Just in case- Alternatives to SageTV

[davephan]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

I have 6 MVPs in the house, and on the TVs they are on, playing through TV speakers, they look and sound just fine, whether playing mpg or other file types transcoded by the server. As good as any SDTV.

You lot are just TV snobs!

Of course there's nothing wrong with using an MVP if that is good enough for you. The SageTV replacement solution should not be limited by SD or poor audio quality for those that choose have better video and audio. For people with HD and higher audio quality systems, the SageTV replacement is not viable if the quality is sacrificed.

I don't think is snobbish, it is simply stating the facts. Once you are used to HD and the far higher quality sound, you cannot go back to a MVP. If you had severe hearing problems or eyesight problems, then you might not notice the difference. If you have never experienced HD or higher audio quality, then you have nothing to compare to your MVP, then you won't ever realize that the video and audio could be far better.

The other problem the the MVP is it can only playback the mpeg2 format. If you have another format, the computer must transcode the video into meg2 on the fly. If the computer does not have enough throughput, then the video stutters.

Dave

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I hope you're talking the current ebay cost (~$300), and don't forget about a Windows license.

Yes, I am referring to the eBay price. with no other source of extenders, that has to be considered the going price of them. I posted up a newegg shopping cart, with win7 OEM included, that would be more than capable of working as a sagetv client, for $341.94 plus shipping (cheaper than an HD300 on ebay):

[unclepoo]

Rick was correct, He was standing up for someone who was ridiculed for
still using an SD extender, and a non HD TV. I was correct, while we may be in the minority, there whas at least 1 other person using SD extenders, and I suspect there are others.

"The Sage TV replacment Solution" is a personal one, and this discussion should be open to everyone regardless of the price of the equipment they own.
Listing what might work for some users with older hardware does not take anything away from those with more expensive equipment.
If I need help with HD, I know there are plenty of people here who know it backwards and forwards.
As for the golden rule, I haven't found many on this board who have a clue what it is.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by unclepoo

Rick was correct, He was standing up for someone who was ridiculed for
still using an SD extender, and a non HD TV. I was correct, while we may be in the minority, there whas at least 1 other person using SD extenders, and I suspect there are others.

I don't think anyone was meaning to ridicule you for not using an HDTV. If they were I wouldn't listen to them anyway. I still have an SDTV downstairs in my living room that I don't use (because I have no extenders) so don't worry it isn't just you.

As far as the talk of a sage replacement there really isn't a device out there that is capable of not only replacing the functionality of sagetv software wise, but in the area of extenders there just isn't anything that can do everything the hd300 can do. The mvp method is nice with gbpvr, but won't make everyone happy (as you have seen). If there was something like XBMC that had the pvr functionality that sage has then we'd be better off. So far as I can tell there isn't. Myth, media protal, gbpvr (npvr now) look nice, but they are no replacement. If WMC had true extenders it would be close, but still wouldn't be a replacement.

If you are happy with the solution you have working it doesn't really matter what other people think.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Yes, I am referring to the eBay price. with no other source of extenders, that has to be considered the going price of them. I posted up a newegg shopping cart, with win7 OEM included, that would be more than capable of working as a sagetv client, for $341.94 plus shipping (cheaper than an HD300 on ebay):

You forgot the remote.

[sub]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

As far as the talk of a sage replacement there really isn't a device out there that is capable of not only replacing the functionality of sagetv software wise, but in the area of extenders there just isn't anything that can do everything the hd300 can do. The mvp method is nice with gbpvr, but won't make everyone happy (as you have seen).

You do know GBPVR/NextPVR support much better extenders than the very old MVP? It supports extenders like the Popcorn Hour A100/A110, EGreat M34A etc which are based on modern Sigma chipsets, and play just about everything, with full HD vide, and highdef UI. A recent video of it in action can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZINoWUIc4. The video was captured with a Hauppauge Colossus, shows you a bit of the UI, a short bit of playback, and also shows the multi-record feature (where several channels are recording at the same time from the one digital tuner installed).

