Windows 7 Media Center

[defilm]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I've got Vista on my laptop, and I don't really have any issues with it, but I never upgraded any of my other PCs, mainly because there was nothing compelling in Vista to make me do it. EVR would be nice, but not for the cost of a whole OS.



FWIW, I'm running 7 on my desktop, which is a Athlon 64 X2 4200 with 1GB of RAM, and I can tell that 1GB isn't really enough. But at the same time, at least the way I use it with what I run, 1GB wasn't quite enough with the XP install I had before. They're actually remarkably close.



Best way I understand it is EVR is all the benefits of VMR9, without the issues (like not working well except in Fullscreen Exclusive mode).



Sounds like you need an HD PVR.



All you need is another tuner and an IR blaster, you don't even need a "second SageTV", Sage works with as many tuners and sources as you care to set up. And if you're just using SD, then any old tuner would work.

<SNIP>

Thanks for all the responses. If W7 is to Vista what XP was to 95/98 I will
gladly jump on that bandwagon. I don't think I can support another decoder.
I specifically designed my PVR to be a tiny ITX 7x7x3" dual core duo 2 1.8Ghz and with Vista and 4GB I can get simultaneous OTA recording while watching a Mpeg2 video on disk.

The wonderful thing is with the addition of the Malore multi-pane menu's
and the Dynamic Menu STVI, I have fallen in love with the SageTV PVR.

If you get to experience FIOS HD DVR, it will make you cry. 160GB Drive,
can share with all other decoders in the house, but only record 20 hours of
HD!! My SageTV with 500GB drive can store 240hours of HD! (going by the Fios HD DVR a drive of 500GB would only record 62.5Hours! But the Guide is horrible. I have also found more bugs in the Verizon Fios HD DVR than SageTv. Pretty sad if you consider scope.

I think to keep things simple I will build another HD PVR (perhaps the new one available on SageTV side... Similar to mine, but I spent much more than the price here at SageTv. Set it up for Fios and I am golden. ot only that, I save $20/Mo as the Fios HD PVR is rented. I can scale back to a simple decoder at no cost, and replace it with a SageTv PVR. I save money, and I get a better PVR! The people, who make up the forums, are so excellent here!

PS. If you have not seen the FIos decoder/HD PVR, the default SageTV
menu's look like stellar works of art in comparison. As an example... If you check out every "How it's made", the information provided in the guide is "See how things are made. Insightful views of how common and not so common items are made". GREAT!! It fails to mention the Episode content
so you have no idea if this one you are about to view is the "How they make baseball bats" I have seen 12 times. It is soooo bad.

I am off to build a new PVR... Thanks!

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by samgreco

To me, the only place that Windows 7 has it over Sage is in the setup of tuners. I was quite amazed at how easy it was. I had 2 dual tuners (analog and digital) and it found all four, scanned for channels, and got the guide right for all tuners, with only a couple of clicks from me.

Wild curiosity, but aside form QAM (which MC doesn't really support IIRC outside OCUR), what's easier with 7MC/harder in Sage regarding tuner setup? Last time I ran through an MC tuner setup (I did configure VMC on my laptop and 7MC beta for kicks), there wasn't much difference aside from Sage having more options.

[Brent]

I thought the setup of tuners was actually more difficult in W7. Easier than it was in Vista, but harder than SageTV or BeyondTV

[heatvent]

W7 definitely has less options which is a good thing if you just want to setup tuners. It finds all of them, lets you assign different guides and done. It does all this rather efficiently where Sage seems to have more selections. But there are not settings for multiple sources for one tuner in MC so its a + and a -. + if you have a straight forward setup / - if you want multiple sources on 1 tuner or want to assign specific channels to different tuners. This can be done in W7MC, but you need to do it channel by channel (i.e. go into guide setup, select the channel then click on which tuners use the channel).

Not a huge plus but given basic needs, W7 has a better experience in setting up tuners/guides. Also, it setup my guide with no problems. With Sage, my HD channels sometimes had guide data and sometimes did not.

