"Sage" at CES?

[flavius]

Originally Posted by Narflex

OK....one piece of new information. EPG service will continue until at least the end of 2012.

Thanks. -You guys are going to be a bit late with your project, I guess.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

I think you will put everyone's mind at ease for a while if you let us know that the SageTV EPG service will go on for at least another year or more.. go find out, make some calls and get to the bottom of it.

When Maya speaks, Jeff listens.

[mkanet]

What I got out of that video is...

Google realizes that it's going to take significant time (several years down the line) before they can one day be able to have a "smart" on demand streaming solution which includes all the content that cable/satellite boxes have. In the interim, google is "exploring" DVR as one of it's solutions it can offer until then. I think that's where SageTV fits in.

I was careful to notice that Jeff referred to the latest stuff he's working on as SageTV. I dont think he would still refer to it as "sageTV" if it was a drastically different product.

Originally Posted by dgeezer

Interview with Rishi Chandler of Google TV. Video.
He is asked about SageTV at about 12 minutes in to interview. His response is that they basically see DVR's as old technology and that the future is more of a streaming model.

.

[malbec]

Thank you Jeff for the "CES announcement."

-A loyal fan

[drewg]

Originally Posted by wayner

Yes, very good question. We now have a replacement for the Sage EPG, which even has some advantages over the built in EPG, but there is no replacement for this forum unless someone has found a way of backing it up.

What advantages..?

Drew

[plawlor]

Glad I took a look at this post. I had written Sage off after 8 years of enjoyment. I've been spending every evening the past few weeks playing with MediaPortal and mythtv. The ideal plan was a Mediaportal back end with an XBMC front-end. From what I can figure, however, no way to run multiple USB-UIRTs for my four HD-PVRs. And the built in Hauppauge blaster plug-in can't account for multiple tuners either - blasts to all 4 at once! How useless is that!

Anyway, glad to hear there's a future for Sage. I'll hold tight and will start sleeping at night again vs. playing with crappy technology.

Off to bootcamp my Mac mini and install a Sage 7 client... Sure wish there was an OSX v7 client

Peter

[flavius]

Originally Posted by plawlor

... Sure wish there was an OSX v7 client

Peter

Yeah.. however running the windows client using parallels work just fine here.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by drewg

What advantages..?

I am not using this plugin yet but it looks quite good. All of Slugger's plugins are very well done so I trust him to do this well.

One advantage in this plugin seems to be that if Season and Episode info are not included in the EPG then mc2xml can try to pull them in from TVDB. With a little bit of work you can probably tweak this to pull down additional info from TVDB before the recording is made. Having S&E data prior to the recording is useful since you can get Sage to use these in the filenames which makes them automatically compliant with Plex. Although that will be less of an issue since we will soon have a fully functional SageTV metdata scanner for Plex.

[mkanet]

Hi Wayner, I think its great that Slugger offered a backup EPG solution for us; however, the builtin "premium" epg service offers much more practical benefits than free xmlTV based EPGs. The builtin EPG is actually one of the features that separates sageTV from other free DVR apps. We currenly get extended information about sports teams, channel logos, reliable first run/season premiere/finale info, extended details about the type of broadcast (Dolby Digital 5.1), etc. My guess is that if sageTV stops using the current premium EPG content provider at the end of the year, it would be only be to switch to another equivalent (or better) premium content provider.

Originally Posted by wayner

I am not using this plugin yet but it looks quite good. All of Slugger's plugins are very well done so I trust him to do this well.

One advantage in this plugin seems to be that if Season and Episode info are not included in the EPG then mc2xml can try to pull them in from TVDB. With a little bit of work you can probably tweak this to pull down additional info from TVDB before the recording is made. Having S&E data prior to the recording is useful since you can get Sage to use these in the filenames which makes them automatically compliant with Plex. Although that will be less of an issue since we will soon have a fully functional SageTV metdata scanner for Plex.

[crusing]

Originally Posted by dealsdyker

Jeff, can you just at least let us have a few client licenses? Pretty please? Why give away version 7 to nearly all prior customers, but not deal with client licenses? Several months back you said you were working on something for those with half baked builds? My basement was half baked at the time, and I need 2 client licenses. Pretty please? Please please please? I've even had people ask to swap licenses with me and said 'no' because #1 i want to follow the rules and #2 I was hopeful.

Not all of use had 5 extenders sitting in the closet as a back-up or 4 or 5 client licenses on the shelf unused.

Can you at least please address this question again because it is asked a lot, and would put many of us in a much better place. Please Jeff? For the children?

+1 I have given up hope at this point, but might as well ask again.

[maceie]

Originally Posted by wayner

Yes, very good question. We now have a replacement for the Sage EPG, which even has some advantages over the built in EPG, but there is no replacement for this forum unless someone has found a way of backing it up.

Surely backing up the forum is easy?
I did a quick test and seemed to have grabbed pretty much the whole thing.
quick = left the laptop grabbing it for hours.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by mkanet

Hi Wayner, I think its great that Slugger offered a backup EPG solution for us; however, the builtin "premium" epg service offers much more practical benefits than free xmlTV based EPGs. The builtin EPG is actually one of the features that separates sageTV from other free DVR apps. We currenly get extended information about sports teams, channel logos, reliable first run/season premiere/finale info, extended details about the type of broadcast (Dolby Digital 5.1), etc. My guess is that if sageTV stops using the current premium EPG content provider at the end of the year, it would be only be to switch to another equivalent (or better) premium content provider.

