Questions from a Beyond TV user

[TomXP411]

Hi all, I'm currently a Beyond TV user, and I'm looking at options for my next project: I'm setting up a PVR for a friend of mine, and while I like BTV, he's not quite ready to throw down the money until we've looked at all the options.

I'm hoping to get a feel for how BTV compares to Sage, XMBC, MediaPortal, and Windows MCE.

The machine he's getting is one of my old boxes; it has a dual core Athlon 5800 and a GeForce 7600 video card. We're going to set him up much like me:

We'll probably set up an Hauppauge HVR (probably the 2250), and he's considering an HD-PVR.

So here are my questions:
1. What about support for DTV: how does Sage do with OTA or with ClearQAM video? He doesn't have digital cable, but he practically drooled over HD on my system. Even 720p looks loads better than 480i.
2. Automatic transcoding for PMP's. He may decide to get an iPod Touch for watching video during lunch. He wants to basically "plug and go"; manually setting up transcoding won't work, because he won't even be at the computer between the time the show records and he needs to unplug. Does Sage support automatic transcoding of new shows, or do you have to schedule transcoding?
3. HD-PVR support: assuming he decides to get an HD-PVR and go with digital cable (like I said, he was drooling over mine), how strong is Sage's HD-PVR support? BTV users have been reporting a lot of crashes; mine crashes about half the time when I schedule back to back recordings on the same channel. Also, how hard is it to set up the remote emitter to run a cable box?
4. FireWire support. Does Sage support FW recordings? That would save him a good $250, since he could just plug directly in to a cable box.

Also, if you're a BTV convert (or if you run both), please let me know about anything I missed that you feel is important. I need to know the good and the bad, so he can make an informed decision.

Of course, I'm also looking at the other 3 big players, so if you have any input on those, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by TomXP411

Hi all, I'm currently a Beyond TV user, and I'm looking at options for my next project: I'm setting up a PVR for a friend of mine, and while I like BTV, he's not quite ready to throw down the money until we've looked at all the options.

Welcome - Lots of former BTV folks here so you're in good company.

So here are my questions:
1. What about support for DTV: how does Sage do with OTA or with ClearQAM video? He doesn't have digital cable, but he practically drooled over HD on my system. Even 720p looks loads better than 480i.

SageTV has lots of QAM support - they've been consistantly ahead of BTV on QAM for quite a while. I prefer the HDHR, but there are plenty of other QAM cards working with SageTV.

2. Automatic transcoding for PMP's. He may decide to get an iPod Touch for watching video during lunch. He wants to basically "plug and go"; manually setting up transcoding won't work, because he won't even be at the computer between the time the show records and he needs to unplug. Does Sage support automatic transcoding of new shows, or do you have to schedule transcoding?

You can do it automated even. It's not as polished as BTV's in my opinion though. And transcoding HD-PVR files doesn't work at the moment although it doesn't in BTV either.

3. HD-PVR support: assuming he decides to get an HD-PVR and go with digital cable (like I said, he was drooling over mine), how strong is Sage's HD-PVR support? BTV users have been reporting a lot of crashes; mine crashes about half the time when I schedule back to back recordings on the same channel. Also, how hard is it to set up the remote emitter to run a cable box?

HD-PVR support in SageTV is better than in BTV. I've used both and tell you that from experience. BTV's support is still very beta. That being said, the HD-PVR isn't the easiest to deal with. Playback of H.264 files is CPU intensive and for me, the HD200 extender is the best (and cheapest) way to do HD-PVR playback.

4. FireWire support. Does Sage support FW recordings? That would save him a good $250, since he could just plug directly in to a cable box.

Yes, SageTV supports firewire if you're willing to set it up and find a cable box that does it.

Also, if you're a BTV convert (or if you run both), please let me know about anything I missed that you feel is important. I need to know the good and the bad, so he can make an informed decision.

Check out this thread for more from a BTV to SageTV perspective

[TomXP411]

First of all, thanks for your input.

Originally Posted by Brent

You can do it automated even. It's not as polished as BTV's in my opinion though. And transcoding HD-PVR files doesn't work at the moment although it doesn't in BTV either.

Actually, it does as of the 4.9 final release. However, if you had a beta installed, you have to enable it manually in the setup.xml file.

Playback of H.264 files is CPU intensive and for me, the HD200 extender is the best (and cheapest) way to do HD-PVR playback.

So it sounds like Sage isn't using the Arcsoft codec? On my system, I use about 2-5% of my CPU while playing an HD-PVR recording.

Yes, SageTV supports firewire if you're willing to set it up and find a cable box that does it.

That may be a better solution than the HD-PVR. How hard is it to set up? Are we talking about just plugging in a cable and setting up an input, or are the complicated third-party plugins to install?

A key factor here is that this guy can't fix this stuff himself, so he'll be calling me whenever something breaks. I don't want to spend more time than I have to playing tech support.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by TomXP411

So it sounds like Sage isn't using the Arcsoft codec? On my system, I use about 2-5% of my CPU while playing an HD-PVR recording.

SageTV doesn't use the Arcsoft codec by default, but you can switch to the Arcsoft codec easily enough - that's what I've done. But I get quite a bit more than 2-5% CPU for H.264 playback in both SageTV and BTV.

How hard is it to set up? Are we talking about just plugging in a cable and setting up an input, or are the complicated third-party plugins to install?

firewire looks pretty complicated to set up (with any HTPC solution) from my point of view but I know lots have done it.

[pawn]

Originally Posted by TomXP411

So it sounds like Sage isn't using the Arcsoft codec? On my system, I use about 2-5% of my CPU while playing an HD-PVR recording.

Same here, not sure how Tomxp411 has his system set up, but I have the Arcsoft codecs as well as Nvidio's and the decoding is clearly being done on the video card. That said, in my opinion, the problems you see with the hd-pvr are all on Hauppauge's end, so don't expect anything different on SageTV (except I'll mention that the hd-pvr and it's blaster are seemlessly detected and handled by Sage).

[TomXP411]

It's a quad-core Phenom 9850. Actually, both of my computers are. They also have good video cards: GeForce 9600 in the HTPC and a 9800 in the desktop/link PC. I went quad-core because I noticed a lot of problems with BTV's link server when I ran either full-screen video or games on the HTPC (My daughter is addicted to Lego Star Wars.)

As to the Arcsoft stuff: I had manually register the codecs, then I had to go in and tweak their Merit. Basically, my TME install was totally borked. Turns out that the version of TME that came on my CD's has that problem, and running an auto-update to the new version doesn't actually register the codecs. Aside from the performance issues, the Arcsoft codec just plain works better than the one that comes with BTV.

[TomXP411]

Originally Posted by Brent

You can do it automated even. It's not as polished as BTV's in my opinion though. And transcoding HD-PVR files doesn't work at the moment although it doesn't in BTV either.

Okay, I found the option to convert from the recordings menu, but I can't find any place where I can set up an automatic conversion after recording. Where can I set that?

Also, is there a way to pick which device is being used for live TV? Sage keeps picking the analog tuner even though I want it to use the PVR.