What are you going to do now?

[Flybye]

Originally Posted by flavius

...I don't think DVR's have much of a future anyway.

I'm curious...why not?

Instant TV show viewing online is convenient if it truly was instant. But when a show is recorded locally, you have no lag what so ever.

[mguebert]

There are other extenders using the same sigma chipset out there. Hopefully a developer can figure out a way to get the sage extender firmware patched onto one and we can continue to use our setups. Here is to hoping anyway.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Flybye

I'm curious...why not?

DVRs seem like pretty complicated, expensive, limited and failure-prone. I think there's a lot to be said for moving the complexity to "the cloud" and just having simple playback devices in the home.

DVRs seem like a bridging technology. The idea is to be able to watch what you want to when you want to. Having to record and store a video file locally is just added complexity. It seems like streaming is a much better fit for what people are trying to accomplish, its just that the technology and (more importantly) the infrastructure can't yet support it in a very large scale.

Edit: that's kind of why I'm surprised google would be interested in sagetv, given I don't understand why they would buy it for anything other than the experience in developing the DVR functionality. It seems like DVRs probably don't have that many years left.

[bastafidli]

The problem with streaming are bandwidth caps. Until those go away or are adjusted to reasonable values, DVRs are a way how to get around them.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by bastafidli

The problem with streaming are bandwidth caps. Until those go away or are adjusted to reasonable values, DVRs are a way how to get around them.

Awww, that's simple: we'll move to some sort of metering!

Really, I mean it. On most tech sites people would assume I'm being sarcastic. You don't honestly think things will become magically cheaper by moving to streaming, do you?

[david1234]

Originally Posted by reggie14

You're not concerned one of your extenders will die? That's really the thing that makes me nervous about sticking with it indefinitely.

This is a big concern for me... I'm running version 6 with a single hd100. I had planned on making the leap to version 7 later this month, and order 2 hd300's to expand the system, but now I'm stuck.

Worst case if the extender dies again (capacitors), I have a placeshifter license I can use, but we use the extender for DVD's nearly as much as watching TV. I don't want to go back to having to deal with all the physical disks (even though the 5 year old is very good with them, they still get scratched up).

[david1234]

Originally Posted by bastafidli

The problem with streaming are bandwidth caps. Until those go away or are adjusted to reasonable values, DVRs are a way how to get around them.

My problem with streaming is that even with FIOS running very fast, streamed HD just isn't as good as what the tuners can record. It kind of reminds me of watching old VHS tapes done at the super fast tape speed. On the laptop the video is just fine, but on my TV, or even just my workstation, the HD just isn't!

[dcardellini]

Lot's of really smart people in this forum, users of SageTV.

Lot's of really optimistic people here, too.

IMHO, this is the end of THIS world as we know it.

When EPG shuts down in a year, and support dwindles to non-existent....

...and this community scatters to other forums when this board is shut down.... it will be clear.

Love my extenders, but love my PC Clients even more. The options for low-power small form factor extender-like PC Clients are getting closer all the time. Sandy Bridge and upcoming products from AMD make this clear. They may never be as cheap as $150, but you WILL have a very flexible vendor-independent solution available to you indefinitely. It is a good fall-back option.

So many bright, visionary third party developers pouring heart and soul into a closed, proprietary product like SageTV. What if all this effort had been focused into an open source multi-platform solution.....guaranteed to live on indefinitely.

..sorry for the pessimism. I need to start now in developing my go-forward plan. And it will take (at least) a year for the alternative to be production-ready for my family.


Just like I refuse to drink the Apple kool-aid, I fear lousy solutions that take forever to bring forward from other massive companies. What are the viable open source alternatives?

[flavius]

Originally Posted by Flybye

I'm curious...why not?

Instant TV show viewing online is convenient if it truly was instant. But when a show is recorded locally, you have no lag what so ever.

We don't experience any noticeable lag.

As to your question, it's mostly based on observation. I have three kids, the youngest couldn't even walk when we got broadband access all over the house. Only the oldest who is 16 remembers what it was like to watch Live TV - and be limited to it. We stopped watching Live TV in 2003 when I put together the first (BTV-based) server and had 'HTPC'-style PC's handle the playback. In 2005 we switched to Sage and all those devices they supported over time.

I don't know exactly when it started, but I was still heaping TB upon TB, ripping movies and what not, slowly but surely Sage was seeing a lot less usage in our house, since the kids were going after what they wanted to watch when they wanted it. The advent of Hulu, Netflix and the like accelerated the process quite a bit it seems.

Now, this spring we had construction going on and the Sage server and all those things around it got moved and were offline for a couple weeks. Nobody, but my wife cared, myself included.

I'm still spending quite a bit of money, but it's for content now. 'They' have won. I might as well switch to WMC7 if I would need (or want) any part of it.-

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by bastafidli

The problem with streaming are bandwidth caps. Until those go away or are adjusted to reasonable values, DVRs are a way how to get around them.

More so than bandwidth caps, the problem with streaming is quality. While the quality may be fine on a 20" 720p display using the built in speakers, watching Avatar on a 120" 1080p projector with a 7.1 sound setup would suck streaming it from any of the current streaming options. Of course those of us that care about quality are in the minority....

