Compatiblity Problems

[mls]

Originally posted by carlgar

While in principle I agree with your letter to frey. I think you were a little hash. Your "That is clearly unacceptable business practice." statement was over the line. It is their business and they are entitled to run it any way they want. I would saw it is poor business practice. The only unacceptable business practice for me is a company breaking the law or knowling making incorrect or misleading statements. I have not seen any sign of Frey coming anywhere close to this line.

Well, maybe I did go a bit overboard, but after going thru so many posts in the forum and finding so many people that "feel" they have been mislead in one way or another (in fact, there are some comments in this thread alone along those lines)... Well, clearly there is something wrong with Frey's business model if they have that many unhappy customers.

Now, I fully understand the rule #1 in advertising is to never say your own product is not as good as that of your competition. However, not admitting to flaws, or not doing so promptly is poor business practice.

Frey needs every bit of advertising they can get, and the best advertising is "word of mouth". It' spreads much faster than any other form. And with so many complaints, even those few multiply up exponentially into a major bad advertisiment for Frey.

Most good companies post things imediately on the front page of their web site if a problem is found along with extactly what it is, and exactly what steps they are taking to solve it.

If you look at Frey's web site you won't see one single thing about any of the problems that have been heavily discussed in the forum. Without keeping the public informed of what is going on, what problems are occuring, and how they are being dealt with is a sure fire way for a company to lose it's reputation really fast (even if they do provide a forum such as this to seek additional help).

I don't particularly care for the phony stuff some web sites do in that regard, or the fake Bill Clinton "I feel your pain" kind of thing, but it has to be there open for the public to see right up front.

And, it has to as honest and straight forward as possible in order for a company to grow (although Microsoft seems to have been able to pull it off with a lot of fudge thru the years, but they have billions of dollars to spread as much fudge as they want).

[falchulk]

Carlgar to me you are unreasonable a good amount of the time. You expect too much. PC's are not a homogeneous platform. They have not been since the first IBM clone appeared. Frey might be aware of people running identical or 99% similar configs to you that have no issue at all. You don't have a clue what their criteria is to declare hardware incompatible. How can you complain they need to do so just because YOU are having the issue. Also, did it occur to you that v2 might fix some of your issues? You can safely upgrade while keeping your existing installation in a another directory until you are satisfied it works. There is no excuse to stay behind the curve because you are afraid to try the new version. The worst that could happen is you miss out on recording some TV shows! Somehow that does not strike the same terror into my heart that it does for you.

I have supported PC's and networks for a long time. We have PC's that were purchased at the same time and are almost identical where the same app just will not install or work right. That's just the way things are. That's a fact that has to be accepted and adjusted to. I have multiple PC's running sagetv 2 smooth as butter. Did I do the same thing to all of them to get it that way? NO WAY. Did that make Frey responsible? NO. We all want to have these highly customizable machines that make us look great to our friends. Well to do that, we have to spend time making things work.

[carlgar]

I do not think I am unreasonable, but I do have high standards. I do not have an issue currently. I have been trying to point out that a lot of issues could be avoided by new users by Frey just listing what equipment they have available.

It occurs to me everyday to upgrade to v2, but I see no major advantage to it yet. My primary interest with V2 is the OSD, but currently I lose the ability to resize the screen if I use it. Also, as other people have pointed out that with multiple tuners it is sometimes hard to find a open slot to shut Sage down. I have also been expecting another update from Frey before I give V2 another try. I know I am behind the curve and that is why I do not report problems that may be corrected in V2. However, when I do upgrade I will check the issues and will report them if they still exist. So Frey may be getting a break by me not upgrading yet.

Perhaps I have just been lucky but I have not encountered any systems that did install or work right. I have not even had any software issues until I bought SageTV. I have spent more time and money on SageTV than I will ever be able to justify.

[falchulk]

Originally posted by carlgar

Perhaps I have just been lucky but I have not encountered any systems that did install or work right. I have not even had any software issues until I bought SageTV. I have spent more time and money on SageTV than I will ever be able to justify.

You are an avid BTV user as well correct? If you are not useing that exclusively then that software must not meet your expectations either. I understand the time statement but not the money. You have spent money on HARDWARE not sagetv. That is unless you cannot justify the purchase price itself.

