Slashdot Mirror

You mean like the ones that SageTV used to make before Google bought them? http://www.sagetv.com/index.html

With Google's acquisition of sageTV, it was speculated that SageTV would either become or become part of a revised platform for GoogleTV. What will happen to this fine company? Their DVR software was fantastic, and their "media extender" hardware was very useful. Many companies that get assimilated by Google become integral parts of a greater whole. But what will happen here? I seriously doubt that Google will shelve the set-top box concept. They may transform GoogleTV into something different, but I doubt they'll abandon it.

I would also recommend the SageTV HD Theater 300. I have one and it plays just about anything.

SageTV now has an HD extender called the SageTV HD Theater 300 for about $150.00. I have not used it, however I have used other SageTV media extenders with great success.

You also need to run the SageTV server software on your Linux box. The HD Theater 300 just connects to the network.

SageTV costs, but it is very solid, and they have reliable hardware partners.

SageTV now has an HD extender called the SageTV HD Theater 300 for about $150.00. I have not used it, however I have used other SageTV media extenders with great success.

You also need to run the SageTV server software on your Linux box. The HD Theater 300 just connects to the network.

SageTV costs, but it is very solid, and they have reliable hardware partners.

I have been using SageTV and their Media Extenders for a couple of years now, and I am very happy with it.

The basics:

1) You set up a "server" PC loaded with hard drives and tuner/capture cards, running the SageTV software.

2) At the TV, you connect a small, low-power Media Extender, which presents an identical user interface to the SageTV software.

I am using this to record broadcast TV from an antenna, watch DVD and Blu-ray rips, and (with the addition of PlayOn) watch Hulu and Comedy Central streaming.

Their website: http://sagetv.com/

I used to use MythTV, and I find that SageTV has pretty much identical functionality, but I could remove a computer from the living room and use the small extender device instead.

I like SageTV ( http://www.sagetv.com/ ), especially the one-click commercial skipping; it has (had?) its occasional hiccups, but this might also be a function of how much one fiddles with the hardware/software setup :-) It seems pretty mature (it's at v6.x by now), has an active user/contributor base, and handles multiple receivers and set top/converter boxes with IR control nicely. It has a free trial.

There is currently no DVR that requires no monthly fees that has at least some rudimentary capability to acquire the listings.

Moxi
Windows Media Center
Beyond TV
SageTV
MythTV

None of these require any subscription for guide data or functionality, and the top two even have CableCard support so you can enjoy your HD content fix. TiVo Series2 units with DVD burners often come with a free "limited" subscription to TiVo's guide data, lacking the recommendations and ability to look more than three days in to the future IIRC.

Actually yes. MythTV kicks the utter crap out of any other PVR ever made.

I love MythTV, used it for years. After some frustration (yet another update, yet another two nights messing around to get my IR remote working again, arrrrgh), I tried out SageTV. I have no association with the company; I think it's mostly a one-developer shop. But they make an awesome product. Less than $100 for the server and client licenses, and I had a system that streamed to multiple windows/mac/linux computers seamlessly (I could never get Sage to stream to more than one networked computer, and even that was painful). (And I picked up a couple of dedicated Sage hardware boxes, that work beautifully, loading their GUI off the server. Very slick.)

Not knocking Myth, and I bet it will overtake all others some day; but to say it's the best and kicks everyone's butt, isn't consistent with my experiences. If you like the indy-ish PVR approach, but want something easier and more polished than Myth (and more cross-platform, ironically), do check out Sage.

And a "convergence" issue. It you have the right software, you can buy one of these puppies so you can keep the Compy86 upstairs and still stream video content from it.

It won't be done by general desktop PCs at all

That is because the "general desktop PC" will not exist as we know it. Computers are becoming closer to a mesh than solo devices.

DivX is the best format to use for archiving TV shows you've recorded. It will usually half to third the size of a one hour show and the quality reduction isn't very noticeable(as in, the lady doesn't notice). It is a native format of the media extender and its bigger, high-def brother.

However, I do have to somewhat agree with you about both DivX and Mp3 getting their roots in piracy. I distinctly remember the first time I heard one of those new fangled mp3's in like 1997. Sneaker Pimps 6 Underground. The whole song, 4 megs and tons more on this new fangled XDCC thing on IRC. What could possibly go wrong :-) DivX? Years later, random Simpsons episodes, 50->100 megs a piece with a tolerable reduction in quality. Also available on that new refined XDCC thing.

