SageTV vs. Beyond TV

[cgrey]

Originally Posted by Rem

I posted this on the BeyondTv Forum yesterday;

Sage really needs to develop a web based, high density EPG, for quick "whats on TV" lookups like BTV has. I still use my BTV guide to look things up on my remote PC, then use the Sage client to set them up in Sage. The remote live TV function is a killer app for me, especially when setting up future pay-per-view recordings where I need to see the Cable Box On-Sceen guide remotely to order the shows in advance.

I assume you've already found this, but just in case:

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...&highlight=web

[Rem]

Thanks for the link, it's a great app, and since there isn't a Sage server to go to, like BTV, it's maybe the only way to go.

I like the high (time) density BTV version because it can be configured to show 5 hours at a glance, I'd like to be able to configure a EPG for up to 6 or 8 hours out.

The key feature for me is to be able to check an EPG from a remote PC to DECIDE whether I want to fire up the SagePC and record it. If I kept the SagePC running all the time, then this prog would be about perfect (just could use that higher time density).

My use model may be whack, but I use networked ReplayTV's for disposable TV shows. I fire up Sage to get and Record High Quality video for burning or other HT related video, but keep it off when not needed, to save energy (in Calif, I try to save some energy when possible).

For now I still just use the BTV guide which really works well for quick scanning.

[Outvit]

My opinion on the matter:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=9589

[jominor]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

As soon as I tried the current Sage with SageMC I loved it. The interface and menu navigation is exactly what I am looking for.

The ONLY thing that is better in Beyond TV in my opinion is playback. I can't understand how anybody can say SageTV has better plackback, that's just not the case. With VMR9 and Beyond TV's exclusive fullscreen mode my plackback was always amazing. Not once did I even experience tearing, stuttering or any image corruption ever.

Well, I'll say it. BTV's picture quality, for me, was nothing compared to Sage. In fact, I've had people who've said that the quality is BETTER than my standard TV. I concur.

Picture quality was my number one reason for switching to Sage, and this is 1.4. Stabiltiy was a very close second.

BTV hung. It crashed. It didn't always change channnels.

No IR.

[kny3twalker]

yeah renderless VMR9 looks much better than windowless VMR9
SageTV does much better
they be top PVR solution in everyones eyes again
unquestionably with exclusive renderless VMR9

[mayamaniac]

I used to be a BTV user, but switched to SageTV about 3 motnhs ago. Here's what I think of BTV and why I switched, I posted on the BTV forum: http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/show...1&postcount=25

And for my SageTV review, the link is below my signature.

But to sum it up, I think BTV is a fine product and does its job well. Most like BTV for the user-friendly interface and likes SageTV for it many features. And then there's MCE 2005, thats another beast to consider. So it depends on what you need. For basic PVR recording and scheduling, I think all 3 products do them well. But if you demand more than that out of your PVR, then SageTV is probably the best choice.

Anyway, I switched to SageTV because it supports the PVR-350 TV-Out, and the fact that I didn't like the business practices of Snapstream. It seems they are greedy and wants to make money too quickly, just look at the way they priced their products and licenses. But I'm glad I made the switch because I found out how helpful the people on this forums are to help users with their PVR problems. I don't see that kind of user support for BTV.

[sudipto]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

I used to be a BTV user, but switched to SageTV about 3 motnhs ago. Here's what I think of BTV and why I switched, I posted on the BTV forum: http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/show...1&postcount=25

Looks like your post got deleted at the Snapstream forums

This may be another (side) reason why Sage is better ... the forum moderators here do not believe in deleting any post that that talk about a competitor's product

Me ? I tried BeyondTV back in the 3.x ( 0 <= x <= 3 ) days and it was extremely crash prone. Sage 1.4 on the other hand, though ugly was absolutely rock solid ... so the decision wasn't very hard at all. That, and the fact that Sage was the only product out back then (end of 2002) that flawlessly supported multiple tuners.

