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

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I'm not sure I agree. With SOS it becomes a lot easier to offer preconfigured hardware. You could have a base system and then choose options such as tuners and drive size. It wouldn't take long to assemble and test those systems.

But once upon a time Sage already tried to offer preconfigured hardware, and (apparently) there wasn't much interest. I think there have been third party companies offering preconfigured Sage servers as well (maybe there still is), but I don't think those have ever really caught on either.

The two biggest complaints with Sage are it's hard to setup and the GUI is not flashy. With SOS and some preconfigured systems you could solve issue 1. Let the buyer select the hardware and also indicate how they will be capturing and what ZIP code you could even ship the systems totally preconfigured for EPG data. Just unpack, plug it in and you're good to go.

Maybe. But, you can't automate QAM/ATSC remapping without doing something like what SiliconDust did. Maybe Sage could make use of that system, but I'm not sure even SiliconDust has a very automated method for doing that under Linux.

Or, in the case of STBs, you're either doing to need to do firewire or IR channel changing. Firewire won't work for everyone, so IR support is important. To make that automated, you need a pretty good database of different remotes. Hauppauge has that. Maybe you just have to learn IR commands when you set it up, but then you've added complexity to the configuration process.

In addition, it seems like there are still a number of tweaks that people need to do to make things like the HD-PVR stable. A number of people have STBs locked to certain resolutions, or put tape over the IR receiver. This adds to the complexity of setup/configuration.

I think a lot of the things that could make server-on-a-stick more friendly, like better setup/configuration wizards, would work just as well in the Windows/Mac versions of the software. I'm not sure the server-on-a-stick aspect of this really helps that much with the hard stuff.

[Stuntman]

Yawn.. Windows 7 media center sure is getting a lot of play time these days.. I can only hope that SageTV is being so silent due to something big about to be announced.. thing is, I'm afraid to buy anything from Sage now because their silence makes me nervous.. I told some friends of mine to hold off on the HDTheater as there could be something new coming soon.. based on no facts, just that nervousness that comes from silence.. kinda had the same vibe when the HD200 was about to replace the HD100.. which I bought just before they were replaced!

[Brent]

Wow! A few months of no betas and the crowd gets restless.

All educated speculation below so take it fwiw:
My guess is there won't be a new hardware device (extender) any time in the next few months at least - probably longer. And no software betas for a short while aren't a bad thing. Last time they did that............

[reggie14]

It is getting a little long since the last beta/release. Sage v6.6 came out 5 months ago and we haven't seen any betas yet, or even any official announcements of anything coming up. As far as I've been able to tell, this has only happened once since I started using Sage: between Sage v2.0 and the v2.1 beta (which seems weird because that wasn't a big release). The gap between v5.0.4 and the v6.0 beta was only about 4 months.

Now, I'm not including STV updates or firmware updates when I'm counting gaps. We've seen some of those recently. But, Sage managed to push out HD100 firmware updates while still releasing several updates to Sage v6 during 2008. It seems like things have been a little slow during 2009, compared to previous years. But, its hard to know how difficult and time consuming things like CC, BDMV, and HD200 wireless support were to develop.

So, I guess really what I'm saying is that I'm expecting something relatively big when the betas do start up again. Probably an updated UI. Maybe server-on-a-stick. I can't really think of much else though.

---------------
A Not-so-Brief History of SageTV Releases

05-31-2003 Sage v1.3

08-27-2003 Sage v1.4

12-04-2003 Sage v2 beta

05-12-2004 Sage v2 release
Included major UI improvements.

10-13-2004 Sage v2.1 beta

11-03-2004 Sage v2.1 release

01-12-2005 Sage v3.0 announcement
Note: No software was released. Sage just created an official SageTV v3 thread.

03-07-2005 Sage v2.2 release

07-22-2005 Sage v3.0.3 beta
First public beta for 3.0 (I think).

10-17-2005 Sage v3.0.13 RC2
First public RC for 3.0 (I think). 3.0 plus SageTV Studio basically became v4.0.

11-02-2005 Sage v4.0 release
First official release with Studio SDK.

12-15-2005 Sage v4.1 release
First to include official extender support (MediaMVP).

02-20-2006 Sage v4.1.7 beta
First public beta to have Placeshifter support. This beta led to Sage v5.

04-25-2006 Sage v5.0 release

05-31-2006 Sage v5.0.4 release
Added wMVP support.

