Just in case- Alternatives to SageTV

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by pizzachef

I am totally bummed about SageTV going dark and ceasing to sell product.

My buddy loves my setup but waited too long to copy it, now he is out of luck, except for a few sales on eBay which right now are going for crazy prices.

Is there another extender box that streams Video_ts. I know appletv and roku do not.

I believe plex can handle video_ts

Atv2 and roku both have plex clients

[drewg]

I came to SageTV from MythTV years ago for the HD100 extender. The extenders are head & shoulders better than having client PCs at each TV. Nothing to maintain, low heat/noise/power, perfect playback for supported formats. Extenders are my killer feature.

Now that new SageTV extenders can no longer be reliably obtained at a reasonable price, I'm looking around at alternative PVR solutions that can use extenders, and it is looking pretty bleak. What I know about:

- WMC / Xbox360:
Even the newest Xbox is louder & pulls more power during video playback (70w) than any PC client I'd build. It has fairly limited format support. But at least you can buy as many as you want, and they'll be around for a long time. And the GUI is pretty and it makes pleasant noises when navigating..

- NPVR / PopBox:
Seems that only the older, obsolete Popbox hardware works as an extender. Am I missing something?

- XBMC on AppleTV v2:
Only 720p, cannot play back HDHR / ATSC MPEG2 recordings without transcode to MPEG4. However, frontend solutions seem to exist for both MythTV and SageTV as XBMC scripts.

- SageTV / Boxee Box
Single source hardware. Playback bad/flaky on my Ion Win7 Boxee test setup. Familiar Sage GUI.

- [SageTV | NPVR| WMC| MythTV] / DLNA
No automatic commercial skipping, live TV, or scheduling recordings. DLNA is flaky

- Moxi / Moxi-mate
Cable only, no ATSC support.

Is there something I'm missing? Wasn't there a big announcement last year that Sigma was porting XBMC to their hardware? Whatever happened to that? XBMC on a sigma box, running the MythBox front end would be close to my ideal



Drew

[drewg]

Originally Posted by drewg

Is there something I'm missing? Wasn't there a big announcement last year that Sigma was porting XBMC to their hardware? Whatever happened to that? XBMC on a sigma box, running the MythBox front end would be close to my ideal

Drew

More:

It looks like XBMC is coming to the raspberry pi. If it can do a decent job of 1080i ATSC, I'll just buy 10 for their $35 asking price.. I'm worried it might be one of these chipsets like in the ATV2 and Roku boxes which can only handle H.264 HD, though.

There is also some guy who has a minimal MythTV front end working on his Patriot Box Office (and other) rtd1073 hardware:
http://www.patriotmemory.com/forums/...p/t-6617.html?

Drew

[reggie14]

So, I'm still looking for something to replace SageTV. I really don't intend to run SageTV after this upcoming summer. That gives me some time, but realistically I don't expect anything new to come out between now and then.

I'm still looking for a stable and supported multiroom DVR system with an ability to stream music and ripped DVDs/blu-rays from a NAS, and to stream Netflix. I don't care if I need multiple boxes, since I already use Sage with a Roku box to give me Netflix, although I'd prefer to keep it to two boxes at each TV, not three.

I also am restricted in that I can't get satellite. I'm in an apartment, and I don't have a way to point a dish to the south. Comcast is the only provider currently available to me, and their multiroom DVR kind of sucks. I might move into a townhome, where I might still have some difficultly getting satellite, although I'd probably be able to get FiOS.

Barring any move, though, I think I'm left trying to put something together for Comcast. I don't want to mess with PC-based clients, because they were a pain to maintain when I used them before. If I were living alone I'd consider it, but not anymore. The new owners of Moxie seem happy to let it die off, and TiVo doesn't seem to plan to offer the Preview at retail.

So, its really looking like WMC/Xbox is the only option left. Am I missing something? That would work OK for TV, but I'd need something else for streaming DVDs and blu-rays. For that I'm thinking either a Boxee Box or a WD TV Live would be the way to go, although I always have a hard time figuring out what actually works on a Boxee Box.

This would be a huge and expensive change, and I'd replace almost everything except for the server itself. Although I suppose if I do it somewhat soon I could sell off my extenders and try to sell my HD-PVRs to cover at least part of the cost of two or three XBox 360s and streamers, in addition to a cablecard tuner. But, I'm reluctant to make this change for lots of reasons. It's not quite what I'm looking for, its kind of expensive to switch to, and I'm a little concerned Microsoft is going to abandon WMC in a few years.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by reggie14

So, I'm still looking for something to replace SageTV. I really don't intend to run SageTV after this upcoming summer. That gives me some time, but realistically I don't expect anything new to come out between now and then.

