SageTV acquired by Google

[hb4]

Name one closed source software product that has been discontinued, yet maintains a loyal, active development community that keeps the product from becoming obsolete and marginalized.

ReplayTV

[wayner]

Originally Posted by hb4

ReplayTV

It's not marginalized? You could argue that SageTV was marginalized, even beofre the ides of June announcement and it probably has a lot larger user base than ReplayTV.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

The point was that it is NOT obsolete NOW, nor will it be for at least a year or two.

I think SageTV's lack of native Netflix, and other streaming services, says otherwise. Even if you don't used or like them, they're required to be considered relevant today. Yes, SageTV's PVR is superior to any other alternatives available, but I expect that to change relatively quickly.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by brainbone

I think SageTV's lack of native Netflix, and other streaming services, says otherwise. Even if you don't used or like them, they're required to be considered relevant today. Yes, SageTV's PVR is superior to any other alternatives available, but I expect that to change relatively quickly.

You expect it to change quickly? how, and from where? I have yet to see any PVR's close. MCE is too limited, with no real extenders or even clients, nPVR lacks the capture hardware support... neither of those things are likely to change anytime soon. The ONLY way I see sagetv becoming obsoleted in the next 2 years is IF google is able to bring a full sagetv back-end to the google TV system.

And the concept that netflix is required to be relevant in the PVR market is odd, since there aren't many other real PVR's that support it now (TiVo premier is pretty much it). There are plenty of media streamers that support it, and quite a few TV/bd players... but I fail to see how it's required in a DVR.

Personally, I much prefer an HBO/Starz/Whatever subscription and SageTV DVR to netflix streaming... I get HD and surround sound form HBO... Netflix is only 'required' to be relevant if quality is not.

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

nPVR lacks the capture hardware support...

I think that is a partially biased statement because you are an r5000 user. Most brands Hauppauge, Silicon Dust, Avermedia, ATI are supported plus generic digital BDA DVB/ATSC devices are supported as well. A surprising number of legacy analog devices seem to work with hardware or software encoding and of course there is HDPVR/Colossus support. Not all QAM devices are supported but with the HDHR and Hauppauge support I figure they are what most user choose anyway.

Other then r5000 and firewire (both of which I consider esoteric) I'd say the comparison with SageTV is pretty good. Plus support for new devices is ongoing there were prototype pictures of potential support for the Hauppauge DCR 2650 posted on the forums. For those that want their CableCard in other way there is talk of development of a plugin like SageDCT

Martin

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by emveepee

I think that is a partially biased statement because you are an r5000 user. Most brands Hauppauge, Silicon Dust, Avermedia, ATI are supported plus generic digital BDA DVB/ATSC devices are supported as well. A surprising number of legacy analog devices seem to work with hardware or software encoding and of course there is HDPVR/Colossus support. Not all QAM devices are supported but with the HDHR and Hauppauge support I figure they are what most user choose anyway.

Other then r5000 and firewire (both of which I consider esoteric) I'd say the comparison with SageTV is pretty good. Plus support for new devices is ongoing there were prototype pictures of potential support for the Hauppauge DCR 2650 posted on the forums. For those that want their CableCard in other way there is talk of development of a plugin like SageDCT

Martin

Yes, the r5000 would be one of the primary things keeping me from using nPVR, because I'd have to sacrifice a LOT of harddrive space, and some quality by moving to an encoding solution (HD-PVR). It's not like it would be difficult to implement the R-5000 in nPVR (it interacts with sage via VERY simple network commands), but sub has stated he's not interested in doing so. I'm not knocking sub for this decision, but it DOES remove nPVR from consideration as something that would make SageTV obsolete.

It remains, that SageTV + R5000HD is the ONLY way to get a full, whole-home DVR, with media center capabilities, DRM free, utilizing ALL channels I subscribe to, in the untouched broadcast stream. As soon as something comes along that does all of this, plus 1 - sagetv will not be obsolete.

[ArcAiN6]

In all reality, this is probably some market-cornering gambit employed by google to hock some new fangled bloat-ware.

I remember when google was a search engine, and they did their job well.. now that google is trying to get it's grubby mits into everything, guess what, the search engine is fail. They've integrated so much crap into their search engine, they've annoyed the people that made them popular to begin with, the purists, the people who were striving for a better search engine without all the craptastic ads, and other junk..

