Just in case- Alternatives to SageTV

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by SHS

I know and very little to no real info on it and for I know there no picture of the Hardware or UI so for now it dosen't interest me one bit.
Must be more expandable harddrive like support NAS or something like
If it don't support my other media like Video, Music, Pictures then there no point in it end of story.

Though it could make a nice DVR companion to a robust media streamer like a Dune. That an 1TB will go WAY farther recording native DirecTV bitstreams than HD PVR recordings (talking three-four times as far).

I'm sort of resigning myself to the fact that if I want the "best", should I need a post-SageTV solution, it's going to have to be a separate DVR and media streamer solution.

[valnar]

@MKANET

I think most of the features you mentioned are nicities, not core features. I could do without 80% of them should my whole Sage setup take a dump.

I need a solid PVR system with sigma based extenders. Requirements are working with my tuners, USB-UIRT, EPG data and can play my collection of MKV files through the same interface. I think anything above that is gravy.

At least for me, since I currently own enough extenders, the developer of NPVR has a year or so to beef it up even more.

[sub]

Originally Posted by valnar

@MKANET

I think most of the features you mentioned are nicities, not core features. I could do without 80% of them should my whole Sage setup take a dump.

I need a solid PVR system with sigma based extenders. Requirements are working with my tuners, USB-UIRT, EPG data and can play my collection of MKV files through the same interface. I think anything above that is gravy.

Yep, NPVR can do pretty much all your core requirements. It's not a commerical app, so I cant fund and provide built-in EPG data for North America ($$$), but it does allow for using either Schedules Direct or XMLTV. There are free options like mc2xml for getting free XMLTV listings.

mkanet is just being arse. He headed over to the gbpvr forum to berate me for not having all these these 'must-have features the sage users would require'. I politely explained that NextPVR is not SageTV, and wasnt attempting to be. My feature set is different from Sage, and driven by what my users having been asking for.

NPVR is a pretty good match with the core of what I imagine most Sage users would want - solid TV and recording, and playback, support for extenders. There is also a lot of flexibility allowing for Sage users/developers that want to develop their own skins and plugins (for example, you might want to develop a media library screen with integrated fanart downloading, or R5000 recorder plugin if it was required), which might go a long way towards filling the gaps of what you're used too.

[gplasky]

I had been meaning to mention that the one app that most closely approximates what Sage was doing would be nPVR. I used it (GB-PVR) back in the early days and have always tried to keep up to date on what it was doing. I never got the chance to try out nPVR or any of the extender solutions but it seemed the users had been happy with it. For a solid PVR backend this is head and shoulders above Mediaportal/XMBC or any of the other solutions left over now that SageTV is gone.

Gerry

[valnar]

Originally Posted by sub

Yep, NPVR can do pretty much all your core requirements. It's not a commerical app, so I cant fund and provide built-in EPG data for North America ($$$), but it does allow for using either Schedules Direct or XMLTV. There are free options like mc2xml for getting free XMLTV listings.

And I wouldn't mind paying that fee. $20/yr is reasonable.

As long as you hit the core features of Sage and implement custom firmware on commercially available Sigma based extenders, I think NextPVR is our best choice. I know you are a one-man shop, but if you opened up development further to some of our favorite Sage gurus, I think NextPVR could come along even faster. I look forward to the progress.

PS. If you can retrofit the firmware on the HD200/HD300 extenders, even better!

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by valnar

As long as you hit the core features of Sage and implement custom firmware on commercially available Sigma based extenders, I think NextPVR is our best choice. I know you are a one-man shop, but if you opened up development further to some of our favorite Sage gurus, I think NextPVR could come along even faster. I look forward to the progress.

As an NPVR plugin developer and the author of the NMT extenders I can tell you while sub is a one-man shop he is very open to helping extend the API's for plugins, skin and even the extenders and I am sure the Sage gurus would really have a field day.

mkanat was being completely clueless when he said the extenders didn't support plugins, I've written four plugins for NPVR and they run very well on extenders, (PlayOn even runs on the the lowly MVP) and sub hides most of the differences and I can help other out on the small nuances.

