SageTV HD Media Extender

[Ken C]

Are you taking pre-orders ?

[flavius]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Since there's been quite a few posts speculating we're not actually working on this anymore, I wanted to set things straight.

Q: Is SageTV still doing an HD Media Extender?

Yes!!! Yes!!! Yes!!!

See, how those few words brought back all the excitement?

[inseattle]

Sign me up for two! If they are targeting a Nov release, I would hope that they already have a few beta testers out there!

[Trepidati0n]

This coupled with WHS is pretty much making the house my wife wanted a reality =P

[autoboy]

2 please. Now...what do i do with these extra clients? I'm glad I went budget on them.

For those of you that want HD movie capability, personally, I really don't mind having to use an external HD-DVD player for my HD movies. I also have an extra HD cable box just for On Demand. Get a good remote, program it right, and this whole system can be seemless. The processors for HD movies are not quite to the price point that would make this box doable. While the box is confirmed to do h.264, it probably will not support the high bitrates of HD movies. I really do hope they have a built in DVD player though. That would make my life easier in the bedroom. In the family room i'll have my HD player.

[gilbreen]

Another long time lurker that doesn't currently use SageTV but have been waiting for the HD Extender. In fact, I bought a Windows box in the Spring to run SageTV in anticipation of the HD extenders (it is still in the box and the first Windows box I have ever purchased - I use Macs at home - this was before SageTV for Mac existed).

I had been biding my time with Comcast HD DVRs but finally got tired of paying Comcast the extra money for a digital package that I rarely used and returned them a few months ago (Really only need the locals in HD which come with a lower package).

Without any news here, was about to buy a TivoHD next week for our HDTV to supplement our 3 ReplayTVs in prep for the fall season.

Looks like I will be waiting a few more weeks to get more info on the extenders. If Sage works well for our situation, I plan on replacing all our Replays with extenders (3 HD and 1 SD).

Keep the info coming and thanks for sharing!

[GbrNole]

Originally Posted by mdnttoker

woot! Got my money on $249.99. I'll start off with just one...then we'll see how that progresses.

i hope net - you can get an xbox 360 for that...

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by GbrNole

i hope net - you can get an xbox 360 for that...

Obviously you've never tried to use an Xbox360 as a media player/MC extender

This post sums it up pretty well, but surfice to say that it is severly limiting in ways that I assume/hope Sage's won't be.
http://www.missingremote.com/index.p...sg7258#msg7258

[95TBird]

Originally Posted by mikesm

There are squillions of these types of devices out there. Why do think this particular one is being sourced to Sage?

BTW, it REALLY would be silly for the HD extender to not be able to play HD-DVD and BR content (forget about the encryption issue for now). Since the product has been delayed to this point, and most of the newer hardware has that capability, the HD extender really should have the decoder support etc... to be able to play those formats, even if Sage today can't.

I've always argued that Sage should support unencrypted BR and HD-DVD playback, just as they support unencrypted DVD playback today. They depend on users to deal with any encryption if that is an issue for the media being played back. Most of the new versions of authoring packages have HD video support now anyway, and the number of HD camcorders is dramatically increasing, so that will provide media that needs playback support even if you ignore the HD titles being produced today.

Since the time the HD extender was demoed at CES, a lot of new development has happened in the device space, and since there really are no new formats in the offing, either for OTA video or published media, it's a relative unusual period in time where Sage could ship a cheap HD extender that is capable of natively playing all media formats, and that it will not be obsoleted for at least 5 years or so. What I am saying is their timing is great to do something and not have to do something else in the extender dept for a long long time.

Thanks,
mike

I'm just guessing based on some clues...

1. It has all the outputs Narflex discribed in his post.

2. The MAC address on the HD Media Extender that Sage demoed at CES was registered in the FCC database to Syabas.

3. Sage is based in Inglewood, CA & Syabas is based in Fremont, CA.. A short 5 & 1/2 hour dirve apart (OK, I admit, this one is pushing it ).

But the most important thing is...

I have to have something to do while I'm waiting for the HD Media extender to come out !!

[trini0]

Excellent....

[gil]

Now that the cats out of the bag on the new HD extender, can we get some photos of the new hardware ?