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

You forgot the remote.

yeah, i suppose i did... but I've got piles of random remotes laying around, and extra USB-UIRTs from my old IR Blasting days, so i didn't think about that. there are cheaper alternatives to the more expensive USB-UIRT though:
AVS Gear GV-IR01BK Vista Infrared MCE Black Learning Remote Control - $20.99
AVS Gear HA-IR01SV Infrared Certified MCE VISTA Remote Control - $21.20
AVS Gear MG-IR01BK Windows Vista/Window7 MCE Infrared Remote Control - $22.99

And with a little creative work, one would probably replace that ugly Microsoft button with a SageTV logo... ;-)

[ThePaladinTech]

Originally Posted by sub

You do know GBPVR/NextPVR support much better extenders than the very old MVP? It supports extenders like the Popcorn Hour A100/A110, EGreat M34A etc which are based on modern Sigma chipsets, and play just about everything, with full HD vide, and highdef UI. A recent video of it in action can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZINoWUIc4. The video was captured with a Hauppauge Colossus, shows you a bit of the UI, a short bit of playback, and also shows the multi-record feature (where several channels are recording at the same time from the one digital tuner installed).

Do you have a client version and how well will it run on an AMD E350 platform? I'm looking into getting one of these for my SageTV setup and if I end up going somewhere else nPVR may be it.

For that matter as a client anyone running an E350 with SageTV?

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by sub

You do know GBPVR/NextPVR support much better extenders than the very old MVP? It supports extenders like the Popcorn Hour A100/A110, EGreat M34A etc which are based on modern Sigma chipsets, and play just about everything, with full HD vide, and highdef UI. A recent video of it in action can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZINoWUIc4. The video was captured with a Hauppauge Colossus, shows you a bit of the UI, a short bit of playback, and also shows the multi-record feature (where several channels are recording at the same time from the one digital tuner installed).

That's much better. Pretty cool. Will it play almost all file types/codecs? That is one of the most important.

I'm going to check out what ui mods there are. Sage seems to be better in that area.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

yeah, i suppose i did... but I've got piles of random remotes laying around, and extra USB-UIRTs from my old IR Blasting days, so i didn't think about that. there are cheaper alternatives to the more expensive USB-UIRT though:
AVS Gear GV-IR01BK Vista Infrared MCE Black Learning Remote Control - $20.99
AVS Gear HA-IR01SV Infrared Certified MCE VISTA Remote Control - $21.20
AVS Gear MG-IR01BK Windows Vista/Window7 MCE Infrared Remote Control - $22.99

And with a little creative work, one would probably replace that ugly Microsoft button with a SageTV logo... ;-)

God don't buy those remotes the input lag on the recievers is terrible!! Buy usbuirt or the standard microsoft issues reciever for no lag.

[panteragstk]

You know, I was looking at things like mediaportal, npvr, xbmc, and others and they seem to be able to run on things like the nmt devices. So really there is no reason one of the dev's couldn't make a custom firmware (or whatever) that we could load on one of those devices and make it a sage extender. I know it has been discussed, but we were talking of getting the current firmware onto a device as opposed to programming our own.

Also, there really isn't any reason we can't keep sage alive for as long as we want by taking the forum and plugins dev somewhere else if this forum dies.

Just thinking out loud.

[ivseenbetter]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

my guess is he has a headless server, but realized he could run in client mode (-client) right on the server to get an additional interface.

Yep. That's what I did.

v/r

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

God don't buy those remotes the input lag on the recievers is terrible!! Buy usbuirt or the standard microsoft issues reciever for no lag.

I did find what appears to be a decent RF WMC remote. I'm going to try one soon. I doubt it will be better than my gyration, but they don't make those anymore.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Yes, I am referring to the eBay price. with no other source of extenders, that has to be considered the going price of them. I posted up a newegg shopping cart, with win7 OEM included, that would be more than capable of working as a sagetv client, for $341.94 plus shipping (cheaper than an HD300 on ebay):

The problem for those of us in CA is the ludicrous energy costs thanks to Enron/PG&E/etc. My incremental rate is somewhere ~$0.34/Kwh. That system, at an incremental 50W beyond an HD300 (including cpu, hard disk, graphics, etc) , that's another $12/month in throwaway costs. At a 3 year estimated lifespan for hardware, you're looking at an all-in cost of $345 (hardware) plus $432 (electricity) = $777!

