IT seems awfully quiet in the beta department... until now

[Fuzzy]

Not much need top rent floor space just to show some screenshots of the 'new UI'.

[Dingdul]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I'm not a usability person myself, but the ones I talk to tell me lots of mock-ups and testing with actual users is key to building a good UI. Maybe Sage has a good set of private alpha/beta testers

Being a usability person by profession I'd be delighted to assist if/where appropriate; Coincidentally I have a spare TV, HD200 and PC staring at me from various corners of the room and longing to be taken on a new adventure.

Anyway, exciting news, let's hope to hear something more definitive from Sage themselves with a beta release not too far away...

[bsung]

Originally Posted by Dingdul

Coincidentally I have a spare TV, HD200 and PC staring at me from various corners of the room and longing to be taken on a new adventure.

With Win 7 64 Ultimate, I've been able to mess around with another installation of Sage within my WinXP virtual machine (unfortunately, I only have 1 desktop) and been able to connect to it from an HD200 by assigning a different port. I couldn't get it to see any capture devices (it would be awesome if it could) but think it could be a good way to mess around with different UI/settings/etc without having downtime on the main system. I'd need to buy a license to "play" for longer than the trial but it might be worth it if I could mess around with Sage while preserving WAF.

[cmcfarling]

Originally Posted by TwistedMelon

No one uses cablecard anyway, so releasing a product supporting it wouldn't get you anywhere in the market. Microsoft's PVR/DVR market share is insignificant. Cablecard is a complete and utter failure - everyone, including the cable companies, knows this.

Actually not true. Since July 1, 2007 cable operators have been required to use a CableCard as the decryption mechanism for all STBs deployed after that date. In other words, if you have a STB from a cable company it's very likely that it has a CableCard in it.

The latest tally shows that 17.8 million of these STBs have been deployed. However less than 500000 CableCards are in use in retail devices, that's less than 3% of the total.

CableCard Tally: 17.8 Million Set-Tops And Counting

It cost the cable co's around $1 billion to implement the CableCard infrastructure. I' don't think they'll be scrapping CableCards and implementing some other solution anytime soon.

The roadblock for CableCard in the CE space has been the issue of 2-way support. The cable co's don't want every Tom, Dick, and Harry interfacing with their proprietary VOD and PPV systems. Since this FCC has never addressed this they're allowed to do as they please in regard to 2-way.

I say fine, let the cable co's keep their crappy PPV and VOD lineup. This is where the emerging media outlets (hulu, netflix, et al) come into the equation. The ideal HTPC would have CableCard support AND be able to tap into the IP based content providers. One-way CableCard would be fine in the scenario. You get all of the broadcast channels plus all of the Internet junk. Add some extenders and you've got an MRV system that is unmatched.

Windows Media Center is almost there but they have completely dropped the ball on the extender part of the equation, which has been extremely frustrating. That is the why I've been scoping out SageTV now. While it seems that sage gets the extender thing, CableCard support is not likely unfortunately, so I may be in the same boat over here.

Since I can't bring myself to watch SD programming now, I'm still stuck with the POS cable box and no MRV.

So anyway, CableCard is not going away in my opinion. In fact it will most likely be used as the basis for future enhancements to cable services and/or FCC mandates.

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by stanger89

But I think I know what the really huge difference is between the US/NA and the rest of the world regarding tuning/recording substreams. In NA, recording digital is only possible/usable with clear, unencrypted "free access" content, like ATSC OTA, or clear QAM. With either of these it's trivially easy to just add more tuners, at no additional monthly cost, if you need to record more things at once. So in the US, the lack of "sharing" on transport stream, combined with the triviality of using multiple tuners to get them makes simultaneous recording of subchannels on one transport stream not of much value.

In the rest of the world, where you can tune conditional access content (encrypted) via a card that you have to rent, I can see the monetary value where it would save a bit of money to be able to record 2 or more things with one CAM. But we don't have that "luxury" here since there's no open standard for conditional access (we're stuck with the CF that is CableCard and satellite with nothing).

Wanting to be able to view/record multiple channels from the same frequency transponder is not just because of decoding encrypted channels with a single subscription card as it is very worthwhile for FTA channels.