10-02-2006 Sage v6.0.11 beta
First public beta for v6.

12-18-2006 Sage v6.0 release
Included relatively major UI enhancements. This release possibly added DVD folder support on extenders.

02-16-2007 SageTV V6.1.3 RC
First public beta for Sage v6.1.

04-05-2007 Sage v6.1 release
Youtube and HDHR support.

06-29-2007 Sage v6.2.4 beta
First public beta for Sage v6.2.

09-17-2007 Sage v6.2 release
Added ClearQAM support for multiple tuners.

11-08-2007 Sage v6.3.1 beta
First public beta for Sage v6.3.

12-11-2007 Sage v6.3 release
Added HD100 support.

02-28-2008 Sage v6.3.10 RC
Maintenance release for Sage v6.3.

05-08-2008 Sage v6.4.2 beta
First public beta for Sage v6.4.

08-18-2008 Sage v6.4 release
Added HD-PVR support.

11-15-2008 Sage v6.5.1 beta
First public beta for sage v6.5.

02-03-2009 Sage v6.5 release
Added HD200 support.

02-26-2009 Sage v6.5.11 beta
First public beta that led to Sage v6.6.

06-23-2009 Sage v6.5.18 RC
First RC from a long string of betas that led to v6.6.

07-23-2009 Sage v6.6 release
Added CC and BDMV support.

[SHS]

And let not forget there working on 3 diff OS and Media Extender and beta don't count becuases there beta.
Maybe the hold up may have something to do with (New native recording patch).
By the way has any one really look a round this year with the lack of all new tv hardware card this year everthing I look at is like mirror upgrade nothing in the way of a Major upgrade like the HD-PVR in fact I'm very surprise that none of the other manufacturers have come out one.
Who know we my see before the end of year a maintenance release?.

[gplasky]

And maybe all the work is just trying to get out a version the fully supports Windows 7, UAC and all the other "special" Microsoft features and standards. It's not an easy task. Don't overset your expectations just because it's taking a little longer than usual.

Gerry

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by gplasky

And maybe all the work is just trying to get out a version the fully supports Windows 7, UAC and all the other "special" Microsoft features and standards. It's not an easy task. Don't overset your expectations just because it's taking a little longer than usual.

Out of curiosity, what sorts of things do you have in mind here. I don't know of a lot of problems between Sage and Windows 7. I've been running Sage Client on Win7 for a while now without any problems. Sage supports EVR now, and can play with the MS decoders if you use the native recording patch. Obviously that hasn't been released yet, but it doesn't seem to be a terribly high priority for Sage. Wasn't that patch included with one of the Sage v6.x betas a long time ago, and then pulled out?

There's still the issue with the window style of Sage not matching the rest of Windows, but that has always been an issue and neither Sage nor users seem too concerned about that.

UAC seems to mostly be a non-issue. It sort of makes things confusing when you're tweaking settings manually (because of the virtual store), but besides that Sage seems to play well with UAC on my system. I can only think of a couple things that Sage needs to do on Windows 7 to play better with Win7. First, they need to move configuration and data files out of the Sage program directory. Second, (and I might be wrong on this), Sage needs to ask for privilege escalation when it tries to do things like STV updates (I assume that's why the semi-automatic STV updates don't work on my Win7 system).

Am I forgetting anything?

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Am I forgetting anything?

Well, my Hauppauge 2250 and my AverTVHD Duet have limited function (OTA reception) in SageTV under Win 7.

HD PVRs work like a charm though.

EDIT: That's OTA ATSC reception and both cards work with SageTV under XP and Vista. They also work fully under Win 7 Media Center, but not fully with SageTV under Win 7.

[simonen]

My Duet card works pretty well for OTA reception in win7 x64, that was after I RMAed it. It use to disappear on me, but it also did that in XP. My real problem was my HDPVR, the hauppauge IR emitter stopped working for me. It didn't really matter since I was no longer going to use it anyways (dropped digital cable). I do notice my HDHR getting more failures now though (QAM).

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Out of curiosity, what sorts of things do you have in mind here. I don't know of a lot of problems between Sage and Windows 7.

UAC seems to mostly be a non-issue. It sort of makes things confusing when you're tweaking settings manually (because of the virtual store), but besides that Sage seems to play well with UAC on my system. I can only think of a couple things that Sage needs to do on Windows 7 to play better with Win7. First, they need to move configuration and data files out of the Sage program directory. Second, (and I might be wrong on this), Sage needs to ask for privilege escalation when it tries to do things like STV updates (I assume that's why the semi-automatic STV updates don't work on my Win7 system).

