SageTV and the Online World?

[pzukowski]

It would be good to hear from SageTV's product management what is the roadmap for providing a more robust support of the "online world" for SageTV? It seems that all we can do for now is view youtube/google videos, what about all the other services: Google TV, Vudu, Hulu, Netflix etc. Why does SageTV feel like it is stuck in the Tivo days?
I realize that you can't support all of the services out there and you have to rely on third-party plugins, but you should draw a line in the sand and offer some online services that can replace the traditional cable/satellite world. My experience with most 3-rd party plugins has been awful, case in point is the Hulu plugin that requires a 3-rd party service that does not even work well - your own code has been a lot more stable then the 3-rd parties out there!
You will be asking for us to pay for upgrades to go to version 7 and that is fine, but for those of us who have invested 100's of dollars into whole-house Sage installations it would be good to know where this is all going?
Please look at the future as one without cable/satellite and think about solutions addressing this trend - we do not want to see you guys disappear like Tivo!

[cncb]

I agree. I was hoping for some news about direct integration of services like Netflix or Pandora into the HD200 but it looks like nothing is coming. They did say last year in Brent's interview that they would have some internet radio "support" towards the end of last year but I haven't heard anything since.

[medwynd]

Originally Posted by pzukowski

I realize that you can't support all of the services out there and you have to rely on third-party plugins, but you should draw a line in the sand and offer some online services that can replace the traditional cable/satellite world.

My experience is that there is no solution out there that would replace using a satellite or even a possibly a cable connection but I have found that there is nothing that really compares. Satellite mostly has me locked in because of Sunday Ticket. But even just for shows, there are enough shows on different channels that I couldn't get through some other service.

I would love to be able to get out from under the boot of DirecTv but for what we watch there is just no substitute right now.

[jm9843]

There is an easy solution to this one if you're Sage...

Ship the version 3 extender on the Google TV platform. Come join the discussion - http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48484

Please disregard if you are referring to SageTV Client/Placeshifter.

[pzukowski]

I agree with you, today we cannot completely scrap our cable/satellite connections. However, this will change fairly quickly as more content gets deployed on-line.
This by the way, is a perfect value proposition for Sage - it can now become a dvr for both online and live content! Sage's product management does not seem to see this at all or I am simply not aware of their plans. Once you have a media server deployed at home based on sage it can now collect content from different sources based on your "favorites". This will also improve user's experience for HD content downloaded from the web as it will be cached locally....SageTV is in the perfect place today. It has a robust DVR for TV and now it only needs to add modules (plugins) for web content. I just do not understand why they are not doing anything about it? I don't think that a strategy based on relying on the "community" to develop such support is sound - this worked well when the web was an afterthought to TV viewers, but it is rapidly becoming the way content will be delivered! It should be a key development strategy for the SageTV roadmap.

[medwynd]

Originally Posted by pzukowski

I don't think that a strategy based on relying on the "community" to develop such support is sound - this worked well when the web was an afterthought to TV viewers, but it is rapidly becoming the way content will be delivered!

I haven't seen numbers to support this either way but I think this is just a pipe dream at this point. Maybe among enthusiasts this is true.

My gut says that most Americans do not think of tv in this way. Also with the penetration rates of broadband and the actual speed of those pipes, I do not see this becoming reality any time soon.

[pjpjpjpj]

This topic has been discussed quite a bit in the media lately - seems like at least once every couple of weeks, I see an online article about how more and more cable and satellite users are quitting, and switching to antenna-only with online content as a "supplement". Unfortunately for companies like Sage, those article almost always ignore HTPC solutions and talk about the new TV sets and BD/DVD players that come with the online content built in.

However, there is the article linked in this thread, which is indeed VERY interesting: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48102

As for why Sage has not made a lot of the online content native to its core product (the pandoras and netflixes and all, that seem to be ubiquitous on newer hardware), I suspect, as several have suggested in other threads on this site, that it's a matter of licensing and support. You can't just add that content to your product without some sort of licensing agreement with those companies (i.e., Pandora), and I also suspect that some/all of those companies probably require promises of numbers of users before they agree to let you carry their product. I don't know if Sage can do that. I also suspect that Sage would have to promise to provide online/live support of those products within Sage, 24/7, so that if some bug occurred, it would immediately be remedied, and Sage simply doesn't have the resources to do that.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

This topic has been discussed quite a bit in the media lately - seems like
As for why Sage has not made a lot of the online content native to its core product (the pandoras and netflixes and all, that seem to be ubiquitous on newer hardware), I suspect, as several have suggested in other threads on this site, that it's a matter of licensing and support. You can't just add that content to your product without some sort of licensing agreement with those companies (i.e., Pandora), and I also suspect that some/all of those companies probably require promises of numbers of users before they agree to let you carry their product. I don't know if Sage can do that. I also suspect that Sage would have to promise to provide online/live support of those products within Sage, 24/7, so that if some bug occurred, it would immediately be remedied, and Sage simply doesn't have the resources to do that.

Also there is the issue with supporting all the different content and having to constantly make adjustments to Sage just to pull in the various feeds (and hope they don't shut them down entirely). It seems to me, Sage is much more comfortable just letting 3rd parties (i.e. PlayOn) do all this so they don't have to get into supporting it.