Cablecard... again.

[texneus]

[Soapbox mode]
Sorry, but I must disagree vehemently. I came from WMC. I lived in DRM hell for years. Trust me, you don't want to go there. DRM is not here for our convenience and it is not our friend. It is to here to bend our will to do whatever the recording industry decides we should be allowed to do with legally acquired content (fair use rights be darned) because, you know, we the consumer are the enemy!

Once a recording is in the DRM wrapper, you can't do anything with it except watch it in WMC on the very same computer that recorded it. You cannot put it to your portable device and watch it on a trip. You can't watch it on another computer in your own home. You cannot put it on a video DVD to save it or for the kids to watch in the car. You cannot even open it outside of WMC on the same computer that recorded it.

On top of that, when (not if!) you reinstall windows, all your DRM'd recordings are useless. When (not if!) you upgrade hardware sufficiently enough so that windows now thinks your are on a different PC, your DRM'd recordings are useless. When (not if!) your DRM store becomes corrupted, your DRM'd recordings are useless. When (not if!) you restore from a backup from a month ago to recover the system, your DRM recordings are useless. When (not if!) there is a DRM bug, your DRM'd recordings are useless. Been there, done it all, I don't have a T-shirt because quite frankly, it would be DRM "protected" and require me to use only laundromats owned by the T-shirt provider.

I don't believe for a second SageTV will somehow be better. It would be subject to the same requirements by the same content providers and enforced by the same certification authority. If Sage goes DRM then we all might as well use WMC because it's cheaper and they'll both be just as frustratingly useless for their intended purpose.
[/Soapbox mode]

[PLUCKYHD]

Good post!! That happened to mr an was when I started searching and found sagetv. I lost about a years worth of archived recordings because of the drm bs and that was the last straw for me.

[Taddeusz]

Does Microsoft not provide a way to backup your encryption key like they do with Windows Media Player?

[Biggen]

Originally Posted by texneus

[Soapbox mode]
Sorry, but I must disagree vehemently. I came from WMC. I lived in DRM hell for years. Trust me, you don't want to go there. DRM is not here for our convenience and it is not our friend. It is to here to bend our will to do whatever the recording industry decides we should be allowed to do with legally acquired content (fair use rights be darned) because, you know, we the consumer are the enemy!

Once a recording is in the DRM wrapper, you can't do anything with it except watch it in WMC on the very same computer that recorded it. You cannot put it to your portable device and watch it on a trip. You can't watch it on another computer in your own home. You cannot put it on a video DVD to save it or for the kids to watch in the car. You cannot even open it outside of WMC on the same computer that recorded it.

On top of that, when (not if!) you reinstall windows, all your DRM'd recordings are useless. When (not if!) you upgrade hardware sufficiently enough so that windows now thinks your are on a different PC, your DRM'd recordings are useless. When (not if!) your DRM store becomes corrupted, your DRM'd recordings are useless. When (not if!) you restore from a backup from a month ago to recover the system, your DRM recordings are useless. When (not if!) there is a DRM bug, your DRM'd recordings are useless. Been there, done it all, I don't have a T-shirt because quite frankly, it would be DRM "protected" and require me to use only laundromats owned by the T-shirt provider.

I don't believe for a second SageTV will somehow be better. It would be subject to the same requirements by the same content providers and enforced by the same certification authority. If Sage goes DRM then we all might as well use WMC because it's cheaper and they'll both be just as frustratingly useless for their intended purpose.
[/Soapbox mode]

This!

I was on the SAGE NEEDZ CABELS CARDSZ NOW bandwagon too for a while At least, until I started reading up on DRM and its implication.

Thanks but no thanks. The selling point of Sage it to be able to use extenders and stream content all over my house. If I can't do that what the hell is the point of having it anymore?

[panteragstk]

I'd like native support for DirecTV cards. They may not exist, but they should. Why they scrapped that project I'll never know...(stupid niche market)

[tmiranda]

My position on cable card is that Sage should support it. Many people will not use it, but many others will.

What I'm not certain of is where it should fall on the priority list. (i.e. What new features will we not get if Sage puts a lot of effort and money into cable card support). I can't answer this because I don't know what's on Sage's drawing board right now.

First on the list for me would always be fixing bugs in the existing product.

I'd put native NetFlix and Hulu (and whatever other online sources become popular) support next on the priority list because I think that market is growing and has a lot of potential.

I'd put native iPhone, iPad, Android support next on the priority list for exactly the same reason.

I might put better music support higher on the priority list as well.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I might put better music support higher on the priority list as well.

Give me enough time and I'll get that done. Lots of time. Lots. Studio isn't all that easy.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

My position on cable card is that Sage should support it. Many people will not use it, but many others will.

See I would take that position BUT they would have to use playready's drm to do it and if you look over at media center they even get restrictions and have trouble recording stuff from locals that is drm'd in the software and shouldn't be. I would hate to have those troubles trickle over here that is for sure.

[Audacity]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Have you tried Diamond or changing the grouping/sorting.

