Saged and Confused

[roussell]

Warning, looooong post ahead - thanks in advance for taking the time to read/reply!

Frustrated by the multitude of cable boxes, AV switchers, TiVos, DVD players, an PCs that seem to congregate around our TVs - the wife has given unprecedented clearance to move to a consolidated system. For what seems like an eternity, I have read about other member's sweet SageTV systems and longed for the day that I would have the same. Well, that day is now, kind-of...

First off, let me say that I'm a Mac guy. I like Linux, Mac, and most things different. My only Windows box is the HouseBot server. I have nothing really against MS or Windows, I just prefer the *X side of the street. That being said, if I do go with SageTV - I would most likely install it on Windows, from my observations; the support/options/stuff available for the MS platform seems to eclipse whats available for Linux or Apple with respect to SageTV. I'd love to hear from alternative installations though.

I made the mistake(?) of downloading Plex on my Macbook and playing with it. For those that don't know, Plex is a fork of the XBMC media center that has been specifically tailored to the Apple platform. Anyway, it works brilliantly. I pointed it at a server share containing several hundred ripped DVD movies, to another share containing almost as many TV shows and it indexed them all, found ratings, episode/movie info, posters, fan art, etc. all automatically. I literally did nothing except define the folder location and tell it the folders contained movies or TV shows. Plex found my itunes playlists and imported those and pictures as well. It was about this time that my wife walked up and said "ooh, what is that?". Now, rarely is my wife interested in anything that is happening on my computer, so, seeing the opportunity in front of me, I began showing her my new toy. She fell in love, hard. I explained that doing this would involve putting a Mac mini at each TV and purchasing a Harmony remote - quite a costly investment for watching Desperate Housewives... But in return, we could go back to "expanded basic" cable and have nothing but the Mini at each TV, plus she could watch Netflix movies and Hulu shows instantly in addition to whatever the TiVo records. I thought she was going to faint.

Not forgetting Sage, I said: "If you think that's good, wait until you see SageTV!". then went about downloading and installing the SageTV server trial on a virtual XP install and the Sage Client on my Macbook. I explained to her that we could do everything with SAge and also watch record live TV without the expense of multiple Mac Minis. I went thought the the explanations of how the HD200 extenders would work and how we'd put SD and HD tuners in the SageTV server to capture shows, commercial skip, place shifting, the whole works. She was ready for a demo!

Knowing that I didn't have a tuner card for the demo, I knew I couldn't show her the live-tv gooey goodness so I went about setting up the save movie and tv shares that I had working in Plex.

I fired everything up (sage client on the macbook) and her smile turned upside down - "Sage is ugly, Plex is pretty", she said. "We can customize Sage to look however we want" I responded. I went to the media center section and then to the videos. Hmm, all the TV shows and Movies are intermingled together, getting "more info" for a show only shows the file/pathname - low WAF there too. I was losing her fast, actually she was already gone, now playing with the dog on the floor in our office. "Don't you want to see more", "Nah, I don't like it. It's ugly, and the movies are all jumbled with the TV shows". I say; "But it's a lot cheaper, plus don't forget the Live TV capabilities with Sage, I'm sure I can customize it to separate the Movies and downloaded TV shows. Let's just try a movie and see how easy it is." I pick a movie from the list and it starts playing - regular DVD rip, not HD. The movie starts skipping, pausing, etc. Not good, "What about Hulu and Netflix?" she asks. We can do it, but it's through a separate application that we have to buy and plugin on Sage" (playon) I said. This was the death nail for Sage, she left the room.

I want Sage, but is what I'm seeing normal? Do people just put up with the poor navigation, skipping movies, etc. Will a HD200 be better or worse performance than the client on my dual-core Macbook? Plex's default theme is based on the Mediastream theme for XBMC. Is there anything like that for Sage? I downloaded SageMC and installed it but it wasn't much better than the default. Perhaps I'm missing something.