DVB-S/T/C always has multiple channels multiplexed into the same frequency. That's the way it works so it makes perfect sense to want to be able to view/record multiple channels from the one frequency & get away from a one tuner = one channel paradigm. Adding extra tuners does incur extra expense & while OTA DVB-T does require little more than merely splitting the signal from an antenna if your programme source is satellite (DVB-S) then you need a whole new feed from the dish.

If you take a look at this list of transponders of UK FTA satellite programming available here in Europe from the Astra 2 satellite you will see that for example using a single tuner tuned to 10773H you can receive five distinct & separate channels simultaneously (BBC One London, BBC Two England, BBC Three, BBC Four & Five - there are others on the transponder that are either timeshared with one of those channels (CBBC & CBeebies) or carry the same programming as one of those five channels for 95% of the time (BBC One Northern Ireland). http://www.lyngsat.com/28east.html That's just taking mainstream network channels. If you look at some of the transponders where they cram the junk shopping channels etc you could if desperate enough view/record a dozen or more channels with a single tuner.

[stanger89]

I understand all that, I was trying to explain why it's not very useful in NA (where the vast majority of Sage customers live). In NA, the only place it would be of significant value is with encrypted content, which we do not have access to.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stanger89

In NA, the only place it would be of significant value is with encrypted content, which we do not have access to.

I wouldn't even go that far. It would definitely be of value to anyone with cable whose local networks are coupled together on the same frequency, which is the case for me. Cox Cable has two (2) HD streams multiplexed together into a single frequency. How would being able to record both streams using a single tuner not be of value?

[stanger89]

I said "significant" value, you've identified one instance on one provider. We've already established it's not much value for OTA, and the trend for cable is toward everything but locals being encrypted, so it's not of much value there either. Plus it's quite easy to add extra tuners for clear content.

EU is completely different, there you can rent a CAM card from your provider and put it in a PC capture card and access all the content you subscribe to. So in EU there's a LOT more content that's available to users that falls on the same channel/transponder, additionally since they are paying a monthly fee for a CAM, there's a lot more value in EU for recording simultaneous subchannels.

Most of the people who really want the ability to record simultaneous subchannels are not in NA, they're in places where there is much more use for such capability. Unfortunately for them, they're a very small portion of the Sage user base I'd guess.

[mpogr]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Most of the people who really want the ability to record simultaneous subchannels are not in NA, they're in places where there is much more use for such capability. Unfortunately for them, they're a very small portion of the Sage user base I'd guess.

And on what basis exactly you have come to such a conclusion? Do you have access to Sage customer records? I guess no...
Coming from a relatively small country (only 7.5 million total population), I personally know of > 100 Sage users, some quite heavily invested into both licenses and hardware (just take a look into this guy's system). My guess is that this might be higher per-capita penetration than in NA...

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mpogr

And on what basis exactly you have come to such a conclusion? Do you have access to Sage customer records? I guess no...

I base it on the fact that Sage is from NA, Sage only provides NA guide data (outside NA you have to provide your own), and it seems most people here on the forum are from NA.

My guess is that this might be higher per-capita penetration than in NA...

We're not talking about per-capita, we're talking about absolute numbers, I'd guess at least 90% of Sage's customers are in the US.

[Tiki]

If I understand things correctly, this would be an awesome feature - and yes I live in North America and have Comcast. HDHomeruns are expensive. If this feature were implemented, I could record AMC, Discovery, History, and TBS all at the same time with one HDHomerun (dual tuner), or NBC-HD, Fox-HD, ABC-HD, and PBS-HD all with one HDHR.

Take a look at my attached scn file (I renamed it as txt). This is what is available via clear-QAM on Comcast in metro Detroit. I believe anything with the same physical (phy) channel is also on the same frequency (frq).

