Stay or Bail ?

[mitchedo]

I was a Dish Network subscriber for many years until I got sick of them nickel-and-diming me to death. My parents just got DirecTV, and I'll never do that. DirecTV are nothing but a bunch of predators. I dumped cable in the mid 90's and will never go back.

I sprung for a server, 2 HD300's, and 2 HDHR's back in August last year. I've spent hours and hours getting everything just right.

Then steps in Google to rain on my parade.

I'll keep using SageTV until it no longer works. If Google jacks SageTV up too much (ie: DRM or ads), or kills it altogether, then I'll stop watching TV. It's as simple as that. My whole family spends too much time sitting on the couch watching the stupid box anyway.

[speck55]

Originally Posted by mitchedo

Then steps in Google to rain on my parade.

I'll keep using SageTV until it no longer works. If Google jacks SageTV up too much (ie: DRM or ads), or kills it altogether, then I'll stop watching TV. It's as simple as that. My whole family spends too much time sitting on the couch watching the stupid box anyway.

You can count on it being some cloud-based, highly compressed, ad-ridden piece, embedded in 2 or 3 blu ray players or TV's, and a dedicated STB that will look like either (a) a tivo, or (b) some needlessly large, square box (oooh, but then Google can buy out Boxee and the Boxee box to fix that). I looked at GTV some time back, and it seemed to me to be one of google's neglected "pet projects" (flea-ridden, matted, crippled, and begging for someone like the ATVFlash folks to make it worth using) just as the original AppleTV was one of Jobs'. <sarcasm>Can't wait to see the new incarnation</sarcasm>.

I for one am not interested in having my TV 'in the cloud', especially considering I switched to THE LAST broadband provider in my area that doesn't do bandwidth caps and/or metered billing.

[MickBurke]

After spending 4 hours trying to contact google for a client who uses one of the other companies that google gobbled up and destroyed (postini), I have lost all hope that google could possibly do anything good with SageTV.
I went through all of their web pages, the clients admin console on the postini system, called and there is NO way to get customer service or support or talk to a human being. I know you're thinking '4 hours? not really right?'. YEP, 4 MISERABLE HOURS. And nothing to show for it.

That said, they left the product itself pretty much in tact after they bought it, so it's still great, but google as an organization is just absolutely miserable to deal with. Their web page should just have a big $ and middle finger on it so you know where you stand right off.

[speck55]

Originally Posted by MickBurke

After spending 4 hours trying to contact google for a client who uses one of the other companies that google gobbled up and destroyed (postini), I have lost all hope that google could possibly do anything good with SageTV.
I went through all of their web pages, the clients admin console on the postini system, called and there is NO way to get customer service or support or talk to a human being. I know you're thinking '4 hours? not really right?'. YEP, 4 MISERABLE HOURS. And nothing to show for it.

That said, they left the product itself pretty much in tact after they bought it, so it's still great, but google as an organization is just absolutely miserable to deal with. Their web page should just have a big $ and middle finger on it so you know where you stand right off.

We have had no movement on the SageTV store situation, client license situation, no comment beyond the initial announcement, in what, a month now? We did manage to get the patched executable for the in-the-middle upgraders, but that's about it. No replies to my emails or support requests... Google is too good even to dignify the "little people" with a response, even if it were a middle finger, you're absolutely right, at least we'd know for sure, and be able to make educated decisions.

I used to implement Postini for clients, and the first time I had to call for support post-Google-Gobbling as their relay servers were rejecting mail destined for clients' domains, I spent a WORKWEEK trying to get "directed" to the "right place". That weekend I rolled my own product from the various open-source packages available (Exim, MailScanner, SpamAssassin, etc.), tested for a week, gave my clients (AND their individual end users) access to their queues, and dropped Postini like a bad habit. (Though I was never fond of the name, it had worked great for years prior).

As an experiment, if you get some time and an extra $5-20 to spend - open an advertiser account (AdWords, AdSense, etc.) with Google. Let us know if it takes you anywhere near the effort to get support. I bet that 4 hours goes down to 4 minutes (or less).

If there were any other tolerable engines, I wouldn't even use Google. That way, I could reserve the "Google" verb to describe these acquisitions: "Oh, SageTV? Yeah, they were great, with great support and a great community. Too bad they got googled.".

[Localhorst]

Originally Posted by SomeWhatLost

I just tried out DVB Viewer...
kinda crap really..
menus don't really make sense...
movie listing thing doesn't even compare to Plucky's SMM...
no extenders (and no, upnp is not an 'extender')

be a great way (maybe) to add DVB support to sage?

