Just curious. How do you all use Sage?

[Fountainhead]

Are you using it as your primary TV watching mechanism, streaming it to TV's and so forth. Or are you using it strictly as a secondary way to watch TV on your PC's and laptops?

I've got a three tuner setup, but I still use it strictly for PC watching...on my den PC (I spend a lot of time in my den, heh heh) and my laptop. The wife uses it on her laptop also. I find I use it quite a lot, but I still don't send it off to actual TV's or anything. I feel like maybe I'm not taking advantage of Sage like I could.

So how many of you really use it as the center of your TV watching, and how many of you keep it kind of on the side as I do?

[bcjenkins]

4 MVPs 2 Client PCs and 2 Servers for whole home solution. + PS licenses too

B

[sainswor99]

I'm kind of like the OP; I use it primarily on my desktop PC (Placeshifter, in a window). Allows me to watch, while I work. I've thought about adding a third monitor to my PC so I could actually dedicate a whole monitor to Sage, but why bother?

I occasionally use my MVP, and sometimes Placeshift across the net, but mostly it's me sitting at my desk.

Stu

[GKusnick]

I do pretty much all my TV watching through Sage, on both TV and PC screens. My Sage server feeds its audio/video output into a whole-house AV distribution switch, so I can bring up the server UI on any TV in the house. I can also connect by LAN from any PC in the house and watch TV using SageTV Client. (I don't have any Sage clients driving my TVs; they're all driven from the server through the AV switch.)

For me it's about 50/50 between TV watching and PC watching. Shows that my wife and I both like, we watch together on the big screen. Shows that I watch but she doesn't, I watch by myself, usually on the PC.

Mostly I watch recorded shows. I rarely channel-surf with Sage (or without it for that matter). The closest I come to Live TV watching is when I start watching a scheduled recording 15-20 minutes after the show starts, so I can skip through the commercials without quite catching up to real time.

We do also have a DirecTV DVR box, which my wife uses to watch the evening news in real time and to record some of her shows. I don't like the Tivo UI so I don't use it much myself.

[stanger89]

I don't "watch TV" anymore since I've started using Sage. By that I mean I don't sit down in front of the TV and just watch whatever's on. With Sage, I watch whatever I want, whenever I want (within the bounds that I can't watch stuff that's not aired yet, now that would be a feature ).

Asside from news/weather, I don't really watch TV outside Sage, or live for that matter.

[Fluffdaddy]

Never could get into watching tv or movies on a PC.

100% Sage on a 65" RP CRT TV in our media room and MVP on a *50" plasma in the bedroom.The only thing I watch live is Pro Football.



*Will wait another month for that HD media extender or I'm building a Client for the plasma.

[jmoney579]

After about three weeks of setting up my media center and installing Sage, watching live TV doesn't happen any more. I setup all my favorites and watch them when I get a chance. I use the placeshifter to watch recordings on my laptop, my desktop and at work, when on lunch of course . Now all I'm waiting on is for the ATI 650 pro pci-express to come out, then I'll be recording so much I'll need a terabyte drive .

[camus]

Only thing I watch "live" is College Football (specific games, the rest recorded) and maybe Cubs games. My wife watches everything prerecorded.

When I say "live" that is still through Sage, our family room TV's only connection is through Sage. My client is basically just a PC with an LCD monitor, not a TV.

We have another set that is in the process of being replaced for an HDTV once I finish the client.

[flavius]

At my place Sage still rules the SD TV world, for anything else there are better solutions, if not excellent stuff.

[Opus4]

We use SageTV exclusively for all TV viewing, to the point that our kids are confused about why there isn't a list of shows to watch at their grandparent's house & why they can't FF while there. Although, now I remember them recently starting to ask to watch something on my laptop via Placeshifter when we are away from home, so I guess they understand the concept after all.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Asside from news/weather, I don't really watch TV outside Sage, or live for that matter.