@joedcc list
!joedcc "Blah blah blah.mp3"
... or something. It has been a long while.

But I sure wish I could at least get a QAM tuner on a PCI card that has a Cable Card slot on it. Once I finally make the plunge to getting HDTV myself I'll probably use this cute little guy and route around the whole mess. But the problem with all those solutions is you are basically going from Digital -> Analog -> Digital when you can just record the feed right off the wire with no loss in quality. I'm also reading stories about how the some in the industry want to down-convert the analog ports to keep us evil criminals from stealing the content we pay for. And regardless, I need a set top box.

And yes, I rant and yet I don't have HDTV personally. Every time I look into what it will take to get HDTV + SageTV, I get pissed and give up. The SageTV is a requirement, the lady would kill me if I took that away (Tivo lacks this or this). The analog capture card gives me comfort though, even if it isn't ideal.

But I sure wish I could at least get a QAM tuner on a PCI card that has a Cable Card slot on it. Once I finally make the plunge to getting HDTV myself I'll probably use this cute little guy and route around the whole mess. But the problem with all those solutions is you are basically going from Digital -> Analog -> Digital when you can just record the feed right off the wire with no loss in quality. I'm also reading stories about how the some in the industry want to down-convert the analog ports to keep us evil criminals from stealing the content we pay for. And regardless, I need a set top box.

And yes, I rant and yet I don't have HDTV personally. Every time I look into what it will take to get HDTV + SageTV, I get pissed and give up. The SageTV is a requirement, the lady would kill me if I took that away (Tivo lacks this or this). The analog capture card gives me comfort though, even if it isn't ideal.

There are alot of products out there that pretty good as an AV Gateway.

There is the Hauppauge MVP that is easy to use and setup, and yes you can put linux on it (if it isnt already).
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_mediamvp.html
It can stream almost anything but HD with an appropriate server.

A suggestion for the Ultimate at home Multimedia machine would be SageTV with its HD extenders that can play HD and almost everything I have found online. http://www.sagetv.com/hd_extender.html
(( Yes is it can play Netflix too !! ))

-BTK
 

Oh man, where do I start? Let me start with their latest jewel, of shipping 2wire routers to their customers with a HUGE KNOWN SECURITY VULNERABILITY. And yes, that deserves to be in caps. From a remote web site, your router can have its default password changed, and from there unimportant little pages like your bank's web site can be easily diverted to a page in Kyrgistan and next thing you know all your money's gone. I was able to verify this myself and was able to change my password from the URL string without knowing my password. Brilliant. Known exploits are in the wild and Bell is still shipping these things, and has no firmware upgrade in place. You still like Sympatico?

How about throttling P2P traffic? If that's not bad enough, how about throttling their corporate clients' P2P traffic, like Teksavvy? I'd be surprised if I didn't see a lawsuit about that soon.

How about blocking outbound port 25? Not a problem for you maybe if you're happy using Sympatico's SMTP server for everything and I understand the rationale behind it, but the fact is that it's 100% trivial for malware writers to get around in about 15 seconds of extra programming, but it is a huge PITA for those of us relying on our DSL connections to make a living and/or take our laptop to different networks.

Still a Sympatico fan?

How about being one of the first ISPs in Canada to institute a bandwidth cap? My girlfriend/fiancée (now wife) had Sympatico and I managed to wring up some hefty extra charges on that account one month before realizing what was going on. Yeah, I could have read the fine print, but OH, she was in a contract (not necessary with Teksavvy, I might point out) so switching would have cost extra. What kind of business feels the need to lock customers in? Teksavvy doesn't need to, and neither does Star Choice. Somehow they must feel that giving customers what they want at a fair price should be enough to keep them on board. That's crazy talk.

