution for D* or cable at this time. With the D* box we can record anything D* offers in HD. Turns out the only HD stuff we really want to see is available free OTA. Now, when Battlestar Galactica is available in HD on SciFi then my needs will change.

EDIT: BTW, I have no problems with HD playback (using VMR9 and FSE) on my less than exotic hardware. I am, however, still using V5.

Jesse

[jbarr]

I think the real problem here is a general misconception of just what SageTV (or ANY other DVR/PVR product for that matter) can or can't provide. The problem is not with SageTV, but with the cable company and how they provide and control content. Because the cable company encrypts (most) channels requiring an STB, this means that other than succumbing to a cable company-provided DVR, you will never, repeat never have a one-box solution--end of story. The only exception to this might be if a Vista/CableCard solution surfaces, but then you are locked into the Microsoft/cable company marriage.

You see, it's all about control by the cable company. The cable company wants to control what you see and how you see it. Yes, they give you lots of choices, but it is all within their controlled boundries. Don't be misled to think otherwise. Their bottom line (like any company) is to make money, and that is done by getting the viewer to want to watch more channels and to use premium, STB-only functionality. That's why PPV, On Demand, and premium HD all require an STB. I really don't believe it's for convenience, but for monetary control.

My point is that you can berate SageTV all you want, but please do it for the right reasons. SageTV can only work within the bounds available to it, and if the cable company is providing boundries that are too restrictive, then the best maybe it would be prodent to investigate cable-provided solutions.

Interestingly, for me, my sentiment on SageTV as a one-box solution is quickly evolving to just the opposite. I'm now looking for a multi-box solution to provide greater, more reliable storage, and to provide better picture quality: Build a recording server that will do the best job of recording, and build a playback client box that will provide optimal playback quality. And as for the "extra" boxes in the mix (STB, HDHR) they are completely and absolutely unavoidable unless you want to record only raw analog cable.

[jbarr]

I forgot to mention that the ONLY way that I have been able to provide consistent, reliable, stutter-free playback of HDHomeRun-recorded content is to set the renderer to "Overlay", use the InterVideo decoder, and to turn FSC "off". Any other setting yields stutter-filled playback. Go figure....