I haven't tried Diamond or any other plugins. I looked into it, but I got the impression from the forum here that you need to contend with memory leaks and tweaking the Java runtime memory use; you know, stuff that would make my SageTV setup much more configuration intensive.

I haven't tried changing the grouping/sorting in the stock UI, where do you do this? Basically when grouping by series, I'd like it ordered by the series name. The other view I'd like is listing the individual recordings (not grouped), ordered by time recorded, descending. In other words, the same sort and grouping options that were in BTV and 7MC. Normally I want to see "what recorded recently" or I'm looking for a particular series, and it's most helpful if they are in alphabetic order. I didn't see an option to do this in SageTV.

[jptheripper]

My position is Sage should stay the hell away from cablecard. Basically at work we refer to this as "stop encouraging bad behavior".

If everyone (anyone) jumps on board and supports cablecard, it implies that the DRM implementation is acceptable. It is not. The only way to communicate that is to refuse to support it.

Sage supports the content I want. If the content is not available (i.e. DRM, etc..) I find a different path to get the content into sage. My view is the content should change, not Sage.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Audacity

I haven't tried Diamond or any other plugins. I looked into it, but I got the impression from the forum here that you need to contend with memory leaks and tweaking the Java runtime memory use; you know, stuff that would make my SageTV setup much more configuration intensive.

I haven't tried changing the grouping/sorting in the stock UI, where do you do this? Basically when grouping by series, I'd like it ordered by the series name. The other view I'd like is listing the individual recordings (not grouped), ordered by time recorded, descending. In other words, the same sort and grouping options that were in BTV and 7MC. Normally I want to see "what recorded recently" or I'm looking for a particular series, and it's most helpful if they are in alphabetic order. I didn't see an option to do this in SageTV.

Have you read the manual? Look under Chapter 3 (around page 42). You don't need any plugins.
Have you tried pressing the Options button on your remote?
You can group, sort, and filter to your heart's content. You can also create custom views. And, if you don't like the default recording menus, you can enable the hidden extras and then you will have access to the Malore-style multi-pane recording menus which have even more options. If that's not good enough, you can investigate some of the great plugins for Sage.

Sorting Options
The Sorting Options dialog contains a list of options for sorting the recording list. If a recording
list entry is a group, the first entry in the group’s list is used when determining the group’s sort
rank. Choose from the sorting options listed below:
Oldest/Newest First – Recordings are simply sorted by their recording date.
Title A-Z/Z-A – Sorting is performed on the recorded shows’ titles.
Category – The name of each show’s category is used for sorting. As usual, there is a
choice for reversing this sort.
Orig. Air Date – The recorded show’s original airing date is used for sorting, in oldestto-
most recent or most recent-to-oldest (reversed) order.
Channel Name A-Z/Z-A – The name of the channel where each show was recorded is
used for sorting.
Intelligent – The list will be sorted by SageTV’s recording priority. Manual recordings
are listed before Favorites, then Intelligent Recordings and live TV, followed by watched
shows, with shows marked as Don’t Like listed last. Within each of those sections, the
newer recordings are listed first. The Reversed form of this style simply reverses the sort
order.
ShowID – The recording’s ShowID is used for sorting, in ascending or descending
(reversed) order.
Reverse Sort Order – When checked, the recording list will be sorted in reverse order.
Close – Close the pop-up list without changing the current setting.

Grouping Options
The Grouping Options dialog displays a list of options for how the list of recordings are to be
grouped:
No Grouping – The list of recordings will not be grouped together at all. Every entry in
the list will be an individual recording; there will be no group entries.
Title – Shows with the same title will be grouped together and there will be a group entry
in the list with that title.
Channel Name – Recordings will be grouped according to the name of the channel
where they were recorded.
Category – Recordings will be grouped according to the name of their categories, as
displayed in the detailed information section on the Recording Detail screen.
Close – The standard choice to make when you wish to exit the pop-up menu without
changing the current setting.

Filtering Options
The Filtering Options dialog displays a list of filter options used to determine which types of
recordings are to be shown in the recording list.
Select each of the following filtering options to toggle between not filtering by that
criteria, only include recordings which match the criteria, or exclude recordings which
match the criteria.
o Manual Recordings
o Favorites
o Not Manual Recording or Favorite
o Archived Recordings
o First Runs
o HDTV Recordings
o Watched Recordings
o Recordings marked Don’t Like
Categories Filtered – Select this option to choose the list of categories to be filtered.
When at least one category is selected, you can choose whether the categories are to be
Included or Excluded.
Clear all filters – Clear all filters so that all recordings are included.
Close – Close the dialog.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Audacity

I haven't tried Diamond or any other plugins. I looked into it, but I got the impression from the forum here that you need to contend with memory leaks and tweaking the Java runtime memory use; you know, stuff that would make my SageTV setup much more configuration intensive.

Tiki answered yout other part. There is not "tweaking" involved with Diamond other than increasing your java heap which is pretty straight forward. I don't know what you mean by configuration intense it and the default are pretty staightfoward with the options buttons.