SageTV acquired by Google

[Zippster]

Hmmmm, not gonna make full page rant, but IMO, not so good for us end Sage users. Best to start making plans to look out for us and be over prepared then out in the cold.

[GovtMule]

Holy crap this pisses me off... I just ditched all my WMC gear and invested in SageTV and some HD300's this year!!!! Un-freakin-believable!!!!

I understand the developer probably made a lot of money in this deal but I hope he is not doing so at our expense. Maybe he will maintain some sort of control over the project... guess it doesn't help to spit and cuss over it.. just hope for the best.

[d2tw4all]

So Google bought them and they didn't leave a lot of info. It just happened. I'd say it's safe to assume they won't be selling any more of the SageTV we all know and love at this point. These things happen, it's TV guys you'll all live and honestly most of use who have invested in SageTV have working systems that are probably doing everything that we need them to do. I was a longtime MythTV user who went over to Sage because of the awesome standalone extenders. I'm not sure what google is going to do with this technology but I'm hoping for the best at this point. For now my Sage setup is up and running and I even have a spare HD200 just in case, so I'm not going to worry about things at this point. Truthfully, except for the software and extenders, all of the other technology you have invested to make Sage work can be applied to alternative solutions. Going from MythTV to sage only required me to buy the software and extenders and I retired the PC based MythTV frontends that I had been using. Myth is a ROYAL BITCH to get working, but once it works it's absolutely bulletproof. There are definitely features of Myth that I miss in Sage, but if the world collapses and a year or two from now I feel the need to move away from the SageTV that I have set up now, I'll just have to consider what Google has done with SageTV, or move back to MythTV, or look into alternatives at that time. No need to go crazy at this point, we have no idea what the future holds. Ultimately I think this could be a good thing for us but time will tell. Jeff to me seems way way too happy for this to be a bad thing for us, I'm sure he'd be happy walking way with big cases of cash, but I just don't see him going on the record the way he has showing how pleased he is, so to me there must be something good brewing, let's just all be optimistic, and worst case scenario we move on to the next DVR solution out there.

What if SageTV got embedded into the DVR's you get from the cable company like they have been doing with Tivo? Though not perfect, I'd just love to see Verizon FioS offer a sagetv based system, where the shows were stored in the Verizon or google cloud. I don't have comskip setup and to have to maintain all the infrastructure, recording gear, power, etc. for the current SageTV setup I have, I'd give it all up in a heartbeat for the majority of features that I use being available baked into a solution and cloud hosted. Guess we'll just see what happens.

Tom

[d2tw4all]

Going into Disaster Recovery mode, being the planner that I am, I just posted on the MythTV forums to get the scoop on what's been advanced in that solution since January 2010 when I switched to Sage. The biggest problems I had back then were getting the HD PVR to work reliably, I got it to function but it was extremely buggy. At least if they have worked that issue out, I can have faith that I have a fallback plan that is immune to acquisition... MythTV being on linux makes it somewhat challenging for Windows folks, but ultimately it's a very stable platform and I'd have no problem going back to it if they have gotten the HD PVR working. Really the thing I'll miss the most is my extenders, they make SageTV bulletproof for me. I won't jump ship until we know what the future holds, and if/when something jumps up that makes moving away from Sage a requirement, but ultimately I will need to get back up to speed with MythTV so that I'm not that much further behind the 8 ball should the need arise.

I really do wish they had posted a message a little more descriptive than the one that was presented. Hopefully they will also have a fire sale of all the gear left in inventory so that folks who invested in Sage will have the ability to complete their setups or get some gear as backup, but they may not as they would then need to support it. Guess we'll just have to see what happens, we'll probably see them end up on woot in a year or something as standalone media players with no support included...

Tom

[TBacker]

First off, congrats to the Sage team. I'm sure they made out well, but more than that, it's a validation that a company such as Google saw value in what Sage has accomplished thus far.

That said, Sage as a community focused product has ended, IMHO.

Google desperately wants the approval of the motion picture industry, the music industry, the advertising industry, and so on. That means:

• DRM
• Strong restrictions on content storage (only with explicit studio approval)
• Viewing habit tracking for targeted ads
• Ad insertion, whether it be graphics or video pre-rolls
• Tracking of user-stored media and automated blocking if it's deemed to be an illegal copy
• Possible disabling of any commercial skipping capability (at least for national ads)

And that's if they bought Sage to keep it somewhat in-tact and re-brand it. I think there is an equal if not greater chance that they simply bought it to get access to ready-made, already debugged, source code and hardware to frankenstein into their own projects.

