Slightly overwhelmed.

[monsterblues]

Window's Media Center works well on the PC, but the extenders are complete garbage. The Xbox360 Media Center extender looks and runs nice, but it can only play back WMV or recorded tv. The Linksys V2 extender i'm about to return runs very choppy and has so many bugs (WMV freeze, loses setup info, hack to play divx files, no subtitles.)

So...I just discovered Sage TV makes extenders now AND they playback recorded TV as well as Xvid and DivX. I have a few questions about the extenders though. I tried searching, but I became overwhelmed with information.

1. Do they play MP4? I saw MPEG4, but I don't know if that's the same thing.
2. Do they play all WMV types? Specifically WMV9 Advanced profile.
3. I have SRT subtitle text files, can extenders display those natively or with a plugin?
4. If I want to run Sage TV on my PC, and two HD extenders, which softwares do I need to buy? SageTV Media Center? Media Server? PlaceShifter? Client? seams like a lot of dough to dish out.
5. I may use a laptop instead of a second extender? Do I need to buy two copies of SageTV media center?

Thanks in advance, I'm so tired of the Window's Media Center built in limitaitons. It's nice to see a community driven media center applicaiton.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by monsterblues

Window's Media Center works well on the PC, but the extenders are complete garbage. The Xbox360 Media Center extender looks and runs nice, but it can only play back WMV or recorded tv. The Linksys V2 extender i'm about to return runs very choppy and has so many bugs (WMV freeze, loses setup info, hack to play divx files, no subtitles.)

So...I just discovered Sage TV makes extenders now AND they playback recorded TV as well as Xvid and DivX. I have a few questions about the extenders though. I tried searching, but I became overwhelmed with information.

1. Do they play MP4? I saw MPEG4, but I don't know if that's the same thing.
2. Do they play all WMV types? Specifically WMV9 Advanced profile.
3. I have SRT subtitle text files, can extenders display those natively or with a plugin?
4. If I want to run Sage TV on my PC, and two HD extenders, which softwares do I need to buy? SageTV Media Center? Media Server? PlaceShifter? Client? seams like a lot of dough to dish out.
5. I may use a laptop instead of a second extender? Do I need to buy two copies of SageTV media center?

Thanks in advance, I'm so tired of the Window's Media Center built in limitaitons. It's nice to see a community driven media center applicaiton.

1, 2, 3) I am not an expert but the Sage FAQ should have all of this info. Pretty much, the HD Extender plays almost anything you throw at it.

4) You buy two extenders and a license for the software (in reality, you would buy the bundle - one extender plus the software license - and then an extra extender). Each extender purchase includes a license for that extender. "Client" licenses are for other PCs on your network and "Placeshifter" licenses are for remote access.

5) The "client" license is what you would buy for the laptop. As mentioned above, the laptop (or any other PC that is on your home system) is a "client".

As always, make sure any server (the PC on which you install SageTV) and client PCs have specs that meet the system requirements. Note that if you do not intend on watching anything on your server PC, but only on TVs through Extenders, then you can have a considerably less-powerful server PC, because the HD Extender does all of the work. If you read the system requirements for the SageTV software, you will notice a considerable difference between what is needed for watching on your Server and what is needed for "hardware encoding" (only watching on your HD Extenders). In this case, you could still navigate through the SageTV GUI on the server, but just can't watch anything. However, this is probably not an issue for you since you said you have WMC anyway.... but if, for example, your laptop did not have the "juice" to watch HD, but still met the "hardware encoding" specs, then you could make the laptop your "server" and use the other PC as your client.

[monsterblues]

Thank you for the info.

Looks like the SUBTITLES can be displayed through a plugin: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...=subtitles+srt

It's so weird to hear that stuff will just work. After dealing with stupid Vista Media Center limitations.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by monsterblues

Window's Media Center works well on the PC, but the extenders are complete garbage. The Xbox360 Media Center extender looks and runs nice, but it can only play back WMV or recorded tv. The Linksys V2 extender i'm about to return runs very choppy and has so many bugs (WMV freeze, loses setup info, hack to play divx files, no subtitles.)

