Where to buy hd300

[speck55]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Shortly after the Google announcement I did a basic patent search on Jeff's name. I came up with one hit, and it actually seemed to be from the right Jeff, but it was from Jeff's pre-SageTV days and definitely wasn't DVR related.

I kind of doubt it. There's tons of prior art here. What does Sage do that other products can't do? It's more a matter of Sage doing things better than other products, or having a better combination of features than other products.

OK, now check for any recent Google filings. If they are DVR-related, and/or have Jeff as inventor but Google as the assignee, then here we have it.

I don't claim to have a law degree in IP, but the way these companies manage to get around prior art is the "MECHANISM" by which the functionality is achieved. Sure, there are plenty of prior released products that do some of what Sage does/did.

One would expect to see a patent caption such as "Mechanism for Extending Centralized Video using a combination of Multicast and Unicast packets", or something like that. (This example is purely a made up one, but you get the jist). "Mechanisms" and "Processses" for arriving at (roughly) the same end result/product, are a lot of patents I've read. For example, one "process" may be worth patenting because it involves a much cheaper manufacturing/fabrication process, or less CPU power in the case of software - Sage had at least one of these "Mechanisms" or "Processes" that Google found unique (likely by reverse engineering), I'm willing to bet.



There had to be motivation for Goliath to spend the money, and they've got more lawyers than some state governments in the US do, I'd bet, with a good chunk being IP / Patent attorneys. Albeit maybe not so great since Microsoft enforced recently some of their patents upon (I can't remember if it was the Android Project or device manufacturers) Android devices.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by speck55

There had to be motivation for Goliath to spend the money, and they've got more lawyers than some state governments in the US do, I'd bet, with a good chunk being IP / Patent attorneys. Albeit maybe not so great since Microsoft enforced recently some of their patents upon (I can't remember if it was the Android Project or device manufacturers) Android devices.

The motivation was to hire a new employee. To accomplish that they had to buy his company along with an offer of a good salary for him. Do you think the investors that SageTV had would let him leave without an offer to buy the company?

[Evil_Attorney]

I am a patent attorney and I highly doubt there is anything about the current SageTV software that can now be patented. As you may know, you have 1 year from first public disclosure/sale to file for a patent. I'm not sure there are any features in the current SageTV software that are less than a year old. I just checked for published applications assigned to Frey or with "kardatzke" as an inventor...none came up.

Google seems generally less interested in patents and more interested in talent and working products to fill in gaps in whatever strategy they are trying to implement.

Also, owning the rights to the Sage code simply allows Google to prevent others from directly copying it. Anyone can write software that functions identically to Sage without infringing Sage/Google's copyrights.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

I am a patent attorney

You may have already stated this, but I missed it if you did. Do you know if SageTV has any patents?
I think the answer is no, but wanted to be sure.

[Evil_Attorney]

I didn't see any patents or published applications assigned to Frey Technologies and only saw one patent with Jeff's name on it (as I think Reggie earlier mentioned), but that patent is assigned to Raytheon.

[speck55]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

I am a patent attorney and I highly doubt there is anything about the current SageTV software that can now be patented. As you may know, you have 1 year from first public disclosure/sale to file for a patent. I'm not sure there are any features in the current SageTV software that are less than a year old. I just checked for published applications assigned to Frey or with "kardatzke" as an inventor...none came up.

Google seems generally less interested in patents and more interested in talent and working products to fill in gaps in whatever strategy they are trying to implement.

Also, owning the rights to the Sage code simply allows Google to prevent others from directly copying it. Anyone can write software that functions identically to Sage without infringing Sage/Google's copyrights.

Are you sure there aren't any pending patent filings, or filings under shill individuals or entities, as Apple was so fond of doing, and then doing the assignment once it's granted?

Barring seeing the source code in its entirety, I think it's a bit premature for any person outside Soogle to say whether there's any novel processes involved in what they are doing code-wise.

Being that you're an IP attorney, I'm sure you've seen some of the silly s**t that patents are granted for. I would also have expected a disclaimer with your post that your post didn't constitute legal advice, in case one of us decided to start an open source project that oh-so-cleverly rhymes with SageTV, and looks and acts nearly identically, based on your post.

I can't help but question whomever said something about Google needing to buy the company and all assets in order to make a purely talent acquisition in order to placate its' investors/board of directors/whatever -- I'm guessing with high probability that Sage was not in any way publicly traded, and looking back at the history of things, it's not that hard to imagine that there possibly was no-one Jeff had to answer to in that fashion -- perhaps a co-founder, and some net-terms vendors? He clearly feels he need not answer to his user base, 3rd party dev base, customers, and those to this day that are kind enough to stand by and provide his tech support for free.

Just my net -$0.02.

[Evil_Attorney]

Pending patent applications are generally published 18 months after filing. So, in theory, there could be some application that was recently filed that will not show up. Again, this would be for something that was NOT already in the SageTV software. Google is legally barred from a patent on anything that has been public/on sale for more than a year.

The best reason to by Frey/Sage was to get the rights to to source code to a fully functioning DVR system and the know-how (and trade secrets) from one of the best DVR programmers (IMHO) in the country.

[speck55]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

Pending patent applications are generally published 18 months after filing. So, in theory, there could be some application that was recently filed that will not show up. Again, this would be for something that was NOT already in the SageTV software. Google is legally barred from a patent on anything that has been public/on sale for more than a year.

The best reason to by Frey/Sage was to get the rights to to source code to a fully functioning DVR system and the know-how (and trade secrets) from one of the best DVR programmers (IMHO) in the country.