As I see it now, below are my goals and options:

Goals:
Currently 3 TV's in the house, could expand to 5 over the next year
Desire to drop to expanded basic cable and remove need for cable boxes
Remove multiple DVD players from TVs
Will rely on Vuze/ShowRSS (torrent downloads) and Hulu for TV beyond basic cable offerings.
Netflix stream and rental for Movies
Will keep the current Gen II TiVo until it dies (lifetime subscription)
Would like to watch TiVo content on whatever solution
Optionally would like to integrate a "10 foot" interface to Housebot on whatever solution
After seeing Signal15s post on his kitchen TV with Boxee, we've though about something similar - It would be nice if either solution could display recipes from a local/web recipe database - I'm not aware of anything existing though. Anyone know of anything for Plex or Sage for recipes?

OPTION 1 - SageTV
Sage on Virtual XP on existing Linux server or standalone box
3 HD200s
1 hauppage video card (1600?, 1850?) and one HDhomerun to grab live TV
Playon application to stream Netflix, Hulu (How well does this work? I know you drop out of Sage on the HD200, is it easy, seamless?)
Shared DVD on Sage Server (Blueray maybe, no need at the moment and I assume this would mean Win7 over XP)
A prettier face for Sage - preferable one like the Plex offering
A way to separate TV shows from Movies (Ideally, I could plut downloaded TV shows in the same location with Sage-recorded ones - possible?)
3 Harmony remotes? (Do I need Harmony remotes or are the HD200 ones fine?)

OPTION 2 - Plex on Mac Minis
3 Mac Minis
Plex
Live TV would be either switching the TVs inputs from the Mini to cable/antenna or installing EyeTV units/software on each Mini(That's another $200...). Plex isn't integrated with EyeTV yet, but I could switch between the apps with a harmony remote.
3 Harmony remotes

Obviously, the Plex/Mini solution is much more costly and we wouldn't buy everything all at once - probably outfit one TV to test, then another in 6 months or so. Am I crazy for even considering Plex? Am I crazy for considering Sage?

Sorry for the long explanation, thanks in advance for your help/opinions.

Terry

[dead_ferrets]

Hi Terry and welcome.

I'll chime in with a few answers and opinions. What you are seeing regarding playback is definitely not normal. Using extenders will result in pretty much flawless playback of your DVD library (and pretty much any content you throw at it).

What you are seeing regarding the UI and how Sage organizes your media library 'out of the box' is 100% normal. Sage is waaaaay behind here. The out of the box UI experience is just bad, IMHO. Having said that, the beauty of SageTV is that the UI and feature set is customizable and there is quite the active community of very talented people who create create feature customizations and UI skins. They are also very generous with their time in helping folks install and troubleshoot their customizations.

Many folks, myself included, install these customizations to automate the retrieval of fantart (BMT), separate our library into movies/TV shows (SMW & TVExplorer), etc. So I guess this is a bit of long winded way of saying, have no fear on the playback side, but on the UI and feature side, you'll have some work to do.

Good luck!

[paulbeers]

I haven't tried Plex (and yes I have a mac), but have you tried SageMC? I still use the standard Sage interface, but many prefer SageMC as their GUI. Another option you could do (since we all know the WAF factor is the most important part), use Sage solely for recording shows and point Plex to your Sage Recordings directory so that when Sage completes a recording, it becomes available in Plex (I assume Plex will regularly check for updates).

Secondly, your shows/dvd's, did you select one of the options at the top of the Videos Screen? You can actually narrow down which ones Sage shows you by their type. I always leave mine on DVD since the only videos we keep in Sage are DVD rips (still in VOB format).

Oh and the HULU/Netflix Playon plugin works beautifully in Sage (I use it fairly regularly). Sometimes it is best to leave how things work out of the conversation when discussing with the Wife as it can just muddy things up!

[aflat]

You shoudl pretty it up before you show your wife. Get SageMC, and try Sage Movie Wall(SMW), and look at Batch Metadata Tools(BMT) for fanart/show info/etc. Organize your movies and TV shows so they are in separate folders, then they will who up separate in Sage as well. For example I have a videos folder, and under videos I have 2 folders, TV shows and Movies, with all the folders under that.

Set all that up, and make sure you record a show and run comskip/showanalyzer on it. That alone can trump pretty ness. Then show your wife. She should be happy with how pretty it is, and you get Sage with the LiveTV.