PS. If you can retrofit the firmware on the HD200/HD300 extenders, even better!

I could have done it, and even offered a few years ago but SageTV wasn't interested.

Martin

[valnar]

Originally Posted by emveepee

As an NPVR plugin developer and the author of the NMT extenders I can tell you while sub is a one-man shop he is very open to helping extend the API's for plugins, skin and even the extenders and I am sure the Sage gurus would really have a field day.

This is all good to know. Thank you Martin.

I will be watching NPVR development very closely. I'm sure you won't be offended if I say I'll stick with Sage for as long as it works, but that should give you guys plenty of time to add more features while the rest of us save up $$ to replace our existing extenders. We need to get the most out of our current investment, as I'm sure you understand.

If you are at all familiar with Sage, a comparison sheet between the programs would go a long way for all of us desperately trying to decide what to do next. Some of us need to make those decisions sooner than later.

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by valnar

I'm sure you won't be offended if I say I'll stick with Sage for as long as it works.

No offense taken, I'd probably do the same for the short term. NextPVR was a complete re-written a year ok, and over that year many times I debated going back to GB-PVR but I decided it was better to progress with the program updates rather than stick with the old reliable GB-PVR. I personally feel it is better to support the future and be part of it and while SageTV is a great product there is no place for new users here.

Martin

[mkanet]

Does anyone have any experience with Dune Prime 3.0? I just found out about it today on AVS.

It seems to have pretty much the same capabilities that sageTV has for media center functionality. It supports Blu-ray directory structures from HDD stored on a network share/NAS (with Blu-ray menu, BD-J, BD-Live), MKVs, and any other media you can throw at it. It also supports My Movies plugin on WHS. Up till now, I thought media playback boxes were not much better than the quality I'd get from WDLive boxes and the like. Anyway, I don't want to get too ahead of myself since it might not be as good as it looks on paper; but if it is as good as it looks...

my plan, is to stick with sageTV as long a I can (for the obvious reason). If there isn't a product that does what Dune can AND DVR functionality integrated (like sageTV), my plan is to separate Tivo functionality from Media Center functionality.

[mistergq]

emveepee:

Which extenders does nPVR support? Do it support the Hauppauge HD-MVP?

[TBacker]

FWIW -

I backed up then uninstalled Sage, and switched to MediaPortal to test it's worthiness. Ran it before Sage and liked the visuals, but it was unstable as hell (I believe it was still version .9 or just barely 1.0 at that time).

I'm still not sure about it, mainly because I'm not familiar with it yet and am still tuning it a bit. However, running the current 1.2 beta, the stability is a huge improvement over my last experience.

I bought a mini-ATX core2 box with the ION chipset to use as a client and it's giving smooth HD with no real issues (on XP with VMR9 none the less!). It's only slightly thicker than my HD200, and about twice the footprint, so still a very AV-cabinet friendly setup.

I am using ForTheRecord rather than the MP native scheduler as FTR is much closer to the Sage schedulers capabilities than the MP TVServer. Both work very will with my HDHR tuners. Many have complained about the amount of setup in either the MP TVServer or FTR, but if you know the terminology, have some patience, and RTFM as you're doing it, it goes smooth. You have to get out of the "everything's integrated" mindset to try most of the Sage alternatives, and this is no exception. There may be a few separate apps with their own config, but in the end they all talk to each other.

I'm using Schedules Direct and it seems pretty complete and accurate so far. Yes, its $20 a year, but that $20 buys you some quality control and a little reassurance. The alternative is a lot of scrapers and a never ending battle of guide web sites rendering the scrapers temporarily useless when they update their code.

Overall, comparing MediaPortal with FTR vs Sage, I'd say it's a 8 out of 10, 10 being Sage level. If MediaPortal had the development man-hours of Sage, I think it would be on equal footing. That said, it seems like there's just a couple of core developers buried under the bug logs and trying to move forward at the same time. There is also a version 2 that others are working on, but it's been being built for years and I it's just about to reach alpha.