[carlgar]

I have not even visited the BTV site let alone use it. The money I was referring too was for new hardware to work around the 15/16 issue problem. My primary backup system which I planned to use as a client was rendered useless when I attempted to update the BIOS so I could update the OS. The system had windows 98 instead of windows 98SE. I ended up just building a new client.

edit: I guess I have had a firmware issue that I forgot about.

[falchulk]

My fault. I thought I recalled seeing you post over at the snapstream site frequently.

[mls]

Well, I'm glad this thread kept moving on while I was off with other things.

Originally posted by falchulk

I have supported PC's and networks for a long time. We have PC's that were purchased at the same time and are almost identical where the same app just will not install or work right. That's just the way things are. That's a fact that has to be accepted and adjusted to. I have multiple PC's running sagetv 2 smooth as butter. Did I do the same thing to all of them to get it that way? NO WAY. Did that make Frey responsible? NO. We all want to have these highly customizable machines that make us look great to our friends. Well to do that, we have to spend time making things work.

Isn't that what I've been trying to say all along? The whole "Plug'n'Play" concept is really Plug'n'Pray, and everyone that's had a computer for any length of time has already found that out.

It would be nice if every computer worked the same, but heck, even supposedly identical computers don't always operate the same (as those of us who've had to deal with them for almost 20 years well know).

Check the return lines at BestBuy, CircuitCity, or other such stores and you'll find all kinds of software and hardware being returned because it did not work with their specific computer even though the spec say it should.

Heck, the last PVR-250 I bought was a return that didn't work for somebody. Even though it was all nicely re-shrink wrapped, I know it was a return becauce the batteries were already in the remote (which are in sperate plastic wraps otherwise) and the cord for the remote receiver was not wrapped up nicely with a twist tie (which is is originally and I could see all the foldes in the wire from where it once had been).

Even though it didn't work for someone else, it worked without a hitch when installed in my computer even with the Roslyn card in the same computer (that's driven me almost nuts for over 2 months to get to work right).

[jphhughes]

mls, did you ever get a response to your email to Frey?

[mls]

Originally posted by carlgar

Perhaps I have just been lucky but I have not encountered any systems that did install or work right. I have not even had any software issues until I bought SageTV. I have spent more time and money on SageTV than I will ever be able to justify.

Yep, either really lucky, or you don't put together very many computers and/or install very much software.

Since you're still using the older SageTV version, I'd have to assume part of not having run into as many problems as some of the rest of is simply because you do not change things very often.

Actually, I see nothing wrong with that approach. In fact, it may even be wiser to wait until other have gotten the bugs worked out of things BEFORE buying anything.

Heck, several places have even mentioned that about next releases of Windows (back since Win98) saying it's better to wait a year or two until they get bugs worked out. The security issues with XP would tend to indicate that too. Now that SP2 came out for XP, maybe it's worth getting into more now.

Anyway calgar, I'm glad you stuck it out to work thru all the problems you have had with SageTV. I can't say I've really had many issues with the software (either v1.14 or v2.0), but there sure have been a lot of hardware problems to work around.

Sorry you did have those problems. On my end, with the 3 diff computers I've used SageTV on (both v1.14 and v2.0) I've only had a couple "software" problems and Frey had a solution to those within a week (or will be fixed in the next release).

Only MAJOR problem I had was the Roslyn, and that's a "hardware" problem all of its own.

My main complaint with Frey is that they don't bother posting any info about a problem on their web site even when it becomes apparent there is one. This sorta falls in line with your asking for a detailed list of what hardware works together. As I've tried to point out that would be very difficult to do. However, posting notices of what DOES NOT work together sure would not be all the difficult to gather from the problems reported to their support area.

Not doing either sure can't be helping anyone.

[jphhughes]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mls
[B]I'll get back to comments on the other posts in time. However, as I had mentioned I'm taking some drastic action here to help resolve a lot of this.

As such, here is a copy of the e-mail I have just sent to Frey:

Hey Dan,

MLS, this is the email I was refering too. Did you ever get a reply?

[jphhughes]

mls , forget my question I see you answered it in another thread.