SageTV acquired by Google

[valnar]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Why? It's still working...

Of course, but they have a more vested interest in their Sage setup. People with 2-4 tuners could....if a gun was pointed to our heads....find an alternate product to do most of what we want. I know of nothing extensible that could handle 8 tuners in a client/server model outside of Sage.

[dead_ferrets]

Wow, I was out of the loop on the weekend...

Congrats to Jeff and the SageTV team! You must all be on cloud 9 (assuming of course the whole team gets to go to Google). This sounds like a fantastic exit strategy for the business and an outstanding opportunity to take your ideas to the next level.

I very much look forward to whatever it is you're going to build with Google as the expertise your team will bring to Google can only make their efforts that much more excellent.

In the mean time though, I will continue to happily use my Sage setup and hope you continue the EPG for us.

[stanger89]

I've only got 4 tuners, but I've not jumped off anything yet. Jeff seems pretty excited about the future of SageTV with this, so I find that encouraging. Though I am planning to cover my bases and try and get caught up on what else it out there to cover my needs should I need/decide to change.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Though I am planning to cover my bases and try and get caught up on what else it out there to cover my needs should I need/decide to change.

I think that many of us would be interested in your findings.

[logsvp]

Originally Posted by valnar

In the past, I remember hearing from Sagezillas on this forum that have multiterabyte arrays and something like 8 tuners in their setup. I wonder if any of them have jumped off a bridge?

Well I recently downgraded from 12 tuners to 10 tuners (a move forced on me by the BBC in the UK moving their transmissions to DVB-S2 which meant I had to change my hardware). I survived that move and as rickgillyon says above, it is all still working. Anyway, I think dvblogic will allow more than 4 tuners on WMC when the next beta is released - I don't see it being a problem (yet)

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by valnar

Of course, but they have a more vested interest in their Sage setup. People with 2-4 tuners could....if a gun was pointed to our heads....find an alternate product to do most of what we want. I know of nothing extensible that could handle 8 tuners in a client/server model outside of Sage.

nPVR should do it, looked possible last time I checked it out. It'll be a long time before I head that way though...

[stanger89]

At this point I'd say it's rather unlikely I'd choose another PC-based PVR solution. I certainly will not be using anything that requires me to use a PC for playback, so that basically means stick with SageTV, 7MC with Xboxen, or Dish or DTV.

[Ender]

Firstly I would say congrats to Jeff and team at Sage, they worked hard these last nine years, hopefully our adventure is not over just yet.

On the speculation side, I wonder if Google bought Sage for it's DVR back end, as has been discussed, but more specifically for the Intelligent Recording engine. Think about it, a googleized sagetv could use the IR to suggest movies, and shows that could be purchased, or rented form a youtube ppv server. They could also pitch this idea to cable cos, who could integrate the tech to drive ppv purchases. As i see it the wiz.bin holds all the viewing habits of ours, and is not google in the information dissemination game so they can sell ads/services?

Just my two cents...

My ultimate hope is, going forward, that we are not forgotten after all I was about to purchase a HD300, well such is life. In my current setup, as long the epg data does not go away, and no more glitches rear its head I will happily continue with sage.

As Jeff stated, support will continue for existing customers. This gives me hope for the future, whatever that may bring.

[aflat]

Originally Posted by stanger89

At this point I'd say it's rather unlikely I'd choose another PC-based PVR solution. I certainly will not be using anything that requires me to use a PC for playback, so that basically means stick with SageTV, 7MC with Xboxen, or Dish or DTV.

Don't forget Tivo. It's not cheap, especially if you buy Lifetime. I used to have my Tivo boxes set up so they could play movies from my PC, but it did require transcoding sometimes. It's workable, but not nearly as nice as Sage. I too won't ever go back to PC clients, I've been spoiled too much now.

[calypsocowboy]

I was out all weekend and came back to this as well. Wow, I moved over a few months ago from WMC, just before my XBox RRODed.