Oh - and I ran XBMC on my desktop to check it out briefly. I gotta say that if FTR's plugin for XBMC works well, that is a killer combo. XBMC is smooth and sexy - it just lacks a PVR. I was truly impressed with the XBMC GUI and it's smoothness despite running on an older machine with a ton of other apps open and competing for processor time. I understand a ForTheRecord community developer is working on a plugin - I just don't know when it will be at release stage. They've got TV working, but EPG and timed record is still stuck due to some XBMC API issues. If it gets going, that may be my next Sage. The beauty is that my new client can run that as well - I'm not tied to a platform specific extender. I have NO hate for Sage or my HD200 though! It was my first 98% trouble-free system.

Bottom line is, there can be life after Sage - you just may need to relive the earlier growing pains of Sage a second time while the alternate platforms grow up.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by TBacker

Oh - and I ran XBMC on my desktop to check it out briefly. I gotta say that if FTR's plugin for XBMC works well, that is a killer combo. XBMC is smooth and sexy - it just lacks a PVR. I was truly impressed with the XBMC GUI and it's smoothness despite running on an older machine with a ton of other apps open and competing for processor time. I understand a ForTheRecord community developer is working on a plugin - I just don't know when it will be at release stage. They've got TV working, but EPG and timed record is still stuck due to some XBMC API issues. If it gets going, that may be my next Sage. The beauty is that my new client can run that as well - I'm not tied to a platform specific extender. I have NO hate for Sage or my HD200 though! It was my first 98% trouble-free system.

I really think this is the way to go - continuing using Sage as the backend server but use XBMC as the frontend either on a SFF PC or an appleTV or other Extnder-like device. This is likely also a better solution for content like Netflix, Hulu, etc.

We just need some of the Sage developers to start looking at this. It shouldn't be too hard to add features like the Guide, Schedule Recordings, Upcoming Recordings, via an XBMC plugin.

That would leave LiveTV and (perhaps) currently recording TV as the only things that XBMC couldn't do as the TV Library, Video Library, Music and Photos sections in XBMC appear to be at least as good as what we currently have in Sage.

[valnar]

With all the XBMC customizations being proposed (which may never happen), it might be cheaper overall just to pay the high prices for the HD300's people are selling on eBay. I can't imagine a bastardized system is the future any of us want, unless you don't have kids or a spouse. Personally, I would be killed if I made it more complicated.

[wayner]

Yes but we will still have a dying platform. The XBMC UI looks very much like Sage and extenders seem possible as does Netflix, Hulu - assuming that it continues to have a thriving community then this makes a lot of sense to me.

I don't mind going to my server or using the WebUI for scheduling shows but not being able to watch shows currently being recorded is a killer for me.

[TBacker]

Originally Posted by valnar

With all the XBMC customizations being proposed (which may never happen), it might be cheaper overall just to pay the high prices for the HD300's people are selling on eBay. I can't imagine a bastardized system is the future any of us want, unless you don't have kids or a spouse. Personally, I would be killed if I made it more complicated.

Once the EPG is working on this plugin, it won't be any more complicated for the end users (i.e. the family) to use than Sage is now. The GUI's are very similar as a matter of fact.

The extra setup is on the back end, and that's not terrible - just not as integrated as Sage.

I may go back to Sage until this is done, I don't know yet. But I don't have any illusions that my 7.1.9 Sage system will run forever now that it's development and founding company are dead. And don't forget that those HD300's on eBay are not in unlimited supply - expansion of your system a few months down the road may be difficult if not impossible.

[renfrja]

Originally Posted by TBacker

Once the EPG is working on this plugin, it won't be any more complicated for the end users (i.e. the family) to use than Sage is now. The GUI's are very similar as a matter of fact.

The extra setup is on the back end, and that's not terrible - just not as integrated as Sage.

I may go back to Sage until this is done, I don't know yet. But I don't have any illusions that my 7.1.9 Sage system will run forever now that it's development and founding company are dead. And don't forget that those HD300's on eBay are not in unlimited supply - expansion of your system a few months down the road may be difficult if not impossible.

I am fairly new to Sage - so maybe this isn't a problem...