During my last encounter with Bell just last week, I was trying to get them to install a demarcation box for our new house. I didn't want Bell for phone or DSL (can you guess why) but I still needed them to run the copper. Well, I get a guy who is obviously in India (besides the Indian accent, the phone line was terrible and there was significant lag). That's fine, I have nothing against Indians in India or in Canada, and nothing really against hiring Indian tech support. My problem was with the conversation. He said his name is Michael but everybody calls him Mike. Then he tells me he's a "specialist in bringing down prices". Good for him, he had a sense of humour. He tells me that everything nowadays is going up except his paycheque, thanks to McGinty and Harper. Look the guy's obviously not in Canada, so why is he pretending to be? My supposition: because his employer makes him. It's not "Mike's" fault. It's Bell's fault. If Bell's going to outsource tech support, at least be honest about it. But honesty is not Bell's way. This is why I say they hate their customers.

To carry that story on further, I was told that they would not install the demarc box on my house unless I agreed to either get DSL through them or pay at least $22/month for a phone line. This AFAIK is totally bogus and in fact runs completely against their contractual obligations that come with having a government-granted monopoly. So why are they trying to trick me into signing up for their services?

Let's contrast that to Teksavvy. I called them up to ask them what to do about this. I got a guy in Chatham, ON on a crystal clear phone line. I can c

Unfortunately, it's not just Microsoft. Cable and Satellite providers have things so locked down that doing what *I* want with the HD content I pay for is simply out of the question. I use an HDHomeRun box in conjunction with SageTV, which will let me record both OTA and clear QAM HD channels over cable, but the offerings are limited, and it's certainly NOT a system for Joe Sixpack. While it is nice to be able to watch and record HD content, unless it's clear (unencrypted) you are out of luck. Cable, DirecTV, and Dish all provide varying degrees of "premium" HD content, but unless you lock yourself into a their HD-DVRs, again, you are out of luck. And even if you do use an HD-DVR from cable or satellite companies, don't even think of offloading the content.

If you want something that's not tied into some specific hardware (ala Tivo) but that still provides free monthly listings, and the ability to extend it with your own code, try out SageTV. It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and is extremely easy to set up. It's stable, and has great support. Oh, and as per the point of this post, it include free TV listings.

SageTV has been able to do this for several months now, and incorporates Google Video as well. Granted, SageTV is not an STB as such (actually an HTPC) but the functionality is there. The up side is access to lots of videos on your TV. The down side is that the video content and quality leaves a lot to be desired.

It doesn't affect SageTV's built in EPG data at all because SageTV pays for the US & Canadian data it receives & redistributes to customers.

That announcement is talking about shutting down the free Zap2It Labs Data Direct service, which is not what SageTV uses for the built-in data.

It doesn't affect SageTV's built in EPG data at all because SageTV pays for the US & Candian [sic] data it receives & redistributes to customers.

There is a version of SageTV for Linux ...

http://store.sagetv.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Scre en=PROD&Store_Code=SOS&Product_Code=STVLS&Category _Code=SS

However, I'm still using SageTV on a Windows box. If my recent switch to Ubuntu for my main computer continues to work as well as it has so far I will upgrade my PVR box to the Linux version. SageTV has been one of the best pieces of software I have ever paid for.

I still have no clue if they are affected by this. Guess I'll check out the SageTV forums next.

Or, you can go over to SageTV (http://store.sagetv.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Scr een=PROD&Store_Code=SOS&Product_Code=STVLS) and stay on Linux.

Our habits were similar until we built a SageTV system. Now, it goes something like this:

1. After a show completes recording, ShowAnalyzer auto-scans the recording for commercial breaks and flags them. This process completes within about 2-3 minutes of the completion of the recording.

2. We watch the show with SageTV's ComSkip plugin enabled, and when a commercial break begins, playback just jumps forward to the marked end of the commercial break, resuming the show content. It's slicker than snot.

3. Should we want to watch commercials, we either temporarily disable the ComSkip plugin, or we just FF or REW into the marked commercial section.

And the auto-marking is 's amazingly accurate--probably 98% accurate. The combination of SageTV + ShowStopper + ComSkip plugin gives us very successful commercial marking. No, it's not perfect, and sometimes shows get mis-marked, but it's very rare.

Other home-brew DVR's like MythTV and BeyondTV have similar capabilities.

And when we want to do something else (food, bathroom, phone, etc.) it's just a simple press of the Pause or Stop buttons

Commercials are not evil. Forcing us to watch them is.