[samgreco]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Wild curiosity, but aside form QAM (which MC doesn't really support IIRC outside OCUR), what's easier with 7MC/harder in Sage regarding tuner setup? Last time I ran through an MC tuner setup (I did configure VMC on my laptop and 7MC beta for kicks), there wasn't much difference aside from Sage having more options.

Actually, it did scan and find all of the QAM channels that I could get from Comcast. Mapped them correctly in the guide, etc. So that's why I said it's easier.

With Sage I have to scan and then figure out what the channels are and remap them, etc.

Again, it's certainly not enough to make me consider switching. I would be giving up WAY more than I'd gain. And in theory, I only have to do the "more difficult" setup once. OK, maybe twice

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by samgreco

Actually, it did scan and find all of the QAM channels that I could get from Comcast. Mapped them correctly in the guide, etc. So that's why I said it's easier.

That's cool.

[Rico66]

Don't get me wrong, I like Sage more then MC, but I don't buy into those comments that Sage is easier to setup. It's more flexible, but definetly not easier.

Things that are a pain in Sage:
- IR blaster setup. Sage can't do this natively for an MCE remote/blaster and relies on 3rd party SW. That piece of SW is great, but it's an addional step with manual copying of files. If I do the same in MC, I'm guided through a full blaster setup, which simply works
- OTA tuner setup. Sage requires disabling of UAC to be able to scan for channels in Sage, otherwise it will simply don't find channels and hang. This might be tuner specific (the HD PVR setup does not require disabling of UAC). UAC can be enabled, once everything is set up.

MC basically is more straightforward to set up, but again there's the drawback that it does not support all kinds of fancy setups (things like e.g. different guide input data). If you only have one tuner, or basic things like OTA plus STB via S-Video, then MC is easier to setup.
Sage supports more complex/custom scenarios, which obviously requires more tinkering. That's why most people here have and like Sage

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by Rico66

Don't get me wrong, I like Sage more then MC, but I don't buy into those comments that Sage is easier to setup. It's more flexible, but definetly not easier.

Things that are a pain in Sage:
- IR blaster setup. Sage can't do this natively for an MCE remote/blaster and relies on 3rd party SW. That piece of SW is great, but it's an addional step with manual copying of files. If I do the same in MC, I'm guided through a full blaster setup, which simply works
- OTA tuner setup. Sage requires disabling of UAC to be able to scan for channels in Sage, otherwise it will simply don't find channels and hang. This might be tuner specific (the HD PVR setup does not require disabling of UAC). UAC can be enabled, once everything is set up.

MC basically is more straightforward to set up, but again there's the drawback that it does not support all kinds of fancy setups (things like e.g. different guide input data). If you only have one tuner, or basic things like OTA plus STB via S-Video, then MC is easier to setup.
Sage supports more complex/custom scenarios, which obviously requires more tinkering. That's why most people here have and like Sage

Isn't that the standard tradeoff - flexibility = complexity ; simple = less options. It's hard to be highly configurable and simple.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by heatvent

Isn't that the standard tradeoff - flexibility = complexity ; simple = less options. It's hard to be highly configurable and simple.

That's part of it, but I don't think Sage has made a particularly serious effort to make Sage relatively easy to set up. I think Rico66 had some decent examples, although I'd generalize the second one to say that setting up digital channels (i.e., scanning & remapping) is sort of a pain. It's always going to be a bit of a pain, but I think it could be easier.

Though, I don't think this is terribly problematic. I don't think Sage is really trying to sell to the less sophisticated crowd. Sage has focused on adding really cool and powerful features, over making things pretty and easy.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by ikarus79m

I don't think WMC has drastically changed, however, it has now become stable and usable enough to be a great, out of the box, solution.

I doesn't give you the kind of tweaking SageTV does. I'm not sure about multiple line-ups, and I don't think that you can watch a Video-TS folder. So for someone who needs that, SageTV is still the way to go.

