Evaluating SageTV - questions about existing media

[Bizarroterl]

Currently I'm using XBMC for playback of my media from my NAS. I'm very happy with it except for the PVR functionality I need.

So I'm considering jumping ship to SageTV. I downloaded the server & client, installed and played around a while. PVR looks good, but I wasn't able to make much progress with my existing movies/tv shows.

I have my data arranged like this:

\\NAS\HD Movies\[movie title]\movie (typically [movie title].m2ts)
\\NAS\Movies\[movie title]\movie (typically ISO as these are DVDs)
\\NAS\Videos\TV Shows\[tv show]\all episodes files (typically like "The Office.S01E01.avi")


Movie folders will have the movie as a m2ts file (HD) or the DVD ISO and a trailer file. IE Spartacus.m2ts and Spartacus-trailer.m2ts (or Spartacus-trailer.mov)

The trailers appear first on the movie list. How do I get them to not show as a movie? Ideally they will only be accessible as a option to the movie.

How do I get DVDs to appear properly, IE "Gross Pointe Blank" instead of "Gross Pointe Blank.ISO"

How do I get tv shows to appear something like they do in XBMC, IE a list of shows, select one, see seasons for the show, select one and then see a list of episodes in order?
Currently the appear as raw files, IE "The Office S01E01.avi" mixed in with movies.

[Fuzzy]

I'd look into MyMovies for your movie library (using the SageMyMovies plugin). I believe it supports trailer files as well (not exactly sure on the implementation though). As for tv shows, my personal preference is to import them into the recordings database using BMT. This will allow them to be treated as tv shows in sage, which, combined with using the Malore menus, will allow very customizable filtering/grouping views. There is also the TVBrowser plugin, which I believe allows combining both recorded and imported tv, and allows grouping by season info as well (still need the Season/Episode info tagged with BMT).

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'd look into MyMovies for your movie library (using the SageMyMovies plugin). I believe it supports trailer files as well (not exactly sure on the implementation though). As for tv shows, my personal preference is to import them into the recordings database using BMT. This will allow them to be treated as tv shows in sage, which, combined with using the Malore menus, will allow very customizable filtering/grouping views. There is also the TVBrowser plugin, which I believe allows combining both recorded and imported tv, and allows grouping by season info as well (still need the Season/Episode info tagged with BMT).

As does diamond without the need to import them into recordings

[Bizarroterl]

Thanks. I'll start setting it up to see where I get. Undoubtedly there will be more questions as I progress....

[Bizarroterl]

I'm getting close with the movies. I started a thread in the Sage MyMovies forum for that.

I installed the Diamond UI Mod. Should I install the Malore Menus too? If so, where are they? I went through the plugins and found several that are enhancements for malore menus, but nothing that appeared to actually be the Malore Menus.

I wasn't able to get what I wanted for trailers. SageMyMenus has a trailers option, but it is for playing trailer(s) before a movie.

I'm going to install BMT next....

[Fuzzy]

The malore menus are a 'hidden' feature built into the default UI. To enable, go to the System information screen, and key in 5309. A little dot will appear at the top, indicating the 'unsupported extras' are enabled. These are mostly features that were originally created by 3rd party developers, and have since been rolled into the product. however, since they weren't originated by sage, they are 'unsupported' - even though they have all be drastically improved over the years by sage. For info, check the thread here: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50000

[Q*bert]

Originally Posted by Bizarroterl

Currently I'm using XBMC for playback of my media from my NAS. I'm very happy with it except for the PVR functionality I need.

Wow Bizarroterl, I am in exactly the same situation you are but you're a few steps in front of me! I haven't installed SageTV yet.

I love XBMC and hate to give it up. I am familiar with MyMovies after an aborted run at Windows Media Center. My recollection is that MyMovies is actually pretty nice, but XBMC is really nice...

Please keep us posted as to your opinion of SageTV through the eyes of a (former?) XBMC user.