Am I forgetting anything?

You made my point. Configuration and data files and virtual store IS directly related to UAC. You say move it out of the Program Files directory but best practices in Microsoft programming states that is where the application goes. (Program Files (x86) on a 64bit system) There are a variety of ways to solve the issues but you also want to try to follow the Microsoft Framework for future compatabily with OS's and service packs. And as Helen mentions some people have seen tuner and tuning issues and there is usually a reason why the solutions for native recording patch (last check at ver 10) is in the beta section. It still needs some fine tuning so that it works for everyone. For it to just work on Win 7 it needs to do a standard install, directories end up in the standard places, editing of files shouldn't need to be done outside of the program and one set of files should be in ine place on the PC. Permissions should be set from the install (if needed and without user intervention) and after completing the install wizard the program should just work with no editing of files or adjustments afterwards. That would be the goal.

Gerry

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by gplasky

For it to just work on Win 7 it needs to do a standard install, directories end up in the standard places, editing of files shouldn't need to be done outside of the program and one set of files should be in ine place on the PC. Permissions should be set from the install (if needed and without user intervention) and after completing the install wizard the program should just work with no editing of files or adjustments afterwards. That would be the goal.

I think you got the impression that I was suggesting Sage should move its default installation directory out of the Program Files directory. That's not at all what I meant. I said I thought Sage should move its configuration files (e.g., sage.properties) out of the Sage application directory and into a User/AppData folder. Besides being Microsoft's clear preference, this has become the current best practice. When I look the programs I have installed the vast majority of them seem to store configuration files in the User/AppData folder (not in the virtualstore).

From a security perspective, it seems like an awful idea to store configuration files in the application directory. You really want to lock the application directories down so only admins can muck with them, and keep configuration files in places where users can play with them. Things have gotten better lately (because of the virtualstore and new programming practices), but there was a period of time when a lot of programs didn't work properly under non-administrator accounts for no other (apparent) reason than where they were storing configuration files. It seems like Windows developers just got a little sloppy since before the WinXP days they never really had to consider that users might not be admins.

Now, I'd certainly agree UAC isn't perfect. I don't see why you can't set programs to always run with escalated privileges (though, it would be awful to do that without user intervention the first time, as you suggested). I've talked with people that worked on Vista and Win7 at MS, and they said they weren't really happy with UAC either, but it was the best they could get working. In any case, while that is related to the configuration file storage location, its really a separate issue. I'd really think typical best practices should say the configuration data should be separate from the applications, just because typically you shouldn't need to run applications as admin.

Plus, if I'm not mistaken, it seems like most of your complaints are issues with Win7/Vista, not Sage. Sage can't do anything about the security architecture in Win7- they just have to deal with it.

BTW, on the native recording patch, I'm not convinced that's been a high priority at Sage. As I said before, I'm pretty sure that an earlier version actually made it into a beta a long time ago before getting pulled out. And it doesn't look like we've seen a huge amount of effort dedicated to it since then. Qian has released some updates to it over the last 4 months, but most of that effort seemed to occur a few months ago with much less going on recently. I doubt that has much of anything to do with the lack of betas on the server/client software.

[wayner]

@reggie14 - Where would addins (JARs, Jetty files, etc) and stv files go? I find that I am changing these all the time on my Sage system. If they were in the Prog Files folder wouldn't we still have the same problems?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by gplasky

And maybe all the work is just trying to get out a version the fully supports Windows 7, UAC and all the other "special" Microsoft features and standards. It's not an easy task. Don't overset your expectations just because it's taking a little longer than usual.

Gerry

reggie14

This was the point of my original post. There are many different ways to make Sage more Windows 7 compatible and to fully support UAC and any other Windows 7 standards. The decisions aren't easy and you have to weigh Microsoft standards with ease of use for users and the support for both the Linux and Mac versions.

The native recording patch is key to supporting the native microsoft decoders that come in Windows 7. It hadn't been a priority but as you see as the Windows 7 release date approached more and more betas were released. Releasing 10 beta versions does seem to me that there was some priority assigned to it.

All I was trying to say that because of the amount of time that has gone by since the last beta don't automatically assume it is some great overhaul and new version coming out. It may just be overhauling for the whole Windows 7 experience. It is now the latest OS and should be supported as best as practical.

