Just in case- Alternatives to SageTV

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by osx-addict

... As for the XBOX noise, we've got one that is about 3 years old (or 2?) and when the kids are playing games on it or we're watching netflix I don't hear it at all.. But then again I'm in my late 40's so perhaps my hearing is shot!

I have an older elite xbox, and when there are quiet scenes in movies you can hear it, not that it's over bearing, but it's there. I also have it in an open face enclosure in the wall so maybe it echo's a little. I never gave it much thought, but my HD300 is very quiet.

[osx-addict]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I have an older elite xbox, and when there are quiet scenes in movies you can hear it, not that it's over bearing, but it's there. I also have it in an open face enclosure in the wall so maybe it echo's a little. I never gave it much thought, but my HD300 is very quiet.

Thx.. Not sure about your HD300's but mine get REALLY hot.. I'll bet that takes it's wear-n-tear on the components over time..

[flavius]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

Only Apple TV 1 & 2 which doesn't give you 1080p only 720p, with limited audio support. Apple Tv 3 isn't jail broken yet AFAIK.

.. which is why you can get more for an ATV2 on ebay than the ATV3 costs.

[aflat]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The #1 reason for me is the 360 has crappy format support. It can't play DVD rips, or Blu-ray, it can't even handle raw/native Blu-ray audio/video, nor can it output HBR audio. FWIW, it would be great if it worked well because I've already got a 360 sitting right next to my HD300 in my HT.

Of course most other people will point out the noise/heat.



If you don't care about DVD/BD then it works great, it plays WMC native content just fine.

And don't forget it can't play MKV files, without transcoding them on your server. At least in WMC mode. Unless they changed that?

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by aflat

And don't forget it can't play MKV files, without transcoding them on your server. At least in WMC mode. Unless they changed that?

You can use "haali splitter", but that only goes as far as DTS with audio, as stanger has pointed out, no HBR audio from the MKV with that. Even 16 bit fo that matter. sheese ...

[aflat]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

You can use "haali splitter", but that only goes as far as DTS with audio, as stanger has pointed out, no HBR audio from the MKV with that. Even 16 bit fo that matter. sheese ...

But that's still just transcoding right?

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by aflat

But that's still just transcoding right?

Not sure, not using any more processes when an MKV is playing and CPU utilization does change anymore then if a mpg is playing. I don't use trancode360, it's not installed.

I have really only tested the MKV's I have made. They are h.264 with DTS audio mainly from DVD's. I think any BD rip's would choke the 360 with the audio so I haven't tried any.

I wasn't trying to imply that this is the answer, as it surely isn't.
I am still betting on the Echo to come through on this front.

[clayfree]

Originally Posted by osx-addict

Thanks.. I was just reading through this thread -- looks REALLY promising with very active development! If you pair XBMC front end up with NPVR backend and IF XMBC can be loaded up on an AppleTV device that seems like it ought to be a great setup but one that I'm not convinced anybody has tried yet..

I run 3 AppleTV's loaded with XBMC and they are great. I've also been keeping my eye on the PVR builds of XBMC.

The problem as I see it is that the ATVs will not play hd mpeg2. All of my OTA recordings are mpeg2.

I've looked for an atsc card that will capture mpeg4 from ota and can't seem to find anything.

I've also started to follow the Android development since there are so many boxes starting to be produced. I hope to find one that can decode mpeg2. I would prefer to move to android since the boxes won't be locked down like the iOS.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by clayfree

I run 3 AppleTV's loaded with XBMC and they are great. I've also been keeping my eye on the PVR builds of XBMC.

The problem as I see it is that the ATVs will not play hd mpeg2. All of my OTA recordings are mpeg2.

I've looked for an atsc card that will capture mpeg4 from ota and can't seem to find anything.

I've also started to follow the Android development since there are so many boxes starting to be produced. I hope to find one that can decode mpeg2. I would prefer to move to android since the boxes won't be locked down like the iOS.

Can't you use the transcoding feature in sage to get the atv to play your OTA recordings? Anything that captures OTA is going to capture the stream directly, not convert it to another codec. Would be cool if it did though, save some space.

[reggie14]

I was really hoping that the Ceton Echo would be a good replacement for Sage and my HD extenders, but unfortunately the Echo is a bit of a dud. Still, there's not much else out there, and I have two TV with no Sage extenders for them. So, I'll be switching to something.

Basically, I think I'm going to have a get a different streamer to play back ripped content. But, I haven't found a good one yet. Basically, I want HD300-like functionality. So, I need support for high bit rate H.264 and VC-1, good container/format support, including mkv and DVD folders, DTS decoding (downmix to stereo), and PGS subtitles.

The last one seems to be the hard thing to get. I can't tell what streamers actually support PGS subtitles. It sounds like a number of them have it half working, but I don't know which ones have it fully working. Maybe the Dune, but those are a little outside my preferred price range. I'd like to stay below $200-$250.