I wish I could say the same thing about Sage stability with 2.1 onwards ... but I am very hopeful that it will become rock solid again with the released version of 3.0

[m1ketuck]

i have purchased both (BTV was first) i then switched to sage following the v2 beta test

Reason, mostly due to the community that seem to create some great customisations

also xmltv support is more straight forward, just run xmltv each day and thats it

with btv i had to run xmltv and then run an importer

[silkshadow]

I, for one, choose Sage for one major reason. When I was looking at both products, I posted some questions both here and in BTV's forums. In BTV's forum, I was largely ignored. Here, I got a responses within a day and they were extrodinarily helpful. Sage had already won at that point but then I installed both demos and gave them a try. During the install/config, again, I posted questions here and on BTVs fourm. Same result. The community is so important to early adopter/niche products because 1) it ensures the longevity of the product as well as addons and stuff 2) Early adopter/niche companies are almost always small and have bad tech support. I am not saying the tech support for Sage is bad, on the contrary its not bad for a small company. However, you always get better answers to questions from other people who are also enthusiests and who are using the product daily and, like yourself, on a variety of different hardware/situations.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by sudipto

Looks like your post got deleted at the Snapstream forums

It's still there actually, the link works when I clicked on it. But it's post #25 on this thread: http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=19556

Originally Posted by sudipto

I wish I could say the same thing about Sage stability with 2.1 onwards ... but I am very hopeful that it will become rock solid again with the released version of 3.0

Try the latest betas, you will get a taste of 3.0. But I've started with Sage 2.1 and its been working well. I'm using the latest 2.2.4 beta now.

[Wheemer]

It is not there... they must be hiding your posts... they did this to me too once.

[parkimar]

It goes from 24 straight to 26 , no 25.

You did upset someone !

Cheers

Mark

[sudipto]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Try the latest betas, you will get a taste of 3.0. But I've started with Sage 2.1 and its been working well. I'm using the latest 2.2.4 beta now.

I *am* using the latest beta (currently have 2.2.4 installed), but I can still fairly easily lock up the Sage GUI. I have noticed one random crash with 2.2.4 as well. I have always been upgrading to the latest beta within 2-3 days of their availability, but (for me at least) nothing has brought back the stability of 2.0.20 yet

With 2.2.3 I *did* get a taste of SageTV ver 3.0 ... since the startup splash screen said "SageTV ver 3.0" ... but that was prety short lived, since with 2.2.4 it agains says ver 2.2

I would like to report these bugs, but other than the GUI lockup issue, other problems are hard to patternize and I have not found a specific set of steps to reproduce them. They just happen randomly from time to time.

Even with the latest betas, Sage is *STILL* way more stable than BTV was when I was trying it out. I understand they have improved the product since then, but I have no need to try them again ... well, unless they were to start supporting OTA HDTV

[glbrown]

Sudipto,

What decoder are you using? I was having a lot of GUI lockups (every 2 days) for months since going 2.x. Been running Intervideo decoders in 224 for 2 weeks and haven't had a single lockup.

[sudipto]

Thanks for the feedback, glbrown ! I have been using the latest NVIDIA decoders (1.00.67).

Which Intervideo decoder are you using ? The regular one or the non-css one ?

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by parkimar

It goes from 24 straight to 26 , no 25.
You did upset someone !
Cheers
Mark

You were right, I was suspicious for why others can't see the post so I logged out of the forum and tried to view it as a guest and not as a member, and it did skipped my post. I logged back in as my account and the post reappears. ooh, how sneaky they are, I'm even more glad I switched to SageTV.

But for those intereseted: here's my original post #25.

I Switched to SageTV 2.1.

I purchased Snapstream PVS 3.0 when it first came out. I thought it had huge potentials based on the many built in features, especially the web stuffs like remote scheduling and LiveTV streaming. It wasn't bug free though, I spent countless hours trying to configure the IR blaster, the Remote control, the Video playback, the capture card, etc, to work properly. With each new upgrades up to BTV 3.4.4, the software just kept getting better. And with the announcement of 3.5 features, I was excited to see BTV becoming a polished PVR software.

But then on the side, I started hearing about some other products called Beyond Media, and Beyond Link, and Firefly. I had mixed feelings about these products. I like the potentials of those products also, but at the same time, I'm not sure I like the direction that Snapstream is heading. I felt like they should really focus on BTV and get it working really well instead of trying to make money too fast with other products. Because BTV still felt unpolished, it has potentials, but has rooms for a lot of improvements; it's like a beta software. So now, instead of having one beta software to fix, they now have 4 (BTV, BTV-Link, BM, and Firefly). And the worst part is these products cost a lot of money, at least for me.

