alternatives to Sage to consider

[LaoChe]

I have had Sage up an running for several years now. But last week I had a hard drive crash. It was a recording directory not my root drive but still, I am having second thoughts about rebuilding the PC at this point. I am thinking of letting this one limp along while I think about/play with an alternative

So my question is: Are there any serious altrenatives? XBMC seems to get the most airtime in the forums but with mixed reviews. I really am just looking for a system for TV and movies (QAM cable) - watch live tv and recorded TV and movies. I don't mind having separate boxes if necessary (I have a Roku box for pandora and netflix). If it makes sense to use apple TV or WD or one of the other boxes on the market for ripped movies - that's fine. My only real requirements are 1) pretty intuitive for the family 2) commercial detection and skipping is a must

I know this is covered in other posts but they all seem focused on one particular product. I am looking for a quick list of options I can research and figure out if any of them will work.

Thanks a lot.

[mistergq]

Serious is a subjective word.

Each alternative has its pros and cons. I remember watching the people that stuck with BeyondTV and think how could they stay with a product that was not being developed. I have a much better appreciation and understanding now.

In no particular order, your PVR based alternatives are:

Windows Media Center
NPVR
MythTV
XBMC

I rebuilt my Sage Server about 9 months ago and everything is working great. I am considering moving back to clients from extenders at some point. Main reason is for streaming options outside of SageTV.

I have considered moving to NPVR, MythTV, and Windows MC, but just can't do it at this time. The main reason for not switching is WAF. She knows sage, she likes sage and she does not want me to change.

Whether to stay or go is a personal decision. None of us know absolutely that there will be or never be another version of SageTV under google's name. I fault no one for leaving, but as of right now, I am staying.

[stuckless]

Is MediaPortal (http://www.team-mediaportal.com/) a viable alternative. I remember looking at it a few years back, and it seemed fairly decent. The sticking point for me was that it was Windows only, and I needed/wanted something that runs on Linux. (The reason I went to SageTV in the first was because it was the only solution that ran on Linux, Mac and Windows)

[stuckless]

Also check out Plex Media Server... that'll probably be my next solution when I leave sagetv... although I'll have to figure out a way to use another pvr backend, like mythtv to do the recordings, and then move them in to the Plex area. Since our family never uses "live tv", I think I could make do with a Plex setup.

[nyplayer]

Isn't the only viable solution Windows media center?... If you are going to leave Sagetv you would want to leave for a solution the can record non -copy freely channels.

The only one that can do that is WMC. Why would I leave Sagetv as long as I can record all my channels. To go to the another product that will also be limited to what I can currently do in SageTV. I use Sagetv along with plex at the moment and have absolutely no problems.... I also use clients.

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Also check out Plex Media Server... that'll probably be my next solution when I leave sagetv... although I'll have to figure out a way to use another pvr backend, like mythtv to do the recordings, and then move them in to the Plex area. Since our family never uses "live tv", I think I could make do with a Plex setup.

If going the Plex route, why not keep SageTV as the backend recorder? Plenty of folks doing just that now...

[tvmaster2]

http://www.lmgestion.net/@en-us/4/22/139/article.asp

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

If going the Plex route, why not keep SageTV as the backend recorder? Plenty of folks doing just that now...

The main reason, is that I don't intend on going the Plex route until after my sagetv server dies (sagetv software no longer works with the hardware I have, etc)

If it turns out that I run out extenders before the lifetime of my server, then yeah, I'll definately be looking at keeping sagetv alive for the recordings, and then using something like plex.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

http://www.lmgestion.net/@en-us/4/22/139/article.asp

That doesn't work for USA users.

I would probably go with

Windows Media Center
MCE Buddy (Renaming and transcoding)
Remote Potato (Remote Scheduling)
Plex
use my 2 Roku as extenders

[valnar]

I haven't looked at Nextpvr for awhile. How is it these days?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by valnar

I haven't looked at Nextpvr for awhile. How is it these days?

NextPvr though good lacks in what I consider Sage to be far above any PVR out there and that is the Favorite settings. If Sage is a 10 in setting up favorites NextPvr is a 2.

[valnar]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

NextPvr though good lacks in what I consider Sage to be far above any PVR out there and that is the Favorite settings. If Sage is a 10 in setting up favorites NextPvr is a 2.

That's a shame. I hope it's a planned feature.

