Need advice on how to upgrade my Sage

[ThePaladinTech]

Originally Posted by LSHorwitz

I was not aware that the older vintage circa 2006 Media Extrnder MVPs would even work with Sage 7. I assumed that Sage 7 had switched to mpeg4 and I am pretty certain the MVPs were never designed to handle that codec or that additional decoding workload. My experiences on going from camcorder mpeg2 (HDV) to mpeg4 (h.264) made my Pentium class hardware grond to a near halt and made me migrate to a fast quadcore. I just assumed Sage 7 would totally overwhelm any 2006 vintage MVP box.
Larry

Yep, it works. And yes... for formats other than the ones the MVP understands your sage server would need to transcode it for the MVP.

[LSHorwitz]

Can SageTV version 7 be configured to save all recordings in the older mpeg2 / DVD format so as to never require transcoding for the MVPs?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by LSHorwitz

Can SageTV version 7 be configured to save all recordings in the older mpeg2 / DVD format so as to never require transcoding for the MVPs?

That is a function of the recording device/STB not SageTV. And if you are doing OTA ATSC then it is controlled at your TV station. But with SageTV v7 you can tell it to automatically transcode the video to another format after it is done recording and replace the original. So for all practical purposes you get your recordings in an MVP compatible format. If you want to watch it live then it has to transcode it real time and with an older PC that might not work well. But if you can watch it after the auto transcoding is finished you would be able to seek just like any native SDTV recording you were use to before.

[LSHorwitz]

Thanks Bob. Best case scenario for me would be if the Hauppauge ATSC capture card can store in mpeg2, essentially transcoding the OTA HD stream from its native mpeg4 to mpeg2 in real time as it captures. Unlikely but possible, and something easy enough to check out before purchase. The pption of transcoding after capture is a second-best solution, but still viable. My cuurent experiment of using an ATSC OTA to analog SD converter box is still unfinished but spares me the cost of new capture cards and 8 extenders.

Thanks again,
Larry

[SafetyBob]

Larry, surprising to find someone else still running the old Sage with MVPs.

I really looked hard at what the options are/were for replacing the old with new. My difference was that most of my old TVs died during a lightening strike. I only have two TV's out of 6 that are still analog.

If you lurk around the forum here some of the guys were using XBMC and Plex and other stuff to work around the lack of any HD MVPs. Plex was the software key it seemed to all this stuff and then you pretty much chose your hardware.

I still haven't upgraded but will have to figure somthing out seriously this year. That said, Netflix and Hulu pretty much have all the shows available and stream in HD. So this has pretty much put my upgrade on hold for the past two years.

There is some really good Plex threads here that you need to look at no matter which way you go. Unless things have changed, then whatever solution you go with you will have to use Plex to "distribute" your recorded shows around to your hardware that will function like your MVP did (or close to it).

I believe, unless things changed that version 7 was available for all, but just the server. Again, in those Plex threads you will find this all spelled out.

I wish you luck.

Bob E.

[LSHorwitz]

Thanks for your reply Bob.

When it was all said and done, I ultimately decided to retain all of my original Sage system including the capture cards and 8 MVPs, all of which are still working well. I have added two identical over-the-air set top boxes, each connected to its own HDTV antenna in my attic.

The beauty of this solution, other than keeping everything I already own and like, is that the set top boxes do the HDTV to standard def conversion for me, and the 2 Hauppauge WinTV capture cards no longer have to provide channel selection. I am using a USB-UIRT to switch the 2 external set top boxes via IR commands, but the rest of the Sage including all the MVPs work exactly as before.

One other HUGE bonus is that I have the 2 HDTV antennas pointed optimally at the 2 clusters of signals arriving at my home from two different directions. Each antenna gets the very best reception from the set of channels it is pointed at.

The channel line-ups were then selected to make the two identical set top boxes only select the channels they receive best, yet they appear merged as one composite EPG via Sage. The entire setup works beautifully.

I could have migrated to Sage 7, a much more powerful server box, 2 new capture cards, figured out a way to get mpeg2 conversion, and possibly retained the MVPs, but I really do not care at all if the picture I am watching is HD or SD on these sets.

I do feed live HDTV around the house from the antennas for the 2 HDTV viewing systems I have, and can use BluRay or other media servers like AppleTV if I really want content of that type.

I continue to appreciate what a really nice job Sage TV does when I see a lot of the other DVR, PVR, and whole house systems now on the market, and figured that there must be a way to keep the Sage alive a bit longer. Thw brothers did a really superb job, and I dearly wish their continued genius was more readily available to the public.

Thanks again for your suggestions Bob,

Larry

[LSHorwitz]

This is the original poster with a final update to this thread. I did install a USB controlled IR blaster to control two HDTV to SD analog converter boxes, and continued to use the rest of my Sage 4 system in this configuration with 8 SD client MVPs for another year and a half.

I ultimately have migrated to Tablo 4 channel DVR, having played with SmartTV (such junk) and am now using Tablo with Roku 3 clients with full HD, 4 tuners, and a pretty adequate ereplacement for Sage with far less cost and complexity. All considered, a really nice replacement.

So very sorry to leave the Sage world, but in fact, Sage left us.......

Donated all the gear including the server PC system to a local organization who might be able to salvage something.

Very sincere thanks to the most excellent people here on this forum for all the truly excellent support and help.

Larry