[stuckless]

As a former Xbmc user, i LOVED XMBC. I had 4 Xboxes all modded so just to run xbmc. When I switched to SageTV I was frustrated at first, but I jumped with both feet, and decided to learn it and use it.

2+ years later, I haven't fired up an xmbc a very long time. The last time I fired up Xbmc is was royally frustrated. It didn't work the way that sagetv works Even while I was using Xmbc, I was frustrated by having to update each xbox. In the end, I had 4 different xboxes running 4 different versions, because it was PITA to keep them all running the same version. Then I had to configure 4 different xboxes all the same way, so that the user experience was the same.

Personally, I'd drop xbmc, and go with SageTV + Extenders. One server install that easy to keep up to date. Xbmc looks nice, but SageTV, in my experience just works better, and offers way more features. To give some idea of how far SageTV has come even in terms of the UI... My brother, who recently bought a boxee box (and loves it), came to visit. I showed him sagetv, and his comment was "I like boxee. Your sagetv has more eye candy and is smoother than the boxee, but I'll stick with boxee". I was almost blown away when he said that SageTV and eye candy in the same sentence... and I run the default UI.

I think in the end... you are either a person that enjoys function over form or form over function (although today, I think sagetv does a nice job of both form and function). I moved away from Xmbc because my xboxes would not play HD content. ie, it didn't function well for my needs. SageTV functioned great, and I didn't care so much about how it 'looked'.

Anyways... my suggestion... just start using sagetv exclusively... and you'll probably start to realize that you'll actually like it... as it is. You'll discover features of it that you didn't even know existed because you'll actually be using it

[Q*bert]

Stuckless - Thanks for the feedback.

I don't know what XBMC was like back in the xbox days, but the latest Dharma release (Win, Linux) is really smooth.

It's a big difference though between a media player and a PVR. A media player can crash and it's no big deal. But if my wife can't reliably change channels and watch TV, I'm in big trouble.

Any comments on the SageTV's WAF?

[OneOfMany]

My wife has had a love/hate relationship with the various PVR products I have played with over the years. Various free ones, MCE2004, 2005, Win MCE, and Sage. I started with v.6, and granted I spent a lot of time setting it up and making it work almost perfectly. It had some burps, lost connections occasionally, and didn't always work perfectly. For me, no big deal. My wife OTOH.. complained. So, I shut down my Sage server, turned off my PC clients, and hooked everything up the old-fashioned way...

That lasted exactly six days.

So, I reconnected, upgraded to v7, and life has been blissful. I'm guessing she's onboard as I overheard her at a friends place extolling it's virtues over their PVRs with his wife..

Grant

One great plugin that makes channel changing easier (as she watches a lot of Live TV) is the Mini-Guide. It makes finding and changing channels much easier

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Q*bert

Any comments on the SageTV's WAF?

I'm sort of cheating... I'm treating my wife like I used to treat my kids at the McDonald's playland... ie, Instead of just telling them that we are leaving now... I given them a 5 minute, then a 3 minute warning, and then we leave

I've been telling my wife for a few months that we are going to be make the full switch to sagetv. So, right now, I have half my recordings on a Bell PVR and the other half on the SageTV pvr.

I figure in a couple months, I'll be finished the transition. So far, she has some minor comments, good and bad. ie, she likes the fact that shows are recorded and automatically commercial skipped, but she finds the interface fairly complicated (the bell pvr has 1 screen for recordings).

But she surprised me the other night because I walked into the room and she was watching a movie... turns out she turned it on, navigated to the movies and started playing it. I'd say my plan is working well

[Fuzzy]

I guess I just never really gave my wife a chance. to be fair, when I started out with sage using 2 cable STB, a zoned USB-UIRT, and a PVR-500, everything just worked so well, she never had a problem with it. Since moving the R-5000's devices, with inconsistant H.264 video, there were a lot more problems, so WAF dropped a bit - but all it took was for the system to crash when I was out of town for 2 months, and she temporarily got the cableco's Moxi based PVR - to have her permanently accept sage.

