SageTV and online content - hulu, netflix ...

[Brent]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Seems like I am one of the few who use SageTV ONLY via HD Extender... and that poses a problem for me. Unlike most here, I don't have a PC "handy" at all times. My Sage server is in a dark corner of the basement and our "family" PC is a laptop in the study, and is off/hibernating unless my wife or I are actively using it. I realize this makes me an "out of touch archaic old dinosaur" to most of you, ....

I'm moving in that direction actually. I really believe in treating the HTPC as an appliance and less of a PC. The extender does that for me quite well actually. I've moved the actual client PC to a less-used room and now primarily use the extenders... So I think you are probably ahead of the curve there

I also agree that getting the ability to stream online video content from Hulu, Netflix Watch-Now, AmazonUnbox, and other content providers would be a very nice-to-have feature and has to arrive on the extenders - not just the PCs. It's lower on my list of "wants" but moving up as time goes on and as Hulu and Netflix Watch Now improve.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Brent

...I really believe in treating the HTPC as an appliance and less of a PC. The extender does that for me quite well actually. I've moved the actual client PC to a less-used room and now primarily use the extenders... So I think you are probably ahead of the curve there :thumb

If that is true - that the goal of software like SageTV is to have the server hidden away and have all the functionality on a TV via Extender, then I would say there is still a long way to go (not saying others are ahead of Sage - I don't know - Sage is the only one I am familiar with).

I sense that the great majority of people who are tech-savvy enough to use an HTPC want full PC functionality (web surfing, game playing, etc.) at the TV/monitor location, and that's why they have the HTPC right there. And by the time you could expand the Extender capabilities enough to satisfy those people, you are effectively just talking about having a long-distance-remote monitor, keyboard, and mouse connection, and not even having an extender.

I actually wonder how many people using Sage are in my/your situation (Sage server tucked away somewhere and effectively not used, all Sage viewing through extenders). I am guessing only a few. Brent, want to do a survey thread?

[jrog]

I have a rack in my garage with my noisy server with all my nas drives and the mess of tuners and cable boxes and HD-PVRs. There is no way this monstrosity would be allowed anywhere near my home theatre setup. I could run cables through the wall, up the ceiling, and into the living room, I have, but I still prefer the HD-100. I have 3 HD-100s on 3 TVs, and the server doing it's thing out of site.

I want the same experience everywhere, and there's no way I'd consider multiple PCs in multiple rooms.

[bastafidli]

I would actually guess the other way. Anybody lucky to get extender is using it this way. Server somewhere else (in my case pantry :-) and viewing exclusively by extenders. The only reason why not everybody is doing it this way is the lack of extenders.
And I am VERY technical, but I do not want to mess with my entertainment (after I have been experimenting with it for years) and have tons of electronics in my living room. Right now I am down to extender and TV. All my gaming is done on beefed up laptop since the kids are still too little to play.

[btrcp2000]

i can't even imagine what it would be like to have to fight with pc issues at each spot that currently has an extender (3 HDs and three mvps). The server is in what looks like an intensive care unit in the basement that my wife calls the nerd dungeon. She should count her blessings though, as we have a neighbor who works for Cisco for whom sagetv would be child's play.

I do use the server for one thing. I pulled a monoprice hdmi cable through a wall out to the garage, and we do outdoor movie/ballgame/etc night in the driveway maybe once a month when it's warm. And I ALWAYS have some issue with it that I have to run down while people sit patiently watching in my driveway watching Spinny the Circle of Death. But it's not worth an extender that would mostly collect dust, and hey, I paid for that client license that's built into the server, might as well use it.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I sense that the great majority of people who are tech-savvy enough to use an HTPC want full PC functionality (web surfing, game playing, etc.) at the TV/monitor location, and that's why they have the HTPC right there. And by the time you could expand the Extender capabilities enough to satisfy those people, you are effectively just talking about having a long-distance-remote monitor, keyboard, and mouse connection, and not even having an extender.

I felt this way too which is why I decided to put together an HTPC about 2 years ago. I thought it would be great to be able to browse the web, play games, etc. on a 50" TV. After all - many of the Home Theater components are really PC components (i.e. a modern TV screen is a PC monitor, DVD player, TiVo, etc) But in the two years that I have had this I have rarely used it to browse the web, I tried playing Guitar Hero III on it (but decided to go the Xbox route instead as it just works better) and I only use my HTPC software (on that PC it is XP MCE) and almost never use other software unless it is to play stuff that MCE can't handle.

So I guess that I too have moved towards the extender model - as long as there are no shortcomings. I have 5 MCE V1 extenders through the house and this works great - everyone in the family knows the UI as it is the same. The only problem is that these extenders are limited in what types of video files that they can play - to play MPEG-4 you have to use a transcoder and that is very unreliable.

And the extenders seem to play the video better as my HTPC sometimes stutters when it plays back files, particularly the first few seconds of a file.

[GKusnick]

My Sage server is in a rack in the closet, but is directly connected to my living room TV by extension cables. So I could surf the web on that screen if I wanted to, but I've never wanted to. If I need to look something up, I either take a few steps into my home office and use the PC there, or bring a laptop into the living room, or use the browser on my smartphone.