Huh, i'm not sure which kind of software you tested. The UI is completely skinable and you can easily change the menus in the way you want. Therefore you can either use the buildin menu editor, or the more flexible external program.
Again, no extenders? I really hate to say this, but you can use all extenders available on the market. There is a popcorn hour support, as well as the ability to stream to ipad, iphone, android and or dlna capable tv's resp. PS3, XBox, XBMC and so on.
An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wMWJ3hsvos
More examples?
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...dvbviewer+upnp

Again, i'm aware that this board is not the best way to discuss pro and cons of competitive software. It would be quite similar to discuss SageTV inside the dvbviewer forum. As far as i remember there where 2 small discussions and almost nobody even tried to flame against SageTV. Why should they, they already found out which one is better for them. Again, stick with Sage if you are happy - you brought it. By the way as far as i remember the dvbviewer board has 90k users compared to the one here, it is probably slightly more popular. I do not want to speculate, but according to my experience the amount of customers is usually direct proportional to the forum accounts.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Localhorst

I really hate to say this, but you can use all extenders available on the market. There is a popcorn hour support, as well as the ability to stream to ipad, iphone, android and or dlna capable tv's resp. PS3, XBox, XBMC and so on.
An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wMWJ3hsvos
More examples?
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...dvbviewer+upnp

Again, those aren't extenders. UPnP does not an extender make. If you don't get the "server"s UI, all the menus and functionality, it's not an extender. Streaming media files does not count as an extender.

[Localhorst]

Again the fact that i have a html frontend which can be changed in order to get run on a cehtml display, like the popcorn hour is more than enough to be used on a extender.
This one for instance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlGF09rjG7g works fine in iphone and even on a ipad.

[stanger89]

That's not an extender, that's internet streaming, and the performance looks pretty horrible and unrefined. And besides that I have no interest in developing my own extender.

And besides that it doesn't seem to have very good support for non-DVB devices (which the vast, vast majority of us Sage users use).

[IVB]

ditto, an iPhone or an iPad are *not* extenders. An extender is a piece of hardware I can plug into my TV, and use a remote while sitting on my couch/bed to control, using an attractive GUI. (and I don't mean a wireless keyboard, I mean a simple remote.)

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by speck55

You can count on it being some cloud-based, highly compressed, ad-ridden piece, embedded in 2 or 3 blu ray players or TV's, and a dedicated STB that will look like either (a) a tivo, or (b) some needlessly large, square box (oooh, but then Google can buy out Boxee and the Boxee box to fix that). I looked at GTV some time back, and it seemed to me to be one of google's neglected "pet projects" (flea-ridden, matted, crippled, and begging for someone like the ATVFlash folks to make it worth using) just as the original AppleTV was one of Jobs'. <sarcasm>Can't wait to see the new incarnation</sarcasm>.

I for one am not interested in having my TV 'in the cloud', especially considering I switched to THE LAST broadband provider in my area that doesn't do bandwidth caps and/or metered billing.

You know, Speck, I agree. For the life of me I don't understand how people don't realize that when all of a sudden they start to stream 4-6 channels (some being watched in different rooms, some being recorded) in HD at any sort of decent bitrate that their ISP is going to do one of the following: A. Slow to a crawl when the whole neighborhood starts streaming. B. Institue caps/meters, as you say. C. Raise rates. D. All of the above.

I don't want my TV "in the cloud" either. The costs have to be passed along. It's just that simple. One look at those cheapo long-gone-all-you-can-eat cellular broadband plans should make that obvious. Or what AT&T went though when they realized that iPhone users wanted to do more with their phones than make phone calls...

[SomeWhatLost]

Originally Posted by Localhorst

Huh, i'm not sure which kind of software you tested. The UI is completely skinable and you can easily change the menus in the way you want. Therefore you can either use the buildin menu editor, or the more flexible external program.

didn't look at skinning, just d/loaded the demo and looked at the stock UI that kinda sucks (personal opinion, I just don't like the way it is laid out, not meant as a flame or anything)

Originally Posted by Localhorst

Again, no extenders? I really hate to say this, but you can use all extenders available on the market. There is a popcorn hour support, as well as the ability to stream to ipad, iphone, android and or dlna capable tv's resp. PS3, XBox, XBMC and so on.
An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wMWJ3hsvos
More examples?
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...dvbviewer+upnp

show me one of DVB's dnla 'extenders' doing something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qA4bU59ZfA
I use that feature weekly with my HD300's & 200's, it is a must have...