I'm still looking for a stable and supported multiroom DVR system with an ability to stream music and ripped DVDs/blu-rays from a NAS, and to stream Netflix. I don't care if I need multiple boxes, since I already use Sage with a Roku box to give me Netflix, although I'd prefer to keep it to two boxes at each TV, not three.

I also am restricted in that I can't get satellite. I'm in an apartment, and I don't have a way to point a dish to the south. Comcast is the only provider currently available to me, and their multiroom DVR kind of sucks. I might move into a townhome, where I might still have some difficultly getting satellite, although I'd probably be able to get FiOS.

Barring any move, though, I think I'm left trying to put something together for Comcast. I don't want to mess with PC-based clients, because they were a pain to maintain when I used them before. If I were living alone I'd consider it, but not anymore. The new owners of Moxie seem happy to let it die off, and TiVo doesn't seem to plan to offer the Preview at retail.

So, its really looking like WMC/Xbox is the only option left. Am I missing something? That would work OK for TV, but I'd need something else for streaming DVDs and blu-rays. For that I'm thinking either a Boxee Box or a WD TV Live would be the way to go, although I always have a hard time figuring out what actually works on a Boxee Box.

This would be a huge and expensive change, and I'd replace almost everything except for the server itself. Although I suppose if I do it somewhat soon I could sell off my extenders and try to sell my HD-PVRs to cover at least part of the cost of two or three XBox 360s and streamers, in addition to a cablecard tuner. But, I'm reluctant to make this change for lots of reasons. It's not quite what I'm looking for, its kind of expensive to switch to, and I'm a little concerned Microsoft is going to abandon WMC in a few years.

Really, the first question you have to ask is what is sage NOT doing for you now, and do any other options do this for you?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Really, the first question you have to ask is what is sage NOT doing for you now, and do any other options do this for you?

I don't see why every time someone asks about alternatives someone (usually several people) has to jump on him saying Sage continues to work fine. Pretty much everyone left on the forums has heard that several times. We get it. But, it shouldn't be surprising that some people want to change, for various reasons. I don't see why some people just can't accept that assertion and move on.

But in any case, what it really comes down to is I don't want to end up in a difficult situation with an unsupported product, particularly when its something that my fiance and I use everyday and expect it to work everyday. At some point I'm going to need another extender, either for a third TV or to replace a older extender that's gone bad, and I don't want to shell out $400 for it. And even more than the cost, I don't want to have to wait a week or two to buy it on eBay and have it get to me.

I don't want to worry about whether or not future Windows updates will break something in Sage. Or if updated versions of tuner/capture cards (be it updated drivers or the hardware itself) will play nicely with the beta we've been left with.

I don't want to have to set up and maintain various workarounds if and when Google shuts down the EPG servers (or for any other problems that arise). I don't want to worry that if Zap2it changes their website I'll need to find out about it and update XMLTV before I run out of guide data (which is what happened when I started using SageTV in 2003 before EPG data was available across the US).

Yes, SageTV works fine for me right now, but I have no confidence that it will continue to work well for me even in the near future. I don't want to wait until an extender breaks before I switch systems because then I might be without TV for a week or two buying things and getting it set up. With my current setup, I don't have any other way to get TV signals to my TVs, because there aren't working coax jacks by my TVs (only one that goes to my SageTV server, and I've routed cat5 around my apartment to distribute the TV).

So, when it comes down to it, your questions aren't particularly relevant to me. I'm simply not going to stick with an unsupported product, even if it means I'm either going to lose features and/or accept added cost. I'm willing to accept lots of tradeoffs that some (many?) left on these forums don't want to accept. Notably, I don't care as much about customizability/flexibility, nor do I care if I need to use multiple boxes at each TV. I just want to have a multiroom DVR with ~2TB of storage and ~4 tuners, and I want to have a way to stream music, ripped DVDs/blu-rays, and Netflix

[Skirge01]

@reggie14: I'm sort of with you on that and have been actively seeking out alternatives. However, I'm not dumping SageTV entirely in the immediate future. For all the concerns you mentioned for wanting to leave, that's why I'm rebuilding my server and putting the SageTV server into a VM and freezing it under Windows XP. (I'm doing a VM for other reasons. This isn't actually necessary for SageTV.) No more updates, etc. The only thing that needs to continue working is the EPG, for which I'm pretty confident Slugger's solution will suffice. Simply put, I have yet to find a back-end PVR application that's anywhere near what SageTV offers, so I'm doing what's necessary to keep it functioning.