SageTVTips.com

I'm sure a standard that allows users to download an advert template for a given broadcast of a show would very quickly turn up and allow automatic skipping.

Yes Their's Beyond TV by Snapstream http://www.snapstream.com/ supports software tuners as well as hardware tuners, HD tuners and USB tuners.

    And My 'Fav' Sagetv By Fry technoligies http://www.sagetv.com/ supports hardware tuners HD tuners and added support for software tuners as well as USB tuners and runs on java. Sagetv first forged support for multi hardware tuners before anybody else back when even microsoft said it wasn't possible and in my view they have the most developed software on the windows side. Now everybody supports multi tuner setups some better than others and it's insane the number of tuners and HD space some people have setup in their systems 6 or more tuners with upwards of 1 terrabyte or more HD space incase they want to record 6 or more channels at once.

    THeir's also Microsofts WIndows MCE which came along after Sagetv, Beyond TV and Mythtv being from micorsoft they have worked hard to make up lost ground and it is a good software/OS (You have to buy the Windows MCE OS to get it so if you want it and have windows already your stuck). MCE also supports hardware tuners and HD tuners as well as i belive USB tuners. I dont know about software tuner support but really if your doing non HD tv hadware tuners are the way to go they use less cpu cycles and have less issues with crashing.
  With HD their isn't any need for hardware encoding as the shows come in as a digital encoded stream already the tuner just dumps the stream to the drive and thats it.

    Their is also Mythtv for linux as well as a Sagetv version on linux using java.

    Mythtv has been around for a while on the linux side they started out using software tuners but since moved into hardware tuners and lately I belive into HD as well as i think USB tuners. Mythtv is a great PC PVR solution if you can go through all the work involved with setting up linux and myth as well as any and all dependancies etc.. It's also free as is many flavors of linux.

  The Linux sagetv is pretty much the same as the windows version but it runs on linux using Java the same basicly as the windows version runs on.

    But Mythtv for linux and Sagetv and Beyond TV for windows are the main ones that have the most developed software and support of hardware etc..

    Though some may argue that point but I have used several and I found the one I like the best was Sagetv even though it uses java it does it quite well.

    Their are also pre made box's out their that you can buy with hardware and software preinstalled if you don't want to go through all the work of doing it yourself. Their much more expensive but if you really don't want to or can't do it yourself then their pretty much the only way to go.

    So try thoughs out or do a search on the web for PVR software and happy hunting.

Slightly OT perhaps, but you might be interested in knowing that SageTV will do the same thing. It's commercial PVR software that runs on Windows and Linux.

Doubt whether this supports HDTV:

http://www.sagetv.com/extender.html

I will answer just to some of your comments, as one answer covers all of them.

. I had to write my own sleep command in VB script just to accomplish a simple "sleep 5s". And since VB script is such a fucking mess, my script would only run on some machines unless I wanted to do version checking.

So, you can program a bash script and manage to install a tarball but you whine for a pretty basic "idiot-based-language" VB script?. Cool that you only have this *some machines* problems with a sleep thing that can be done in other ways (or at the end, you achieved in your own way); there are things that can NOT be done on any Linux flavor, like for example using some hardware. Darn...

using Linux and all I needed to do was compile one external driver for the PVR-250 card and write a bunch of Bash scripts utilizing Zenity for GUI interaction.

Whoopewho, Compile? wow 1337. On windows you only have to double click on a program and it will be there!

Everything I needed was in my base Fedora Core 3 installation. I didn't need to buy anything other than the PVR-250... I challenge you to do the same with Windows.
I do not care how much did it costed, as a lot of companies. Remember, the advantage of OSS is not in the price. If I wanted a PVR I would just bought a softare (you could do it too!.

Now, I will conclude saying again, I am not against any OSS, but it is not true that Windows
is too limiting compared to Linux. All the new applications available for Linux are "replacements" of Windows applications. That is not bad, they make some functionality available.

The difference is that with Windows you pay for the software so it just work while on Linux you have to make it work. Some people do not want to waste their time on that. The same way as I do not want to waste my time looking at the motor in my car, I just want it to take me from my office to my home.

If you're still looking for good HTPC software, that's because you haven't found SageTV (http://www.sagetv.com/).