Gerry

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by gplasky

You made my point. Configuration and data files and virtual store IS directly related to UAC. You say move it out of the Program Files directory but best practices in Microsoft programming states that is where the application goes. (Program Files (x86) on a 64bit system)

That may be what MS says, but I disagree completely, at least for applications like SageTV that store their configuration "locally". For stuff like Sage, IMO it's way better to put it on a different partition from your OS. Makes any OS re-installs or re-images way, way easier.

Though that said, I'm all for more seamless support of popular OSs

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by wayner

@reggie14 - Where would addins (JARs, Jetty files, etc) and stv files go? I find that I am changing these all the time on my Sage system. If they were in the Prog Files folder wouldn't we still have the same problems?

Yeah, I agree. I think that's probably the trickiest thing to deal with in terms of problem with UAC. At the same time, I don't really think Sage needs to come up with a wonderfully elegant solution to that. I think its OK if people have to do moderately goofy things to use certain plugins under Win7. But, the problem might not be that bad either. First of all, this only impacts things that want to write to the application directory. As long as the plugin isn't trying to write to any configuration files, it will happily live in the application directory with UAC. Second, plugins that need to write files presumably could use the user/AppData directory too. Then its just a matter of the plugin developers writing things that are more Win7/Vista compatible.

I thought of the plugin thing after my original post about this. I agree with you, though, that might make the UAC stuff less trivial to deal with.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by gplasky

And maybe all the work is just trying to get out a version the fully supports Windows 7, UAC and all the other "special" Microsoft features and standards. It's not an easy task. Don't overset your expectations just because it's taking a little longer than usual.

Gerry

There's nothing "special" about what Microsoft is forcing with UAC. For years programmers have been completely ignoring best practices for convenience. Most programs prior to Windows Vista require local administrator rights in order for them to run. Try to run them as a lowly user and you get very mixed results. It's about time programmers started following best practices, forced or not.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by gplasky

This was the point of my original post. There are many different ways to make Sage more Windows 7 compatible and to fully support UAC and any other Windows 7 standards. The decisions aren't easy and you have to weigh Microsoft standards with ease of use for users and the support for both the Linux and Mac versions.

Right. I agree with you. I was mainly trying to get a handle on how the outstanding problems with Win7 compatibility. While I'm largely guessing, they don't seem terribly big to me. The UAC might be a difficult thing to deal with- I'm not sure. It seems like doing what I originally said- moving Sage configuration/data files out of the application directory and fixing whatever Sage's issue with automatic STV updates is- wouldn't be terribly difficult to do. Plugins might be more difficult to deal with, but maybe Sage doesn't really need to make big changes there and let the plugin developers deal with it themselves.

When it comes to dealing with UAC, I actually suspect the changes would be relatively easy to implement, but might break compatibility with plugins. So, if Sage was going to make changes with that, I wouldn't expect a long wait leading up to the first beta, but rather a long public beta period giving developers a chance to update plugins.

[Stuntman]

I wonder, if in fact development at SageTV is primarily on the S.O.S., and if that device is running a Linux backend.. why is the Linux Server and Placeshifter version of the current revision so 'unpolished'? I would have guessed if all the behind the scenes work was in Linux, we would have seen a fairly steady improvement in the Linux product that was released in past BETA's.. of course, this is all conjecture and thinking 'out loud'..

Christmas time is so busy, I don't know that I'd have time to test any new Beta anyhow..

Hopefully good things are coming.. maybe Santa will bring us a SageTV official roadmap for 2010.. Please Santa, we've been good!

[wayner]

If they are going the route that you suggest then it might make sense to sell a full turnkey product - i.e. a Sage server running Linux with tuner cards along with HD-200 extenders. The reason I say that is that I don't think that an unsophisticated user is really going to be all that keen on adding a PC in there house that runs Linux. If it was marketed as more of a standalone appliance then that makes more sense but I still see support as then being the key issue.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by wayner

If they are going the route that you suggest then it might make sense to sell a full turnkey product - i.e. a Sage server running Linux with tuner cards along with HD-200 extenders.

Like this?


I don't think that will happen again. But, I could certainly be wrong. Just because it didn't work out before doesn't mean it can't now. Sage's previous attempt into this area came before extenders became very popular. Maybe now that they are users are more inclined to go for this sort of thing, and maybe Sage feels a little more comfortable selling hardware.