What I'm also doing, though, is trying to figure out what to use as a front-end, should something happen that breaks SageTV on my client HTPC, which runs Windows 7. Currently, that still looks like XBMC and a script someone put together to create symlinks for the SageTV recordings which are usable by XBMC.

[Thron]

Reggie14, I couldn't agree with you more. While Sage does work and will work for a while I don't want an extender to break and then I'm frantically looking for a solution. That will only lead me to compromise for something far less. I rather start looking now and maybe find something that fits better.

Media Portal looks very promising, but I don't think they have extenders yet.

[gplasky]

Well everyone has an opinion. I'll keep running Sage as long as I can because it's the best at what it does. But I am also going thru the gamut of testing. But it was the Sage extenders that made the biggest difference for me. So until someone rolls this into their solution, Sage works best for me. I'm getting a small Windows client but even keeping the price low it's still close to $400 (Windows OS license cost). It's double my extender cost. (Well what it was any way.) What I would like to see is someone come up with a way to use the WD Live Plus as an extender to any of the PVR solutions including Sage. And I mean so you get the native interface actually working on the WD extender. This one actually seems the most open one to that option. I'll also give Myth TV a shot. Right now Windows Media Center is working very well for me with the tuners I have. (This is another reason I love the network tuners. I can test multiple apps without needing more tuners.)

Gerry

[Fuzzy]

The reason I bring it up is because it seems most often it is an emotional move, and you end up setting yourself up for disappointment. If anything, the very length of this thread is a good indication that there ISN'T an Alternative to SageTV. You will be giving up something no matter which way you go. I asked what sage doesn't have to help you figure out which direction you DO want to go. If it is just the comfort level that you aren't getting from sage anymore, then i think you've already stated that you are worried about MS dropping WMC, and just about any other project can up and disappear just as sage has. So, if everything else out there has the same risk of disappearing, than what is the point in switching to an inferior system?

If there IS something you need that sage doesn't have, like cablecard support, than yes, THAT would be a reason to change... but if sage is already working, and you only want to move change for the sake of change, you might want to think about it before putting yourself and family through the changes needlessly.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by gplasky

What I would like to see is someone come up with a way to use the WD Live Plus as an extender to any of the PVR solutions including Sage. And I mean so you get the native interface actually working on the WD extender. This one actually seems the most open one to that option.

I think that is pretty unlikely - there is no API for the WD Live as far as I know. I have been trying the new WD Live SMP box out for the last several weeks and when I asked Martin, the developer who turned the NMT devices into NextPVR extenders, he said WD never gave him the information necessary to turn a WD box into an "extender"" when he asked.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by cncb

I think that is pretty unlikely - there is no API for the WD Live as far as I know. I have been trying the new WD Live SMP box out for the last several weeks and when I asked Martin, the developer who turned the NMT devices into NextPVR extenders, he said WD never gave him the information necessary to turn a WD box into an "extender"" when he asked.

Now that's a bummer. Especially when the WD extenders plays just about any format you throw at it.

Gerry

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

If anything, the very length of this thread is a good indication that there ISN'T an Alternative to SageTV.

That's a ridiculous statement, and it starts with an assumption that SageTV was the best to begin with. Many alternatives have been proposed in this thread and the most significant recording MythTV, MediaPortal, NextPVR/GBPVR, and Windows MCE are all worthy of consideration. No one can argue that the player alternatives like XBMC, Plex and Boxee are also worthy. TiVo, and whole home satellite and cable system are also options.

Obviously on SageTV forum there are going to be biased comments by fanboys, but overall the online reviews and polls have shown that the alternatives fare pretty well, or more appropriately SageTV is preferred by well under 10% of the users out there who voted. Everytime there is a negative or average review of SageTV the posts give it time, etc etc. The same can be said about the alternatives. Change is difficult and not always comfortable but an hour review of the alternatives isn't going to be valid.

Perhaps your statement is better as there "ISN'T ONE" Alternatvive there are several. What is clear to me is there is unlikely to be a consensus. The difference is all the alternatives will get better and new users must have to choose from them.