[roussell]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I agree that I showed it to the wife prematurely, I guess I was ridin' the wave of excitement over her enthusiasm and crashed and burned. Based on suggestions I've proposed the following:

We start out with SageTV buying just the items below (Sage Bundle and HDhomerun ~$375). This would get us the SageTV software, the HD200 HD Theater and the HDHomerun HDTV tuner. I told her that kind souls on the forums will help me to pretty-up Sage and to separate the Movies from TV shows. After I get it visually/functionally ready, we’ll try it for a while. If she still doesn't like it – I can probably sell the HD200 for about $160-$170ish, but continue to use the Sage software and HDHomerun to record live TV shows that we can then view with Plex on a Mac Mini. That’s the only way I see to truly try Sage to see if it’s a good fit while minimizing our risk and cash outlay.

How does that sound?

TIA,
Terry

[paulbeers]

That sounds like the way to go. Give the whole thing a try and like you said, you can always sell the HD200 on ebay if need be (heck I still see the occasional HD100 on there for $100+ and that isn't even the current model!).

[dead_ferrets]

Sounds like a great way to start. Once you get the basic server and extender running, I would suggest proceeding as follows (in order) at a pace you are most comfortable with:

1. Add the SageMC STV and find a skin you like
2. Get the latest SageMC update, currently 6.3.9b_21
3. Get Comskip working
4. Add the Jetty webserver plug-in
5. Add the SageTV webserver
6. Add BMI
7. Add the Sage Movie Wall (SMW) STVi
8. Add TVExplorer STVi

Each step of the way, I would suggest you make a back-up of the SageTV folder (the one inside the main SageTV installation folder). Some times you make a mistake and this allows you to easily recover to your previous working configuration.

BTW, an important concept to understand in SageTV is the difference between an STV and an STVi. An STV is a UI package and an STVi is an import to an STV that adds functions or themes to the STV. You 'Load' an STV (e.g., SageMC) and you 'Import' an STVi (e.g., SMW). This trips people up sometimes so watch out for that.

Have fun!

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by roussell

... I told her that kind souls on the forums will help me to pretty-up Sage and to separate the Movies from TV shows. ...

But, you have to post what worked, and didn't, to help us back. Improvement is always good!

[Osler]

roussell:

Nice to see you're taking the plunge. What you are proposing is exactly what I did a few months ago. Regardless of the relatively poor "media center" integration that SageTV has out of the box (movies for me mostly), the pvr capabilities have won over the family. Even though hunting for a movie is not the most visually appealing experience, the integration of live tv, recorded tv, and video media into a single navigable 10' interface is very, very nice.

I am working on HouseBot integration slowly, so this should be another selling point to your wife (on down the road).

Also, I'll defray your experimentation and buy your HD200 if you decide SageTV is not for you .

Like others have said, get a stable bare-bones install of SageTV set-up first and let it record some shows for you for a week or so. Once you're satisfied it's stable, start playing with some of the available stvs and plugins. If you can handle HouseBot, you can handle getting these add-ons up and running.

Osler

[davephan]

If you don't want to use Windows, SageTV is available for Mac and Linux. If you are using a Mac computer, it seems like it would make more sense to get the Mac SageTV version.

The HD-200 is a very good media extender, and much less trouble to setup and maintain than a client computer. The HD-200 is small, silent, draws only 7 watts, and works with SD or HD TVs.

The dual tuner HDHomerun will work for clear QAM cable or over the air HD. If you have clear QAM now, you might not have it in the future if your cable system drops clear QAM. If you lose clear QAM cable in the future, you can always use the HDHomerun for over the air HD. You might still need the set top cable boxes in the future, and maybe a HD-PVR if your clear QAM goes away.


Dave

[roussell]

@dead_ferrets
Thanks for the excellent step by step. I've gotten as far as the movie wall install on the trial tonight, I'll play with TV explorer tomorrow. I already see a huge difference and feel like I'm learning a lot about how Sage is put together. Also thanks for the backup tip, I've read elsewhere that the Sage DB file needs to be backed up often, I'll definitely devise a backup plan for the final install. I'd hate to lose all of the config time it take to get this WAF-ready. I sent her some screenshots from the forum today for SMW and TV Explorer, her reply was "Cool, now that's more like it." Those screenshots got me the approval to place the order so thanks to everyone who posts the results of their awesome work.

