[Schedules Direct] SageTV developers: new API

[wayner]

As an aside on the latest comment, I really like having an unRAID server and I use it for a bunch of things, it runs Plex Server, Unifi server, Air Video HD server, Pi-hole to block ads, SageTV (of course), and a Linux VM for things that are easier done in Linux.

If anyone has some spare hardware around then give unRAID a try - it is free for 30 days and pretty cheap to buy a license.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I think in many ways, this is where these systems are light years ahead of sagetv. ie, sagetv has extenders... Plex, ChannelsDVR has apps for android iOS (including Android TV) and Roku and many smart TVs, etc. Plex also have a great web interface that allows you to browse/manage/play your video library. You can remotely watch plex (I do all the time from a hotel, etc), or you can download content to your phone/tablet, etc. I mean in terms of those features... Plex is light years ahead of sagetv. But plex is not really a great DVR system, so, that's where it lacks. So for something like plex, you might need an extender, you might just use your TV's smart OS, but, if you needed an "extender" you can use an android TV box, or Apple TV, etc.

Ok, good points, thanks. Now, over to cable TV and Satellite (mainly satellite). Which of the new systems rivals Sage for recording from these mediums? PLEX does OTA fine, but satellite?

[wayner]

Nobody really does too much these days and it is unlikely that we will see any new developments in this area due to the switch to streaming. Everything is going to be like SageTV where development will stop.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by wayner

Nobody really does too much these days and it is unlikely that we will see any new developments in this area due to the switch to streaming. Everything is going to be like SageTV where development will stop.

So for all the Direct TV, Dish, Shaw, Bell and Sky customers, nobody has a computer-based DVR besides Sage? As much as I’d like to believe what Disney and Netflix wants us to believe (streaming is it), there are still a lot of people with round discs attached to their homes, RV’s etc., no?
Seems like a piece of software someone should get on, unless there are ‘rights’ issues, DMCA etc. rubbish...

[wayner]

This certainly is a dying cohort. I have seen the death of BeyondTV and MCE. And now many/most of the best SageTV devs are leaving or have left for other options - slugger and stuckless being two prime examples. But PC based DVRs were always a niche hobby as it required a high level of geekiness.

Using a round disc to watch content is akin to using vinyl as a source for your music. Sure there are folks doing it but it isn’t as convenient.

The easiest content to get into PC based DVRs has always been OTA. But that is now lagging as well - 4K has been around from streaming services for over five years but we still don’t have 4K channels or 4K OTA tuners. OTA used to be the highest quality amongst the options but that too is fading away.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by wayner

This certainly is a dying cohort. I have seen the death of BeyondTV and MCE. And now many/most of the best SageTV devs are leaving or have left for other options - slugger and stuckless being two prime examples. But PC based DVRs were always a niche hobby as it required a high level of geekiness.

Using a round disc to watch content is akin to using vinyl as a source for your music. Sure there are folks doing it but it isn’t as convenient.

The easiest content to get into PC based DVRs has always been OTA. But that is now lagging as well - 4K has been around from streaming services for over five years but we still don’t have 4K channels or 4K OTA tuners. OTA used to be the highest quality amongst the options but that too is fading away.

So for satellite and cable, Sage is it, the ONLY dvr?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

So for satellite and cable, Sage is it, the ONLY dvr?

I think if you are just looking for a DVR, there are a few options, NextPVR, MythTV, MediaPortal, Kodi, Plex, Emby, etc. Now even if these only supported HDHomeRum, I'm sure there must be a protocol emulator for HDHomeRun that turns any tuner into a network tuner. (if not, then there probably should be )

The challenge as wayner mentioned is that home built DVRs are a niche that is getting smaller (not larger). There will always be an interest, but I think the driving force behind "why" you'd want one is going away. Either you are a media hoarder, or you want to watch your stuff when you want, where you want. If it's latter (like me), then streaming is OK, provided I can watch a show when I want, take it with me when I travel, view it from the holel room, etc, all the stuff I could sort of do with sagetv (although the "take it with me" was always a bit of a challenge).

It takes a huge amount of effort and $$ to setup a home based DVR and it takes pretty much no effort to setup a Netflix account.

Not to mention that it's getting harder and harder to record HD content, and that even the DVRs provided by the cable/sat company are getting better and and better. And sadly it's getting easier and easier to just pirate/download tv shows without having to invest thousands of dollars into hardware.