I'm not sure what to think about this, but like others have said, I can't think this is good. Google is an ad company and I've had enough of their ads. I had an Android phone but dropped it to go back to something similar.

Like other have said, what I have will work, but I only have just the server and an extender I bought about 6 months ago. I was planning on another extender or client license in the next few months, as of right now I can't do that.

I'll give Sage a little while to figure things out, but I'd really like my environment to be stable before the new season starts in the fall.

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by wayner

Rakesh, the owner of Snapstream / BeyondTV has a blog posting on this deal. His main conclusion

http://rake.sh/blog/2011/06/19/my-ta...ion-of-sagetv/

Rakesh also lauded GoogleTV a year ago when it was first announced and stated that GoogleTV is where the consumer market was going. So he missed the boat the first time, and I think he is missing the boat this time. All the criticism of GoogleTV is it needs to have local DVR capabilities. So why it does need cloud access, it needs local too. Otherwise, Google just spent good money to get nothing.

[bastafidli]

Originally Posted by stanger89

At this point I'd say it's rather unlikely I'd choose another PC-based PVR solution. I certainly will not be using anything that requires me to use a PC for playback, so that basically means stick with SageTV, 7MC with Xboxen, or Dish or DTV.

What is your take on the DNLA support built into most of current televisions as a playback device?

[asirota]

First let me say congrats to the SageTV folks. I spent the better part of 3 years between 2004 and 2007 and a 20,000 bank loan trying to get to market a consumer and commerical SageTV powered box into physical fitness establishments. I sold a few custom boxes for my friends who would/could not get a PVR at home. At the time it was a marvelous invention.

A few things that completely prevented me from getting any traction was:

1. Complete lack of understanding of what a PVR does for you

2. Lack of HDTVs ready to accept these into the living room - analog connections suck and only recently has HDTV penetration come around

3. Horrible integration with cable boxes/satellite boxes -- IR ports don't cut it !

4. Price -- devices had to be around $100 rather than $1000 to be useful.

I think this is an absolutely terrific move. Consider ALL of the time you all have spent making SageTV better an investment in your and your kids future in terms of how entertainment will be consumed.

If we are all very very lucky, Google will introduce TVs with PVRs built in that are ready to record any sort of signal INCLUDING over the air antenna. Future TVs will come ready to

a) play your pictures, music and video off your network
b) record whatever you have connected to the back of your TV
c) search and interface with the net

I think this is a terrific development. I just wish Google would consider all us SageTV enthusiasts as early on that beta program they will eventually run. That will be worth it for me

Alex Sirota
www.currentinternet.com - (now defunct)

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by asirota

First let me say congrats to the SageTV folks. I spent the better part of 3 years between 2004 and 2007 and a 20,000 bank loan trying to get to market a consumer and commerical SageTV powered box into physical fitness establishments. I sold a few custom boxes for my friends who would/could not get a PVR at home. At the time it was a marvelous invention.

A few things that completely prevented me from getting any traction was:

1. Complete lack of understanding of what a PVR does for you

2. Lack of HDTVs ready to accept these into the living room - analog connections suck and only recently has HDTV penetration come around

3. Horrible integration with cable boxes/satellite boxes -- IR ports don't cut it !

4. Price -- devices had to be around $100 rather than $1000 to be useful.

I think this is an absolutely terrific move. Consider ALL of the time you all have spent making SageTV better an investment in your and your kids future in terms of how entertainment will be consumed.

If we are all very very lucky, Google will introduce TVs with PVRs built in that are ready to record any sort of signal INCLUDING over the air antenna. Future TVs will come ready to

a) play your pictures, music and video off your network
b) record whatever you have connected to the back of your TV
c) search and interface with the net

I think this is a terrific development. I just wish Google would consider all us SageTV enthusiasts as early on that beta program they will eventually run. That will be worth it for me

Alex Sirota
www.currentinternet.com - (now defunct)

Maybe this is overly optimistic, but you may be right. I think extenders or servers with either can connect to an HDHOmerun device or cable cards is the waive of the future. Then the googletv stb will compliment it. If that is what they are heading for, your theory is a good way to go. But we just don't know and silence creates all that is needed for speculation.

