SageTV vs. Vista Media Center

[PLUCKYHD]

There is a limitation of 4 tuners currently 2 OTA HDTV/QAM and 2 analog or digital cable (cable card)

There is an easy registry hack to fix this that enables up to 4 and 4 tuners hence I am buying two more cable card tuners It will give me a total of 6 tuners 2 hdhomerun ota HDTV and 4 cable card tuners.

[cncb]

What ruined Vista MC for me is that they still don't support OTA digital sub-channels in the guide! So, for all 4 of my PBS sub-channels the guide shows the same programming (of the analog channel) plus you have to add the sub-channels manually. There is a hack where you specify you have digital cable service and then try to manually match the channels but this is a ridiculous hack that was not reliable at all. The fact that they have claimed to have OTA digital support in Media Center for quite a while even when it is in this sorry state is really inexcusable.

[PLUCKYHD]

Yeah that is irrating I agree forunetly for me all of me sub channels are on my cable card tuners so I get them that way. But still there is no excuse why they don't have it yet I agree.

[Brent]

I just wish:
VMC had:

• "softsled" like SageTV, BTV and others do
• Extenders that worked with as many file formats that SageTV's HD extender
• Extenders that you could watch DVD's and movies on
• Multiple Guides for different device listings
• No crappy DRM you had to workaround constantly

And I wish SageTV had:

• More clout in the tech world (more publicity)
• An easier setup
• SageMC built in as an installed option
• CableCard ability (just the option would be nice...)
• Improvement to the DVD Library function in SageMC (almost there, but not there yet)
• Improvements to the Music Library (again almost there)
• Easier way to move files from folder to folder.

That pretty much sums it up. Deal killer for me on VMC was the DRM issues, the lack of real extenders that could do everything the server can (XBox is not my idea of an extender sorry) and no softsled. I love SageTV and I see it becoming a very, very popular #2 behind MS in sales and press IF the Hauppauge HD-PVR device turns out to be a viable alternative to the CableCard. Gotta have a reasonably inexpensive and user-friendly way of getting that encrypted, HD content or else.

By the way, the guy I was writing about in the top of this thread will likely go with VMC. HD is VERY important to him so a CableCard HTPC is the way he'll likely go. I told him to wait for the HD-PVR just to see how it comes out, but he is concerned about the fact that content will be transcoded on-the-fly and could decrease the quality of the HD output. I'm not sure if that will really be an issue in the end, but hard to argue since there's no HD-PVR to test....

Thanks for everyones input. This continues to be a very useful and interesting thread. SageTV really does compare well to the competition although VMC has that CableCard thing that is a feature difficult to beat for some.

[PLUCKYHD]

Couldn't agree more with your post.

Wanted to through in I stream movies to my extenders just fine had to re-convert to dvr-ms but not a major issue for me and worth it. I too am interesting in the hd-pvr but not interested in having set top boxes again and having to your ir blasters to control them.

[hifiaudio2]

Sorry to pull back an old thread but as a noobie here I did a search on Vista vs Sage and this is what came up. Im a longtime home theater nut but really just getting into HTPC (same username on avsforum by the way). I have been building gaming pcs for a long time but not for HTPC use.

Since I know the last 8 months or so have brought numerous changes to Vista, and I am sure Sage as well, would someone post another breakdown similar to the above comparing what each does well and not so well, and where they directly contrast?

I will be running one or two Hdhomeruns for both OTA and Clear Qam access. Since the OTA should be the clearest signal, it is my top choice and failing over to clearqam should there be an issue.

Second is the ability to rip 1:1 copies of dvds and play. I am familiar with My movies 2, and Open media theater. Vista does this fine, but of course as mentioned the extenders dont. BUT... that leads me to #3...

Ripped ISO Bluray playback.... I must be able to do this as well, so if the Sage extenders wont do this, then their ability to do dvds wont matter and I will have to get a full HTPC at every location (not a deal killer, since it sounds like I will need to do this with either solution. I like having full menus, etc on my dvds and blurays also.

So those are my main three things.
Either seems to categorize and play music and pictures fine, so I doubt there will be much difference there.

So what am I missing with VMC right now that Sage can do for me?

Thanks for any help!

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by hifiaudio2

So those are my main three things.
Either seems to categorize and play music and pictures fine, so I doubt there will be much difference there.

So what am I missing with VMC right now that Sage can do for me?

Thanks for any help!

I don't use VMC, so I don't know all the differences. My choice was easy - VMC support for H.264 HD TV capture is basically non-existent. I also wanted DVDs w/ Menus at all TVs, but was willing to compromise on Blu-Ray.

If you remux blu-ray streams they'll playback on Extenders (mostly), but you only have the movie without menus, and you'll be limited to 5.1 DTS or DD audio. Some people transcode the best audio-track to full bitrate DTS and report that working well for audio quality. I haven't messed with this much.

With Sage you also have Placeshifter capability (Softsled in VMC lingo, or Slingbox if you prefer), though strangely you can't do it with DVDs. H.264 HD Video is still getting worked out in the 6.5 beta.

I'm told merging multiple guide types is easier in Sage (for example OTA and Dish Network), as is adding in more tuners.

Sage handles H.264 much better, but that doesn't seem like it matters to you in your current install. If you ever want a premium channel in HD you'll run into issues since the HDHR won't be able to tune anything but clear QAM. If you ever want an HD-PVR I think you're stuck.

Another thing I like about SageTV (or more specifically SageMC) is the customizability of the UI. I can freely rearrange the menus, adjust the numbers of columns and rows, change font size, etc... Not sure how easy this is to do with VMC.

VMC looks like it's a little better with a movie library because of the My Movies2 plugin. SageMC is good enough for me in that regard.

There's a start for you... Hope it helped some.

[hifiaudio2]

Yes that does help, thanks very much.

So Sage records my OTA and clear QAM network HD channels in h.264 vs VMC's mpeg2? So that saves a ton of space...

And you mentioned no bluray support on extenders.. but what about the main software? Will it display BLuray .iso files in the movie guide and launch TMT to play them?

[Moe]

Does SageTV actually record in h.264 format or does it convert the file after recording? Do you need a TV tuner with software encoding or can any TV tuner work?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Moe

Does SageTV actually record in h.264 format or does it convert the file after recording? Do you need a TV tuner with software encoding or can any TV tuner work?

Sage has a list of supported tuners on the system requirements page. Almost all of them have hardware encoders, but there are some software encoding tuners too.

As I said, pretty much all of the supported tuners have hardware mpeg2 encoders. I believe there is one old hardware mpeg4/divx encoder that is supported. SageTV also supports Hauppauge's new HD-PVR, which records in H.264 format.

In other words, unless you're using the HD-PVR or the weird mpeg4 encoder tuner, Sage will record in mpeg2, and then, if you wish, you can reencode it later.