Martin

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by emveepee

That's a ridiculous statement, and it starts with an assumption that SageTV was the best to begin with. Many alternatives have been proposed in this thread and the most significant recording MythTV, MediaPortal, NextPVR/GBPVR, and Windows MCE are all worthy of consideration. No one can argue that the player alternatives like XBMC, Plex and Boxee are also worthy. TiVo, and whole home satellite and cable system are also options.

Obviously on SageTV forum there are going to be biased comments by fanboys, but overall the online reviews and polls have shown that the alternatives fare pretty well, or more appropriately SageTV is preferred by well under 10% of the users out there who voted. Everytime there is a negative or average review of SageTV the posts give it time, etc etc. The same can be said about the alternatives. Change is difficult and not always comfortable but an hour review of the alternatives isn't going to be valid.

Perhaps your statement is better as there "ISN'T ONE" Alternatvive there are several. What is clear to me is there is unlikely to be a consensus. The difference is all the alternatives will get better and new users must have to choose from them.

Martin

Pretty unfair to quote me without the following qualifying statement. Every way you move away from SageTV will be giving up something. If that something is not important for you, then of course they could be considered alternatives. but there is nothing out there that does everything that sage does as well as it does.

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Pretty unfair to quote me without the following qualifying statement. Every way you move away from SageTV will be giving up something. If that something is not important for you, then of course they could be considered alternatives. but there is nothing out there that does everything that sage does as well as it does.

I didn't mean to be unfair, since O think I addressed that by indicating that 90%+ of PC PVR users would disagree with your opinion. Without a doubt SageTV does some things well, but nothing seems unique, at least in the base package, other than as a commercial product it does have polish. I was likely going to license it simply because of the HD300, not because it did anything better than the alternatives.

Martin

[amt]

Originally Posted by gplasky

I'll also give Myth TV a shot. Gerry

That's what I did, and I am happy with the change. There is absolutely nothing in terms of features that I miss from SageTV. The user interface experience is close, although I would give a slight edge to SageTV. The support for MythTV, IMO, is far better. If anyone thinks there is going to be decent support from now defunct Sage company after Summer 2012 is fooling themselves. The DVR/server capabilities of MythTV IMO have everything one could want. The one weakness I see with MythTV are the clients. You can build a capable client for $200, so the cost is not a problem. It's still PC based, so you have any issues associated with that. But, considering there will be no more STB's made for Sage, I do not see that being much different from running PC based SageTV clients. In fact, I recently reinstalled a ION net top box with MythBuntu, and the whole process was quite easy. Honestly, had I given MythTV a chance before I found SageTV, I probably never would have tried SageTV in the first place.

[reggie14]

The arguments in this thread, and others, get rather silly. Of course every product is going to make tradeoffs. You really could generalize Fuzzy's quote to say "Every way you move away from [insert product here] will be giving up something." Sage made tradeoffs too, or at least had downsides. In general, you'd expect people that ended up using Sage to not value the features it missed, otherwise they wouldn't have ended up with it.

But again, I don't see why every discussion regarding alternatives to Sage has to devolve into this. I understand its a little silly to be asking people about other products on a SageTV users forum, but I suspect people out there have some experience playing with WMC, WDTV, Boxee Box, etc. Notably, I'd be really interested to read about how well the last two could replace Sage's local network media streaming features. How reliable was it? Does it work with ripped DVDs and blu rays? What sort of support for metadata does it have?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by emveepee

That's a ridiculous statement, and it starts with an assumption that SageTV was the best to begin with.

If you're using everything, or even most of what Sage is capable of then really there are no alternatives.

Many alternatives have been proposed in this thread and the most significant recording MythTV, MediaPortal, NextPVR/GBPVR, and Windows MCE are all worthy of consideration. No one can argue that the player alternatives like XBMC, Plex and Boxee are also worthy. TiVo, and whole home satellite and cable system are also options.

Problem is each one of them only replaces a portion, usually a small portion of what Sage can do.

WMC is probably the closest alternative for PVR duties having robust recording functionality and extender support (for TV).

NextPVR is probably the next best, with the rest being various stages of incompleted, and none really have extender support.

There are alternatives for players, and heck, most are even probably better in ways than SageTV, but they don't support TV.

Obviously on SageTV forum there are going to be biased comments by fanboys,

I don't think that's fair.

[QUOTE]...but overall the online reviews and polls have shown that the alternatives fare pretty well, or more appropriately SageTV is preferred by well under 10% of the users out there who voted.[/UQOTE]

I've seen those too, the "problem" with trying to extrapolate from those to whether or not there are good alternatives for SageTV users, is that SageTV users picked SageTV for some reason, or a number of reasons over the alternatives, that they found other solutions lacking.