Holding on to a homebuilt DVR today is alot like building up a CD collection. Sure, there'll always be physical media, but, it's not going to ever be like it was. The convenience and cheapness of just streaming music is so ubiquitous that it is the norm.

[tvmaster2]

that’s the key, being able to turn any tuner into a network tuner. I imagine I am a ‘hoarder’, which sounds like a term a content creator made-up to associate shame with recording their precious shows. lol. And in HD no less. Criminals. Yes, it may be simple to PAY every month for EVERY streaming service, but I prefer just ONE bill, to my satellite company. I guess I’m a dinosaur in this respect, but that’s ok - I’ll have to cope.
I agree it’s a challenging and frustrating endeavour as well, software bugs, hard drive crashes, AC rates...but living in a non-OTA zone makes satellite necessary, and using Sling for remote access is just as nightmarish.
If Canada adopted cable cards, I could settle on TiVo.
Nope, that never happened.
It always seems to come back to either the content distributors / creators treating paying customers like thieves. And they wonder why people pirate.
Hopefully either PLEX or ChannelsDVR creates a way to access my Hauppauge tuners....

[wayner]

It is sad to say but the easiest way to find the content you want is to pirate it. With just a little knowledge you can be watching whatever you want in 5 minutes in HD or UHD.

I live in a very good OTA zone as I am in Toronto just north of the lake and I can get all of the US and Canadian networks. But OTA has very little content that I am interested in. I subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video (free with Prime), Disney+ and Apple TV + (which is free for now). Occaionally I subscribe to DAZN for a few months to get access to Rugby Union. And I will also subscribe to Crave from time to time. I also pay Rogers about $80/month for cable. So I am paying about $110/month for video content.

I have said for years that we need a Spotify for Video. Give me access to all video content for a fixed monthly fee, just like Spotify has whatever music I want for $10-15/month. For video this would give me any TV show ever made, any movie that has been released on DVD and any live sporting events. I would be willing to pay around $125-$150/month which is a bit more than I pay today but I would have access to more content and it would be seemless. The entertainment world gets more revenue and I get more stuff to watch. But that will never happen due to the vested interests.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I think if you are just looking for a DVR, there are a few options, NextPVR, MythTV, MediaPortal, Kodi, Plex, Emby, etc. Now even if these only supported HDHomeRum, I'm sure there must be a protocol emulator for HDHomeRun that turns any tuner into a network tuner. (if not, then there probably should be )

FWIW I recently ran across tvhProxy (https://github.com/jkaberg/tvhProxy), which appears to be an HDHR protocol translator (it pretends to be an HDTC-2US) that sits in front of tvHeadend that would accomplish what you describe. The project however, is marked as archived. Might be a good starting place for someone if they are interested in going down this path.

--John

[wayner]

I don't think that will help for cable, at least not in Canada, where we don't have CableCards available.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by wayner

I don't think that will help for cable, at least not in Canada, where we don't have CableCards available.

No, probably not, but if the future is that new DVR options "only" support devices that look like HDHRs, things like this might allow people to hook into whatever sources they do have.

Here's another one I found: https://github.com/dsaupf/HDHRProxyIPTV

--John

[emveepee]

Because of Plex there are many HDHR proxies for other devices. The same issues could arise as with SageTV since you still depend on the open source community to fix or update them.

Case in point is OpenDCT, it's a great utility and a requirement for many SageTV users. I've created an interface to it for Ceton users in NextPVR and have had questions for EscapeNoEscape. He told me that he really has no time for support or development referring me to the tome-like thread for answers. This is in no way a criticism it is the nature of software.

Channels DVR sounds good for many people that doesn't mean they have a long term business model either.

We will see how this shakes down if regulators are able to control IPTV.

Martin

[wayner]

Speaking of IPTV, what I would really like to see if Cable/phone/Sat companies were forced to create apps for their IPTV systems so that you didn't need a cable box. You would just run an app on Roku/Fire TV/Android TV/Samsung/iOs/Android/Apple TV/etc that would connect back to your main TV box. I think Xfinity has this, or at least they are testing it. But Rogers (largest Canadian cable company) is using Comcast's Xfinity but Rogers is not offering this right now and have no plans to do so.

The advantage of this is that it reduces the need for a box. And if you buy a Smart TV you may need no boxes at all.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by emveepee

We will see how this shakes down if regulators are able to control IPTV.