I like Sage, but I'll give this a try in day-to-day-use, simply to see if I even NEED more than WMC.

Once SageTV 7 is announced (if ever...) I will definitely reevaluate my situation.

First - I'm a long time SageTV user and fan. More about that later.

Just to add my 2 cents (no I haven't had time to read the entire thread so sorry if this has been said).

YES- you can watch a ripped DVD folder, uncompressed, natively in Windows 7 Media Center. It is my only DVR right now since I cancelled Comcast. Broadcast TV pretty much sucks so one tuner is fine for me - although if TV ever improives I would want more tuners.

WIndows7 had drivers for the HD USB tuner I have - worked out of the box. Literally plug&play - and not to get off track but for me driver support has been incredible the two drives that did have to be downloaded (Nvidia and something else, I forget) installed via Windows Update with no reboot.

I have a 2 TB RAID-5 that I store my DVD library on and Windows 7 Media center handles it beautifully. The RAID is mounted as a media library folder so I won't have to remember which drive things are on. But XP can do that too.

Regardless of if you use Sage or MC - Windows 7 hands down outperfroms XP in my use over the last several months.

ButI can see why Media Center is very popullar - it works very well - at least in Windows 7. There are add-ons like "my movies" to help manage large DVD collections, etc but natively I find it very nice.

I'm a longtime Sage user and fan.

But I stopped using it 2 years ago when I bought the HD set and wanted to record encrypted channels and the picture of the Comcast box was way better than I could get from a PC at the time (the HD shows my Hauppauge USB tuner records under Windows Media Center are awesome on the 50" Sony the PC is connected to now - and to be fair they would be awesome with Sage too).

But I'm really out of touch wuith Sage - honestly I'm wondering if I should even take the time to install the latest trial. I am ***not*** a "Sage hater" I'm ***not*** disgruntled, let's clear that up - Sage was always a very solid product for my experience in the past.

I'm just impressed to see Microsoft seeming to "get it right" in my opinion. Having said that, I have never used Windows Media Center till installing Windows 7.

I was disappointed to see the screenshots for the current SageTV after being "away" so long. I'm not sure if 2 years of "the same GUI" will entice me to switch back. No offense.

And to be fair, I know that GUI develeopment takes serious manpower and that many people feel that core functionality is the most important goal. That I agree with, that's cool. But The widows 7 interface is awesome in my opinion, lots of modern eye-candy. This is the first time I've used Media Center. I did download the Sage trial but after running Media Center decided it was good enough - and I hate to say it guys but one reason was the cool interface.

But I want more choice and that's always been a plus for Sage. But those alternate interfaces were clunky and difficult to install.

Are there more choices now? Can I install a skin simply by clicking on a link like Winamp yet? Not griping - just asking.

I want a slick modern interface, lots of bling. Today's dual core macines with their 2 & 4 GBs of ram everyone uses these days can handle that stuff easily.

Not saying make it job one or anything, but think about it...for a simple minded old stoner techie those things count. Having a new interface framework or something on the development schedule, even at lowest priority, would be a great nice-to-have feature in my opinion anyway.

And for this simple minded old stoner techie, Windows Media Center was easy and painless to set up from the 10 foot UI. More choices are definitely needed but set up is easier than Sage if you figure that visualizations actually work out of the box - for me that was always a major downside for a product aiming to be a Media Center replacement. And manually editing those files? Hey I edit scripts for a living, I don't want to have to do it at home just for a simple every-day DVR (BTW if any knows of software or hardware validation openings in Vancouver WA please PM me).

Make it work like an appliance out of the box. An extensibility framework that allows one click add-ons, skins, increased functionality etc would make me pay all over again. Does Sage have any of that yet? I've been away too long.