Ch23 ( AMC, Discovery)-All SD
Ch24 (QVC, C-Span)-All SD
Ch25 (WGN, History, TBS)-All SD
Ch26 (Fox Sports Detroit, TNT, CBET- Canada)-All SD
Ch28 (WLNS-CBS Lansing, TV Guide Network, CBB-Community Bulletin Board)
Ch29 (WJBK-Fox Detroit, WMYD-My Network TV Detroit, WDIV-NBC Detroit, WXYZ-ABC Detroit, WFUM-PBS, WADL - UrbanTV Detroit, WWJ-CBS Detroit, WKAR-PBS, WKBD - CW Detroit, WTVS-PBS)-All SD
Ch43 (WXYZDT-ABC HD Detroit, WTVSDT-PBS HD, WTVSDT2-PBS alternate stream 2, WTVSDT3-PBS alternate stream 3, WXYZDT2-ABC alternate stream)-Mix of HD and SD
Ch44 (WDIVDT-NBC HD Detroit, WJBKDT-Fox HD Detroit, WDIVDT2-NBC alternate stream)-Mix of HD and SD
Ch45 (WMYDDT-My Network TV HD Detroit, WKBDDT-CW HD Detroit)-All HD
Ch46 (WWJDT-CBS HD Detroit)-All HD
CH61 (WJRT-ABC Lansing)-All SD
Ch64 (NFLRZ-NFL Red Zone)-All SD
Ch76 (ShopNBC)-All SD


I don't think this would be too hard to do either. In fact when I first got my HDHR last year there was a bug where it was sending down all the programs on one frequency and Sage had to split them out and throw away everything except the program you actually were trying to record (the downside was that this wasted a lot of bandwidth on the home network). After the software update, the HDHR split out the desired program and only sent the one that Sage was requesting.

[Fuzzy]

Technically, it isnt' that hard, as you waid, with devices that are already designed to do it (like the HDHomeRun). What is more difficult is the scheduling part, in regards to conflict resolution andsuch. That is all sage REALLY has to do with it, they just, as yet, have not had much of a reason to do so.

[stanger89]

Actually I think the tricky part is managing to record/write several files at the same time from a single tuner. Something made more difficult when you consider that those multiple files may come from shows that don't start at the same time.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by mpogr

And on what basis exactly you have come to such a conclusion? Do you have access to Sage customer records?

Judging from the number of posts in the International forums I would say that the non-North American user base is well under 10% - either that or the international users never post in the international forums. Even the Canadian forum gets very little volume even though we know that there are a fair number of Canadian users (like myself) but the Canadian TV landscape and EPG source is pretty much exactly the same as the US with the same hardware with a few minor exceptions - the most notable being the lack of CableCards in Canada.

[tpboyce]

Guys, I think the Linux version of Sage does support the subchannels appropriately, or so I thought.

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by stanger89

EU is completely different, there you can rent a CAM card from your provider and put it in a PC capture card and access all the content you subscribe to. So in EU there's a LOT more content that's available to users that falls on the same channel/transponder, additionally since they are paying a monthly fee for a CAM, there's a lot more value in EU for recording simultaneous subchannels.

Most of the people who really want the ability to record simultaneous subchannels are not in NA, they're in places where there is much more use for such capability. Unfortunately for them, they're a very small portion of the Sage user base I'd guess.

It's not just the EU it's the whole world outside of North America that uses DVB & even in the USA it's used by DirecTV. In most countries outside North America satellite TV has a far larger market share & cable is less popular. Digital terrestrial broadcasting (DVB-T) akin to ATSC is also widely available.

Just to correct some of your terminology. A CAM is a Conditional Access Module that generally fits into a CI (Common Interface) slot so a single receiver can be used with different encryption methods by changing the CAM. However commercial broadcasters prefer to lock in subscribers to their own proprietary hardware rather than have the option to change to another broadcaster so in some markets provide free or subsidised receivers with an embedded CAM.

Whether the receiver is an open standard with a CI or proprietary e.g. a UK Sky digibox for scrambled services a smartcard is provided which is addressable OTA & enables the decryption. While generally it is subscription services with a monthy fee that use a smartcard in some countries e.g. France a one off fee purchases a smartcard that decrypts satellite transmissions that are FTA when broadcast terrestrially.

As I stated in my previous post because on all versions of DVB several channels are multiplexed onto the same frequency so even without the possibility of decrypting several scrambled channels with one subscription card being able to view/record several channels just with one tuner when the channels are all on the same MUX is avery attractive possibility. For example in the UK there are almost 50 TV stations & 24 radio stations broadcast FTA on DVB-T (branded as Freeview) but only six MUXes so with just six tuners one theoretically could view/record every single transmission (if your system had sufficient CPU power & disk throughput available).

