One Month - First Impressions

[dadof4]

I switched from a single set setup using BTV to SageTV about a month ago. I find SageTV to be feature rich versus BTV and given the support for extenders (MVP and the HD100) it made the switch a no brainer for me. I was about to upgrade BTV to control three tv's. That would have required two additional client PC's so I thought I'd give SageTV a try.

My BTV set up included a Hauppauge 150 and 1600 plus an HDHomerun so I had most of the hardware already.

I already owned an MVP so I picked up another one and purchased the SageTV HD100/Sagetv software combo. I had my house wired with Cat6 when it was built making the hardware setup a breeze.

I already owned a Harmony 880 which I set up for the HD100. I picked up two new Harmony 550's on Ebay. Now I have a Sony 52" XRD4 set up with the HD100 and two SD 27" sets using the MVP's.

I downloaded the trial version of SageTV and pretty much had it up and running with an MVP extender within the first day. That was the swan song for BTV. The responsiveness of the extender blew me away. On my old set up, and with the trial version of SageTV, I had a 50' DVI>HDMI cable with an HDMI extender from my PC to my Sony TV along with the audio cables. When I received the HD100 I eliminated the cables with the HD100.

So far my issues have been minimal. There is a learning curve and I am still in the early stages of it. I'm fairly PC savvy with programming experience in Assembly, C, Basic and Pascal (Delphi).

What I like -- Just about everything. The fact I can use extenders. Weather, online capabilities, responsiveness, wide array of setup options and did I mention the extenders! Here's a big plus. With the programmed remotes my wife actually uses SageTV.

What I see as a weakness -- I think the casual PC user would have some problems. SageTV, along with it's competitors, is still only attractive to a limited user base. Many of the "edit this file" fixes should probably be included in a super advanced setup.

Did I make the right decision to switch..without a doubt.

I am now done with this seemingly never ending post!!

Cheers

[gjvrieze]

Very nice review, I have been using it a little over 8 months and am still amazed by how nice it works/looks and what can be added it to it, via addons, I would say it is the best PC app out, for the amount of design/coding time spent making things work

[David HVR1600]

I have to agree. Being a 3 month user I would have to say that I really like it as well. With my harmony remotes it makes it a snap for my wife to use and my kids.

I think each persons experience depends on how they are hooking up. I am using 3 Hauppauge 1600 capture cards giving me 3 digital and 3 analog tuners.

I capture a good bit of SD over teh analog and most of the nighttime programming I watch comes from the clear qam receivers.

I know some folks who use this who have run firewire from their STB and use IR blasters etc... They say its "Almost there". My experience says its there because everything is in one box, IR commands can't be missed, no STB etc... I think the biggest hold up to sage being a mainstream product is configuration settings and the need for file edits will hold back the less tech. savvy person. I know quite a few people who would love to have a setup like mine but they won't be doing it because it would then require more experience than they have to configure.

If sage could idiot proof this product and provide live support I think it could go to the next level.

[dadof4]

Originally Posted by David HVR1600

I know quite a few people who would love to have a setup like mine but they won't be doing it because it would then require more experience than they have to configure.

I had a few freinds ask me to get them started with BTV but I declined as I knew I'd have to live with the install. At this point I would decline with SageTV also for the same reason.

So I'll just let them drool over my set up!

[cychou]

I am a long time Sage user as well, and I was pretty happy with Sage in the first two years when I only capture analog s-video recordings. I believe that was with Sage version 2. Things were pretty easy those days, no EPG, no favorite. Sage was solid as a rock then.

Then about two years ago, Sage started to support DVB-T digital broadcast in Australia. Based on my past experience with Sage, I jump on the Beta testing with a purchased upgrade license immediately. The DVB-t support process steadily, and I have everything working (sort of) now.

However the stability of Sage has decline over this period of time, mostly because Sage's inability to capture the DVB-T signal reliably. Sometimes the recording will stop halfway through the schedule, and sometimes it causes an application error and even bring down the whole system. Or it will just record the program with garbage audio tracks, which cannot be played back later.

I have submitted many bug reports, and it all seems to come back to "TSSplitter.ax" which Sage uses to capture raw DVB-T data before converting it into program stream and save to disk. If you notice the beta release note, there are still work to refactor the way DVB-t signal being captured.

I really hope Sage will fix this issue soon, as this is the fundamental functions for my usage. If it cannot record and play back my local FTA tv reliably, then all the other whistles and bells does not matter at all.