[Brent]

I'm pretty sure we have a pretty wide array of setups among SageTV users.

For example, here's mine:
SageTV server (currently located in office, but soon to be moved to basement) Won't be headless as I have a monitor and keyboard on it, but primarly a SageTV machine along with transcoding etc. Quad Core for transcoding and commercial processing

Three extenders - these are all attached to the most used TVs in the home.

One Client PC - this has just recently been moved to a less-used TV in the home (yeah I have too many TVs) and is used much less now.

All TVs are linked to the living room TV output via a cable modulator. What this means is that when the living room TV is on, that video and audio feed is served through my CATV wires to all TVs if they are tuned to channel 77. This makes it nice for sports, parties and for those viewing a show in the living room while others are working in the adjacent kitchen (TV in there).

I've given up on the Netflix Watch Now plugin on most TVs so that I don't have to spend ANY time (and I mean zero time) maintaining the PCs. The extenders are fail-proof, silent, small and handle everthing I want them to (except for netflix and online radio). All of my maintenance is done on that server PC except for the occasional firmware upgrade on the extenders. Yes, I've given up a little (netflix) but I've gained confidence that everything will work when I'm not around the home and confidence that work on an upgrade really only has to happen on one PC. Honestly that is the definition of perfect HTPC (without the PC) in my eyes.

I'm hoping we can somehow get a web browser, netflix watch-now, hulu, web radio etc. on the extenders at some point. But even if that doesn't happen, I have most of what I want with my setup right now.

As requested I'll work up a good poll - probably this weekend or early next week. I'm kind of curious as well.
EDIT: In the meantime, there's a pretty nice thread with SageTV-based system diagrams you might find interesting. There are some forum users here that have some pretty impressive setups.

[gibsonpa]

Same here.

I have my HTPC in the basement and am using 4 extenders to TV's in the house. Never touch the server in the basement. It has been working perfectly since Feb '08 when I bought my first 2 extenders. WAF=150%.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

If that is true - that the goal of software like SageTV is to have the server hidden away and have all the functionality on a TV via Extender, then I would say there is still a long way to go (not saying others are ahead of Sage - I don't know - Sage is the only one I am familiar with).

Not sure what you mean by "long way to go"...

I sense that the great majority of people who are tech-savvy enough to use an HTPC want full PC functionality (web surfing, game playing, etc.) at the TV/monitor location, and that's why they have the HTPC right there. And by the time you could expand the Extender capabilities enough to satisfy those people, you are effectively just talking about having a long-distance-remote monitor, keyboard, and mouse connection, and not even having an extender.

I'm just going to echo what the others have said, I think the market of people who would be willing/able to setup a headless Sage server (eg on WHS), connect extenders, and not worry about surfing or other PC tasks on their TV is much, much larger than the group who want's to use thier TV as a sort of hybrid PC/TV thing.

I have an HTPC in my HT connected to my projector, right next to my extender. I originally got the HD extender figuring what do I have to lose, worst case it will replace my MVP and save me from the trouble of having to avoid HD channels (my server is insufficient to transcode). However my extender promptly replaced my HTPC as the "go to" device. It's what I use now. My HTPC only exists because I opted to upgrade it to BD for $200 less than it would have cost me to buy a standalone.

All that said, this is really what makes SageTV so great, and so unique in the market. SageTV supports everything, they've got best-of-class hardware extenders for those who want to leverage a PC but not necessarilly use a PC. They've got SageTV Client to extend SageTV to any number of PCs, they've got Placeshifter, that allows remote usage. They've got server software for Windows, WHS, Linux, Mac, clients for all of the above.

Nobody else can come close to saying that.

I actually wonder how many people using Sage are in my/your situation (Sage server tucked away somewhere and effectively not used, all Sage viewing through extenders). I am guessing only a few. Brent, want to do a survey thread?

I'm guessing probably quite a few fewer than there would be if the extenders were readily available

[babgvant]

Using the PC to consume content (not just serve it) provides much greater flexibility/ capablity vs. a CE (extender or like) device. I hardly ever use my HTPC to do typical PC tasks (web browsing and the like), but having a PC there means I'm not restricted by someone else's vision/timeline for providing functionality. Even with Sage, when you opt into there extender model, you are subject to the features they have time and desire to support.

[pjpjpjpj]

Whoa - miss a day, miss a lot.

I guess I didn't explain very well. I didn't mean to say that no one here had extenders and everyone had a client in every "TV-viewing room". I certainly don't think that, and that's obviously not true as seen by the popularity of the HD Extenders. But I am frankly a little surprised at the number of people responding here who do have a server stuck in a closet and operate on Extenders only (as evidenced above)... though this could be more a misconception of how many people are on Sage and how many browse this forum. Because while it seems like a lot of people stepped up to dispute my assumption, I guess it really only was 7 or 8, out of how many?

