Glad I Didn't Buy The HD Extender

[EdwardATeller]

I'm sure many people have had good results with the HD Extender, but it seems like enough people have problems that I am glad I didn't pay more than $200 for a possible headache. While I do love watching live HD, and it would be nice to record it, I've found that I can live with recorded SD and live HD for now. I am looking forward to the day when HD recording is a mature technology, but that day hasn't arrived yet for the HTPC world.

BTW, I was going to use the HD Extender to enable my lowish-powered PC to playback HD reliably rather than going through the expense and headaches of upgrading graphics and CPU on a perfectly good SD HTPC. Since it appears that the HD Extender needs some more time in beta, I'll hold off on the whole HD upgrade cycle, but many thanks to the early adopters out there. I think you should be Time's People of the Year instead of Putin.

[mcaron1234]

Just to be the voice of opposition The only problem I have with the extender is the IR sensor, playback of all recorded shows HD and SD has been flawless. I am extremely glad I did purchase it and it seems that most sage users are glad as well. I have had minor problems with UI responsiveness, etc but a power cycle always help get that under control. This device will only get better. This is the best 200$ I've spent in a long time.

Matt

[evilpenguin]

Just to put it in perspective, 10's of people are having issues where as they've probably sold 1000 units at this point. Remove about 25% of those issues as user error and the STX isn't doing to bad in my book (or my living room for that matter).

[jchiso]

The extender does not have anything to do with recording HD streams. HD recording has been available since v4 and requires as little processing power as a Sempron 1600 and a $60 PCI capture card. In fact an HD extender makes a low-end encoding server more valuable in that the extender does the heavy lifting.

[DualQuad]

I jumped in feet first with these extenders (bought several) and am really not too upset with this revision. This first go around has some issues and I have confidence that Sage will bang these problems out.

Things that need work with extender (in my application)
- Off axis IR
- UI response for Videos (real pokey)
- SD playback is lacking(IMO) compared to PC clients. Of course I spent more on software/video cards for these clients than an extender costs in total. The majority of SD viewing here is cartoons that perhaps have some wacky frame speed to start with before their conversion to TV compatible format, who knows.

Things that rock
- Difficult DISH HD h.264 playback works real well
- MPEG HD playback in general is smooth and stutter free
- Minimal load on server

I am currently serving up to multiple HD sets and have no showstopping problems. On the other hand though, I am whipping up bug reports. I have a way to get HD into my system and can finally use it easily universally within the home. Outside of cartoons, I would guess 80% of our household TV viewing is HD. These extenders are a silent/lowpower godsend for my situation.

In closing, the issues with this box are minor/insignificant compared to what I encountered over the last year and a half dealing with broken video drivers, screwy JRE issues and trying various codec packs for playback.

I am happy working through these issues to help make a better product. I have 95% of what I had hoped for.

DQ

[benjamintm]

I'm not sure what HD recording has to do with the HD Extender, but either way, recording is a mature technology. There are plenty of hardware(TiVo, Comcast DVRs, DirectTV DVRs) as well as software (MCE, Sage, Beyond, MythTV) that can record HD. To me this indicates the maturity of a technology.

As for problems with the extender, as has been put before, there are 10s of people having problems (myself included) out of an unknown sold (though I'm willing to bet between 500 and a 1000), which is a low percentage. As a (comparatively) inexpensive box the HD Extender does not have any issues encountered are not (for me) critical. No data is lost and most errors are recoverable (power off) or hackable (IR issues). Given that this box was only released two weeks ago this speaks volumes about it's reliability.

Oh, and I'm not sure if your name is Edward Teller or not, but it's also the name of the "father of the hydrogen bomb". Your post can easily be interpreted as a troll bomb.

Ben

**edited for clarity**

[dnlmln]

I, for one, am completely satisfied with the HD extender as well as the MVP's. I don't record any HD content yet, but SD content and mp4's look great.

All this in a quiet, easy to configure device that doesn't generate any heat and doesn't consume much power.

I've been using SageTV for four years now and am 100% satisfied with the product.

[mohanman]

I am satisfied as well. For $200.00, this extender beats anything out there currently. Those microsoft media center extenders look dumb. I read one of the reviews, said the interface was all boggy and slow, no ripped dvd support, forget that. I am sure some of the minor bugs and here and there will be worked out, but so far its working pretty good.
Thanks Sagetv for the continued wonderful products

Mo

[peternm22]

I am also satisfied with the extender. Most of the issues I was having were due to user error (me).

Most posts on a forum are usually from people who are having trouble with something, so that might skew the overall perception of a product.

-Peter

[unkyjoe]

Edward, I am glad you didnt buy one either This way I got mine before Christmas.

Oh and I do recommend you buy one, ASAP as the minor problems I am having far outweigh the problems I was having trying to run a pc.

I dont use this unit for HD yet. It does everything else as quickly as it did on the pc. Minor annoyances are there, and I am having a few of them, that is the cost of being on the bleeding edge of this technology..

I think Sage did an excellent job getting this unit ready for Christmas, a few issues have popped up and I am sure Sage will make it right.

FOlks at Sage should be proud this got done at all, what do the others have to offer in a integrated system with even some of Sage's functionaily.

I for one am very pleased.

[autoboy]

I'm back to using my HTPC for playback for a couple reasons that are pretty easy fixes.