Even for our friends in coal burning states with a 0.15/Kwh incremental cost (bite me you jerks), that's $5.60, or an extra $200 over 3 years, for a total of $542.

Makes the eBay HD300 price seem a little easier to understand. Not that i'm buying one yet, but I am tempted.

EDIT: For those of you who claim you can put the system to sleep/resume/etc to save on power costs, I have *never* gotten that to work 100% reliably despite many hours trying. And I need 100.00% reliability for a wife/kids solution.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by IVB

The problem for those of us in CA is the ludicrous energy costs thanks to Enron/PG&E/etc. My incremental rate is somewhere ~$0.34/Kwh. That system, at an incremental 50W beyond an HD300 (including cpu, hard disk, graphics, etc) , that's another $12/month in throwaway costs. At a 3 year estimated lifespan for hardware, you're looking at an all-in cost of $345 (hardware) plus $432 (electricity) = $777!

Even for our friends in coal burning states with a 0.15/Kwh incremental cost (bite me you jerks), that's $5.60, or an extra $200 over 3 years, for a total of $542.

Makes the eBay HD300 price seem a little easier to understand. Not that i'm buying one yet, but I am tempted.

EDIT: For those of you who claim you can put the system to sleep/resume/etc to save on power costs, I have *never* gotten that to work 100% reliably despite many hours trying. And I need 100.00% reliability for a wife/kids solution.

sorry you haven't gotten sleep to work, but for me it always has (on clients). My current i3 client uses very little juice (peaking out at 56W watching a bluray). I also live in CA, and don't worry about the cost of running my client. At S3 sleep, it uses 2.2W, which costs me <$7/year to cover all my non-watching time.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

sorry you haven't gotten sleep to work, but for me it always has (on clients). My current i3 client uses very little juice (peaking out at 56W watching a bluray). I also live in CA, and don't worry about the cost of running my client. At S3 sleep, it uses 2.2W, which costs me <$7/year to cover all my non-watching time.

oho, now I shall have a 2nd thing to harass you about when I need another extender/client. (the first being the spanish inquisition into your hardware).

[junkieofreality]

Originally Posted by IVB

EDIT: For those of you who claim you can put the system to sleep/resume/etc to save on power costs, I have *never* gotten that to work 100% reliably despite many hours trying. And I need 100.00% reliability for a wife/kids solution.

Checkout Auto Shutdown Manager over at http://www.enviprot.com. I could never get my server to reliably shutdown since there always seemed to be something running in the background keeping it from doing so. This program can monitor any background running process such as network bandwidth, harddrive read/write, or CPU usage and it can either force or prevent the computer to shutdown.

[rhinoman]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

You know it is funny you say that me and my wife where just saying the other day how our daughter will never know what a tube tv is/was.

My kids think its normal to have a cinema in the lounge and a 40" lcd in the kitchen.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by davephan

The SageTV replacement solution should not be limited by SD or poor audio quality for those that choose have better video and audio.

"The" solution? Everyone's replacement is likely to be different, no? I can't see us all moving as a block...

Once you are used to HD and the far higher quality sound, you cannot go back to a MVP.

Can and do. I have no problem going from 3 days a week using HD to the rest of the time using MVPs. But then again, I tend to watch TV rather than get caught up in the quality of it the whole time... I don't think it's a surprise that we get a lot of obsessives using a product like Sage.

The other problem the the MVP is it can only playback the mpeg2 format. If you have another format, the computer must transcode the video into meg2 on the fly. If the computer does not have enough throughput, then the video stutters.

Errr, obviously. But it's transparent to the people watching the TV. Wife/kids don't have a clue what the MVP handles or doesn't, it all just works. But if your server is a piece of crap, it won't.

[war10ck]

The problem for those of us in CA is the ludicrous energy costs thanks to Enron/PG&E/etc. My incremental rate is somewhere ~$0.34/Kwh.

Thanks to enron/pg&e are you serious? Thank your idiot liberal politicians for that... I'm at 0.07/kwh here in Texas. But hey your carbon footprint is so small in California never mind people can't afford to stay in there homes. What a joke