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

[cncb]

Wow, what a surprise after all this time. I guess the question still remains about guide data?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Narflex

My current plan for this is to take all the relevant changes we've made in the past 3+ years at Google and merge them into the codebase from when we were acquired. (I've already done most of that work, I'm leaving out all the Google Fiber specific stuff since that's not relevant and just clogs up the codebase for y'all) I'll then run that version myself for awhile to ensure it's solid and then that'll be what we open source. The only code we've changed since acquisition that'll be released is basically the Java code. We didn't touch the native windows/linux code much here at all (w/ the exception that we wrote a whole new thing that did the recording/playback portion, i.e. network encoder/streamer, but that piece won't be open sourced as it wouldn't really be of use to you all)

Is there anything "important" in V7 that won't be included/can't be OS'd? I'm thinking for example the extender code, I believe that relies on drivers and the like from Sigma, I assume that can't be OS'd.

[dstanley]

Thanks for thinking of all of us Jeff!

SageTV is STILL the only one of it's kind ...

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Is there anything "important" in V7 that won't be included/can't be OS'd? I'm thinking for example the extender code, I believe that relies on drivers and the like from Sigma, I assume that can't be OS'd.

Fortunately that is not critical unless you want to try fixing bugs in the Sigma SMP libraries which are of course proprietary (are you thinking about the HD-MA issue in the HD300? Me too)

In these cases you need to design a wrapper for the existing API to an OpenGL (in one of its embedded incarnation) layer, this way you will be able to port the miniclient to different architectures like ARM (RPi). You might need to change some graphical behaviours depending on how heavily the existing extender code depends from the Sigma SMP library, but this is normally doable

Eddy

[nebulink]

I wonder if a client could be made for Amazon's FireTV? Just download the client from the App Store and be good to go.

That would be the best of all worlds for me. Streaming, DVR and Movies. Could be exciting.

[Smiley]

This sounds like the best thing since sliced bread

Can't wait to see what the combined skills of the community can come up with once the source is out and a reasonable versioning strategy and test setup has been created to ensure stable builds.

# Smiley

[sabre]

Just yesterday my 12yo daughter asked if Sage would no longer work in the near future as a while ago I told her it had been bought by Google and no longer supported. We are both happy with this turn of events.

[phelme]

Originally Posted by nebulink

I wonder if a client could be made for Amazon's FireTV? Just download the client from the App Store and be good to go.

That would be the best of all worlds for me. Streaming, DVR and Movies. Could be exciting.

I think a nice Android client is near the top of everyone's list.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by phelme

I think a nice Android client is near the top of everyone's list.

Unless you're in the Apple camp.

[stanger89]

Actually, the top of my list is probably eliminating the recording "glitches" that happen periodically.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Narflex

My current plan for this is to take all the relevant changes we've made in the past 3+ years at Google and merge them into the codebase from when we were acquired. (I've already done most of that work, I'm leaving out all the Google Fiber specific stuff since that's not relevant and just clogs up the codebase for y'all) I'll then run that version myself for awhile to ensure it's solid and then that'll be what we open source. The only code we've changed since acquisition that'll be released is basically the Java code. We didn't touch the native windows/linux code much here at all (w/ the exception that we wrote a whole new thing that did the recording/playback portion, i.e. network encoder/streamer, but that piece won't be open sourced as it wouldn't really be of use to you all)

So it occurs to me, does that mean the Netflix, Youtube, Vudu will be coming along?

[asd]

A Roku channel, or app, or whatever, would also be nice. An LG smart TV app also would be appreciated.

[gwgunter]

Not my primary recorder anymore, but still running Sage. This is exciting news.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by poto

I'm probably getting a bit ahead of myself here, but I'm wondering if, during the course of post-open-source development, compatibility will be maintained with HD200/HD300 hardware?

Either way, a big thanks to the SageTV team for staying the course!

Any development I'm involved in will maintain backwards compatibility with extenders going back to the MediaMVP. There's no reason that should get broken.