I'd love to be optimistic, but I think, minimally, it will be made different enough as to negate our current investments of time, money, and hardware.


Sorry, but Google only does what is good for Google. If the end user benefits, its merely icing on the cake. They have to convince me that Sage's future is anything but dimmed by this.

[iolaus]

Originally Posted by traker1001

Personally I think this was a completely gutless, cowardly and unethical move on Sage team side. Not only do They walk with no warning and a extremely crappy statement, no longer have to support sage, Honor any of the contracts, deal with customers anymore, But they sell what was a great product to a competitor who will most likely kill it, Rather than doing something to make sure of it's continued survival.

But I guess I am only one of an increasingly rare breed who wouldn't even considering selling his soul for a few suitcases of money.

And Even if by some miracle google doesn't kill it, IT will most definitely never be the same again.

Although they don't really give a crap, I absolutely do blame Jeff and his team and I believe there are much better ways whey could have handled this if they had actually given a crap.

Agreed. SageTV would be nothing today without the dedicated users and developers that just got thrown under the bus.

[thomaszoo]

One of the things I don't think I have seen in the previous 300+ posts is the analogy of the plugins to apps on the android platform. Google made it as easy as they could for those app developers. Without it the android platform would have failed. Without the plugins, SageTV may not even exist today.

If Google does just kill Sage, why did they even buy it in the first place? It was certainly no threat to them. The user community loves them, as evidenced by the number of posts in the last 24 hours (and I suspect even more as other find out in the next day or so). If they do kill it, I would be unlikely to go with GoogleTV (obviously a POS). If they put ads in it, I would not be a happy camper. My hope is they allow the STV team to continue on with more development $ under the direction of Jeff.

Wayne

[matterofrecord]

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst

I think as sage users we have to serious look at making a BACKUP COPY OF THE FORUM ASAP and placing the info somewhere else.

I do not have technical knowledge do this. Can anyone help with this? Perhaps we should make a new thread about how to do this?

I have created a seperate thread in general discussions about making a forum backup.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=503218

PS I don't blame the sagetv crew for selling. Everyone has their price ( and google can afford it). And remmember big rich companies can always afford to build competition if they didn't sell so they had little real choice.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

No-one sold his soul - people sold a company that was theirs to sell. Get some perspective.

And how can you say how you would react unless you do in fact have something that Google would offer a lot of money for? I suspect you haven't...

However, If SageTV's contract gave us EPG data and service with the purchase price, then either the new owner needs to fulfill that contract, or refund our purchase money.
Any lawyers here? The one I just talked to said Sage is indeed in a contract with it's users, and failure by either the outgoing or incoming owners are responsible to honor the terms.
Throughts?

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by SteveD

For us that don't know how to setup the XMLTV, would the experts post a guide.

Thanks.

x2 please - prefereably on a site that isn't controlled by Sage in any way

[flavius]

This reminds me of our tiny company being swallowed by a much, much larger fish, almost ten years ago now. When Jeff is saying he's quite happy now, that most likely means that everybody that was with SageTV when they closed the deal got to keep their job.

Maybe, there will be some more info about what happened and/ or what they will be working on, but probably not. I do hope they are not being sucked into that GoogleTV vortex.

SageTV is over, that much is clear. It's time to move on.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by logsvp

I really don't understand all the doom and gloom

In Jeff's announcement he says:


To me this sounds absolutely fantastic

SageTV looks to be moving mainstream - I guess we could even find it embedded in TV's thereby removing the need for extender's.

I for one am looking forward to the next set of announcements on where SageTV is headed - If Jeff is pleased about it, then I suspect I will be to

There is some truth about embedded TV's: my sony bravia 3 engine allows me to access all my Sage programs via Windows Media Player...no extender, no hardware required.

[bastafidli]

I believe HD300 is not Sage developed product, but somewhat generic extender sourced in Asia, with Sage bits on it. Does anybody know the source of these extenders?