I suspect that trying to implement this that Sage would have EPG & scheduling problems with the current architecture which maps the EPG as a particular channel to a particular tuner, There probably needs to be some form of abstraction for example to use a tuner as a network encoder & present multiple virtual tuners from a single physical tuner.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by MCE-Refugee

It's not just the EU it's the whole world outside of North America that uses DVB & even in the USA it's used by DirecTV.

It's actually Dish Network, but Dish network does funky things with encryption and modulation that make it so standard DVB cards and CI won't work.

In most countries outside North America satellite TV has a far larger market share & cable is less popular. Digital terrestrial broadcasting (DVB-T) akin to ATSC is also widely available.

Doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of Sage's customers are NA based.

As I stated in my previous post because on all versions of DVB several channels are multiplexed onto the same frequency so even without the possibility of decrypting several scrambled channels with one subscription card being able to view/record several channels just with one tuner when the channels are all on the same MUX is avery attractive possibility. For example in the UK there are almost 50 TV stations & 24 radio stations broadcast FTA on DVB-T (branded as Freeview) but only six MUXes so with just six tuners one theoretically could view/record every single transmission (if your system had sufficient CPU power & disk throughput available).

I'm not denying the value for those who have access to such streams. My point is most Sage customers don't have access to such streams, so it makes it a tough sell for Sage to spend their limited development resources on something that most of their customers can't make much use of.

When you look at the state of software, the softwares that support recording multiple subchannels are generally developed outside NA where it's of use to most of their users.

I suspect that trying to implement this that Sage would have EPG & scheduling problems with the current architecture which maps the EPG as a particular channel to a particular tuner, There probably needs to be some form of abstraction for example to use a tuner as a network encoder & present multiple virtual tuners from a single physical tuner.

Like I said above, I think the real tough part would be changing Sage's file writing architecture to be able to write multiple files from a single tuner, and be able to start and stop them independently. The way (AFAIK) Sage currently records is it builds a Directshow graph connecting a tuner to a file writer filter. When the file changes, Sage has to tear down the graph and rebuild it for the next file. They'd need to completely change that so that they can keep a tuner tuned, and open/close aribtrary files and route arbitrary substreams to each. That would seem to be a non-trivial change.

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by stanger89

It's actually Dish Network, but Dish network does funky things with encryption and modulation that make it so standard DVB cards and CI won't work.

Apparently it's both Dish & DirectTV. The latter use DVB-S2 for their MPEG4 HDTV services.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of Sage's customers are NA based.

I wasn't arguing the contrary just
pointing out that there is a vast untapped market. Being able to view/record multiple channels from the same transponder simultaneously might very well increase the number of SageTV users outside North America as there is no comparable PVR software that does this.

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'm not denying the value for those who have access to such streams. My point is most Sage customers don't have access to such streams, so it makes it a tough sell for Sage to spend their limited development resources on something that most of their customers can't make much use of.

As I pointed out it could increase their market share to implement this facility.

Originally Posted by stanger89

When you look at the state of software, the softwares that support recording multiple subchannels are generally developed outside NA where it's of use to most of their users.

The only one that I know & have used personally is TSReader which is developed in the US albeit by an English guy I believe. TSReader is not by any stretch of the imagination PVR software.

Of the other commercial PVRs - Windows Media Center & Beyond TV do not provide multiple recording off one tuner. Elgato EyeTV on the Mac allows you to manually select more than one channel from the same multiplex but I don't think that you can schedule recordings. As regard the Freeware & Open Source I expect that MythTV does but not everyone wants to become a Linux Ubergeek in order to record TV. GB-PVR apparently does but this also requires a serious amount of low-level mucking about but on Windows rather than Linux. It would be really nice if SageTV which is to my mind easily the best of the commercial products all could be differentiated by providing this facility.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Like I said above, I think the real tough part would be changing Sage's file writing architecture to be able to write multiple files from a single tuner, and be able to start and stop them independently. The way (AFAIK) Sage currently records is it builds a Directshow graph connecting a tuner to a file writer filter. When the file changes, Sage has to tear down the graph and rebuild it for the next file. They'd need to completely change that so that they can keep a tuner tuned, and open/close aribtrary files and route arbitrary substreams to each. That would seem to be a non-trivial change.