Originally Posted by routerunner

Jeff, for sure I am not the only one thinking

...what about a sneaky peek of that version 8.something you're currently using, now?

I cannot thank you enough for this

Eddy

Well...there's not much you all will get in the UI. The things added in there rely on EPG data that's not available to SageTV users (i.e. actor images, more series images). There's lots of new API calls. We have Lucene full text search integrated for faster searching (not that it's slow on a PC anyways). Database was massively enhanced; biggest thing is now there's read/write locks rather than plain locks for operations so you won't get the spinny circle of death when it's doing EPG updates anymore.

But overall; most of the changes were for Google Fiber specifically (and those I removed, since no one would care) so the open sourced version will be pretty much like what we had with V7.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Is there anything "important" in V7 that won't be included/can't be OS'd? I'm thinking for example the extender code, I believe that relies on drivers and the like from Sigma, I assume that can't be OS'd.

All the code for the Windows & Linux versions will be open sourced (with some minor exceptions for proprietary driver interfaces we used on Windows, but that wasn't for any mainstream devices). We will open source as much of the 'miniclient' code from the extender as we can. We cannot open source stuff that references the Sigma Designs SDK...but we do have an OpenGL variant of it for the UI side. This is the part that I'm hoping the community will build on, such as in a RPI port...because the extender was one of the best things about SageTV IMO.

Originally Posted by stanger89

So it occurs to me, does that mean the Netflix, Youtube, Vudu will be coming along?

No. That stuff was specific ports for the set top boxes for Google Fiber. It's not part of the SageTV codebase.

[phelme]

Originally Posted by wayner

Unless you're in the Apple camp.

oh go play with your exclusive HBO Now.

[trk2]

YAY! I am so excited at this news! Kudos to Jeff and google!

And because I'm impatient, here is my wishlist for (hopefully simple) features that would resolve some long lived pet peeves:
1) Forced subtitles
2) Gapless playback (why does this issue plague so many music media devices?)
3) A method to link to various bluray playlists for playback directly from the movie menu. This would allow movies that have multiple cuts to have separate listing (eg Bladerunner - Theatrical Cut, Bladerunner-Director's cut) without ripping the movie multiple times. Also, this would simplify bluray TV shows because they would no longer need to be ripped to mkv's first. Or...we could have bluray menu support

Originally Posted by routerunner

Fortunately that is not critical unless you want to try fixing bugs in the Sigma SMP libraries which are of course proprietary (are you thinking about the HD-MA issue in the HD300? Me too)

Eddy, I can't wait to see what you can do with the extenders. Your Squeezeslave plugin is one of my favorites.

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Any development I'm involved in will maintain backwards compatibility with extenders going back to the MediaMVP. There's no reason that should get broken.

That certainly picks up my interested in working on a client code. I offered to do this years ago for the NMT but was disappointed to find the code was proprietary, hope I can do something to reverse engineer it. The biggest deterrent for me is the lack of really good framebuffer support on the RPi2 and earlier.

I wish people wanted to spend just a little more for the amazing Chromebox and get a full PC.

Martin

[KryptoNyte]

If we're throwing ideas around ...

Would it be possible to make SageTV natively recognize the cablecard tuners (Prime, Ceton)? I understand that this would only function for cable stations that CCI flag everything as copy freely, but would still be handy if it were built it, and solved the 'not able to playback some recordings' situation.

I'm not really sure we ever figured out why this occurs, but it opens up a whole new world for those folks that have Charter or Comcast, and it's darn nice.

[mtenboer]

This is incredible news! I have been sending tons of hours on RPI's, Kodi, NextPVR, Plex, ServerWMC, and a bunch of others for the "eventual" day when Sage had to be abandonded. BUT NO MORE!!! Welcome back Sage.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Would it be possible to make SageTV natively recognize the cablecard tuners (Prime, Ceton)?

Any chance we could increase the reliability of the HDPVRs/Colossus/HDPVR2, for those of us whose cable providers copy-protect everything?