alternatives to Sage to consider

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

FYI only plex pass members can view that thread. I just hope they actually do something with it.

whoops. sorry about that

[reggie14]

What are folks using as Plex clients? I was pretty disappointed to see that my Rokus won't play back blu-ray rips without transcoding.

I installed the Plex server for the first time today. It does seem pretty nifty for mobile devices. I might get a lifetime subscription and use that for both online streaming and encoding (offline) videos to my tablets. It doesn't seem like much of a replacement to Sage, though, even if you're just looking for imported video playback.

[LehighBri]

I was a loyal SageTV user for many years and have been flailing around for different solutions over the past couple years. I helped with the plex sagetv integration, gave up on that due to my need for live TV and comskip. Then I helped with the xbmc addon and have been using that for a while, but sagetv was flaky and would miss some recordings w/ my Ceton. So just needed something more stable.

So very recently I noticed XBMC has a PVR addon that uses XBMC's native PVR functionality and integrates with windows media center as a backend. It supports live tv, etc etc and seems to be promising. Link: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=171216

And for extenders, I've been using raspberry pis (using raspbmc which comes with the WMC PVR addon above) and am loving it. So far so good. I still miss some aspects of plex, but so far so good here.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

I was a loyal SageTV user for many years and have been flailing around for different solutions over the past couple years. I helped with the plex sagetv integration, gave up on that due to my need for live TV and comskip. Then I helped with the xbmc addon and have been using that for a while, but sagetv was flaky and would miss some recordings w/ my Ceton. So just needed something more stable.

So very recently I noticed XBMC has a PVR addon that uses XBMC's native PVR functionality and integrates with windows media center as a backend. It supports live tv, etc etc and seems to be promising. Link: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=171216

And for extenders, I've been using raspberry pis (using raspbmc which comes with the WMC PVR addon above) and am loving it. So far so good. I still miss some aspects of plex, but so far so good here.

Brian,

How do you keep all xbmc databases in sync? That's my biggest hang up...

Also how's xbmc with Netflix, amazon, etc?

[PiX64]

Not sure how I missed this one.. No extender needed just a Samsung smart hub...
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXdDU_gdU8

[7up]

XBMC Live TV from MCE as backend works. I tried it out with a couple of PCs and setup was honestly 5min. If someone can modify a plug-in, a relatively inexpensive Ouya can be used as an extender. I'm not saying its as good as SageTV/HD300 but it is worth looking at.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=171216

Software:

https://googledrive.com/host/0ByNnAM...T2c/index.html

Client source code:

https://bitbucket.org/krustyreturns/pvr.wmc

[LehighBri]

My main issue now with WMC is every once in a while I get "No TV signal" or "No tuner available" (I have the Ceton infinitv 4 PCIe). I made sure Sage isn't running but for whatever reason it doesn't find a TV tuner to use until I reboot. Any simple answers to that? Until I fix that, I'm now back to Sage again! What a saga...

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

My main issue now with WMC is every once in a while I get "No TV signal" or "No tuner available" (I have the Ceton infinitv 4 PCIe). I made sure Sage isn't running but for whatever reason it doesn't find a TV tuner to use until I reboot. Any simple answers to that? Until I fix that, I'm now back to Sage again! What a saga...

I have this issue with WMC and the HDHR prime. Restarting the computer fixes the problem. I wonder if the DHCP server (router) is assigning a different IP address to the prime and WMC needs a restart in order to search for the new address ??

[7up]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

My main issue now with WMC is every once in a while I get "No TV signal" or "No tuner available" (I have the Ceton infinitv 4 PCIe). I made sure Sage isn't running but for whatever reason it doesn't find a TV tuner to use until I reboot. Any simple answers to that? Until I fix that, I'm now back to Sage again! What a saga...

I am familiar with that issue and don't know of a simple answer. I haven't "launched" the setup for full time usage in the house yet but agree if it would be dealbreaker.

[7up]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

on the same note, if SageTV were to be open sourced and somebody were to develop an .apk, SageTV would probably have ex-users flocking back [/Edit]

I was just thinking this today as I contemplate getting an Ouya as an inexpensive device to run XBMC. SageTV was just a little ahead of the curve or otherwise I suspect there would have been an Android/IOS app released and extenders would have been a non-issue.

[7up]

If anyone is genuinely interested in trying out XBMC as a client, the build from Margo minimizes the channel changing streaming lag to a minimum compared to the official release. I haven't tried the NextPVR plugin but for ServerWMC it makes a significant difference.

http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~mar...ld.html#frodo\

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by 7up

If anyone is genuinely interested in trying out XBMC as a client, the build from Margo minimizes the channel changing streaming lag to a minimum compared to the official release. I haven't tried the NextPVR plugin but for ServerWMC it makes a significant difference.

http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~mar...ld.html#frodo\

This is much better than NextPvr or mediaportal... setup is so simple.

[sflamm]

With the WMC integration can it use the WMC for its tuners?
Does it integrate for scheduling etc?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by sflamm

With the WMC integration can it use the WMC for its tuners?
Does it integrate for scheduling etc?

You can watch live tv on clients or server and You can schedule recordings and play recordings from client or server.... EPG is available in clients. Uses all the tuners that are defined in WMC as wmc does the actual recording. Attached is one view of the epg there are others.

[sflamm]

Interesting ...

Does allow copy once content recorded by WMC to be played on an XBMC client?

What are its limitations compared to SageTV? (What would prevent someone who is using SageTV from switching )

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Does allow copy once content recorded by WMC to be played on an XBMC client?

No

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by sflamm

Interesting ...

Does allow copy once content recorded by WMC to be played on an XBMC client?

What are its limitations compared to SageTV? (What would prevent someone who is using SageTV from switching )

It just came out so It will improve ... but I am impressed with what it has already. Plus the metadata retrieval is much better than Sagetv.

[7up]

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After a day of playing around with it I'm still pretty impressed. No recording torture tests but no crashes either. Here are a few screen shots of XBMC client.

[maninblack_30]

I know nothing of XMBC, but is there any sort of extender available apart from X-Boxes?

[SHS]

Originally Posted by 7up

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After a day of playing around with it I'm still pretty impressed. No recording torture tests but no crashes either. Here are a few screen shots of XBMC client.

I'm not impressed with it all because it not true PVR Software in need backend add-on to make it work.