Mark my words, google will do one of two things..

a) junk this project after the 1year is over for the STB support and hail some new Google-TV + STB as king of the PVR/DVR/HTPC market (after acquiring other useful software / services people need / use and killing them)

b) they'll turn sage-tv into some money-grubbing ad whore that will be slow and horribly bloated with more lines of spaghetti-string-obfuscation code than real substance. oh.. but it will connect to the internetz and your brand new google's clone of facebook...

frankly... i don't blame the sagetv owner(s) for selling out to google, i'm sure they got a good penny for it. I will however say it's a shame that good ideas, and good communities are being extinguished by CEO's of large companies..

i wonder what every happened to all those anti-trust / anti-monopoly laws there used to be... oh.. that's right, they were lobbied out of existence.. so THAT's how we got " too big to fail "

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by ArcAiN6

In all reality, this is probably some market-cornering gambit employed by google to hock some new fangled bloat-ware.

I remember when google was a search engine, and they did their job well.. now that google is trying to get it's grubby mits into everything, guess what, the search engine is fail. They've integrated so much crap into their search engine, they've annoyed the people that made them popular to begin with, the purists, the people who were striving for a better search engine without all the craptastic ads, and other junk..

Mark my words, google will do one of two things..

a) junk this project after the 1year is over for the STB support and hail some new Google-TV + STB as king of the PVR/DVR/HTPC market (after acquiring other useful software / services people need / use and killing them)

b) they'll turn sage-tv into some money-grubbing ad whore that will be slow and horribly bloated with more lines of spaghetti-string-obfuscation code than real substance. oh.. but it will connect to the internetz and your brand new google's clone of facebook...

frankly... i don't blame the sagetv owner(s) for selling out to google, i'm sure they got a good penny for it. I will however say it's a shame that good ideas, and good communities are being extinguished by CEO's of large companies..

i wonder what every happened to all those anti-trust / anti-monopoly laws there used to be... oh.. that's right, they were lobbied out of existence.. so THAT's how we got " too big to fail "

In reality, Google has always been an advertising company. Their search engine was their first advertising stream, as well as their market research system. For better advertising, they need better market data. TV watching data will fit well into that system, AND provide them with another advertising avenue.

As for anti-monopoly, no laws have changed - google doesn't have a monopoly, or even approaching a monopoly... there are a LOT of advertising systems out there. Just because they are the biggest and best, doesn't make them 'evil'.

[rrhorer]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

The ONLY way I see sagetv becoming obsoleted in the next 2 years is IF google is able to bring a full sagetv back-end to the google TV system.

I agree and hope that it happens, even though I do not admire or trust Google to do the right thing -- quite the opposite. In fact, I also agree that:

Originally Posted by ArcAiN6

In all reality, this is probably some market-cornering gambit employed by google to hock some new fangled bloat-ware.

At least, I'm in a position to be pleasantly surprised if we are wrong about Google's motivations.

I give my hopes the following ranking in terms of what is possible IMO:

1. My system continues to function without problems for at least two years or more.
2. A client license is made available to existing SageTV users.
3. A Boxee or similar extender capability is developed as a real alternative.
4. NextPvr gains momentum with support relatively inexpensive and readily available extender boxes.
5. Google comes close to what Fuzzy suggests.

For now, I'm going with #1 and keeping an eye on the others.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

It remains, that SageTV + R5000HD is the ONLY way to get a full, whole-home DVR, with media center capabilities, DRM free, utilizing ALL channels I subscribe to, in the untouched broadcast stream. As soon as something comes along that does all of this, plus 1 - sagetv will not be obsolete.

For r5000 users, SageTV may hold on for some time, possibly relegated to a network encoder for another solution, but I don't think that delays its obsolescence for most others.

It'l be interested to see how it all plays out over the next year or two. (And, from my perceptive, a year or two is "quickly".)

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by brainbone

For r5000 users, SageTV may hold on for some time, possibly relegated to a network encoder for another solution, but I don't think that delays its obsolescence for most others.

It'l be interested to see how it all plays out over the next year or two. (And, from my perceptive, a year or two is "quickly".)

You don't NEED sagetv to use the R5000, any software could send it the TCP commands to start and stop a recording. You wouldn't be using sageTV as a network encoder, the R5000 app is the network encoder, you'd just connect to it with nPVR, or myth, or whatever else you're looking to use. I'd look into what it would take to write up a tunerplugin (or whatever they are called in nPVR), but I am not 'activated' on the nPVR forums...

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

You don't NEED sagetv to use the R5000, any software could send it the TCP commands to start and stop a recording. You wouldn't be using sageTV as a network encoder, the R5000 app is the network encoder, you'd just connect to it with nPVR, or myth, or whatever else you're looking to use. I'd look into what it would take to write up a tunerplugin (or whatever they are called in nPVR), but I am not 'activated' on the nPVR forums...

Well, there you go. SageTV can be obsoleted all the sooner.

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

You don't NEED sagetv to use the R5000, any software could send it the TCP commands to start and stop a recording. You wouldn't be using sageTV as a network encoder, the R5000 app is the network encoder, you'd just connect to it with nPVR, or myth, or whatever else you're looking to use. I'd look into what it would take to write up a tunerplugin (or whatever they are called in nPVR), but I am not 'activated' on the nPVR forums...