[Bizarroterl]

A bit of SageTV vs XBMC impressions. Note that these are my impressions and your experiences will undoubtedly be different. Much of this is based on my needs and preferences, so please refrain from making this a flame war. SageTV v7 is set up using SageMM, Diamond, BMT, and Malore. XBMC v10 is set up with the default skin (Confluence).

MOVIES:
I've fought with MyMovies for a few hours and I've finally gotten my movies imported ino SageTV. MyMovies is really crippled in that you cannot just enter the imdb for a movie and have it pull in ALL the data. With a bit of effort you can edit most of a movie's data in MyMovies, so it does work. If you download videos as I do be prepared for a lot of manual editing. In XBMC the built in scraper is very accurate and fast. If you want to have greater control you can use one of the other scrapers, I use EMM. It gives you detail control over your collection. Both the built in and EMM scrape fanart, while with SageTV you need to run another tool (BMT, MyMovies with added capabilities purchased, or both). I have about a 1000 movies, with approx 75% DVD rips, 20% BR Rips, and the rest are downloads.

TRAILERS:
SageTV is hostile towards the XBMC method for storing trailers. In XBMC you can save the trailer with the movies, IE
Movies/Castaway.m2ts
Movies/Castaway-trailer.mov
In XBMC you can select a movies and in the detail info page you can then select "Play Trailer". With SageTV there is no select movie then select the trailer. SageMM allows trailers as far as a watch before movie. This feature appears to work as a random before the movie lead in. It is a nice feature that XBMC doesn't have (as far as I know). I find that I and most of my guests often want to watch a trailer first to see if they want to watch the entire movie. So far I haven't been able to find a way to do this in SageTV. Because of this I figured that as far as SageTV I wouldn't be watching trailers.

TV SHOWS:
My collection of TV shows (as well as movies) is well organized. Naming is relatively standard like [Series Name][S01E03].XXX with various data in the name, IE Star Trek S01E01_The Man Trap.m2ts. My goal was to have SageTV show these in a series/season/episode manner.
After 3 hours of working with BMT/SageTV trying to get my collection of TV shows to appear properly I'm about to give up. BMT doesn't support specials, and trying to do something manually appears to be impossible. I've been concentrating on one series - Primeval. After 3 hours I gave up on specials & I don't have a usable list of shows. IE

Primeval, Season 1 episodes appear as:
In SageTV
Primeval Jan 6, 2011
Primeval Jan 6, 2011
etc.
Primeval Jan 6, 2011

in XBMC
01. Leapin' Lizards 7.0
02. Underground Infestation 7.0
etc
06. Future Foe 6.7

In SageTv I get no episode name and a date that corresponds to the date on the file. In a couple folders the date was bogus, IE Sept 13, 30828. Using the OS date on the file makes sense if your TV shows are recorded in SageTV, but it becomes useless when you pull them from DVD/BR or downloads. In XBMC I see aired dates, episode names, etc. with the episode names prepended with the episode number. SageTV shows me if the episode is in HD in the list, XBMC doesn't, though XBMC shows that info a more in the show detail pane.

PVR CAPABILITY:
This is easy. SageTV has it, XBMC doesn't.

OTHER THOUGHTS:
With SageTV I have to have a server. This gives me centralized control over my media and is virtually a must once you run more than one viewing location and want to share tuners. For me this isn't an issue as I have a ESXi box and adding servers is simple. One of the things that attracted me to SageTV is the extenders. If you have more than one location the cost advantage gets big quick. XBMC does have a centralized database capability, but there aren't any extenders. The costs for hardware has been dropping so the Sage cost advantage seems to be less and less as time goes by.

I'm a little surprised with SageTV though. I did expect something a little more "together". I was able to get the movies portion very close to what I wanted, and in some ways exceeded that. However it took quite a while, involved installing several softwares and then coordinating them.