That makes sense. One other question - I started my "Sage Journey" at Ver 7 Beta - were there any features or code potentially added in the v7 release, which if I am not (but may well be) mistaken, would put that particular piece of functionality/code within the 12-month window? Does it have to be a "Feature" exposed to the end user, or could it be an extremely novel algorithm, engine, etc, that is not exposed except by viewing the source, to have that time limit? If you follow my question.

By your logic (which seems quite solid) there is nothing left to patent, so I'm trying to figure out this "silent period" before we all get shoved aside and the dns record for forums.sagetv.com and www.sagetv.com become CNAMEs for google.com.

[Evil_Attorney]

I believe that any functioning code in the software would count towards the on sale bar, whether its functionality was obvious or not. There might be a little more nuance here (e.g., if there was software that was not technically sold with the SageTV and resided on Frey's servers), but probable not much.

In case you are curious, here is the statute relating to the on sale bar, 35 USC 102(b):

A person shall be entitled to a patent unless...
(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States,

The silent period is unrelated to patents. Typically, most purchases/mergers have this type of silent period before/after for various legal and business strategy reasons .

[rugerp90]

At least we didn't get totally screwed over on the buyout guys. It seems the value for these just doubled on ebay. I just sold mine a couple of days ago for about $300 including shipping. I think I'm either going to get a Popcorn Hour A-210 or a Dune HD Smart D1, so this should easily cover the cost to get one of them. Best of luck to all of you.

[gary201]

Like most here, I'm also a bit concerned about the future w/SageTV. Just when I acquired my first HD300 and started to like it, Google steps in.

After reading the posts and finding that there just isn't any comment from either Google/Sage as to what the future brings (which doesn't even suggest there will be beyond the 1 year of EPG), I have to remind everyone that many companies have been bought out for the sole purposes of removing that companies product from the market. There no real evidence that to say that Google didn't buy out Sage just to extinguish it --but there's also nothing to say that there won't be a future. So here we sit in limbo left to speculate to the humor of those in Google/Sage in the know.

It's that lack of any comment about whether there will be a future (beyond EPG for a year) that really concerns me. I really wanted to get one more HD300, but now w/no indication that there will be EPG after a year, I wouldn't buy another even if it was 1/2 the price, because w/o an EPG source, it's value is greatly diminished.

[stevech]

For 6 years or more, I've take EPG data from XMLTV:
http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/Main_Page

It now costs a trivial amount per year because the volunteers that operate the service now have some costs. Like $15/yr or so.

In the US it has been very, very reliable. In some countries, less so due to data availability issues.

I'd hope that as we hear that Sage's EPG service will end, then some dear souls here will use XMLTV's service (as to the MythTV users, I think).

I wrote software to parse the EPG data in XML and produce HTML pages that display on the TV in an easy to read form, for channels of interest, vertically scrollable, minus all eye-candy. I download 48 hours' data every day.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by gary201

Like most here, I'm also a bit concerned about the future w/SageTV. Just when I acquired my first HD300 and started to like it, Google steps in.

After reading the posts and finding that there just isn't any comment from either Google/Sage as to what the future brings (which doesn't even suggest there will be beyond the 1 year of EPG), I have to remind everyone that many companies have been bought out for the sole purposes of removing that companies product from the market. There no real evidence that to say that Google didn't buy out Sage just to extinguish it --but there's also nothing to say that there won't be a future. So here we sit in limbo left to speculate to the humor of those in Google/Sage in the know.

It's that lack of any comment about whether there will be a future (beyond EPG for a year) that really concerns me. I really wanted to get one more HD300, but now w/no indication that there will be EPG after a year, I wouldn't buy another even if it was 1/2 the price, because w/o an EPG source, it's value is greatly diminished.

Slugger has a plugin that can use Schedules Direct and has promised to publish it when the EPG disappears in a year. There is also XMLTV available now see below for free option.

Originally Posted by stevech

For 6 years or more, I've take EPG data from XMLTV:
http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/Main_Page

It now costs a trivial amount per year because the volunteers that operate the service now have some costs. Like $15/yr or so.

In the US it has been very, very reliable. In some countries, less so due to data availability issues.

I'd hope that as we hear that Sage's EPG service will end, then some dear souls here will use XMLTV's service (as to the MythTV users, I think).

I wrote software to parse the EPG data in XML and produce HTML pages that display on the TV in an easy to read form, for channels of interest, vertically scrollable, minus all eye-candy. I download 48 hours' data every day.

MC2XML has free EPG data. Coupled with an XMLTV importer gives you free epg now

[stevech]

Sorry - above when I say XMLTV, I actually mean Schedules Direct.

[gary201]

Does this EPG importer thing integrate with Sage's scheduler? In other words, would I need to manually schedule each recording event or would the Sage scheduler work just like it does today by automatically scheduling/rescheduling recordings?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by gary201

Does this EPG importer thing integrate with Sage's scheduler? In other words, would I need to manually schedule each recording event or would the Sage scheduler work just like it does today by automatically scheduling/rescheduling recordings?

It should work automatically. I haven't set up XMLTV yet myself. Still getting things setup after my latest MB/CPU/Case upgrade. Since everybody else in the world except US/Canada uses an XMLTV importer of some kind to do their scheduling in SageTV I would think it would be automatic. I know from Sluggers thread that I linked above that his plugin will.

[bunch92]

Originally Posted by gary201

Does this EPG importer thing integrate with Sage's scheduler? In other words, would I need to manually schedule each recording event or would the Sage scheduler work just like it does today by automatically scheduling/rescheduling recordings?

The EPG importer integrates with SageTV so it will work as it does today.