[david1234]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

Of course those of us that care about quality are in the minority....

I like to think that we're not in the minority so much as the folks that really like streaming are coming from analog cable where the quality just wasn't there to begin with.

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by david1234

My problem with streaming is that even with FIOS running very fast, streamed HD just isn't as good as what the tuners can record.[...] but on my TV, or even just my workstation, the HD just isn't!

Just curious if you've ever watched anything from VUDU in HDX quality?

[davephan]

I plan to keep SageTV running as long as possible, backing up my system periodically with different methods, storing the images and backups on multiple hard drives including off site.

I am afraid that SageTV will become dead-ended with no updates or fixes in the future. The features and options will seem stale after awhile. Over the years the SageTV community has always been eager to the next bleeding edge feature or fix. Running the beta version seemed to be the 'norm' for most people, not the exception. It will be very important to be able to recover the system if there are Windows patches that kill the functionality in the future.

My impression from reading the posts recently is that some of the developers that contributed the most seem to be gone from the forum. If this is true, then maybe they are also under Google's control.

I believe that SageTV is way to complicated for the mass population to maintain and operate. I suspect that Google's intention might be to have a DVR that can be programmed, but all the recordings are done and stored in the 'cloud'. Thousands of people might record the same program, but only one copy is stored in the 'cloud'. However, the Internet providers bandwidth caps will kill any ideas of a 'cloud' based DVR unless Google can replace the current Internet providers with either unlimited streaming or a very high limit. Jacked up Internet provider rates for high bandwidth caps will be a non-starter, and won't sell to the mass population. The bandwidth caps will be a certain and swift death to any ideas of a 'cloud' based DVR.

While keeping SageTV running for as long as possible, I will also start looking at alternatives. MythTV does not look promising. NPVR might be a better possibility. I think any other choice at this point in time will be inferior to SageTV. However, if SageTV is dead-ended and finally breaks, then an inferior product would have to be used. I cannot go back to watching TV live and watching commercials, that is just not a viable option.


Dave

[darcilicious]

right. time to step away from the keyboard apparently.

[Fuzzy]

more specifically, Keep Sage for now. Use EPG as long as possible, then free XMLTV sources from then on.

[sleonard]

Don't forget bandwidth either. I only have 3 tuners and 3 TV's. Watching 3 recorded shows from my HD-PVR's would require the equivalent of a 40Mbit download speed. 3 ripped blurays the equivalent of over 100Mbit/s. My cable ISP is nowhere near that nor will it any time soon.

Also, don't forget that Google, Netflix, et. al. do not have one single content server that they call the cloud. They manage multiple content servers all over to keep the content closer to the user and often put one (or more) inside an ISP's network so that they can provide acceptable delivery speeds. My current Sage server is simply a content server placed inside my own network so that I have acceptable delivery speed. I also get to manage and control it. How can the Google cloud come close to that? It can't.

I'm not impressed with the Cloud. It's just another name for taking away control from me without giving me anything in return.

S

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by davephan

I believe that SageTV is way to complicated for the mass population to maintain and operate. I suspect that Google's intention might be to have a DVR that can be programmed, but all the recordings are done and stored in the 'cloud'. Thousands of people might record the same program, but only one copy is stored in the 'cloud'.

Interesting idea- that's basically what CableVision had in mind with their "network DVR"- but I suspect it would be difficult for a non-cable company to pull off. In theory the court case that allowed CableVision to move forward with networked DVRs should apply equally well to Google. But, if I'm understanding you correctly, Google would essentially have to become a nationwide cable TV company. That's pretty complicated, because Google can't give me the NBC affiliate in your area (KTTC, right?), nor can it give you the NBC programming originating in my area with WRC.

If you can work out the necessary deals to get something like that to work, you might as well just move to a purely streaming model.

While a Sage system is difficult to manage, mass-marketed DVRs aren't that bad. There's a fair number of people with TiVo's, and a lot of people have cable company provided DVRs. I suspect if Google were to create DVR software, they'd be selling it to OEMs that would just build it into GoogleTV devices that already have all the necessary hardware ready to go.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by sleonard

I'm not impressed with the Cloud. It's just another name for taking away control from me without giving me anything in return.

Or, rather than saying its taking away control, you could say its making it so you no longer have to be in control. It's nice to be able to offload problems to someone else. That's what "the cloud" is supposed to give you in return.

[crusing]

I will keep running Sage until one of my HD300's die. Then it's all over for me. I am a recent convert and have rebuilt my entire system around the HD300. I have no spares since all of my hardware is still under warranty. (or was under warranty) If one of them does croak and I can't get it replaced I think I will feel rather screwed at that point. If I could at least buy a PC client license I would have a migration path, but as soon a one piece fails it's all over for me. So sad.

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Or, rather than saying its taking away control, you could say its making it so you no longer have to be in control. It's nice to be able to offload problems to someone else. That's what "the cloud" is supposed to give you in return.

Sage is my hobby. I enjoy managing and controlling it. Moving it to the cloud is like telling Emeril he doesn't have to cook anymore and, instead, just head over to McDonalds and let them do the cooking.

S