SageTV doesn't build a DirectShow graph on the Linux or Mac versions of SageTV. As I said before it's probably not easily done with the current architecture but would require a change in paradigm from one channel = one tuner e.g. virtual tuners or network encoders.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by MCE-Refugee

Apparently it's both Dish & DirectTV. The latter use DVB-S2 for their MPEG4 HDTV services.

Dish uses Turbo-code 8PSK (DVB-S2 is just 8PSK). Direct used to use something completely different from DVB. Dish's CA system is basically the same as DVBs, but they somehow lock their cards to specific boxes, so you can't use a Dish CAM in a DVB-CI. DirecTV uses something which to my knowledge is completely different from DVB for encryption.

I wasn't arguing the contrary just
pointing out that there is a vast untapped market. Being able to view/record multiple channels from the same transponder simultaneously might very well increase the number of SageTV users outside North America as there is no comparable PVR software that does this.

I think lack of simple guide data solution is a much bigger issue outside NA.

As I pointed out it could increase their market share to implement this facility.

Lots of things could though. A new UI would make a huge difference IMO, judging by the number of posts on other forums form people who won't even consider Sage because they think it's ugly (not that I agree with them).

The only one that I know & have used personally is TSReader which is developed in the US albeit by an English guy I believe. TSReader is not by any stretch of the imagination PVR software.

I've not used TSReader for recording, but I thought it was all subs or one. I know I've seen other DVB softwares mentioned with the capability, but those are specifically DVB softwares.

Of the other commercial PVRs - Windows Media Center & Beyond TV do not provide multiple recording off one tuner. Elgato EyeTV on the Mac allows you to manually select more than one channel from the same multiplex but I don't think that you can schedule recordings. As regard the Freeware & Open Source I expect that MythTV does but not everyone wants to become a Linux Ubergeek in order to record TV. GB-PVR apparently does but this also requires a serious amount of low-level mucking about but on Windows rather than Linux. It would be really nice if SageTV which is to my mind easily the best of the commercial products all could be differentiated by providing this facility.

Well most of those are US based and focused, just like SageTV, which is my point. The ones I've remembered hearing about were DVB specific softwares, maybe ProgDVB, DVBViewer, can't remember the name of the last one I remembered mentioned as an example.

[mpogr]

Speaking of network encoders and virtual tuners, this is exactly what my plugin, DVBE4SAGE, does. It acts as a network encoder and presents number of virtual tuners, which is usually greater than the number of the physical ones, to Sage. This way recording of multiple programs from the same transponder using a single physical tuner is achieved.
BTW, architecturally this was not a big deal, I start the graph playback when the tuner is used at the first time, then, for every subsequent recording from the same transponder, I attach a new "recorder" to the same graph. Each "recorder" manages its output file and specific substreams (including obtaining decryption keys from the corresponding plugin, which are different for every channel), and stops recording either by timeout or upon request from Sage. When the last recorder is detached, the graph is stopped. This is really quite a simple logic, I see no reason why Sage couldn't implement it themselves.
The biggest drawback of this solution is, however, that it's potentially unsafe. This is because Sage basically thinks that, e.g., if it has 7 virtual tuners, it can record 7 programs simultaneously, which, having only 4 physical tuners, may or may not be true, depending on the specific programs requested. If Sage had been aware of this situation, it could have made intelligent decisions, like rescheduling unsafe show recordings using their reruns. Media Portal has this capability.
Therefore, there is a fine balance between the number of physical and virtual tuners, which depends on the transponder layout, number of clients and specific viewing habits. For my provider, YES Israel, with reasonable number of clients (3-4) and typical Hebrew-speaking viewer's habits, 3 physical tuners (only 1 of them HD) are more-or-less enough.
I'm actually proposing guys with DVB-S to give it a shot. It already has some users in Israel, UK, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. I'd love to have some testers in the US, on either Dish or Direct TV. I know there exist various MDAPI plugins for using your legal subscription card via a card reader, and chances are DVBE4SAGE will work with these. I'm sure some massaging will be needed for making it work (e.g. because of non-standard modulation, L/R polarization instead of V/H etc.), but I don't see any significant roadblocks.
Moreover, this plugin can be easily extended to other flavors of DVB (T/C) as well as ATSC. I'm planning to get there (at least DVB-T) eventually.
Last but not least, the plugin is open source (GPL), so everyone can contribute to its development. You can find further discussion on it here.