[Brent]

Keith,
It sounds like your needs are pretty small in the scheme of things. I say that because you say the following:

1. You left SageTV because you couldn't get digital HD - which confuses me because SageTV has more options to get HD (including digital HD) than W7MC does UNLESS you are using cablecard. Are you using cablecard?
2. You say Windows7 plays DVDs natively in their standard folders and files. This isn't true for any extenders including XBox360 so I'm assuming you are only using a single HTPC connected to a single TV?
3. At the very end of your comment you talk about manually editing visualizations. What are you referring to?

SageTV has come a long ways since you left it, but the OOTB UI is mostly the same. The SageMC replacement STV is a great option with a very large number of custom skins and UI's and it really isn't that difficult to install (download, unzip, import the SageMC STV and your done).

So I guess I would say to you - if you're happy with what you have with W7MC stick with it. But if you're curious of what SageTV gives you it isn't as difficult as you made it out to be imo.

[HelenWeathers]

My reason for moving to SageTV from MCE was HiDef recording support (HD-PVR w DirecTV receiver), which is still lacking in W7RC1. I've played with the DVBSBridge tuner workaround, but so far no luck for me.

SageTV has the most versatile recording engine I've found.

I don't generally sit down to watch my SageTV UI. I sit down to watch my recorded content. And my recorded content looks great through Sage.

Microsoft has hinted at support for the HD-PVR in Win7. We'll see. Probably after we've given them our money. If past history is an indicator, with Microsoft you pay for your disappointments.

EDIT: Forgot to mention DRM. Maybe Windows 7 will eleminate DRM????

[Keith]

Guys - this is a Windows 7 thread. Some of you from your responses are not running Windows 7. Go download it and dual boot and see for yourself what it supports and what it doesn't.

It does have h.264.

Comparing Sage to MCE isn't part of the discussion. MCE isn't Windows 7. Vista Media Center isn't windows 7. If you're not running Windows 7
we don't need all this "oh but Sage is so wonderful compared to MCE" stuff - it is true - I love Sage. But it's not productive to the discussion. Nor are flames.

In defense of Sage and in an attempt to have a reasoned conversation (why was my post removed??? I said nothing wrong), I installed the latest trial version of Sage on my freshly built (last week) Windows 7 box.

The box is a dual core Code Duo 3 GHz, 4 GB ram, 500 gb raid-0 for HD, 2 TB raid-5 for DVD library via HDMI out and optical out to Denon THX receiver and Polk Audio floor standing speakers.

Media center configured it perfectly, Dolby digital is awesome and the DVD library is great with easy coiver art (dvdxml.com).

Now my recent Sage experience. About an hour ago. Install went flawlessly.

Setup was a breeze with only the 10 foot UI. So far so good. Channel scan went perfectly.

Yet when I went to actually watch live TV I kept getting no signal. To advanced setup and check the channels. No signal. Yet the initial pass was fine.

I never got a chance to test off the air Dolby Digital decoding before it failed.

I thought maybe the antenna had flaked so I switched the HD set from the hdmi to the antenna and it was fine.

So I opened Media Center. Live TV was fine there.

Now - as a geek and a Sage fan I will try to figure it out and get back to Sage.

But - speaking as a consumer advocate, what do you think Joe Blow would do???

Joe Blow is going to say "oh well, it didn't work. Delete it. At least Media Center still works. Shrug..."

So I say Sage has work to do.

This is not an insult to Sage fans. It's an observation.

I'm a Sage fan too remember. I *really* wanted it to work!!! I seriously wanted to do a head to head comparison and give it a real workout. But not this week, I have better things to do than spend time troubleshooting. I will contact support to get a ticket opened so someone can at least have the system info etc on file since it's relatively common hardware.

But seriously - the interface is way 90's. We deserve better for our money - speaking as an outsider this time.

As Helen said I don't watch the interface. But it's in my face every time I do something. It takes half the screen. Think minimal clean design whenever possible (in my opinion). I believe it needs to be updated. Just my opinion.

Please lets hear from only people that have used both sage and media center only on Windows 7 because that's what this topic is.

