MCE user considering SageTV

[jelwood]

I am a long time Microsoft Media Center user and I'm considering switching to SageTV. One thing that is important to me is HD content. I know SageTV offers even more options to capture the HD content than MCE, so I think I'll be ok there.

However, does it have the ability to record the SD content in 16:9 aspect (assuming I'm feeding it a source that was 16:9 to begin with)? The key here is to record it without the letterbox. I have a wide screen display and don't want the letterbox added. If so, what type of capture card do you need? Can the old reliable Hauppauge 150/250 do this through the S-Video input?

[stanger89]

I assume you're talking about the output of the STB, if it outputs anamorphic 16:9, that's what will be recorded.

[jelwood]

Thank you for the quick reply and the link to the other thread. I have Directv so yes I was referring to the output from a STB. Directv has a lot of HD channels now. I know that I can't actually record them in HD, but if I can record them in 740x480 with the 16:9 aspect ratio, that is much better than having them recorded in Letterbox and relying on some "zoom" feature, or messing around with the display aspect ratio for 16:9 shows verses 4:3 shows, just to display them correctly.

Thanks again for your help.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jelwood

Thank you for the quick reply and the link to the other thread. I have Directv so yes I was referring to the output from a STB. Directv has a lot of HD channels now. I know that I can't actually record them in HD, but if I can record them in 740x480 with the 16:9 aspect ratio,

I assume you've tried that? My Dish box won't output HD channels as anamorphic 16:9, only letterboxed or cropped.

that is much better than having them recorded in Letterbox and relying on some "zoom" feature, or messing around with the display aspect ratio for 16:9 shows verses 4:3 shows, just to display them correctly.

You're still going to have to adjust the aspect ratio mode in Sage when you play them. Sage has no way to know that the recordings are anamorphic 16:9 as opposed to 4:3.

[jelwood]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I assume you've tried that? My Dish box won't output HD channels as anamorphic 16:9, only letterboxed or cropped.

Thanks... I haven't tried this with Sage yet (more on why below). However, when I hook up the S-video cable to my TV, and play around, it seems to work. Directv doesn't have an anamorphic setting (only letterbox, stretch, and crop). However, they have a "Native" mode that controls the output resolution. When I turn on Native mode and stretch, the SD content displays on my TV as 4:3 (my TV puts the black bars on the sides). However, when it switches to 720p or 1080i it displays as anamorphic on my TV (since it's only an S-Video cable it's only displaying 480i, but it is wide screen). Now, I don't know if my TV is doing something special, but I could never get this to work in MCE (maybe it was a limitation of the Hauppauge 150 or 250, the Hauppauge drivers, or maybe it isn't MCE's fault and it is just a limitation of my Directv STB). Anyway, I'll play around with this and see what happens in Sage.

Just to be sure I under stood your response correctly. If I hook up a DVD player and play a widescreen video (I'm using this example because i know the DVD player can output anamorphic) through the S-Video cable into a Hauppauge 150 using Sage you think it would record ok. However, when I went to play it I would have to mess with the zoom (or some Sage equivalent feature) because the 16:9 aspect ratio won't be saved into the MPG file (or whatever container Sage uses). Did I get this correct?


Now, the reason I haven't tried this with Sage yet is because I'm still reading and mapping out my testing plan. I'm going to setup a spare PC I have with Sage and try it out. However, since the trial is only 15 days, I want to make sure I have a good testing plan before I install Sage. To give Sage a fare evaluation, I need to understand some of the optimal settings, and plug ins, before I start the 15 day evaluation. Things that are important to me are:

1) picture quality and anything I can do to improve picture quality (or the experience, like the correct aspect ratio). Today I use PowerDVD 7 codec with MCE and it does a good job with picture quality and the deinterlacing. I'm not 100% sure, but from everything I've read it seems like I could still use the PowerDVD 7 codec for MPEG-2. Dscaler seems to be another alternative that I'll have to try. If anyone knows of any good posts about the best picture quality in Sage I would appreciate the link.

2) commercial skipping (I do this today with MCE using DVRMSToolbox). I helped modify DVRMSToolBox a little to make the user experience better. I mostly worked on a way to notify the user when the automatic commercial skip may have skipped over a segment of the show (please don't get the wrong idea, I'm not claiming to be the main developer, babgvant does a great job, my code contribution was minor). However, since I did spend a lot of time with this project, I'm a little picky about commercial skipping.

3) A My Movies equivalent (My Movies was the only reason I could convince the wife that MCE was better than Tivo to begin with. Now I'm going to need some other good things that will make a difference to her to overcome the lack of this feature). I plan to try SageMC and see if it gets me close.

4) automatic encoding for my portable player (I do this today with MCE today using DVRMSToolBox and Mencoder). This is another area where I spent a lot of time, so I will be picky. However, I'm sure I will spend much less time with Sage because I don't have to deal with the horrible dvr-ms format.