I've used it on my home theater PC http://www.terryshometheater.com/htpc/ for almost two years.

Sure it does, search here: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/

First and foremost, don't run MythTV. Really, you are asking for headache after headache. I know I am going to get responses saying I'm the idiot etc, but really... If you want a PVR that WORKS, forget about MythTV. -OR- *Buy exactly what KnoppMythTV recommends for hardware*, no less, no more.

The problem really isn't MythTV. It's Linux driver support. For Hauppauge PVR150 cards (very popular, and great cards), you need the BETA ivtv drivers. After a solid week of tweaking this and that, getting a backend/frontend MythTV system working, I finally sat down and watched a show... Twenty minutes into it, the backend crashed. This is after putting in 40 hours easily into the setup. I got up, pulled the plug, went to bed. The next morning, I woke up, installed Windows 2000, and SageTV. Ever since then its been wonderful.

SageTV has two commercial skip packages, one stolen from MythTV land (comskip) and one ShowAnalyzer made specifically for Windows and all the various PVR applications (BeyondTV etc).

SageTV also has a web-server so you can do all the same things you can do with MythTV.

SageTV has a real show-progress bar where you can actually see how far you are in a show. It even shows the commercial areas on the progress bar.

SageTV even shows the TV video on the background (transparencies) of all the menus.

SageTV has REAL tuner management. In MythTV if you have 2 tuners, each recording a show, and you hit "Watch Live TV", you get the response "Sorry, all the tuners are busy, go away".. You then have to go to the videos list, find the recording show, then select it to watch. Then cancel the show if you want to watch live TV, then go back to the menu and hit Live TV again.

With SageTV, you hit LiveTV and its recording two shows, it will simply show you one of the tuners, if you try to change the channel, it will ask you, which of the two shows you want to cancel in order to change the channel. NICE!

Also, with MythTV, if you come home from work, turn on the TV, see your 4 hour ring buffer full and its in the middle of a movie, you hit RECORD and it wipes out the movie up to where you are now then starts recording, LAME! SageTV will tag the entire beginning of the show/movie to be part of the show/movie recording, so you get it all.

MythTV is limited to a SINGLE recording directory, you can use LVM to span your disks to join together hard disks, but you can't use network disks then. (Im sure theres some hacky way to do it though). With SageTV, I can use the hard disks all over my house in all my computers on the LAN. So I got my two 250gb cards in my server machine, a 160 gig disk on another machine and a 300 gig disk ona linux machine with a Samba server.. SageTV records to ALL of them.

SageTV has great HDTV support for ATI HDTV Wonder, AverMeda A180's ($80!!), and Fusion 5 HDTV cards! I'm doing pure HDTV now with an antenna picking up 36 stations in the bay area.

SageTV because its on Windows, you can use ATI Video cards for TV OUT.. With NVIDIA and ATI you can use Nvidia PureVideo decoders for PixelAdaptive hardware deinterlacing, features of new GeForce6 and ATI cards for kick-ass deinterlacing... With MythTV you get Software-Bob that eats 100% of your 2.6ghz CPU.. blah.

Best of all, its STABLE.

Now, mind you I am not talking about Sage v2, I am talking about Sage v3.0.11-PR11 Beta. http://sagetv.com/beta.html

Read the discussion forums, and try it out. I did, and love it. I could go on and on about why SageTV is better than MythTV... SageTV even has a MUCH better expansion API called SVT's, to totally create custom interfaces and features within the clients.

The only real downside is its $79.95 after your two week trial. I put 4 hours into SageTV and got further than 40 hours with MythTV, I have High Definition video, better support, drivers, etc, commercial skip, web interface yadda yadda yadda... 40 hours for $79.95 is $2/hour... my time is worth more th

Due to an unusual work shift, I have to record any TV show I want to watch. I converted an old system into a DVR (using SageTV and couple Hauppauge tuner/capture cards). Works great.

When it comes to playback, I copy the files to my main system. I strip out the commercials using Pegasys TMPGEnc MPEG editor. Knowing that most commercial breaks are three minutes, I can just jump around the timeline until I find where the show resumes. Then I watch the shows on the pc or burn them out to a DVD-RW for later TV viewing.

Really quite simple.

• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250
• Homebrew HTPC
• SageTV