BTV $70
BTV Link $40
BM $50
Firefly $50
BTV Tuner License (3 or more tuners) $20 each

Whats the deal with that last one? Thats just money hungry. Tuner Licenses for $20 each? And $40 for BTV Link?

But after 3.5 was released, I was excited to test it out. But my excitement was short lived. I have a hardware encoder (PVR-350) which I use for recording TV. And I aslo have a software encoder (Nvidia Personal Cinema) and was hoping to make use it as a LiveTV streaming server. Of course in BTV 3.5, you can't do that even with so-called Multi-Tuner Support. LiveTV streaming is disabled when you use a hardware encoder as default. And its a bitch having to switch the capture cards back and forth.

But, that's not my biggest complaint about BTV. I have a problem with the picture quality of the TV-Out. Using the video card's TV-out isn't good enough, not when I have hardware decoding capability of the PVR-350's TV-out. As I stated in many other threads and complaints to the BTV tech supports, the hardware decoding is night and day better than the video card's TV-Out. And it's most apparent when watching a fast moving video, such as a basketball game. The problem is not just with the video card's TV-out capability, but it doesn't look good on the computer monitor either. The PVR-350's TV out actually looks better than what I see on the computer monitor. Maybe with proper tweaking and more countless hours spent, I can get the video playback to look better on the monitor, but not right out of the box with BTV. And all my complaints for a better TV-out solutions has fallen to death ears.

So I switched to SageTV and so far happy with the product. It supports the PVR-350 TV-out with transparent OSD goodness. And its competitive to BTV in terms of features. It doesn't have LiveTV streaming, but I can't get that working with BTV3.5 anyway, so no big loss. But it has a few features that BTV lacks, like Intelligent recordings, which is like Tivo's Suggestions, a very great feature. It records similar shows based on your current recordings genres. The SageTV community is just as passionate as BTV community. There are people making good skins and good plugins for it.

I thought about selling my BTV license, but I decided to keep it for the LiveTV streaming only. I reverted back to 3.44 because BTV3.5 would conflict with SageTV. BTV 3.44 works fine as a LiveTV streaming server. Besides, it uses less resources, it doesn't hog memory like 3.5. Just look in the your Task Manager when running 3.5, there are like 5 or 6 processes running. If I find a free LiveTV streaming software, I will sell my BTV license. Didn't think I would say that when I bought it with high hopes, but due to the direction of Snapstream is taking, its not good for my interest nor my wallet.

Originally Posted by sudipto

I *am* using the latest beta (currently have 2.2.4 installed), but I can still fairly easily lock up the Sage GUI.

In my experiece, most random lockups in computers are due to hardware problems, such as bad memory, motherboard, videocard, etc.. in that order. But if you system is stable and only lockup with SageTV, then definitely filled out a bugs report with Frey.

[sudipto]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

In my experiece, most random lockups in computers are due to hardware problems, such as bad memory, motherboard, videocard, etc.. in that order. But if you system is stable and only lockup with SageTV, then definitely filled out a bugs report with Frey.

You are absolutely right ! Random lockups of the entire machine almost always indicate memory or motherboard problems. But that is not my case. I am seeing the only the Sage GUI is randomly locking up. It is not very frequent, may be once every three days, but I have not found any specific pattern to what causes this.

When this does happen, I can bring up task manager, kill the SageTV GUI (the SageTV service runs just fine most of the time) and restart the GUI ... and life is good.

Becuase I am using the SageTV windows service, so far killing the GUI has not affected any of my recordings, so that part has been great ! But I wish the whole product once again becomes as stable as it was in v1.4 and in the original 2.0 release, so that I can tuck the keyboard away and use my Sage machine as a true STB PVR.

I am hoping the official 3.0 release will take care of these issues. After all, 2.2.4 is just a beta so I can't complain too much. In fact, for a beta software, it works pretty darn well

[glbrown]

You describe the exact problem I have. My InterVideo decoder version is 4.0.11.250.

[InTheFlow]

Just wanted to thank everyone for this discussion...it helped me make my decision.

Ladies and Gentlemen...I'm going with Sage... :-}

InTheFlow

[sudipto]

Welcome to the growing Sage user base, InTheFlow ! You made the right decision