5) Multiple video sources (ATSC, Directv via STB, and Cable). In MCE I had to hack the guide together to get a complete guide, so Sage will be a nice improvement.

6) Guide accuracy. When I setup a series/favorite I tell it to only record new episodes so I'm not consistently deleting re-runs. I really hope the Sage guide is as accurate (or better) than the MCE guide regarding this.

7) HD extender is a must, I have 5 tv's in the house all being driven from the MCE (and a Directv HR20 for some HD content I can't get off of ATSC). Sage now has this covered, so I think I'll be ok here.

8) music, pictures, home videos, and weather seems to be covered in Sage.

9) general usability... Right now I plan to try the default UI in Sage and SageMC.

As I continue to read about Sage I'm sure I'll come up with more things to try out.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jelwood

Just to be sure I under stood your response correctly. If I hook up a DVD player and play a widescreen video (I'm using this example because i know the DVD player can output anamorphic) through the S-Video cable into a Hauppauge 150 using Sage you think it would record ok. However, when I went to play it I would have to mess with the zoom (or some Sage equivalent feature) because the 16:9 aspect ratio won't be saved into the MPG file (or whatever container Sage uses). Did I get this correct?

Yes the PVR150 only records "4:3" 480i content, by that I mean it records 720x480 and flags it as 4:3. The 150 doesn't know, can't know that the input is anamorphic or not. Sage just plays the files the 150 creates so when you play an anamorphic recording from a 150 in Sage, Sage thinks it's 4:3 (because that's how the 150 flagged it) and will display it as such. You'll have to change the Aspect Ratio control to Fill or 16x9 to have Sage stretch it back out.

One additional tidbit, there is a customization that will store your aspect ratio preference for each show and automatically switch for you once you set it up.

Now, the reason I haven't tried this with Sage yet is because I'm still reading and mapping out my testing plan. I'm going to setup a spare PC I have with Sage and try it out. However, since the trial is only 15 days, I want to make sure I have a good testing plan before I install Sage. To give Sage a fare evaluation, I need to understand some of the optimal settings, and plug ins, before I start the 15 day evaluation. Things that are important to me are:

I think with 6.3 its 21 days now

1) picture quality and anything I can do to improve picture quality (or the experience, like the correct aspect ratio). Today I use PowerDVD 7 codec with MCE and it does a good job with picture quality and the deinterlacing. I'm not 100% sure, but from everything I've read it seems like I could still use the PowerDVD 7 codec for MPEG-2.

Yup. If it works well in MCE I'd expect it to work similarly in Sage.

Dscaler seems to be another alternative that I'll have to try. If anyone knows of any good posts about the best picture quality in Sage I would appreciate the link.

I probably wouldn't both with Dscaler, you really need a hardware accelerated decoder (to get hardware deinterlacing) to get good results with recorded TV IMO.

2) commercial skipping (I do this today with MCE using DVRMSToolbox). I helped modify DVRMSToolBox a little to make the user experience better. I mostly worked on a way to notify the user when the automatic commercial skip may have skipped over a segment of the show (please don't get the wrong idea, I'm not claiming to be the main developer, babgvant does a great job, my code contribution was minor). However, since I did spend a lot of time with this project, I'm a little picky about commercial skipping.

The current import marks commercials on the timeline, it's pretty clear when you skipped something, and just pressing the left arrow will go back.

3) A My Movies equivalent (My Movies was the only reason I could convince the wife that MCE was better than Tivo to begin with. Now I'm going to need some other good things that will make a difference to her to overcome the lack of this feature). I plan to try SageMC and see if it gets me close.

I've worked on it, but honestly every time I sit down to work on it, I get stuck, I can see the desire for metadata, but I just can't figure out what's really so bad about Sage's library. Maybe we just need somebody with some vision Of course time and some skills wouldn't hurt either.

4) automatic encoding for my portable player (I do this today with MCE today using DVRMSToolBox and Mencoder). This is another area where I spent a lot of time, so I will be picky. However, I'm sure I will spend much less time with Sage because I don't have to deal with the horrible dvr-ms format.

There's a couple imports already, and Sage has native transcoding support built in.

5) Multiple video sources (ATSC, Directv via STB, and Cable). In MCE I had to hack the guide together to get a complete guide, so Sage will be a nice improvement.

That's cake in Sage.

6) Guide accuracy. When I setup a series/favorite I tell it to only record new episodes so I'm not consistently deleting re-runs. I really hope the Sage guide is as accurate (or better) than the MCE guide regarding this.

I think they use the same guide source, but I'm not sure. You can look at Zap2It and see what type of data Sage gets. From my experience, the data for all the "major" networks is very good.