"Sage" at CES?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by phareous

EDIT: Does anyone even know what his title is at Google? Does he have any say, or is he just a programmer now? Seems like the latter
EDIT2: His linkedin profile says he is "Software Engineer at Google"...so he isn't a manager...I doubt he has any say over what they do with SageTV

I think that people confuse GoogleTV with SageTV because they both end in TV??. SageTV wasn't bought by GoogleTV they were bought by Google. They are are part of the Google Fibre initiative. It's likely that Google that has multiple strategies when it comes to to the TV front, and we haven't seen what the other strategies are, yet.

I'd suspect that GoogleTV will never incorporate SageTV, since they are completely different consumer targets. GoogleTV is aimed at bringing online content to the masses via their TV set. While SageTV is aimed at the niche market of DVR configurations.

My prediction, which is worth nothing, is that we'll eventually see a SageTV all-in-one DVR server with multiple cablecard/OTA cards. And we'll either see custom HD extenders OR a GoogleTV/Android app that acts as an extender. I don't think we'll see a GoogleTV server.

And given how many GoogleTV embedded TVs/devices were shown off this year at CES, I think that google may do ok with their round 2 or 3 of GoogleTV.

It does suck that we are not getting any information, at all, about where SageTV is headed. My fear is that most of the top talent will eventually migrate out before Google decides to share any information

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by phareous

I wonder if Jeff or the company was having financial trouble, and that's why he was so quick to sell out? We know this market is a niche, and obviously BeyondTV couldn't handle it (although near the end of the consumer product they weren't dedicating any resources to improving it).

Honestly, I'm not sure I could see a case for SageTV being profitable, at least not in the long term, they were just too small, with too small a market to to keep up. We're approaching (if not at) a place where you need Netflix and Amazon and Hulu support. I could see the situation being Jeff being offered a job and a good bit of cash up front to sell, and him seeing a not bright future for Sage.

SageTV met my needs perfectly.... and the ability to view in multiple rooms is a major requirement. I just don't see why this market is such a niche... why are people so content (dumb?) to pay monthly fees to cable providers, sat. providers, or tivo to have an inferior product?

Unfortunately it's got a pretty high up front cost, lots of up front work, vs something that's essentially "free" from the provider, and frankly most people don't care.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

I wanna hear more, but this will tide me over for a little while.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

HE SPEAKS!!! Thank you, Jeff. Thank you!!

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

Tell you're new Google overlords that you've got about until the Ceton Echo comes out to at the very least have something to announce or I think you're likely to lose a number of your followers.

[phareous]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

Wow..well that gives me hope

So it sounds like the Google TV guy (Rishi Chandler) is in a different division than Jeff...and obviously *Google TV* doesn't see a future in DVR...but a different division of Google does? Either way I'm not so depressed now

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Then why not offer Jeff (and whoever else they hired as employees) a lot of money to come work for Google, but just completely ignore Sage? If they don't want to continue in the DVR direction and think it's a pointless technology, why buy out Sage, or force them to kill the product? It wouldn't be competition if they're not going in that direction.

If this was purely a "personnel hiring", they could have given Jeff the opportunity to sell SageTV to others. There's no reason to kill SageTV unless they wanted some technological part of it.

....and this thread suddenly heads in the direction of the "community comments" thread....

If it was a personnel hiring, and if Jeff had taken the job I fell sage would have met the same fate. He would have had work at google instead of sage. It would have slowly died with no hope of getting updated unless he did it in his spare time. Plus, I don't think he could have gotten a job at google and kept sage open without selling it. That seems it would have been a conflict of interest.

EDIT: I type too slow. Disregard the above. Maybe he got a job AND gets to work on sage. Holy crap.

Originally Posted by phareous

I just don't see why this market is such a niche... why are people so content (dumb?) to pay monthly fees to cable providers, sat. providers, or tivo to have an inferior product?

People don't look for better technology like we do. I (among many others here) have been hooking my TV to my computer since video cards started coming with s-video/composite ports. Heck, I even had a 3DFX VooDooTV pci TV tuner card. They haven't been around since 2002. I got an xcard when they came out. The first (IIRC) hardware decoder with an on-screen interface for PC. Media center came out and I was very happy at that time. I didn't know anything else existed.

I'm sure we all have similar stories, but the general population thinks all computers do is get on the internet and check email. I used to do house calls for computer repair. I couldn't believe how long people held on to their pc's.

I also did in-home installs for audio/video in college and couldn't believe how many people still used vcr's to record. You couldn't even buy a vcr with a tuner anymore (well, there was one). I had the first HD-DVR from dish network when Tivo was the only game in town. Harmony remotes were magic to people.

Normies (that's what I call them) don't care about doing the stuff we do because they don't even realize it's possible. When people come to my house to see what my setup can do they ask how they can get something like that. I tell them (at the time you could still buy sage) that they'd have to learn a great deal to get the system up and running and spend money on hardware to make it work. That usually ends their desire.

The Ceton setup could be the beginning of the end of software like sage, myth, wmc, npvr, whatever because it could take all the tinkering, configuring, testing, and everything else out of having a setup like ours. If it catches on then other companies can follow suit. Most cable providers have started the "whole home" dvr this year so people are now able to have "extenders" to their dvr's without having to record things on multiple dvr's at multiple locations. Software like ours would cease to be relevant to anyone but the folks like us that want total control over how things work. Most people don't care.