Oh yeah... now you got me. I guess I did check the weather live last winter. For some reason, I can't bring myself to record The Weather Channel.

- Andy

[mayamaniac]

I think in order for SageTV to fully take over the main TV in the house, they need to release the HD extender. The MVP extender solved the SD solution, but not the HD solution. Not everyone like the idea of having a PC running next to the TV, even some people who run a PC client, I'm sure they would prefer the HD Extender given the option.

I use SageTV for a lot of things. When at home, I use the PC Client and MVP Extenders. When away, I use the Placeshifter and Webserver. It's a great product.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

Never could get into watching tv or movies on a PC.

I find that with 5.1 speakers and a good widescreen monitor, the experience is not that different than watching on a TV (except for using a mouse instead of a remote).

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Not everyone like the idea of having a PC running next to the TV...

You don't have to put it next to the TV. Mine's in a rack in the AV closet.

[tmiranda]

We use it 100% of the time. I can't remember when the last time any of us (me, wife, 2 kids) ever watched live TV. My kids, Like Andy's, can't understand why they can't skip the commercials and see a list of shows when they are at the grandparent's house.

[Fountainhead]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

I think in order for SageTV to fully take over the main TV in the house, they need to release the HD extender.

For me, it has to support captions through the media extended the way it does on a client. I know there's a STV that apparently addresses this but I've never gotten it to work reliably, though it might be my own fault.

We've gotten so used to Closed Captions that we leave them on all the time whether we need them or not. It'd be impossible to move to a whole house Sage solution that didn't include them. I'm not sure what the technical issue is with not having CC with a placeshifter or media extender, but if they ever remedied that it'd open up lots of possibilities.

[Slack]

SageTV box was put together for one reason OTA HDTV to feed a plasma for NFL games.

Household was already wired with cat5 & streamed shows between ReplayTVs for quite sometime before the SageTV box entered the scene. For non-tv media we use modded xboxes running XBMC. So sageTV box has pretty much remained single task box.

Since it's on 24/7 I want to load it up with WiRNS, and DVArchive to help make better use of my ReplayTVs.

Like others my kids have never known a life without commercial skip. And lately, a video on demand library of shows, movies, and pictures.

[Yooper]

I use SageTv at home for the usual stuff.

However, I travel a lot and spend a lot of time sitting in airports. With Sage Placeshifter I can view my cable tv lineup from any airport with wireless internet, which is most airports these days. I can also view our local news to see what is going on at home. It has improved my travel experience enormously.

I can also watch TV in any meetings I'm in - but this is a different story!

[weeber]

When I built my first SageTV computer about 3 years ago I used it for just recording TV shows so I could watch them when I wanted. I also used it for watching dowloaded videos on a bigger screen. It was an experiment out of old computer parts that was a resounding success.

When I upgraded to an HDTV, my HTPC was not good enough to drive it. I couldn't get over having to watch TV on the schedule the networks set. I was so used to watching TV on my schedule.

I immediately built a new and improved HTPC and I'm amazed at how much it's recording that I missed the first time by. And now that it's in HD, I'm amazed.
Maybe one day I'll get into placeshifting or sage/client setups but for now I use it for recording and watching TV and videos.

[Polypro]

99.9% total solution in my house. (HD-DVD is the .1% )

P

[nick_l]

Aside from DVDs, Sage handles 99% of the tv watching in my house. The only tv that even has another tuner is my 50" plasma. I have a DishNet Hd tuner hooked up to that, which I switch over to every other week or so, just for a few minutes to remind me how nice it will be when Sage gets the HD extender out the door. Other than that, 3 MVPs, 1 client and some placeshifting describes how we watch shows from 3 dish standard def receivers and and HDHR, recording to 4 300gig HDDS.

Nick

[jkoutrouba]

Sage -> Infocus 4805, and nothing more. I don't think my daughter knows that there is such a thing as a TV schedule. She just knows she can watch what she wants by going to the right menu.