I had a look for the SageTV network encoder documentation but couldn't find it. Does the r0000 CLI for the DVR allow controlling multiple boxes? It looks like it would be easy to set up a proof-of-concept with it.

Martin

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Well, there you go. SageTV can be obsoleted all the sooner.

so what will take Sage's place?
none of the current contenders seem to be up to the task... and it seems unlikely that they ever will be up to the task...

are you (or someone) currently working on some secret whole home PVR + extender solution that will actually make Sage obsolete that you aren't telling us about???

As for Netflix, I think they just made themselves irrelevant...
for free, I was willing to dabble with their streaming... never was all that impressed with their quality or selection... but now that they are charging $8 or whatever for streaming, I just dropped the streaming from my plan... wonder how many others dropped the streaming option also?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Well, there you go. SageTV can be obsoleted all the sooner.

Not unless the other benefits of sagetv are replicated as well.

Originally Posted by emveepee

I had a look for the SageTV network encoder documentation but couldn't find it. Does the r0000 CLI for the DVR allow controlling multiple boxes? It looks like it would be easy to set up a proof-of-concept with it.

There isnt' much in the way of documentation, but the commands are plainly readable ascii over tcp. I had a list of them somewhere before something really simple like:
START 134 \\Server\RecordingFolder\SomethingSpecial.mpg
STOP
(where 134 is the channel number to tune)
There are also some commands to check the filesize of the recorded file, which sage used to determine if it was still producing data, PING commands to verify the connection is still valid, etc. The full network encoding protocol had a lot more features than that, like auto-discovery via broadcast and propogation of configuration data (where it returned the relevent parameters for the sage.properties file), but the R5000 app doesn't implement them. If I think about it, I can either find the old info I had, or just wireshark it to build the list again. (actually, come to think of it, I thing the R5000 app has a sagetv logging feature that will generate a log of the commands and responses).

This, alone certainly wouldn't get me to switch from sage (because, frankly, I like how I have sage set up, and do have one HD300), but I would like to help push nPVR to the point that it COULD replace sagetv at some point, since I have a feeling Google's solution is not going to be for me.

[PhilH]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

but now that they are charging $8 or whatever for streaming, I just dropped the streaming from my plan... wonder how many others dropped the streaming option also?

Count me in. I dropped their streaming offer & now have a 3 Disc plan with Blu-ray. No streaming..

[Fuzzy]

This is what I gleamed from looking through the source for SGraphRecorder (a universal network encoder):

(ping)
command: NOOP
returns: OK

(version check)
command: VERSION
returns: 2.1

(start recording)
command: START|TunerName|ChannelNo|TunerID|FilePath|RecQuality
returns: OK

(switch channel and file)
command: SWITCH|ChannelNo|FilePath
returns: OK

(Filesize check)
command: GET_SIZE
returns: File size in bytes (STRING)

(stop recording)
command: STOP
returns: OK

It is assumed that either a NOOP or GET_SIZE will be send every few minutes or so - lack of this should stop recording.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by PhilH

Count me in. I dropped their streaming offer & now have a 3 Disc plan with Blu-ray. No streaming..

I will most likely be dropping the streaming as well prior to the rate change on Sep 1. Gotta still discuss it with the wife before making the actual change. Probably end up with 1 BluRay at a Time for $10 - or we might just drop the account altogether (Don't think we've swapped discs in about 3 weeks or so).

[rrhorer]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

As for Netflix, I think they just made themselves irrelevant...
for free, I was willing to dabble with their streaming... never was all that impressed with their quality or selection... but now that they are charging $8 or whatever for streaming, I just dropped the streaming from my plan... wonder how many others dropped the streaming option also?

+1

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

As for Netflix, I think they just made themselves irrelevant...
for free, I was willing to dabble with their streaming... never was all that impressed with their quality or selection... but now that they are charging $8 or whatever for streaming, I just dropped the streaming from my plan... wonder how many others dropped the streaming option also?

I find it interesting that so many people here are saying this. Most people I know are doing the opposite. They always found the DVD plan as a cheap add-on, and are dropping that with the recent price changes. Most people I know with Netflix still end up getting most of their DVDs through RedBox, so they've said they're just going to keep Netflix streaming.

I'll hold on the the DVD plan, but I'm going to drop down to the 2-out plan. Now that RedBox has blu-rays in my area, I've been using that for most new release movies (since it can take a long time to get them through Netflix). But, I get a fair number of old movies and TV shows that aren't aren't available through RedBox or streaming.

I use Netflix streaming a lot though. The selection has gotten a lot better over the last couple of years.