[stanger89]

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to setting up Myth in a VM again (all but one of my tuners are HDHRs so it would be pretty easy) and give Myth+XBMC a try.

[SWKerr]

I don't see Windows Media Center being any different than SageTV at this point. There is no new development going on. The Windows 8 version is just a simple port of Windows 7 and even that is not much better than the XP version.

Until I see Microsoft integrate it into the new XBox One I would not bother. It may already be a dead product and Microsoft is just not telling anyone yet. I would not want to go through the pain of converting just to find out I was in the same boat as I am with SageTV.

Not to mention that Media Center records using its own file format that is seldom compatible with anything non-Microsoft. (even without the DRM)

I have not looked at anything beside Media Center in more than a year but last I looked NextPVR was my favorite but I would want a XBMC and\or Plex front end. (Of course this assumes you are not using Cable Card)
Still NextPVR\XBMC still needed some help to best SageTV in its current state.

[panteragstk]

Mediaportal's backend recording server is the closest thing I've found to sage on the PVR end, but I never put it into production due to the fact that the XBMC front end isn't all that great to me. It's nice, but I like PLEX better (same thing with the exception of being client/server based). I still don't like the fact that it isn't as customizable as sage. I can make sage do anything I want, I don't want to have to relearn everything. Especially since my system works without issue.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Also check out Plex Media Server... that'll probably be my next solution when I leave sagetv... although I'll have to figure out a way to use another pvr backend, like mythtv to do the recordings, and then move them in to the Plex area. Since our family never uses "live tv", I think I could make do with a Plex setup.

I am fairly certain their are scanners / agents available for mythtv and NPVR (windows only i believe)

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Mediaportal's backend recording server is the closest thing I've found to sage on the PVR end, but I never put it into production due to the fact that the XBMC front end isn't all that great to me. It's nice, but I like PLEX better (same thing with the exception of being client/server based). I still don't like the fact that it isn't as customizable as sage. I can make sage do anything I want, I don't want to have to relearn everything. Especially since my system works without issue.

Wild curiosity, and not to derail the thread, but what do you like better about Plex than XBMC? Granted I haven't played with either a lot (much less so Plex), but XBMC, at least as a media solution is growing on me. The ACE MQ skin is a nice, restrained skin.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Wild curiosity, and not to derail the thread, but what do you like better about Plex than XBMC? Granted I haven't played with either a lot (much less so Plex), but XBMC, at least as a media solution is growing on me. The ACE MQ skin is a nice, restrained skin.

for me it is the pure client server tech. I have 1 server running which manages everything NOT 5 pcs clients sitting at each TV and each has its own DB etc. Granted you can sync with mysql and changing prop files on XBMC, but the last time i messed with that It was super painful, super annoying, and not something i wanted to do to kep everything in sync.

Plex has a slew of clients that just plain work, and work really well. ATV3 and newer iOS devices now use PlexConnect so you don't ahve to jailbreak the atv3, roku works really nicely, samsung has built in apps for free that connect to plex and give you a nice metadata rich ui, the list is actually quite extensive.

http://plexapp.com/connected/index.php

and then of course a mobile client for

http://plexapp.com/mobile/index.php

[darcilicious]

Centralized database is awesome. It means I can start a show/movie on one client, stop before it's over, and pick up where I left off on another (remote or local). Also, the web-based content management (adding content "sections", updating metadata as needed, etc) is slick.

Remote streaming is pretty cool, as is the ability to sync (download) content to a local or remote client, include a web-based client.

Sharing my content with others is pretty darn slick as well.

[Yalbik]

Originally Posted by PiX64

for me it is the pure client server tech. I have 1 server running which manages everything NOT 5 pcs clients sitting at each TV and each has its own DB etc. Granted you can sync with mysql and changing prop files on XBMC, but the last time i messed with that It was super painful, super annoying, and not something i wanted to do to kep everything in sync.

That must have been a fairly old version. I recently switched from Sage front-ends to using a sage back end with xbmc front-ends exclusively.

I currently have 5 XBMC clients all configured to use a central mySQL database. All I had to do was:
1) Install the DB on my server
2) Add 2 lines to the properties file for each of the clients.

It's worked flawlessly so far. And having all my metadata queryable/updatable in an open DB format has been awesome. And being able to run XBMC on a $35 client has also been nice.

I considered Plex, but I much prefer the customizability and interface of XBMC. I also found the number of add-ons available for XBMC to be impressive.