@MattHelm
No worries, I'm sure you all will be seeing more posts from me than you care for over the coming days/weeks/etc... If I happen to stumble across something that may be of value, I'll gladly return the favor.

@ Osler
I was just digging up some old HB posts on Sage between Eric and Scott, I had forgotten that you had a Sage setup as well. I guess I've been good this year 'cause Santas bringing Sage, HD200, HDhomerun, and a Proliphix thermostat. Plenty of HouseBot integration to follow I'm sure. I've got a lot swimming in my head, it'll be tough to stay focused and get the foundation down first before I start adding on the coolness.

@ davephan
Thanks, I had thought seriously about Mac or Linux as a platform, and read several of the posts for each. As much as I love Linux, I recognize the serious tweaking needed when it comes to using the V4L (video for linux) drivers and getting them to be stable over the long haul. When I travel for work, one of the last things I need is a call from home asking why House or Grey's Anatomy can't be watched... I feel that I'll be tweaking enough inside of Sage, I don't want to HAVE to spend time tweaking the OS and video/tuner drivers as well. Plus, no Sage trial for Linux - that's bush-league. As for the Mac, the biggest limitation I see there is the small number of tuner cards available. Windows seems to have the most support by sage, by the forum, and by card manufacturers - just my opinion, based on lurking here and some extensive googling, I'd love to hear successes from others on alternative platforms.

I also had read here and on Cocoontech about the possible demise of clear QAM. I'm on Charter in central Alabama and typically we're slow to change. Sometimes that's a bad thing but it will work out in my favor if it does happen then perhaps we'll hang on to clear QAM a little longer. I did notice a couple of new clear QAM channels pop up in a TV channel scan last week so maybe... I've looked at the HD-PVR, we've talked about going to DirectTV or Dish at some point - I'm guessing that the HD-PVR is my only option if we do?.?.

I've ordered the Sage software/HD200 bundle and an HDhomerun. I'm running the trial at the moment to get a feel for everything. It's installed on a virtual XP guest (Sun VirtualBox Host on Debian Linux). The hardware is a core 2 quad with 8Gb of RAM and 6TB of drive space. For the test I carved out a single-processor box with 100GB drive and 2 GB of memory. All of the movies, music and other media reside on a separate virtual server on the same physical box. Will those specs be good enough for a "production" Sage box? I'd like to keep it on a virtual if possible, at least until the need arises for a PCI tuner card. As long as I can get by with USB and Ethernet based tuners though - will a virtual be good enough or will I need more horsepower? I have a spare single-core 3GHz P4 box that I could use, but I don't know if it would be better than the virtual - it 'feels' slower with normal use than the VPC so it may not be acceptable for a Sage server. All of the 'viewers' will be HD200s, I understand they take some of the load off of the server, but it seems like some of the plugins will be asking for a lot of processor so I may need more.

Again, thanks to everyone for all of the help so far and the help that is yet to come.

Terry

[sic0048]

To record any encrypted material you need a STB to first decrypt the broadcast. This is true for cable or satellite broadcasts.

With cable broadcasts, if your STB supports firewire recording, many times you can hook it directly to the Sage server and record from the STB. The "gotcha" is that the box will follow any 5C encrypting bit. So some channels may still not be able to be recorded this way. But I think most people find that it is rare to see a channel or show that is coded as "Do Not Record" with 5C.

Similarly, if you have Dish Network, you can buy a modified STB that allows you to record via a USB connection. This modifcation is called the R5000. The biggest difference I believe is that the STB actually decodes the broadcast and removes and encyrption barriers so ANY show that you subscribe to can be recorded.

The other option is to get the Hauppauge HD-PVR. This box actually gets connected between the STB and the TV and simply takes the already decrypted component video output from the STB and records it. Therefore the broadcast goes from a digital signal (into the STB) to an analog signal (the component output) and back to a digital signal (via the HD-PVR) before it is recorded by the computer. The results in a slightly reduced image quality, but most people don't see the difference. It is certainly still very clear HD quality recordings.

The HD-PVR is a pesky little bugger. I think 10% of the people never have a problem, 85% probably have some sort of probem but eventually get them worked out, and another are currently 5% fighting with the device to get a stable system. I'm just guessing at those numbers, but there are only a couple of people squawking about the HD-PVR at a time here on the forum, and there have to be hundreds of users (at a mimimum) here. So I think most people do eventually get a stable system together.