Everytime there is a negative or average review of SageTV the posts give it time, etc etc. The same can be said about the alternatives. Change is difficult and not always comfortable but an hour review of the alternatives isn't going to be valid.

It is if you know what you're looking for and they don't have it.

WMC's extenders can't do media worth a darn.
XBMC has no TV support,
MediaPortal's TV support is experimental at best and no extenders.
NPVR has no real media support

Perhaps your statement is better as there "ISN'T ONE" Alternatvive there are several.

But there aren't any for probably most of us that haven't changed yet. If I was just doing TV, I'd likely have switched to WMC already, if it was just media, I'd have switched to XBMC or maybe a Dune. Those of us who want extenders, and media (DVD/Blu-ray) support and a good DVR.

What is clear to me is there is unlikely to be a consensus. The difference is all the alternatives will get better and new users must have to choose from them.

That doesn't make any difference if they can't do what's needed now. I was hoping XBMC Eden would have the PVR branch included, but it's not. Windows Media Center seems highly unlikely to release softsled (pc client) or improve the extender functionality, NPVR doesn't seem interested in, etc...

Originally Posted by emveepee

I didn't mean to be unfair, since O think I addressed that by indicating that 90%+ of PC PVR users would disagree with your opinion.

They also don't need most of what Sage can do. For example some of the most vocal WMC fans don't use more than one PC while I'd say most SageTV users (still here) use at least two displays.

Without a doubt SageTV does some things well, but nothing seems unique, at least in the base package, other than as a commercial product it does have polish.

The package itself is unique. It's the only option that has robust, bulletproof DVR, broad media support, DVDs, Blu-ray, PC clients, and extenders, and can do everything in the "base package" from any supported client.

I was likely going to license it simply because of the HD300, not because it did anything better than the alternatives.

For media, I agree, Sage had pretty "average" or maybe even below average media capabilities (at least as far as presentation). But I challenge that on the DVR front there's nothing that can match SageTV, everything else is more limited.

But again, that's not what makes Sage unique, it's that it does everything well, across mutliple devices and displays.

So if you know of something that can do TV well, as well as media (DVDs, Blu-ray, MKV, etc) across multiple displays, I'd love to know about it. That's really what we're looking for here.

What I find most ironic is that after years of SageTV being brushed aside by most, I'm now seeing more and more people on AVS looking for something that can do TV and media in a multiroom environment, and there's just nothing to suggest to them anymore.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by amt

That's what I did, and I am happy with the change. There is absolutely nothing in terms of features that I miss from SageTV. The user interface experience is close, although I would give a slight edge to SageTV. The support for MythTV, IMO, is far better. If anyone thinks there is going to be decent support from now defunct Sage company after Summer 2012 is fooling themselves.

Unfortuately that's not been my experience with open source/community projects. It's seems much more a you've got to figure it out yourself.

As for Sage, it works fine, at this point I don't need any support and since they're not introducing any new software updates, they won't be breaking anything that needs support. Sage can run indefinitely like it is now.

The DVR/server capabilities of MythTV IMO have everything one could want. The one weakness I see with MythTV are the clients. You can build a capable client for $200, so the cost is not a problem. It's still PC based, so you have any issues associated with that. But, considering there will be no more STB's made for Sage, I do not see that being much different from running PC based SageTV clients. In fact, I recently reinstalled a ION net top box with MythBuntu, and the whole process was quite easy. Honestly, had I given MythTV a chance before I found SageTV, I probably never would have tried SageTV in the first place.

Does MythTV support DVDs or Blu-rays? MKVs? (I'm asking seriously).

Originally Posted by reggie14

But again, I don't see why every discussion regarding alternatives to Sage has to devolve into this.

Well because there are a number of us interested in what's out there, and everything that's suggested has significant missing features. Like I said above, I'm guessing that given SageTV's limitations in specific areas, most people still using Sage are using it for the package and not for any one specific feature.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

But there aren't any for probably most of us that haven't changed yet. If I was just doing TV, I'd likely have switched to WMC already, if it was just media, I'd have switched to XBMC or maybe a Dune.

The Dune streamers look interesting, mostly because they're one of the few streamers that claims to support blu-ray rips. But, other than the top-line Dune HD Max, do you know which models support streaming blu-ray rips over the network?