So...I just discovered Sage TV makes extenders now AND they playback recorded TV as well as Xvid and DivX. I have a few questions about the extenders though. I tried searching, but I became overwhelmed with information.

First let's make sure everyone's on the same page, there are two extenders, the SageTV Media Extender, standard def, Hauppauge Media MVP hardware, and the STX-HD100 HD Media Extender, which is Sigma 86xx based. They're really very different beasts. The SD extender can only play SD MPEG-2 natively, everything else must be transcoded by the server into SD MPEG-2 (though Sage can handle that for most everything). You really probably want the HD100, especially if you're looking for non-SD recordings.

1. Do they play MP4? I saw MPEG4, but I don't know if that's the same thing.

"Probably", I've yet to see an MPEG-4 variant it won't play, but there are so many options it does happen. But the hardware supports MPEG-4 ASP and MPEG-4 AVC up to level 4.0, on experience I'd say even 4.1.

2. Do they play all WMV types? Specifically WMV9 Advanced profile.

It does play VC-1 (WMV-AP).

3. I have SRT subtitle text files, can extenders display those natively or with a plugin?

I don't believe so, but you'd probably want to search if there's a plugin/extension.

4. If I want to run Sage TV on my PC, and two HD extenders, which softwares do I need to buy? SageTV Media Center? Media Server? PlaceShifter? Client? seams like a lot of dough to dish out.

SageTV Media Center and two HD Extenders, that's it, the extenders come with the licenses needed for them to work with SageTV. There's probably a bundle from SageTV or PC Alchemy that will save you some money.

5. I may use a laptop instead of a second extender? Do I need to buy two copies of SageTV media center?

You only ever need one copy of SageTV Media Center*, for anything you want to connect to that server with, you need the appropriate client, either SageClient or a Placeshifter or Extender.

SageClient is licensed per-install (meaning you need a license for each machine you install it on). Placeshifter and Extender are licensed per-seat and their licenses are interchangable.

So, for example, if you knew you weren't going to use an extender and the laptop at the same time, you could get SageTV Media Center, an HD extender (which includes one extender/placeshifter seat). Then you could use the laptop with SageTV Placeshifter on the seat included with the Extender. If you want to use them at the same time, you'll need an extra seat.

*You may need two SageTV Media Center licenses if you want to do "weird" stuff, like run an encoding server, or have two separate SageTV setups, but for a normal configuration, it's just one SageTV server (SageTV Media Center) and then whatever Clients/extenders you want to satisfy your needs.

Thanks in advance, I'm so tired of the Window's Media Center built in limitaitons. It's nice to see a community driven media center applicaiton.

I know what you mean, I was really excited when I first saw the CES Keynote where MCE was announced, and ever since, I've really wanted to like MCE, but every time I take a serious look, I come to the conclusion that while it's awesome on the surface, it's got far to many (silly IMO) limitations to work for me.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stanger89

"Probably", I've yet to see an MPEG-4 variant it won't play, but there are so many options it does happen. But the hardware supports MPEG-4 ASP and MPEG-4 AVC up to level 4.0, on experience I'd say even 4.1.

I've recently discovered all my DVD conversions are level 4.1. They all play fine. All the HD conversions I've done are all level 5.1 and they all play fine on the HD100.

[stanger89]

If you mean AVC Level 5, you're probably not actually "reaching" Level 5.1 with your encodes as you'd have to be > 50Mbps and/or > 1080p.

I'm guessing you're talking MPEG-4 ASP Levels.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stanger89

If you mean AVC Level 5, you're probably not actually "reaching" Level 5.1 with your encodes as you'd have to be > 50Mbps and/or > 1080p.

I'm guessing you're talking MPEG-4 ASP Levels.

Yea, my encodes aren't even close to being that high of bitrate. They are cropped 1080p so they end up around 1920x800.

I'm just going by what tsmuxer is telling me. It says "Profile: High@5.1" I'm using MeGUI's CE-Highprofile x264 profile and changing it to CQ mode using a quality level of 23.

[stanger89]

Ah, I bet that's just a flag that's getting set, I think the Levels are more limits than anything else.