How many people use SageTV Media Center for Linux?

[cenwesi]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

Ditto here. Someone I know was able to show me Sage so I didn't have any issues with there not being a trial period. Although I agree that they could probably sell more if they had a Linux trial period.

Luckily i already own the windows version so i pretty much know how it works and looks. I wish they had the linux version for trial because alot of people having issues with MythTV right now will most likely buy Sage...

I will note two additional things:

When the plugin problem was not related to an external Windows dependency (for example, not adjusting paths used by a plugin so they get automatically corrected regardless the platform), I've brought it up to the plugin developer and it's been updated.

Sage support has always been responsive to my support questions. I don't feel like as a Linux user I'm treated as a "second class" citizen. Occasionally the response I get is Windows specific but when I say "oh, I'm on Linux" they still give me an updated answer.

Many Sage issues (scheduling issues for example) have nothing to do with the platform (since the core Sage server is basically the same) so don't be afraid to report problems just because you are running Linux.

--John

Plugins i knew from the get go will have issues so i didn't mind and didn't use any to the best of my knowledge on my windows box.

Really, i did convert my SageMCE *.xml files by replacing the path and the backlash... so i really didn't have to do that....

[joat]

I've got SageTV running under Mandriva. The IVTV install was negligible as the card was detected during install and the kernel modules were installed then. The most difficult piece that I had was declaring the path for Java (this was before it was open sourced).

It does take a little bit of systems knowledge to do some of the fancier stuff (remember, SageTV for Linux is offered in OEM form), such as DHCP and TFTP service configuration for the MVP.

Admittedly, I've gone a bit crazy with hooking things together. Take a look at http://www.757.org/~joat/asterice.jpg to see how bad it's gotten. Fortunately, most of that has a web interface (including SageTV), so it's gained spouse-points with my wife (she's scheduled a recording from a restaurant at least twice, that I know of).

pyTivo is valuable in that it allows me to push SageTV recordings or netcasts onto the TiVo to play from there. Cidero allows me to stream music (and some video) to the D-Link media player. There's a ton of audio tools available also.

The choice of platform depends mostly on what you plan to do with the system and what your computing practices are. If you're the plug-and-play type, use Windows to run SageTV. If you like playing with features and getting stuff to do new things, run it on Linux. Example: I'm working on a page scraper (the XML extensions aren't available for the EPG data) so that I can schedule/list records via Asterisk. Obviously, I bought the OEM version of SageTV (hint: you're not limited to Gentoo or Ubuntu!).

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

Sage support has always been responsive to my support questions. I don't feel like as a Linux user I'm treated as a "second class" citizen.

I have to say that I was blown away by the sage support for linux, directly from sage. When I was getting the dvb-s card working, the developer would send me patches daily. In the end, it still doesn't work in sage, but not for the lack of trying on their part.

Another friend of mine, who also owns sage linux, has had a completely different experience with sage support. So maybe the support is hit or miss, but from my perspective, 2 thumbs up!

[Mahoney]

in linux, I was able to get dvb-s working in Sage by writing a sage compatible network encoder. Still a work in progress. Channel changing is a little slow, but that's not sage's fault. I working on updating the viewable channels in the guide based on what the network encoder has scanned. I wouldn't exactly say it's production strength, but it's a fun project

This is very interesting indeed! Have you made any progress?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Mahoney

This is very interesting indeed! Have you made any progress?

I't more of a prototype/POC.... I do intend on releasing the source for it, but I still need to polish it a bit.

What I did was create a java server, that could respond to the sage network encoder protocol. The network encoding server, would get the request from sage to tune a channel, and it would call the linux 'szap' command to tune the channel. It would then create a thread that would read the dvr and copy the data to the file that sage expected. Tuning a channel worked, but it was quite slow. About 5-10 seconds. Later I replaced the szap process with native java code that could tune the channel.

As for the Channels.... you needed to have a channels.conf file and I was working on code that would update the sage channels with the channels from the channels.conf. ie, when I configured sage to use the zap2it, it brought down 300+ channels, but my dvb card only scanned about 100, so I needed a way to synchronize between the "tunable" channels, and the ones that sage listed. I didn't want to manually turn off the channels in the guide.

Again, everything is just a WIP, and I was only playing with it, to see what I could do. In the end, if sage could get their dvb-s working just a little better, then it would ideal.

On linux, you would need to use sasc-ng, and I think that sage had already committed to using a MDAPI model, and the two are different approaches to solving the same problem. I did work with Qain on getting native linux dvbs working with sasc, but in the end, it still doesn't work well.

Sean.

[zoop]

i have to agree... the support to date from the sage staff for the linux product has been excellent overall, and folk in these forums are usually quite willing to help if they can. given how easy ubuntu/debian is to install these days and the fact that sage is now delivering their linux version in debian packaging i have no problem recommending linux over windows.

[ecoolman]

Originally Posted by zoop

delivering their linux version in debian packaging i have no problem recommending linux over windows.

Thanks to the Sage guys for releasing debian packages lately! Hopefully some day in future we'll also see them in the Canonical commercial repos.

I've been using SageTV for Linux for about 4 months now with no issues to speak of. Have only rebooted once in that time, to add more memory (it was running on 128 megs ram for the first 3 months. Now 1 gig). It's been performing great from the start with 2 MVPs, a linux placeshifter, and a windows client. Ordered the HD extender, but it's a no show still. I only use a couple of plugins though, the callerid display, and the webserver, both work well.

Eric