I haven't bothered switching over yet so I realize that there is some value here. But isn't the underlying data that's used in Sage from Zap2It? And isn't this exact data available for about $25/yr from Schedules Direct? I haven't used this data I did use the free DataDirect service in the past.

While the current Sage data is pretty good it isn't perfect. Much of what I record is kids' shows and the EPG doesn't have a lot of the S&E data for these shows. Being able to hook into other sources to get this data is very useful.

[graywolf]

Originally Posted by maceie

Surely backing up the forum is easy?
I did a quick test and seemed to have grabbed pretty much the whole thing.
quick = left the laptop grabbing it for hours.

How did you grab it all? How big was it? And how would you view it?

[chums]

Late to the thread but some interesting info. I have to say SageTV is one of the finest pieces of software that I have ever used. To hear Jeff it won't be put to pasture either. I'll have to re-examine my future setup plans ;-)

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by Narflex

OK....one piece of new information. EPG service will continue until at least the end of 2012.

Thank you, Jeff.

[maceie]

Originally Posted by graywolf

How did you grab it all? How big was it? And how would you view it?

I used HTTrack and just told it to get the forum URL.
It grabbed 440Mb (which isn't all of it) but a large amount of the posts/links are there.
It dumps a copy to a local drive and you can just view it using any web browser.

Of course there is nothing to stop you uploading it to a proper hosting company except that there might be legal issues (at this time I wouldn't suggest anyone "mirrors" the site online), but to make sure "we" have a copy somewhere, it's better than nothing.

I thought I'd try it to see if it worked, which it seems to do just fine (but takes hours to do)

[phareous]

Even if you were to do this, all you have a snapshot... there would be no new posts unless you setup a proper forum system. Plus you would have to get the word out to existing users to go to the new URL...which might be hard if the old forum they checked is gone. And lastly, there is of course all the copyright and legal ramifications. But I think if they are working on SageTV, and the EPG will stay up, then the forum will most likely stay too.

Originally Posted by maceie

I used HTTrack and just told it to get the forum URL.
It grabbed 440Mb (which isn't all of it) but a large amount of the posts/links are there.
It dumps a copy to a local drive and you can just view it using any web browser.

Of course there is nothing to stop you uploading it to a proper hosting company except that there might be legal issues (at this time I wouldn't suggest anyone "mirrors" the site online), but to make sure "we" have a copy somewhere, it's better than nothing.

I thought I'd try it to see if it worked, which it seems to do just fine (but takes hours to do)

[wayner]

Originally Posted by phareous

Even if you were to do this, all you have a snapshot... there would be no new posts unless you setup a proper forum system. Plus you would have to get the word out to existing users to go to the new URL...which might be hard if the old forum they checked is gone.

It is the historical stuff that is valuable, like figuring out how to set up firewire channel changing. How you do that hasn't changed in many years but it isn't in the official Sage documentation.

Setting up a new forum wouldn't be hard, there already is one set up. Ironically it is on Google forums. People that wanted to find it would find it pretty quickly.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by mkanet

Hi Wayner, I think its great that Slugger offered a backup EPG solution for us; however, the builtin "premium" epg service offers much more practical benefits than free xmlTV based EPGs. The builtin EPG is actually one of the features that separates sageTV from other free DVR apps. We currenly get extended information about sports teams, channel logos, reliable first run/season premiere/finale info, extended details about the type of broadcast (Dolby Digital 5.1), etc. My guess is that if sageTV stops using the current premium EPG content provider at the end of the year, it would be only be to switch to another equivalent (or better) premium content provider.

mc2xmlepg plugin features:

Season/episode data: Available since build 1713 (1)
Sports team roles: Done. (2)
Channel logos: Not available (3)
Season/series premiere/finale info: season/series premiere available; finale no. (4)
DD5.1: Could be added (5)

(1) Requires use of licensed version; uses thetvdb.com to pull this data; data is only as accurate as the source; Z2I doesn't have a perfect record in this area so nothing gained/lost moving to this source, imho.

(2) I parse the EPG data for sports events and do my best to apply these team roles properly, but it's not perfect. With that said, I rely on the team roles for all of my sports favs and I haven't missed a recording yet.

(3) Not available, but there are other community plugins that provide channel logos. The Z2I service was always missing some logos for my lineup so, again, moving to the community plugin doesn't seem to have lost any functionality for me either.

(4) Requires that you're pulling S/E data from thetvdb.com. A season premiere = Season (n > 1), Episode 1 and a series premiere = Season 1, Episode 1; thetvdb.com currently doesn't provide season finale information. I actually prefer this over Z2I's data because Z2I only marks the first airing as a premiere and not repeats. Example: Californication on Showtime. If Sage chooses to record a repeat overnight instead of the first airing to avoid conflicts then I don't get that metadata in my airing. With my calculation of this flag I do because I mark every first run airing of Season n, Episode 1 as a premiere.

(5) Requires use of Schedules Direct as mc2xml data source, MS listings do not provide DD5.1 data. Current plugin code doesn't look for DD5.1 either, but is easily fixed to do so when necessary.

Worth noting that the source of mc2xml's data is, like Sage, Z2I. But you are correct in that Sage is getting a different/premium feed from Z2I that includes lots of this info. But, as time goes on, I've been able to provide most of that premium content plus there are many other features (such as the ability to directly modify your EPG data at EPG update time via scriptable filters, etc.).

(I didn't take your post as a "shot" at my plugin or anything like that, I just read this and figured I'd talk about the current state of it for those that come across this post.)

[tmiranda]

Why would Google pull the plug on the forums? They have nothing to gain by doing so, and it costs them little time/effort/money to keep it going. I doubt they'll shut down the forums any time soon.