[Savage1701]

Worthless as it may be, my 2-cents worth on "Stay or Bail?":

Their are 3 basic kinds of takeovers/sell-outs:

1. Synergistic. This is what you are being told this is, or hoping this is. Much like the banking buyout craze of the late 90's and such. Every small bank positioned itself to be bought out by a larger bank. This worked because alternatives existed for the customer who did not like the new owner, and because, frequently, the new owner did business as usual, or very nearly so. I mean, there are only so many variations on a checking account or a savings account, right? the buyer's logo gradually goes from small print next to the acquired bank to crowding it out entirely, but it does not matter. Or when your Buick dealer merges with your GMC dealer so each gets the other's strengths in cars and trucks. You may not care a lot for the new service manager, but the dealership is still in town and you can still get a new Buick orget your old GMC truck fixed.

You are NOT getting "business as usual" here. Every branch of your local bank is closed and your "deposits" are in a nebulous state. You can't open a new checking or savings account or buy a CD or get a car loan. You've got the equivalent of a 1930's Depression-era bank holiday on your hands, but no one knows when or if the holiday will end. If you were used to GMC pickups, now you have a Honda dealer left selling small, fuel-efficent vehicles. Or you can drive an impracticable distance for GMC truck sales and service.

2. Raid. Think the original "Wall Street". Companies were bought out because they carried assets on their books far below market value due to accounting principles. Examples include the attempted raid on Disney in the 80's, and of recent times, say, 10 years ago up until 2007 or so, retailers being bought out because the land their stores were on was worth more than what the stores were selling, and was being carried on the books at a conservative value, or their patents or brands were under-monetized and languishing. Look at K-Mart. K-Mart's value as a brand was worth less than what the land the stores sat on was worth. That's why K-Mart bondholders were one of the only ones to ever profit from a bankruptcy when their debt was converted to equity and the new owner leveraged the assets. That's rare. That is NOT happening here. You are NOT being offered bigger-better-stronger-faster extenders or commercial-grade recording engines or access to some esoteric gee-whiz features that might be on a commercial-grade product, for example. Disney's turnaround exemplifies this. They got a white knight for capital and a CEO who opened the vaults, monetized the characters, and started the movie business up again. Love them or hate them, Disney was a go-go stock from the mid-80's until around 2000, and they churned out invigorated movies, spruced up and expanded their parks, branded everything, you name it. They raised prices mercilessly along the way, but kept giving the customer more and more and more to make up for it.

3. Asset/Patent Buyout and Lock-Up. Odds are, this is what Google is doing. They want the patents and the human assets. Google has never, ever been interested in selling hardware on any appreciable level. Other than Android, they don't work with storefronts in any meaningful sense. SageTV is rinky-dink to them. We live very close to what used to be The Beloit Corporation. They were one of 3 companies in the world that made giant paper-making and handling equipment like newspapers or paper companies would use. They were mismanaged. They failed to innovate. Their patents were bought up and locked away. Their factories were shuttered. A small local company, a shadow of Beloit Corporation, services their equipment but does not build it or improve it. Aside from the patents, I'm guessing the human assets of Sage are under no-compete clauses so they don't get mad and go out and port SageTV into something very close to what they were working on. I would expect those clauses to be in force for 2-5 years, and someone would need to find a meaningful, affordable way to engineer an extender. And I mean a true extender linked to Sage in a meaningful, cross-communicative way, not just a garden-variety media extender that happens to play A/V files. Google does not want its customers to have SageTV. It wants its customers, plus us Sage users, to switch to GoogleTV.

I'm not saying these things to be a jerk. I'm saying them because they correlate to the real-world business models that rationalize buyouts and takeovers and such. I doubt this will end up with a fariy-tale ending like the movie "Other People's Money" had where Danny DeVito's character, Larry The Lquidator, decides to partner up with his buyout target, the Atticus-Finch-writ-small Jorgy played by Gregory Peck, and do the "right thing" and make the best wire in the world and keep the factory humming making a high-profit, high-end product. GoogleTV is not a good product. I read the Logitech forums the other day. The last FW update messed up video playback beyond belief. Other than that, you can buy a Sony TV with GoogleTV integrated into it. Maybe if Netflix had bought out Sage, I could rationalize something positive, since they have decent hardware options. Or Western Digital with their media hubs. My guess is the server license thing was a bone tossed out to legally placate something in the license upgrade fine print. But since you can't do that on any scale with clients, placeshifters, or hardware extenders, it means very little.