The biggest advantage to the HD-PVR is that it works with any broadcast. So if you change service providers in the future, you can still record the output of the new providers STB. If you are recording firewire from a cable box and switch to satellite, then you are back at square one. Similarly, if you buy a R5000 STB, it only works with that particular provider (and pretty much DishTV is the last major provider it works with), so if you change to another provider, you are back at square one again.

[ohpleaseno]

Originally Posted by dead_ferrets

Sounds like a great way to start. Once you get the basic server and extender running, I would suggest proceeding as follows (in order) at a pace you are most comfortable with:

1. Add the SageMC STV and find a skin you like
2. Get the latest SageMC update, currently 6.3.9b_21
3. Get Comskip working
4. Add the Jetty webserver plug-in
5. Add the SageTV webserver
6. Add BMI
7. Add the Sage Movie Wall (SMW) STVi
8. Add TVExplorer STVi

Each step of the way, I would suggest you make a back-up of the SageTV folder (the one inside the main SageTV installation folder). Some times you make a mistake and this allows you to easily recover to your previous working configuration.

BTW, an important concept to understand in SageTV is the difference between an STV and an STVi. An STV is a UI package and an STVi is an import to an STV that adds functions or themes to the STV. You 'Load' an STV (e.g., SageMC) and you 'Import' an STVi (e.g., SMW). This trips people up sometimes so watch out for that.

Have fun!

Definitely do this.

Then say. "Hey honey, I found this new program called "<fillinthenamehere> TV". Take a look at it and tell me what you think."

Then when it's all done say "HA! It's just SageTV with all the add-ins that make it awesome." Then laugh and point in her face and do that thing where you stick your thumbs in your ears and blow raspberries while waving your hands.

Then get the blanket and pillow and enjoy your night on the couch where you can, guess what, watch stuff on SageTV.

[davephan]

I don't know how SageTV will perform as a VM guest. It it works out, then you can periodically take VM snapshots and have a way to easily recover the system if you have trouble in the future.

If you are out of town a lot, and bring a laptop with you, then you should put LogMeIn on the SageTV computer system so you can fix it if needed with remote control. LogMeIn is free. You might also install the web interface so that you can also access it with a web browser.

Dave

[roussell]

Originally Posted by ohpleaseno

Definitely do this.

Then say. "Hey honey, I found this new program called "<fillinthenamehere> TV". Take a look at it and tell me what you think."

Then when it's all done say "HA! It's just SageTV with all the add-ins that make it awesome." Then laugh and point in her face and do that thing where you stick your thumbs in your ears and blow raspberries while waving your hands.

Then get the blanket and pillow and enjoy your night on the couch where you can, guess what, watch stuff on SageTV.

That's hilarious - and I'd definitely be on the couch - most likely for multiple nights. After seeing several of the screen shots from other members, she's on board, but she WILL NOT be seeing our Sage again until it's "pretty". After all, I still need the justification/approval for more extenders, TV in the bedroom, TV in the kitchen, additional tuner cards, new server...

Terry

[roussell]

Originally Posted by davephan

I don't know how SageTV will perform as a VM guest. It it works out, then you can periodically take VM snapshots and have a way to easily recover the system if you have trouble in the future.

If you are out of town a lot, and bring a laptop with you, then you should put LogMeIn on the SageTV computer system so you can fix it if needed with remote control. LogMeIn is free. You might also install the web interface so that you can also access it with a web browser.

Dave

It seems to do okay now in trial mode on the VPC - but I've read that the Playon app is CPU hungry so it's use may necessitate moving to a physical box. I can assign multiple processors to a guest but I'm sure it's not as efficient as actually having them in the physical world. I'll beat on it though and see how much it can take.

Remote access isn't a problem - I do that now for the various Mac, Linux and Windows boxes. Where I go is the problem - remote barren/jungle land in Colombia, South America - High speed internet isn't exactly high on list of amenities. Problems that apparently only I can solve always seem to occur when I'm in the most remote location. Hmm, Sun just introduced live fail-over for Virtualbox (like VMware ESX) - maybe I should look into that...

Terry