Convince Me To Go With SageTV

[SDeGonge]

I'm currently a Windows Media Center 2005 user with 2 extenders. I'm getting ready to upgrade my system to Win7 Media Center but thought I'd look around to see what other options are out there. SageTV look pretty good but I'm looking for more info so I can make a good decision. Has anyone done a feature-by-feature comparison of the two systems. I've searched the web but only found many comparisons but most were comparing old versions and they didn't have feature-by-feature list to make it easy to compare.

So...if anyone can point me to a good, recent, thorough review that would be great - thanks.

[Apap]

I really cant do a side by side comparison because I dont have much experience with VMC.
Brent Evans has a fairly comprehensive guide to Sagetv on http://www.geektonic.com/ that might help.

[kingwr]

I as well am still on a MCE 2005 setup.

Here is my position so far as to SageTV:

Pros:
HD-PVR Support
HD-200 plays HD TV and Blu-ray rips
Very Customizable (alothough Java-based, not .NET)

Cons:
Ugly - UI nowhere near as mature as Win 7
All the cool STVs introduce a new interface look and feel, so you get no consistency in the interface
Seems to take a lot of tweaking to get it working just right
No mControl or other HA support
Not likely to ever have native digital TV support (although, outside of cablecard, it doesn't look like Win 7 will ever have it, either)

[loomdog32]

There have been multiple threads here about this..

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31638

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40221

And here is a very good thread - tho its a discussion about default STV and SageMC, but also compares other HTPC prog

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38290

Not likely to ever have native digital TV support (although, outside of cablecard, it doesn't look like Win 7 will ever have it, either)

Win7 does support ClearQAM and ATSC OTA natively (just like Vista TV Pack)

[SDeGonge]

Thanks for all your input...I'm convinced

Looks like SageTV will work fine for me so I'll give it a try.

This thread is done - thanks again for your assistance.

Future threads on the way about loading WMC & SageTV concurrently and building your own extender.

[MitchSchaft]

I recently switched from MCE2005 w/2 Linksys and 1 xbox360 extenders a few months ago. I completely skipped Vista for obvious reasons. The only downfall with Sage compared to MCE2005 is after a TV show is over and a new one starts, there is a 5-10 second pause while Sage creates a new recording file. It's still annoying after dealing with it for a few months and I hope the Sage guys do something different with version 7.

Other than that, there are nothing but benefits from making the switch and I don't regret it.

[SDeGonge]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

I recently switched from MCE2005 w/2 Linksys and 1 xbox360 extenders a few months ago. I completely skipped Vista for obvious reasons. The only downfall with Sage compared to MCE2005 is after a TV show is over and a new one starts, there is a 5-10 second pause while Sage creates a new recording file. It's still annoying after dealing with it for a few months and I hope the Sage guys do something different with version 7.

Other than that, there are nothing but benefits from making the switch and I don't regret it.

You had nearly the exact setup that I have now. Glad to hear that it's working out better than MCE.