Look at the support side as well. These forums are riddled with those of us who have spent years chasing down HD-PVR failures, weird channel tuning issues, you name it. You think Google wants to babysit a bunch of HTPC tech nerds, myself included, who cobble Sage servers together out of every possible hardware and network configuration imangineable? Their target audience has ZERO interest in building servers. They want a cloud, even though they don't know what it is or that sooner or later their ISP will start throttling them and charging them extra for all that bandwidth they chew through to watch HD movies. Just wait till they try and start streaming 3 or 4 HD channels through different TV's in their home day and night. The ISP's backbone will break.

The closest thing to us in the commercial world is Moxi. Plug in some cable cards, buy some extenders, and you can reproduce a fair degree of what Sage offers on the DVR (not DVD or recorded music or video or plugins) side, assuming your cable provider has good content. Do you see those Moxi boxes on your local Best Buy shelf? Nope. Dish has a poor contender with the Slingbox Dish DVR. DirecTV has, perhaps, something better with its clients/central DVR setup. Other than that, it's more proprietary things like U-Verse and FIOS where offered. My sister-in-law and her husband have U-Verse. They are very undemanding people relative to Sage users, but it works for them. If you want to build a HTPC, I guess you could use Windows MCE on a dedicated hardware PC under your TV. Oh gosh, the temptation. Somebody stop me...

If the storefront had stayed open, or re-opened a week later but with little Google logos starting to appear on the Sage software and extenders, some discounting to present users to entice them to stay, the promise of a GoogleTV FW update, etc., I'd believe it might end well. The current posturing of the website being a disabled landing pad, limiting the promise of the EPG to a year, but maybe more, and warranty service only on the hardware side bodes poorly for those of us who want Sage back as it was. Also, if Sage was desirable in its current business model, then to me a company like SnapStream would have jumped on the buyout with a splashy BTV 5.0 debut complete with awesome H.264 support, a revamped remote, and a branded hardware extender to entice all of us Sage users over to them. Nope. They stayed with the commercial side. BTV for consumers is years behind Sage now. For all intents and purposes it is worthless as an HTPC model, especially in the H.264 arena.

I hope I am wrong. I really do. I have invested time, money, and enthusiasm in this product suite. There are parts of Sage 7 I don't like at all. But overall, as a full package, it is, err, was, the best. Now the guys who don't want to do anything evil can put these patents up on their shelves and admire them when they aren't cruising around in their custom jumbo jet. In many ways Sage users would have been better off if Microsoft had bought Sage, as they are lousy at innovating but great at marketing and not averse to selling hardware all the way down to the humble mouse and keyboard.

To quote Edward R. Murrow, "Good night, and good luck."

[simonen]

Nicely said Savage1701

[speck55]

Originally Posted by Savage1701

Worthless as it may be, my 2-cents worth on "Stay or Bail?":

Their are 3 basic kinds of takeovers/sell-outs:

You are NOT getting "business as usual" here. Every branch of your local bank is closed and your "deposits" are in a nebulous state. You can't open a new checking or savings account or buy a CD or get a car loan. You've got the equivalent of a 1930's Depression-era bank holiday on your hands, but no one knows when or if the holiday will end. If you were used to GMC pickups, now you have a Honda dealer left selling small, fuel-efficent vehicles. Or you can drive an impracticable distance for GMC truck sales and service.


3. Asset/Patent Buyout and Lock-Up. Odds are, this is what Google is doing. They want the patents and the human assets. Google has never, ever been interested in selling hardware on any appreciable level. Other than Android, they don't work with storefronts in any meaningful sense. SageTV is rinky-dink to them. We live very close to what used to be The Beloit Corporation. They were one of 3 companies in the world that made giant paper-making and handling equipment like newspapers or paper companies would use. They were mismanaged. They failed to innovate. Their patents were bought up and locked away. Their factories were shuttered. A small local company, a shadow of Beloit Corporation, services their equipment but does not build it or improve it. Aside from the patents, I'm guessing the human assets of Sage are under no-compete clauses so they don't get mad and go out and port SageTV into something very close to what they were working on. I would expect those clauses to be in force for 2-5 years, and someone would need to find a meaningful, affordable way to engineer an extender. And I mean a true extender linked to Sage in a meaningful, cross-communicative way, not just a garden-variety media extender that happens to play A/V files. Google does not want its customers to have SageTV. It wants its customers, plus us Sage users, to switch to GoogleTV.