I think CES will show us quite a few interesting things that will be very sage-like. We'll see though.

Sorry to be so long winded.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Tell you're new Google overlords that you've got about until the Ceton Echo comes out to at the very least have something to announce or I think you're likely to lose a number of your followers.

I gotta think they are fully aware. This is an interesting development indeed.

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

Go ahead, I give you permission

BTW, how many of you actually watched the video? Because I heard that streaming was the long-term strategy and that DVR tech is still a possibility for GoogleTV in the interim.

S

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by sleonard

Go ahead, I give you permission

BTW, how many of you actually watched the video? Because I heard that streaming was the long-term strategy and that DVR tech is still a possibility for GoogleTV in the interim.

S

I watched the whole thing. I didn't see the doom and gloom that was first reported. Streaming is long-term, but folks know DVR and aren't willing to part with that - yet.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by cncb

It's just another example of a big company ruining something good. And I think the answer is just because "they can"...

Ridiculous thinking

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

[cncb]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Ridiculous thinking

It's one of my strengths .

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by stuckless

My prediction, which is worth nothing, is that we'll eventually see a SageTV all-in-one DVR server with multiple cablecard/OTA cards. And we'll either see custom HD extenders OR a GoogleTV/Android app that acts as an extender. I don't think we'll see a GoogleTV server.

(

i've been thinking (hoping?) along those lines as well. check this out.

http://www.slashgear.com/marvel-arma...s-on-11208515/

"The system works like current Google TV boxes from Logitech and Sony: it incorporates content from a cable or satellite box like the one on display, then controls, records and manages it.

so this looks like, and there is a picture of the marvell box on top of a dish dvr, the marvell box can interact with/control a dvr which means some form of command control for recording...............add cablecard/tuner/harddrive unit in place of cable box and i see what i/we am/are looking for (which is basically what the new ceton announcement looks like)

i'm happy as a clam with my current sagetv system, it works perfectly with 2 hdhr tuners and 2 fios cable boxes + hdpvr............i don't even have hdpvr lockups anymore (which were rare before anyway).

i have no problem waiting another year for a solution to replace sageTV and my cable stb's and i'm encouraged that jeff has hinted at good things to come.

let's calm down............the world is not ending

now let's just hope that when the next great thing does come out to replace Sage7 that slugger will write us an android app version of SRE, the greatest sagetv app ever (slugger: are you sure you can't patent SRE functionality?)

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by cat6man

let's calm down............the world is not ending

December 21, 2012 - end of the world



Gerry

[SprDtyF350]

Happy to hear from Jeff... Kind of funny how some people turn on him because he has tried to better himself. If Sage was gone forever and never changed I would be happy to have had the opportunity to be a user of what I consider to be the best PVR software made. It still does what I paid for it to do, and still does it well. I can't think of another company that has supported a product as well.

With all that said I have setup a Windows Media Center server that sits beside my Sage server. I purchased a bunch of broken Xbox 360's for cheap, like 10 for the price of 2 HD300's when they were still for sale. Repaired 90% of them, and use them as extenders. If Sage is still being worked on as Jeff says, I hope it can integrate streaming in a better fashion. The new Xbox dashboard is much less cluttered with bloat, and it is now being used the majority of the time. Windows Media Center is not anywhere as featured as Sage which annoys me but my daughters could not care less either way as long as the shows they want are there. And we all like the ability to watch Hulu, Netflix, rent movies, etc. from one box with one remote. Early 2012 Xfinity will be on the Xbox and is supposed to have On Demand shows, movies, whatever is on the cable box type stuff. That may be interesting if it is done well like the other apps have been.

I am not saying I think the Xbox is a great way to go, it has plenty of little things that annoy me and things missing that Sage had but it's not bad at all for people that don't care how it works and just want to watch shows. My girls love it..

Only reason I setup the WMC machine was to try to integrate streaming, and PVR together. And because I just got tired of trying to make Sage work with the HDHR Prime. Yes, it works with SageDCT. But I never got it to be as stable as it is in WMC.

Hopefully Sage 2 will be as cutting edge as Sage was back in 2004 when I first started using it.

[dgeezer]

Originally Posted by cncb

It's one of my strengths .

I guess one of my strengths is hunting for bad news in everything.

Also, one of my assumptions has always been that SageTV, people and code, would somehow become a part of Google TV. Looks like I'm probably wrong there too. Maybe there is hope that our systems won't become obsolete in the near future and we'll be able to continue using SageTV in whatever form it becomes.

I'm pretty much stuck with some kind of client-server DVR solution since my current SageTV server is in my office-shop out by the road where the cable TV ends and my house, with the HD300 is 650' away. The new ceton devices might be a possible future solution. Nothing else I have played around with seems to have a chance at giving me the same experience as SageTV does now.

Oh, and Thanks Jeff for setting me straight.

[michelkenny]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

[briands]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I still work on SageTV every day along with the whole team from SageTV before it was bought. SageTV is not dead. Ohhh....I wish I could say more...but that time has not come yet....

Jeff, looking forward to whatever you greatness you are working on... please hurry... getting a little antsy.

[phareous]

Originally Posted by cat6man

let's calm down............the world is not ending

you forget it is 2012... google better hurry up and release something before the mayan apocalypse comes