I think my assumption (you know what they say about assuming) was based on the number of people I see that are working on (or fiddling with) customizations that are not really Extender-friendly. It just "feels" like most people have an HTPC in their living room/family room/main-place-of-viewing.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Not sure what you mean by "long way to go"...

Just the things mentioned above in this thread.... internet video streaming, (easily-available without a hack) radio streaming, netflix, etc. In other words, the things that the people who have an actual HTPC at their "main TV-watching location" can also do because it's a PC, but those of us using an Extender can not do (nor have seen any hint that we may soon be able to do). You could go to the Extender discussion forum and look up the "wishlist" threads and see other things....

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'm guessing probably quite a few fewer than there would be if the extenders were readily available

Well, yeah, and there's that.

[Taddeusz]

Even when my HTPC was hooked to the TV I never used it to browse the internet. It was there strictly for TV viewing. I never had the desire to do anything else on it. Particularly because it was an SDTV and browsing on that is an act of futility.

Right now my server is for all intents and purposes headless. I have a monitor, mouse and keyboard hooked to it because lately it has been less than reliable. Mainly due to my big UPS crapping out on me and the power problems I've been having afterward. I'm actually ready to put a clean install of XP and SageTV on there just to clean things out.

My main method of viewing is my HD100. Secondary is my main computer in my bedroom. I've always had a Client license but had never used it that often for actually watching TV. I've since moved and now found that viewing in my bedroom has become more important and so my interest in that area has become greater. This has also exposed a few problems I have with that configuration but that's for another thread.

On topic I would agree that Frey needs to move towards gaining more online content access and improving what's already there. I like the YouTube feature but searching is painfully inadequate. For example, actual web site YouTube searches are different and provide better results than the same search done through SageTV. Try searching for Chocolate Rain on SageTV and then on YouTube and you'll see what I mean. Very inadequate.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

But I am frankly a little surprised at the number of people responding here who do have a server stuck in a closet and operate on Extenders only (as evidenced above)... though this could be more a misconception of how many people are on Sage and how many browse this forum. Because while it seems like a lot of people stepped up to dispute my assumption, I guess it really only was 7 or 8, out of how many?

I also have a headless server that I hardly ever access. My two HD100's and 1 MVP are used almost exclusively. I also use my laptop and Placeshifter to access Sage when I'm away from home. I have one SageClient license but I hardly ever use it.

I switched from BTV primarily because of Sage's support for the MVP. A PC at each TV is a complete no-go in my house.

[Brent]

Back to the original point of this thread... Hulu and online content in SageTV:

I'm curious if anyone has tried out Boxee. In particular I'm curious if anyone has been able to look at the code behind their Hulu plugin for Boxee to see if there is a way to do something similar in SageTV.

I'm guessing that Official Hulu support in SageTV is a longer-shot than Netflix WatchNow based on my discussion on this with a Hulu representative. They have no intention of doing anything with 3rd parties with Hulu due to their rather restrictive arrangements with the TV networks. This doesn't mean they will block those that figure out a way to do Hulu (as long as the commercials aren't removed), but it does mean the Hulu folks won't be providing any help or support to those that figure something like this out. So if something changes on Hulu, it could easily break such plugins.

Still, I think it should be possible to code a plugin to work with Hulu just like Boxee has done. If anyone with coding experience wants a Hulu invite let me know and I'll send them one. There is a Mac, Linux and AppleTV version right now with a Windows version coming in the next 2 weeks.

[evilpenguin]

Boxee gets its Hulu support by supporting flash the same way a browser does. It'd be possible in Sage, but that's have to come from Sage themselves, I doubt a plug-in could do it. I'm actually working in the other direction and looking into how to get some basic SageTV support in Boxee

[Brent]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Boxee gets its Hulu support by supporting flash the same way a browser does. It'd be possible in Sage, but that's have to come from Sage themselves, I doubt a plug-in could do it.

Good point EP. Yes, we do need flash support first... That alone could open up some opportunities.

Speaking of features wanted/needed in SageTV, I'm making a giant list of features wishlist based on some of my own ideas added to the wishlist threads I've been reading (they are long and it's taking me hours to get through). I think there are lots of little things, but a few big-ticket items that could push SageTV to the next level. I'll be sharing soon for my ideas to be argued and shot down on the forums

I'm actually working in the other direction and looking into how to get some basic SageTV support in Boxee

Great idea.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Brent

Great idea.

Which goes back to my above concern about excluding everyone who is "Extender only". Brent, you yourself said you are moving towards being only on Extenders... so this wouldn't benefit you in that case.

I just seems like all of the "experimentation" and new development is in topics that are HTPC/client-only.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Which goes back to my above concern about excluding everyone who is "Extender only". Brent, you yourself said you are moving towards being only on Extenders... so this wouldn't benefit you in that case.

I just seems like all of the "experimentation" and new development is in topics that are HTPC/client-only.

Not necessarily. The extender does present a challenge to developers though. SageTV has to come up with a way for this sort of thing to happen on extenders no doubt.

[evilpenguin]

Also, Boxee supports the AppleTV, which I wouldn't mind having under my TV either