I'm not saying these things to be a jerk. I'm saying them because they correlate to the real-world business models that rationalize buyouts and takeovers and such. I doubt this will end up with a fariy-tale ending like the movie "Other People's Money" had where Danny DeVito's character, Larry The Lquidator, decides to partner up with his buyout target, the Atticus-Finch-writ-small Jorgy played by Gregory Peck, and do the "right thing" and make the best wire in the world and keep the factory humming making a high-profit, high-end product. GoogleTV is not a good product. I read the Logitech forums the other day. The last FW update messed up video playback beyond belief. Other than that, you can buy a Sony TV with GoogleTV integrated into it. Maybe if Netflix had bought out Sage, I could rationalize something positive, since they have decent hardware options. Or Western Digital with their media hubs. My guess is the server license thing was a bone tossed out to legally placate something in the license upgrade fine print. But since you can't do that on any scale with clients, placeshifters, or hardware extenders, it means very little.

<snip> Their target audience has ZERO interest in building servers. They want a cloud, even though they don't know what it is or that sooner or later their ISP will start throttling them and charging them extra for all that bandwidth they chew through to watch HD movies. Just wait till they try and start streaming 3 or 4 HD channels through different TV's in their home day and night. The ISP's backbone will break.

The closest thing to us in the commercial world is Moxi. Plug in some cable cards, buy some extenders, and you can reproduce a fair degree of what Sage offers on the DVR (not DVD or recorded music or video or plugins) side, assuming your cable provider has good content. Do you see those Moxi boxes on your local Best Buy shelf? Nope. Dish has a poor contender with the Slingbox Dish DVR. DirecTV has, perhaps, something better with its clients/central DVR setup. Other than that, it's more proprietary things like U-Verse and FIOS where offered. My sister-in-law and her husband have U-Verse. They are very undemanding people relative to Sage users, but it works for them. If you want to build a HTPC, I guess you could use Windows MCE on a dedicated hardware PC under your TV. Oh gosh, the temptation. Somebody stop me...

If the storefront had stayed open, or re-opened a week later but with little Google logos starting to appear on the Sage software and extenders, some discounting to present users to entice them to stay, the promise of a GoogleTV FW update, etc., I'd believe it might end well. The current posturing of the website being a disabled landing pad, limiting the promise of the EPG to a year, but maybe more, and warranty service only on the hardware side bodes poorly for those of us who want Sage back as it was. Also, if Sage was desirable in its current business model, then to me a company like SnapStream would have jumped on the buyout with a splashy BTV 5.0 debut complete with awesome H.264 support, a revamped remote, and a branded hardware extender to entice all of us Sage users over to them. Nope. They stayed with the commercial side. BTV for consumers is years behind Sage now. For all intents and purposes it is worthless as an HTPC model, especially in the H.264 arena.

I hope I am wrong. I really do. I have invested time, money, and enthusiasm in this product suite. There are parts of Sage 7 I don't like at all. But overall, as a full package, it is, err, was, the best. Now the guys who don't want to do anything evil can put these patents up on their shelves and admire them when they aren't cruising around in their custom jumbo jet. In many ways Sage users would have been better off if Microsoft had bought Sage, as they are lousy at innovating but great at marketing and not averse to selling hardware all the way down to the humble mouse and keyboard.

To quote Edward R. Murrow, "Good night, and good luck."

Thank you! I thought for a moment I was the most jaded, outspoken jack*** of a person for posting the way I have over the last month. I'm going to limp along (meaning no more new clients/extenders/core development) with Sage until not practical.

This GoogSage is a shelving effort as you say. (See my rant re-defining "Google" as a verb w/re: "acquisitions")..

I really hope Google gets screwed on their 'cloud idea' as the nation finds itself with greater and greater % of ISPs doing bandwidth caps/metered billing. (I'm damning myself here too, as I do a lot of netflix/hulu/PlayOn), but also a lot of ATSC over the air). People won't stand for this cloud crap once they figure out it's soon going to be less expensive to just subscribe to their ISP's video service (CableCo or AT&T's uverse) than to pay the overages at $1/GB to $1/10GB in a household with multiple HD viewers, kids, etc. I think there's a losing battle, and Google picked it. Poetic justice, I say.

Sad state of affairs, and I'm thinking of starting my own forum site for us to visit and discuss once GOOG pulls the plug on this one. Anyone else interested if I were to do that? The lack of movement has me worried that these forums' days are numbered.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by simonen

Nicely said Savage1701

Thanks; needed to get it off my chest. Again, I sincerely hope I am all wrong and this turns out to be a foolish rant...