I had one of these bastardized systems. I used Beyond TV as the back-end and XBMC as the front-end.
XBMC was great - the trick was getting everything that BTV recorded in to a format that XBMC could scrape. For example, TV shows needed to be in their own folders (for each show) and the episodes needed SXXEXX information. Sage can add SXX EXX information (albeit it's kind of hit and miss). However, you would still need to aggregate the shows in their own folders (this is the part I'm not sure Sage does - I suppose you could use SJQ). I had written my own custom scripts to rename and move the BTV recordings.
I was able to add a custom menu item to launch BTV for launching live TV (using the Launcher XBMC plugin). A true PVR XBMC plugin would keep you from having to go this route.

Overall, the setup did work OK. My main issue was the watching live TV and in-progress recordings. The Launcher plugin worked but sometimes got borked and wouldn't pass control back to XBMC when you closed BTV (seemed to only happen when my wife was using it...needless to say she hated the setup). There really wasn't a way to handle the in-progress recordings...

Also, the extending capabilities of XBMC aren't great. You can have a shared DB (MYSQL) that multiple instances can use...but, each instance has it's own cache (which can get HUGE) and there are still a few bugs with the setup.

That's why I ultimately decided to switch to Sage...

[wayner]

Originally Posted by renfrja

I had one of these bastardized systems. I used Beyond TV as the back-end and XBMC as the front-end.
XBMC was great - the trick was getting everything that BTV recorded in to a format that XBMC could scrape. For example, TV shows needed to be in their own folders (for each show) and the episodes needed SXXEXX information. Sage can add SXX EXX information (albeit it's kind of hit and miss). However, you would still need to aggregate the shows in their own folders (this is the part I'm not sure Sage does - I suppose you could use SJQ).

If you search for SageTV on the XBMC forums you will find some plugins written that do an efficient job of this - I believe one of them works with the .properties files that Sage creates.

Presumably one could also kick off a SJQ task as soon as a recording completes to get XBMC to read in the metadata for the show.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by wayner

If you search for SageTV on the XBMC forums you will find some plugins written that do an efficient job of this - I believe one of them works with the .properties files that Sage creates.

Presumably one could also kick off a SJQ task as soon as a recording completes to get XBMC to read in the metadata for the show.

Exactly correct. It's right here, in fact. That's designed to be run on some frequency (author suggests every 5 minutes via task scheduler) and it will keep the two systems in sync. This eliminates the need for SJQ in the scenario you described. So, again, while you can't watch live TV or a show which is still recording, you'd have it in XBMC about 5 minutes after it was finished recording.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

So, again, while you can't watch live TV or a show which is still recording, you'd have it in XBMC about 5 minutes after it was finished recording.

Have you tried shows that are currently recording? In some other apps if you start watching a 2 hr show 1 hour into the show you will only see the first hour as it can't see anything that didn't exist when you started watching. But if you then exit out and restart the show you will get the rest - or at least up until the point that you started watching.

If it did work this way then the plugin could perhaps be altered to also list any currently recording shows.

This is a big issue for me as I watch sports on a slight time delay and not watching currently recording shows is a big problem for me, although not so much for the rest of the family.

[nscpsteve]

I like many of you have been researching alternatives. I asked a question on one of the MediaPortal forums about stability of HD-PVR on a thread that was talking about USBUIRT and getting Canadian listings. Seems to support the comments about more work to setup - but there is good results on HD-PVR stability. Here's the response that I got back:

hey nscpsteve,

I was using beyondtv before mediaportal... the hdpvrs would lock up about once a month... I never had audio sync issues.

now with MP, I've had lockups twice in two years... one of those times was due to the cable box dying I find it much more reliable than beyondtv.... seems to start recording much faster too... I still don't have audio issues but never had them

I will say that setting up mp was quite a bit more trouble than with beyondtv... and likely sagetv, too. but well worth it.

a good indication of the stability is how little I tinker these days... it just works.

I would recommend fortherecord to handle recording scheduling... it's really well done. but you need to get mp all working before adding ftr anyways

good luck

g