And for God's sake if you object that strongly to what I say tell me why in private. Don't flag me. I'll listen and be wiling to edit...good grief.

[Brent]

regarding the no signal thing - what tuner? What decoder were you using?

PS: I have Windows 7 installed and running on my test PC. Works great and is much better than Vista was. But the MediaCenter improvements (for me at least) only addressed a few of the drawbacks of Vista.

[HelenWeathers]

There is some kind of issue with SageTV on RC1. For my OTA and HD-PVR, Sage records fine and the files will play back via Windows, but alas, not through Sage. At least not for me so far. I think I read in other posts that people are at work on ways to use the Win7 decoders.

I am working to get SageTV running without any additional software on the Win7 pc, other that that included with SageTV and Win7RC1.

[Opus4]

I usually handle this privately, but since the question of removed posts came up publicly... rule #1 of the forum rules says that you can debate subjects as long as the posts don't include insults/name calling/etc. Based on my past experience on this forum, I felt that some comments were going to set of a round of off-topic name calling arguments that only serve to get people angry, so I removed them & PMed the person. No one is in trouble and I would like to leave it at that.

I suggest simply returning to the regular discussion. Thanks.

- Andy

[Keith]

Oh never mind about the post. It was a misunderstanding. I talked to Opus. It's cool.

The tuner is a USB HAuppauge HD tuner, the only USB HD one they make as far as I know and the only USB Hauppauge tuner Best Buy sells (had it maybe 3 weeks now). To be honest the main reason I came back was I can't afford Comcast anymore. Otherwise I'd still be using their DVR. Next time I'll use Dish and their DVR. Especially since they gave my neighbor a two room HD DVR setup free...

Of course I'll still use the HTPC for playing DVD archives and music and am definately in the market for an extender of some kind. So I will be medding with Sage more to see how it handles the DVD library and DVD DOlby etc.

I saved all the system info to a file using the Windows tool. You're welcome to peruse it. PM me or something...

I'll send it to support when I get more motivated. LOL

If you or anyone wants I can post it somewhere too let me know - it's a big huge text file that appears to have some debug info. I can post it as a zip... Oh I was wrong the machine has 2 gb ram. I was thinking of a different box with the same motherboard.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

There is some kind of issue with SageTV on RC1. For my OTA and HD-PVR, Sage records fine and the files will play back via Windows, but alas, not through Sage. At least not for me so far. I think I read in other posts that people are at work on ways to use the Win7 decoders.

I am working to get SageTV running without any additional software on the Win7 pc, other that that included with SageTV and Win7RC1.

OK. Good info to have. Looking back I should maybe delete my other posts.

I'll watch the thread for updates. I wasn't aware that there were known issues with RC1 till now obviously.

What a drag. I was looking forward to jumping back in to Sage.

My other comments about the interface is from an outsider's perspective.

Sage has to compete not just with Windows 7 Media Center but with other software and hardware solutions some "free" to consumers.

I want Sage to live long and prosper. That's what motivates the interface comments.

Looking forward to installing the SageMC GUI. But from a consumer point of of view it's still a clunky way to get it installed - considering what else is on the market today in what is fast becoming the second half of 2009. As a techie, yes it's brainless I agree. But it lags the competition - it was just an observation. and it's my opinion only...

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Keith

I wasn't aware that there were known issues with RC1 till now obviously.

There is an experimental version of ffdshow that gives SageTV video/audio playback function on a Win 7 server. It's rev2633 xxl I believe. It works well from what I hear.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

There is an experimental version of ffdshow that gives SageTV video/audio playback function on a Win 7 server. It's rev2633 xxl I believe. It works well from what I hear.

Well here's the showstopper for me.

Dolby is not working with DVD's either physical or ripped.

So I give up. Media center does what I need out of the box and it's "good enough".

I'll check back in a few months and see if Sage decides to get in the game at all (in my opinion only of course).

I'm sad. It had so much promise but in it's current state in my personal opinion I think it's far from user friendly.