What do you mean by this?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wayner

Speaking of IPTV, what I would really like to see if Cable/phone/Sat companies were forced to create apps for their IPTV systems so that you didn't need a cable box. You would just run an app on Roku/Fire TV/Android TV/Samsung/iOs/Android/Apple TV/etc that would connect back to your main TV box. I think Xfinity has this, or at least they are testing it. But Rogers (largest Canadian cable company) is using Comcast's Xfinity but Rogers is not offering this right now and have no plans to do so.

The advantage of this is that it reduces the need for a box. And if you buy a Smart TV you may need no boxes at all.

This sounds good until you realize that when you have 100s of channels in your guide, you now have 100s apps on your phone/tv It's app streaming fatique is already happening today. A better approach would be if a company like Netflix offered "bundled" (like cable companies) and just leased and provided the content. This won't happen (at least not with netflix) since they are a network/cable provide in their own right. But, something like Plex that's already offering free TV and Movies might someday strike some deals and become the carrier for a network, etc.

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

I imagine I am a ‘hoarder’, which sounds like a term a content creator made-up to associate shame with recording their precious shows. lol. And in HD no less. Criminals.

That's ok, I'm probably a hoarder as well Not that I intend to be... but I have 10TB of storage with 1TB free (prob time to add another drive to unRAID). But, I'm just not that attached to it... I'm just lazy and haven't been able to do a clean upin a while I don't think there's anything wrong with being a media hoarder. Before digital I had bookshelves full of DVDs and VHS tapes.

Originally Posted by wayner

What do you mean by this?

I think we need "requlators" to force cable companies to enact change that is good for consumers (like your idea of they should provide an app). They are not going to do it for some altruistic reason that benefits you. Someone has to make them, and that someone is regulators Today networks and cable companies are furiously working on their vendor lock in solutions as we see from the explosion of streaming services.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I think we need "requlators" to force cable companies to enact change that is good for consumers (like your idea of they should provide an app). They are not going to do it for some altruistic reason that benefits you. Someone has to make them, and that someone is regulators Today networks and cable companies are furiously working on their vendor lock in solutions as we see from the explosion of streaming services.

You make some very good points.

In terms of regulators, the problem is they are inconsistent across different geographies. The FCC has had a lot more teeth than the CRTC has. I can think of two examples that directly affected applications like SageTV - active FireWire ports and CableCARD. These were both required in the US so they gave Americans the ability to use FireWire to capture video and/or tune their boxes. CableCARD gave them the ability to capture DRM'ed content. Here in Canada the CRTC was silent on this issue so the best that we got is that some boxes had FireWire that was useful for changing channels but was extremely unreliable for capturing video. And CableCARD was not available other than one very small cable company in Bruce County (or somewhere around there) that was later bought by one of the big guys.

So I have no confidence that regulators will help us here, at least not the CRTC. And the FCC seems to have become consumer unfriendly as well in areas like net neutrality.

[tvmaster2]

Agreed - it’s nearly criminal that the CRTC hasn’t mandated cable cards in Canada, in what appears to be for one reason only: keep TiVo out of Canada.

Today on CBC News, a story that the CRTC may identify both Netflix and Amazon Prime as ‘broadcasters’ which would require them to contribute to the Canadian production fund, which they currently do not, as they claim the ‘aren’t’ broadcasters. Of course, in today’s modern technology world, they absolutely are.

And Stuckless, I consider myself a media ‘collector’.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

Agreed - it’s nearly criminal that the CRTC hasn’t mandated cable cards in Canada, in what appears to be for one reason only: keep TiVo out of Canada.

Why would they have been so worried about that - keeping TiVo out of Canada? To defend the cable companies.

The original reason for CableCARD made a lot of sense, you put them in your TV so that you don't need a cable box. For some reason that fell by the wayside.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by wayner

Why would they have been so worried about that - keeping TiVo out of Canada? To defend the cable companies.

The original reason for CableCARD made a lot of sense, you put them in your TV so that you don't need a cable box. For some reason that fell by the wayside.

There are several companies making products in the U.S. where cable cards can be inserted and used besides TiVo, but at the time, when TiVo was BIG, I’m sure Rogers lobbyists had it shot down. Why would they want to rent you a card for $2 when they can rent you a box for $10