[jriskin]

I've been using Sage since 2003, its been a long ride. Trying to stay optimistic, leaving the forums open was a huge win, but with the store closed and no message or even hints from the guys at Sage, i'm definitely worried. I would have hoped that they would say something like 'don't worry guys, great stuff coming down the pipeline' or anything that might hint that things will work out for existing users. But, that absence, worries me...

Crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath...

[wayner]

Originally Posted by asirota

4. Price -- devices had to be around $100 rather than $1000 to be useful.

And we all wish that we can buy a Ferrari for $10,000.

Sorry, but I have to call BS on this price. It is totally unrealistic to have a high powered PVR solution and only expect to pay the price of (at that time) a mid-sized hard drive.

The PVR offered by my cable company (you can buy STBs from the cable companies here in Canada) is $600 for a 500GB two-tuner system (a SA/Cisco 8642HD) that is a total POS compared to Sage.

Maybe expecting extenders for $100 is reasonable but certainly not a full system.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by mistergq

Maybe this is overly optimistic, but you may be right. I think extenders or servers with either can connect to an HDHOmerun device or cable cards is the waive of the future. Then the googletv stb will compliment it. If that is what they are heading for, your theory is a good way to go. But we just don't know and silence creates all that is needed for speculation.

That's fine for LiveTV but you need to have some storage to save your programs. I have ZERO interest in ever watching Live TV again - I record everything and with sports I watch in near real-time where I watch an hour or two later than the actual event.

I suspect that most SageTV users are the same.

[gabrielcab]

Reading this thread has became as depressive as reading local news online papers comments. Google is not Microsoft, if the headings where "Microsot acquired SageTV" that would be a real bad news, but its Google. Why Google would buy this company to destroy it? Google doesn't have a MCE , it only have GoogleTV and it is just pure crap. While this world of "media centers" is more like a hobby, it has a real future because of it practical use "if tv/movies congress lobbyist wont get in a rampage giving obscene sums of money to politicians".

The little that has been published are really good news

By teaming up with Google, we believe our ideas will reach an even larger audience of users worldwide on many different products, platforms and services.

So as someone here said, stop being crybabies and don't spread the apocalypse word as this is not the end. Even in the worst scenario, i think with hacks and plug-ins we can still get EPG that is the only real thing that could destroy Sage in the short time.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by gabrielcab

Reading this thread has became as depressive as reading local news online papers comments. Google is not Microsoft, if the headings where "Microsot acquired SageTV" that would be a real bad news, but its Google. Why Google would buy this company to destroy it? Google doesn't have a MCE , it only have GoogleTV and it is just pure crap. While this world of "media centers" is more like a hobby, it has a real future because of it practical use "if tv/movies congress lobbyist wont get in a rampage giving obscene sums of money to politicians".

Okay, maybe Yahoo is not Google but Yahoo bought Meedio and killed it. Many of us were Meedio users. A lot of the things that made Sage unique don't fit into a large tech company that has to play nice with the media content creators.

With Sage you felt like the product was being developed solely with the best interests of the consumers at heart without regard to DRM, Hollywood, DMCA, etc. I doubt that will be the case with Google.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by mistergq

Rakesh also lauded GoogleTV a year ago when it was first announced and stated that GoogleTV is where the consumer market was going. So he missed the boat the first time, and I think he is missing the boat this time.

Don't forget that when they killed Beyond Media he also claimed that software companies would be building specialized plugins (photos, music, etc.) for Windows Media Center so programs like Beyond Media would become obsolete. It seems that boat travel doesn't suit him...