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by speck55

Thank you! I thought for a moment I was the most jaded, outspoken jack*** of a person for posting the way I have over the last month. I'm going to limp along (meaning no more new clients/extenders/core development) with Sage until not practical.

This GoogSage is a shelving effort as you say. (See my rant re-defining "Google" as a verb w/re: "acquisitions")..

I really hope Google gets screwed on their 'cloud idea' as the nation finds itself with greater and greater % of ISPs doing bandwidth caps/metered billing. (I'm damning myself here too, as I do a lot of netflix/hulu/PlayOn), but also a lot of ATSC over the air). People won't stand for this cloud crap once they figure out it's soon going to be less expensive to just subscribe to their ISP's video service (CableCo or AT&T's uverse) than to pay the overages at $1/GB to $1/10GB in a household with multiple HD viewers, kids, etc. I think there's a losing battle, and Google picked it. Poetic justice, I say.

Sad state of affairs, and I'm thinking of starting my own forum site for us to visit and discuss once GOOG pulls the plug on this one. Anyone else interested if I were to do that? The lack of movement has me worried that these forums' days are numbered.

Yes, Speck, I read your rant and agree with you. (And being listed as from Milwaukee I am sure you know what I am talking about with The Beloit Corporation and Harnischfeger and Joy Mining and that whole debacle).

You are right about caps and overage charges being inevitable. It is poetic justice. J.B. Say would have been proud - HD media supply has created its own (insatiable) demand. I have no love for the ISP's, but in a degree of fairness to them, I doubt they envisaged bandwidth use on a scale such as this when they began their pricing models. What most viewers want these days is a far cry from web surfing, tiny little window animations, application downloads, and reading some email.

I would certainly follow a Sage enthusiast forum if the official one went off-line. I've started poking around the Team Mediaportal and XBMC ones again, as I have used both in the past.

Please be sure to post that into here if you do start a forum on your own.

[brewston]

Originally Posted by Savage1701

Google does not want its customers to have SageTV. It wants its customers, plus us Sage users, to switch to GoogleTV.

I think you summed things up nicely there. I think they think that these forums will happily beta test their first sage/google product. If the product does what Sage does for me now, then I'll be happy to take a look. Also, with respect to the hardware, if they release a product that runs on multiple vendors HW (Much like Android on multiple phones) that doesn't involve me paying customs/tax on the delivery, messing around with power converters and then constantly being afraid that my extender will suddenly stop working, then I'll be happy about that too

[MCE-Refugee]

The Google takeover leaves SageTV users in pretty the same situation as if SageTV had gone bankrupt. I have never been convinced that the tiny share of a (with respect:-) nerdy niche market was ever a viable business model even if SageTV was/is the best PVR around (which in my opinion it is by a long way). If SageTV had been successful you would have been able to buy HD300 extenders off the shelf in Best Buy. It must be terribly disappointing for all the staff to see a line drawn under all their work but if that is the price to be paid for continued employment & money from Google then we can only sympathise.

SageTV RIP.

[OneOfMany]

Although I'm hanging until I can't, you are bang on Mr. Savage. Both in regards to LaGoogs view of smaller innovative companies, and their non-desire to provide hardware solutions which of course will require both technical support and RMA departments. As well, dealing with individuals on a one-on-one basis will never happen, and as a "leader" they will plow their way through doing it their way. Unfortunately, the new mass generation of sheeple will simply accept whatever crap they are fed, much akin to the apple.

Grant

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by MCE-Refugee

The Google takeover leaves SageTV users in pretty the same situation as if SageTV had gone bankrupt. I have never been convinced that the tiny share of a (with respect:-) nerdy niche market was ever a viable business model even if SageTV was/is the best PVR around (which in my opinion it is by a long way). If SageTV had been successful you would have been able to buy HD300 extenders off the shelf in Best Buy. It must be terribly disappointing for all the staff to see a line drawn under all their work but if that is the price to be paid for continued employment & money from Google then we can only sympathise.

SageTV RIP.

That is one of the reasons I'm not all that sad at the current state of things. I personally think sage was too small (not enough money) to ever get anything like cablecard and netflix/hulu integration. I know that some people don't care about that integration, but when a $60 roku has it, then it kind of becomes necessary.

I believe that had sage not sold to google, we would have not had sage in any form in the next few years due to the fact that they just don't have the capital to get big business' features into their product. Don't get me wrong, I'll use sage in it's current form until everything stops working. It will be a very sad day for me to have to go back to an STB from the likes of DirecTV, ATT, or whoever.