1. Extender IR sucks - need to drill hole
2. No option to unstretch History HD without coming to this forum to research custom aspect ratios. This should be included stock IMO.
3. SD playback is not as good as my HTPC but this will be fixed when I find out how to run the thing in native mode.
4. Inability to program the extender to my MCE remote, while my harmony is too slow with button presses. I've seen some reports that I need to change a setting in the properties, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

When you think about how much I have spent on my HTPC, and then the time it took to get it set up properly, I am amazed that this $200 box can replace it. Once the holidays are over and my projects at work are finished, I'll get around to setting up the extender the way I want it.

[sTVb]

I think the HD extender looks like a great value.

Unfortunately, without support for CC, the extender is worthless to my wife and I. I really hope CC support gets added before I have a spend time and $$ on building a client for the wife.

[rnewman]

As a TV repairman back in the mid 60's (now design other peoples' problems)
I always remember the secretary, who took calls for repair, comment:

"brand name" TVs must be crap (no good) because I only get calls for
problems ALL the time! (or something like that)

I would be interested in getting happy users to chime in.

Ray

[reggie14]

I'm happy with my HD extender. My latest problem is with the extender shutting off semi-randomly. I'm not very concerned about it. I'm sure Sage will fix that with the next firmware. I expect problems like that with new products. The only thing that really bothers me with the extender is the IR receiver and remote. Sage really screwed up with that. I dumped the included remote and am using my own remote that has more power. It works fine for me now, but there's still a major design flaw with the extender that should have been caught.

That being said, there's at least a couple good work arounds for the IR problem. I use a stronger remote. You still have to point it pretty accurately, but its not nearly as bad as the included remote. There's also some relatively easy hacks the fix the problem, although it may void the warranty. If one of these options works for you, then I think you'd be happy with the extender. I am. But, I expect Sage will fix the IR problem with an upcoming batch of extenders.

I didn't have a HTPC capable of playing HD video. It was a lot cheaper for me to get an extender that build a quiet HD-capable HTPC. I would probably tell someone that is reasonably happy with their HTPC client to give Sage a little time to fix the IR problem and work out some of the remaining minor bugs. I think the extender is still worth the $200 even with the IR problem, but certainly it would nicer if it had usable remote.

[bastafidli]

I am also happy with my HD extender. This was an awesome Christmas being able to effortlessly listen to all my music while looking at family pictures, later watching few movies from the server. I do not record any TV and watch only in SD for now. The HD extender locked up few times when I did fast forward during movie with older firmware but i haven't investigated it deeper since power on/off from remote fixed it. The remote works just fine for me from angle 8-10 feet from the unit and I do not mind pointing to the unit.

I do think the default software has some major usability problems, I use only the default software and it drives me crazy that I have to work around all the issues to get simple stuff done. Here is just few examples
- in folder of 2000 pictures try to start slideshow of last 200
- add whole bunch of artists to play now playlist and then I see some as collections, some as individual songs, just a mess
- when playing music try to figure out why some items on the screen are highlighted with blue and some with yellow, but the active item is never the one you expect it to be
There is much more but fortunately this is just a software so I hope that by pointing this loud enough to Sage they will fix it eventually.

[dlandrum]

This whole thread is a plant to create positive customer feedback.
The HDME appliance is clearly better than a Client PC.

I expect to see price on SageClient increase to drive more people to the appliance ... solely on the savings they will see on less QA time and less user support time. The only people who might not want one are those living in a 1 TV household.

[bastafidli]

Actually we are a 1 TV household but I can't now imagine being without the extender. It so nice not having to have a ugly/expensive/noisy (take your pick) HTPC in the living room and rather stream everything from the server in the closet.

[rstumpf]

Unfortunately, I had to admit defeat this morning and just asked Sage for an RMA for the Extender. As much as I sincerely wanted this thing to work, I simply could not get it it to pass the 'Wife Factor'. I'm a geek and love to tinker, but if my wife (who is also a geek) finds a new device I bring into the home harder to use and is generally a less-enjoyable experience than what we currently have, it simply is not allowed to live.

We have been using the Xbox 360 as an extender for Vista Media Center for over a year now, and it has been a generally positive experience. The only reason I tried the MCE from Sage was to overcome the lack of clear QAM support within Vista Media Center. The frustrations we have encountered with this solution from Sage made us decide to go back to our non-HD XBox 360/Vista Media Center system.

I really, really wanted the HD Extender to work for us. I actually spent all day on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day working on it (wife wasn't exactly thrilled about that). But the eventual reality (at least in our household) is that the HD Extender from Sage was a step backward from our current solution. I will continue to monitor Sage's offerings, but will sit this rev out.

[bcjenkins]

that's too bad. You spent 2 full days and this was your first post?

B

[rstumpf]

Oh, believe me when I say I have been all over this board over the last several days. Every time I needed an answer for something, I found what I needed by searching the forums. The forums here rock!

The fact that I HAD to come to the forums so frequently was what gave me my first wave of remorse. I consider myself quite technical and love challenges, such as this. But I have a family now, and don't have the time or desire to spend so much time on things just to get them to work as I expect them to. I'm fairly confident that I had SageTV and the Extender working as good as many of you fine folks, but that wasn't good enough and it didn't work as good as my Vista Media Center/Xbox 360 setup. I wanted something that I could basically 'set and forget' and it would maintain itself. This is what I have with my current solution, but from the posts on the forums I only got the sense that there would always be a high level of upkeep in a Sage solution.

I may be expecting too much from a first revision, but it did feel like I took a step back.