[tvmaster2]

So, anyone having difficulty getting anything out of Hauppauge in the last couple of weeks?
What would be the next logical thing for Google to purchase?
tick tick tick

[Torkild]

Originally Posted by bastafidli

I believe HD300 is not Sage developed product, but somewhat generic extender sourced in Asia, with Sage bits on it. Does anybody know the source of these extenders?

HD300 is an Sigma Designs SMP8654 which is the same chipset used in the WDTV Live Plus Media Player.

It has SageTV's on firmware.

[mayamaniac]

Damn you Google, why couldn't you buy Snapstream instead. I'm curious to know if Google did approached Snapstream first and Snapstream demanded (pinky to chin) "One Billion Dollar" and Google said F@%# OFF and went to SageTV.

But seriously, who knows what the future holds for SageTV end users at this point. Hopefully, we will find out within the coming weeks. But being a SageTV user and seeing how Jeff/Narflex runs the company, how he treats end users, and his personality in a few interviews, I have faith that if Jeff could help it, he will always look out for us end users. From his words, he's saying he will work with Google, so this means that he is involved in some capacity with whatever that is planned. Hopefully Jeff will do what he can to keep SageTV end users happy.

[matterofrecord]

Google are not a search giant they are an internet advertising based company. That is how they make their money.

Google wants people on the net because they make their money from net based ads.
Almost everything google has released so far is related to getting people to use the net more.

andriod - net friendly phones that people can afford
chrome OS laptop ( without net access its a brick ),
youtube ( notice no official download/watch offline option),
google docs ( poor/non-existance offline support).

I think google buying sage is just a code raid and then kill operation by google.

And heres What I think will happen with the sage code.

I envisage a propriety dvr box connected to your tele and your internet called googlesage ( or something more or less lame, something cute). you will be able to surf the web from it obviously. It will limit commercial skipping. They chose sage because it uses java this means you can reduce cost using chorme os and arm based chips. It will store information about what television programs you watch.

Googlesage will bringing google to the living room. By incoporating it with a dvr they will know what television programs people watch. Knowing what people watch on television will give advertisers a better idea about what sort of person the customer is. They will then use this information to better target specific ads toward you.

As well as surfing the internet and enabling interent only shows on your television possible future options are;

Google buying the entire adbreak from the broadcaster and overlay the network ads with more percise targeted adverts downloaded from the internet. Naturally the user will be encouraged to visit the advertisers website. ( with click through cash going to google)

Another possible route.
The googlesage box should be able to predict which ad ( or product placement) you are watching at any moment during a television program by figuring out which program you are watching and how many minutes and seconds thourgh that program you are.
An example say you are 25 minutes into the lastest episode of the "xfactor". Its an ad break and there is an advert for "dominoes pizza". You will be able to pause the tv and press a button on your remote and which will take you to dominoes pizza online ordering. (All with some click through cash going to google obvioulsy. )

Advertisers will like the possability so networks will have to accept it. The googlesage box will probably be cheap ( sold at less than build cost price like xbox and playstation are) but will make up for it in ad click revenue increasing googles main business - money from online advertising.


This leaves no place for sage we have come to know and love. The shop is being closed because they have no intention on continuing sage in it's current form. I suggest you download all the current plugins you need; console yourself that you knew sagetv when it was cool; and then watch this video about google the info giant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfV6RzE30

But there is hope because when there is a gap in the market there is an opporunity. Just a shame it's not sage.

[tvmaster2]

At least T-Mobile users have a year or so to decide how they want to procede before AT&T swallows them.

Not so with Sage - at least as of this writing.

Store closed - software gone - communication severed.

not nice

which seems out of character from the Sage brass.

everyone has a price, I guess Google knew SageTV's

and now we are screwed

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

and now we are screwed

Has your setup stopped working then?

[hoep]

some (personal) experience about the info policy from several M&A projects in the past:

in your original announcement you should at least always release the benefits of the M&A project for the customer base

-> no info about that means that
a) the damage by speculation is even better than the damage caused by releasing infos..
b) they don't care about what others could think

none of both options make me wanna sing and dance

shutting down the store (and the email makes me think it's not just a rebranding issue) isn't different - why should they miss the revenues of the sales within the next couple of weeks (i think they could sell a lot of licenses/hd 300s) - if they would not have to think about the consequences of doing so?

i would need 3-4 hd300s to be safe for the next couple of years