As far as TV Shows? If they're imported, XBMC is worlds ahead of Sage. For me unfortunately this is a critical item. I'm in the process of trying to move away from the "Happy new year your bill is going up another $5" DirecTV merrygoround. This necessitates that a significant portion of my shows will be downloaded. Some aren't available through Hulu, Playon, etc or not available there in HD. I haven;t given up on Sage, but it appears that I may be staying with XBMC and using Sage only as a PVR.

[mistergq]

WAF - prior to STV, I used Beyond TV with a XBMC (on xbox) viewing recordings, and Hauppauge extender. This was okay, but the WAF was pretty low. Right before we moved to our house, I switched to STV with 1 PC running a client. WAF increased but she would still use a STB . Then the HD 100 came out, and I bought two. Suddenly, the WAF significantly increased and she stopped watching live tv with the cable boxes. When we moved to our current house, we had STB at every tv, but one day I noticed she was not using them at all. Now all that are at TVs are Sage HD extenders.

The only complaint I get from the wife is that we don't have Video On Demand. We have the PlayOn plugin, but that is not exactly the same.

[ranger]

Originally Posted by Bizarroterl

BMT doesn't support specials, and trying to do something manually appears to be impossible. I've been concentrating on one series - Primeval. After 3 hours I gave up on specials & I don't have a usable list of shows.

Agreed that support of specials is sadly lacking in BMT, however you CAN edit the show information manually through the BMT web interface. I simply followed thetvdb convention and set them as season zero and filled in the data by copy and paste from thetvdb.

[Q*bert]

Great feedback everyone!

I've now played with SageTV for a couple of hours and I've seen enough to be convinced that it is a much better PVR solution than WMC. I pulled the trigger and bought a license and HD300 bundle.

bizzaroterl's comments really confirm my fears though about giving up my Win7 XBMC setup. It appears to be much better (easier, at least) at maintaining a library of movies and tv shows.

I may use both and justify the hardware expenses by shedding all the nickel and dime (actually $10 and $20) cable addons. This isn't the best solution from a maintenance standpoint, but XBMC is relatively low maintenance already. Hopefully SageTV can be too.

I'm thinking of using HD300's on all TV's in addition to atom based PC's on the two main TV's, switching between them via HDMI.

Anyone else doing something like this?

[Bizarroterl]

That's where I may end up - extenders and XBMC PCs at each location. I am looking at possibly forgoing the extender completely and use a script to move the Sage recordings over to XBMC.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Bizarroterl

That's where I may end up - extenders and XBMC PCs at each location. I am looking at possibly forgoing the extender completely and use a script to move the Sage recordings over to XBMC.

Or just run SageTVClient on those XBMC machines - and get rid of that XB stuff...

[Q*bert]

Originally Posted by Bizarroterl

That's where I may end up - extenders and XBMC PCs at each location. I am looking at possibly forgoing the extender completely and use a script to move the Sage recordings over to XBMC.

I thought of that too, but then you give up live TV. Maybe there's a reasonable way to switch between XBMC and SageTV Client running on the same PC. USB-IRT and Girder maybe?

Whatever I do it's got to be wife friendly. An extender and separate XBMC PC is probably the safest, most reliable solution.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Or just run SageTVClient on those XBMC machines - and get rid of that XB stuff...

Fuzzy, IMHO XBMC is such good a media player for a large, complex library (8+TB on an unRaid server and growing) that I'm very skeptical SageTV can get to the same level. I'm going to give it a fair shot as I don't need to do anything permanent for a month or two, so we'll see.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Q*bert

Fuzzy, IMHO XBMC is such good a media player for a large, complex library (8+TB on an unRaid server and growing) that I'm very skeptical SageTV can get to the same level. I'm going to give it a fair shot as I don't need to do anything permanent for a month or two, so we'll see.

Hostly, I've never used XBMC. But what features make it different than any other media browser out there? and have you looked at SageMyMovies?