[Fuzzy]

I can't say for sure, but i thought XBMC supported PGS subtitles in at least the m2ts container. If that is the case, there is rapidly becoming more and more hardware out there that can handle it. Even the RaspberryPi can run XBMC relatively well I hear (via the OpenELEC distro). That said, I think I'd still rather build up an e350 based cilent, and run OpenELEC on it, which is considerably faster than the R-Pi...

There is a SageTV recordings importer I believe for XBMC (not sure on the current state of it), So you would be able to use this as a playback only extender for your sagetv system, just couldn't control recordings and such.

[Skybolt]

Not sure if this is what you are loking for, as I don't think it supports subtitles, but alot of people like it over at AVS. The Pattriot Box Office. It looks real nice for <$100.

I was looking at the Dune as well. I just can't justify $500 for streaming, when my TV can do this, just no fanart ...

EDIT: To add to Fuzzy's post, XBMC is also availabe for the PIVOS as well.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I can't say for sure, but i thought XBMC supported PGS subtitles in at least the m2ts container. If that is the case, there is rapidly becoming more and more hardware out there that can handle it. Even the RaspberryPi can run XBMC relatively well I hear (via the OpenELEC distro). That said, I think I'd still rather build up an e350 based cilent, and run OpenELEC on it, which is considerably faster than the R-Pi...

There is a SageTV recordings importer I believe for XBMC (not sure on the current state of it), So you would be able to use this as a playback only extender for your sagetv system, just couldn't control recordings and such.

XBMC is the way to go for for exactly what you're are saying. My e450 box in my sig runs very well with openelec and will play pgs subs without any problems. I use it with sage, but a friend uses openelec so I installed it just to see what it was about.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

EDIT: To add to Fuzzy's post, XBMC is also availabe for the PIVOS as well.

Yes, but the Pivos cost 3-4 times what the RPi costs, with not much better UI performance/speed... if you're going to spend $100 for an XBMC box that is only slightly faster than the $35 Raspberry Pi, you'd overall be happier going with a $140 e350 based system that is a LOT faster than both...

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Yes, but the Pivos cost 3-4 times what the RPi costs, with not much better UI performance/speed... if you're going to spend $100 for an XBMC box that is only slightly faster than the $35 Raspberry Pi, you'd overall be happier going with a $140 e350 based system that is a LOT faster than both...

Yes, but not everyone wants a PC in thier living room/HT. However that does give you a lot more optoins, if you can go fanless.

[Fuzzy]

You'd be hard pressed calling an e350 running OpenELEC (which is essentially just firmware) a PC. Fanless is really easy to do on the e350's 18W TDP, though I'd rather go with a smaller heatsink and very quiet fan than a totally passive 'fanless' unit. Ideally, if I was going this route, it'd be a 'custom' case utilizing a picoPSU-90, a cheap e350 board with about 4 or 8 GB of RAM, and network boot into OpenELEC off my server.

But then again, I prefer to use SageTVClient which unfortunately, isn't as finely tuned as openelec, and requires a bit more hardware for 'great' performance.

[Evil_Attorney]

A question about any of these nettop PCs with either Sage or an XBMC varient. Is there any way to get native resolution output switching? I've been pretty spoiled with my HD300 doing this and I really like my TV's processing of different resolutions (especially the Hz "smoothing" that doesn't happen as much at 1080p 60hz).

[eric3a]

Fanless is really easy to do on the e350's 18W TDP, though I'd rather go with a smaller heatsink and very quiet fan than a totally passive 'fanless' unit. Ideally, if I was going this route, it'd be a 'custom' case utilizing a picoPSU-90, a cheap e350 board with about 4 or 8 GB of RAM, and network boot into OpenELEC off my server.

I'd just found out about OpenElec recently and intended to have a look into it to see what my other clients are going to be. (small "PC" under OpenElec, or more Pivos type boxes).
I wanted to investigate what a cheap but capable Openelec box would look like, and had a look around at the XBMC hardware forums, but seems everyone has a different idea. No surprise.... But I'm such a noob at Linux boxes, I have no idea how to pitch it right. I am surprised (pleasantly so) that a $140 box is a reasonable option!
Any ideas?

Eric

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

... Ideally, if I was going this route, it'd be a 'custom' case utilizing a picoPSU-90, a cheap e350 board with about 4 or 8 GB of RAM, and network boot into OpenELEC off my server...

That's a great Idea, I didn't know you could do a net boot with OpenELEC.

[Fuzzy]

I've never cared about resolution switching, but I for quite some time did refresh rate switching using a ReClock script. This was just for sage. I don't bother anymore, as almost all my sage content isn't 24Hz anyways. Arcsoft TMT5 has the capability to do it for my movies. XBMC (at least the OpenELEC builds) also has native refresh rate switching built in.