Come Back to SageTV - Open Source in "Near" Future

[speck55]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

If they do it means that anybody can look at the source and use the SageTV free EPG data in their own PVR software. Most of the recording backends are ahead of SAGETV minus the fee EPG data.

Ah, and this is an example of why I don't play chess (having to think moves ahead). But if say valid API key per SageTV server owner *just* pertaining to the EPG API, would allow abusers to be rooted out easily.

[speck55]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Most of the recording backends are ahead of SAGETV (tuner Support etc..) minus the free EPG data.

I dunno about that -- I've looked far and wide and only gotten limited success with my colossi on other backends. Plus sage knows every episode of everything that I've watched and now and again picks up an episode as a re-run that it thinks I've missed / not seen, and usually it's right (and that's 5 years + worth).

[DIBU]

my wish first.. baby steps and error replacemend, and java with a fully RasPi client. So can i help the open source.

[hemicuda]

Andy, et al (original Devs),

Are you guys going to be completely hands-off after the OS release or will you be allowed to provide input/direction to the project?

* moved here from non-OS topic *

[stanger89]

You might want to read Jeff's comments in the main thread.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by lesbell

I'm a Java/C/C++ coder, albeit with no audio/video streaming expertise, but I'll happily join the effort. I've always treated Sage as a consumer-level, set-and-forget appliance and not dug into the architecture and all the addons, so an early priority would have to be to get to grips with all that and document it.

I reckon that if the core is maintained and documented, and the project brought back to life, everything else will just follow as developers get confidence that it's a platform they can build on.

My father is getting set to retire at the end of this year. We were convinced that Google was never going to Open Source SageTV, or if it did, it would be years from now. One of his prospective "retirement projects" was going to be ending his stint of using it as a consumer and reverse engineering Sage so he could address some problems the system I setup for him has been having.

Needless to say, he's very happy to learn about it's pending open source status, saves him a lot of work trying to decompile Sage so he can get at what he wants fixed.

Looks like other posters have pretty much overlapped a good sized portion of his wishlist. With fixes for the Java Heap issues, particularly as it relates to the wiz.bin, being on top of that list.

Personally, in regards to items needed to attempt to grow the SageTV community are concerned. I do think that focus is probably best served on two fronts.

1) Getting the server side of the equation up to date, in particular where the transcoder and newer recording formats are concerned.

2) There are a lot of other set top box options out there, and many of them do seem to be h.264 only flavors. So being able to transcode to that is going to be important, and likely to be a decisive factor.

Being able to integrate SageTV into things like ChromeCast, AmazonFire, Roku, etc is perhaps going to be one of the most important things that will need to be done if the community wants to grow. Let people get a taste of what SageTV can be like for them, before they have to run out and start buying specialized boxes that can do it better.

....and depending on how much use Sage saw on their devices may actually provide incentive for Google/Amazon/Roku/etc to provide that "better" device themselves. It also largely does away with the likely impossible task of trying to integrate Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and whatnot into Sage itself(as permission is probably not likely to be given to do so in the first place), let the prospective makers of a STB worry about that for now at least.

That isn't to say that a future HD400 run shouldn't happen, but as far as any future development of the client end is concerned, try to make it so a SageTV experience is possible and reasonably pleasant on some of these other STB options as well. More options isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[roymcd]

Has anyone tried running linux with Placeshifter on one of these http://www.solid-run.com/products/cu...mini-computer/ ?
They look well specced and importantly have SPDIF, HDMI and an infrared receiver for a reasonable price. I've had Placeshifter running under Ubuntu and Puppy linux. I thought these little boxes might be a good option as an Extender replacement running open-source Placeshifter.

[stanger89]

I pretty sure it would have to be recompiled for ARM, those aren't x86 boxes.

[dinki]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I pretty sure it would have to be recompiled for ARM, those aren't x86 boxes.

I sure would love to see that happen!

[roymcd]

Yeah, I thought the Placeshifter miniclient was straight Java but the tar file includes several shared i386 libraries. Still, maybe when/if the client is open-sourced......

[stanger89]

Yeah, most of Sage is java, but some things like playback and tuners use/require native code.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Yeah, most of Sage is java, but some things like playback and tuners use/require native code.

Which makes sense, as the playback code is what needs to be tailored to a specific platform to be able to use embedded video decoders properly. In many cases, that part of the code will be simply making calls to the hardware's sdk libraries.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by roymcd

Yeah, I thought the Placeshifter miniclient was straight Java but the tar file includes several shared i386 libraries. Still, maybe when/if the client is open-sourced......

The main thing you need to rebuild for the Placeshifter client is mplayer. And what's the when/if stuff? There is no 'if' anymore....it's only a matter of 'when'.

[Narflex]

And you'd also need a JVM for ARM...or just integrate mplayer into the miniclient (miniclient is basically the C version of the placeshifter client...it's what runs on the extenders)

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Narflex

And you'd also need a JVM for ARM...or just integrate mplayer into the miniclient (miniclient is basically the C version of the placeshifter client...it's what runs on the extenders)

How abstracted are the calls to mplayer from the miniclient? I'm wondering if mplayer is required, or any general playback mechanism could be used (more tailored to the individual platform) without ripping miniclient up too terribly.

[jarredduq]

Originally Posted by Narflex

The main thing you need to rebuild for the Placeshifter client is mplayer. And what's the when/if stuff? There is no 'if' anymore....it's only a matter of 'when'.

Weeks or months away?

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

How abstracted are the calls to mplayer from the miniclient? I'm wondering if mplayer is required, or any general playback mechanism could be used (more tailored to the individual platform) without ripping miniclient up too terribly.

It's all very cleanly abstracted. For example implementing DirectShow playback in the Placeshifter wouldn't be all that difficult...we just never did it because we didn't have an MPEG-4 decoder filter we bundled with the product.

Originally Posted by jarredduq

Weeks or months away?

I stand by my original statements on timeline. But a lot of progress has been made in preparing the code base for open source release...it's actually quite a large pile of code.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Narflex

8< snip >8
I stand by my original statements on timeline. But a lot of progress has been made in preparing the code base for open source release...it's actually quite a large pile of code.

After the amount of development and time that went into you/our beloved SageTV I'm not surprised at the size of the "pile".

(I know it feels like part of my family with the years and time I've put into my Server and SageTV)

[lewispm]

Originally Posted by will

When PlayOn was first released the content was low quality and it wasn't reliable. Now I use PlayLater more than PlayOn but the entire software package has improved significantly.

For example, just the other day a TV show I watch on USA didn't record right with SageTV (the cable box feed was messed up - not a SageTV problem). I was able to use PlayLater to download the episode from USA (I had to login with my cable subscription). The quality was really impressive - almost as good as HD cable TV (I'd say about 80%). The best part, I was able to fast forward through all the mandatory online ads.

PlayLater/PlayOn use the exact same technology, just one is for storing and the other is for streaming live.

Just curious, why do you need PlayLater?

For the same result, I just find the show on the PlayOn Plugin in Sage, then after it starts hit pause, then when its done downloading hit record.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by lewispm

Just curious, why do you need PlayLater?

For the same result, I just find the show on the PlayOn Plugin in Sage, then after it starts hit pause, then when its done downloading hit record.

Not who you were asking, but I prefer to use PlayLater as well, because it's easier to search for things on my desktop. Plus, PlayLaterHD supports recording in 720p instead of just 480p as supported via PlayOn through sage (this isn't really a technical limitation of either sage or PlayOn, its just that since PlayOn doesn't KNOW sage supports HD, it sends SD only. This can be fixed once sage is open sourced.