[Polypro]

Hopefully black, with *any* optical disc player

P

[steingra]

Sorry for a dumb question but can someone explain what kind of additional demands using these HD extenders would place on the sagetv server? I currently have sagetv server, several SageTV PC based clients, and several MediaMVP's. All been working pretty good for several years now. Right now I am in process of investigating the use of an HDHomeRun for getting my local OTA highdef channels. I get all the major networks, and PBS and FOX all in HD OTA. So that will provide plenty of shows and football...etc ...to record on SageTV.

So, I am thinking if I can get the HDHomeRun working nicely with sagetv, then I have the source for recording some OTA HD shows. But that makes me wonder what kind of a load this is going to place on the sagetv server. And if it can even handle it. (I mean handling the actual recording of the HD shows from the HDHomeRun first of all, and then handling playback using an HD extender). They dont have to happen at same time. I mean I wont neccessarily be watching HD shows on an extender while recording them. Because I realize that is asking a lot of my hardware. My sagetv server is 3+ years old now...however has worked just fine for all things SD. But HD might be a killer. So I am wondering what effect others have seen, that are going down this road before me.

If someone could elaborate on these points, I would greatly appreciate. Thank you.

But I like where this is heading... I like HD. Basically I am spoiled on it, and I really dont care about SD anymore. Its HD or nothing. If I am going to watch TV/Movies....they need to be HD

[CollinR]

From whats posted it appears the extender has native hardware support for almost everything you'll care about. So it should reduce the load on the server rather then increase it.

[lobosrul]

They dont have to happen at same time. I mean I wont neccessarily be watching HD shows on an extender while recording them.

Anytime you watch a show via Sage, whether on the server, a client, or extender, it is recording. Scheduling HDTV wont put any extra load on your server over scheduling/recording SDTV.

My guess is if your server is doing nothing else, a 5 year old Celeron could handle at least 10 extenders. Not sure about hard drives that old though.

But I like where this is heading... I like HD. Basically I am spoiled on it, and I really dont care about SD anymore. Its HD or nothing. If I am going to watch TV/Movies....they need to be HD

My sentiments exactly. My local NBC (KOB) FUBAR'd the premiere of Chuck the other night (SDTV "gutterboxed" mode) and I just turned it off.

[foolio]

Thank God! I've been so depressed watching all the new Windows Media Center extenders being released!

[steingra]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

They dont have to happen at same time. I mean I wont neccessarily be watching HD shows on an extender while recording them.

Anytime you watch a show via Sage, whether on the server, a client, or extender, it is recording. Scheduling HDTV wont put any extra load on your server over scheduling/recording SDTV.

It seems to me that IF I am successful in getting the HDHomeRun to work with OTA, that when I tell sagetv to record something from the HDHomeRun...it is going to be receiving a lot more data because its an HDTV stream of data vs. SD. So I was thinking because my server is going to be a lot busier when its recording HD shows...??? no?

I have had no real problems when recording/watching shows using SD...on multiple PC clients or MVP's at the same time. From what I understand, going to record HD shows will definately consume more processing power. Sorry...just trying to understand impact on the server before I do anything.

[bialio]

Recording 4 HD programs on my server takes about 10% of the CPU.

More important is the HDD that you are recording to - they need to be fast enough to keep up.

btl.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by bialio

Recording 4 HD programs on my server takes about 10% of the CPU.

More important is the HDD that you are recording to - they need to be fast enough to keep up.

btl.

Recording 4 HD programs is worst case about 80 mbps, or 10 MB/s of throughput. Any decent NAS should be able to handle this without breaking a sweat.

My linux based NAS does about 50 MB/s of net throughput for SAMBA, faster if you don't go through samba (about 200 MB/s from a native filesystem perspective).

This is just not that hard.

Of course, windows will be slower, and this drobo/linksys/buffalo style NAS appliances will likely choke, but don't blame NAS's in general for that.

Thanks,
Mike

[MrD]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Will it support component video too? My old Pioneer Pro 710-HD just keeps going and going..

Yes component is absolutely necessary in my book. HDMI is a bit of a poison pill... I was an early HDTV adopter.