SageTV HD300 Announced - Page 4

I'm eyeing that one as well. The feature set, price and that Marvel VP look awesome; only downside I've found is the global crossover setting.

Yeah, but that can be mitigated by pairing it with THX-rated speakers all set to "small" and crossed at 80Hz.

That said, I was planning on a new htpc build this month to go along with the new AVR; but, if this new Sage does everything I need it to do, hopefully I'll be able to solve that issue and save a bunch of time/money in the process!

My next two purchases are a 5ch amp (probably Emotiva xpa-5), and a new 3D TV. I was waiting to see what new TVs might show up at IFA this week, but nothing has really impressed me thus far... At least, nothing affordable. (the new Samsung 55" C9000 is mighty fine, but I happen to like my arms and legs, so it's not really an option...lol)

Just tried it out and it does still have HD-DVD. How do you incorporate that with sage though?

It supports passing the video without scaling. I believe Sage refers to it as Native Switching mode. The HD300 (and if IIRC the older HD200) both support this.

Ok, once I get Sage I'll have to see if I can get it working then. I did get it to work pc to pc.

The HD200 supports native switching of 480p, 720p, 1080-60i, 1080-60p in stand alone mode. As an extender (manually configure a text file) will also provide 480i and 1080-24p switching (well Sage offers "unsupported" capability to run the extender at "custom resolutions, but 480i and 1080-24p are the two logical ones to setup.)

According to one comment over on the Sage forums, the HD300 now offers 1080-24p native in stand alone mode too.


-Suntan

Will the hd300 still require editing a text file? If so, do you have a link to the process? Most of my movies are native 1080p/24, so that's what I hope to pass all the way to the tv using the extender...

No. Switching to 23.976 happens automatically, no need to add the resolution.

If you have HD DVDs I think creating a permanent MKV is the best option. Never know when that drive is going to die.

It's not a problem for me now, but I want to get some floor standers that crossover @60Hz. Haven't decided how much of an issue it is for me yet


I picked up a VT25 a few months ago and it is very impressive.

Excellent!!

Man...as much as I like my Dune, I am reallllllly having a hard time not ordering one of these. Oh wait, it's only $150? Time to place an order, play with it for awhile and then sell to dropzone7...

I don't believe this. Finally the search is over. Reading some of your comments it looks like it really does 480i, 576i, 1080p23.976, 1080p50, etc. based on content. This is the first player that does this properly, all other player don't bother at all or only offer "24hz" automatic switching.

Now that the player has source direct mode does it also have forced output? All my video passes through my old hdmi 1.1 receiver which only accepts 1080i. The receiver passes fine all resolutions it is just the EDID that blocks it. My htpc and blu-ray player have forced output and work fine. So can the sage output 1080p50 for example via a script and still do source direct? I'm hoping there is a list of available resolutions you can tick and it autoswitches between them based on content disregarding the EDID. There is not fear of getting no signal as my receiver is tested with all resolutions and passes them fine.

Regarding mlpcm output it was stated that this player doesn't do it but a post later confirmed that a new firmware amends this issue. Which is it? Can the player decode all lossless codecs to mlpcm for my aging hdmi 1.1 receiver?

It's fixed...

http://www.geektonic.com/2010/09/sag...ate-multi.html

The GeekTonic review of the SageTV HD300 listed this:

"Inability to handle multi-channel PCM output"

as a "negative" in review so I thought I would update everyone on a firmware update fix pushed out to all HD300's last night.

The latest SageTV HD300 firmware addresses the multi-channel PCM issue. Now non-Dolby/DTS, Multi-Channel formats are output as multi-channel PCM as you would expect. I checked this out with a Blu-ray rip with 7.1 LPCM and the receiver (and my speakers) registered it as 7.1 channels. I didn't see this as a huge negative in the first place but great to see another example of the SageTV team pushing out firmware updates to address issues so quickly.

In case you were wondering the actual firmware changelog was as follows:

--Add HDMI multiple channels pcm output for non-bitstream formats (aac, pcm,flac, wmapro...)
--Send WOL packet to server on quick reconnect (Home button)
--Fix a network share connection issue

So, who else pre-ordered?

I ordered one, then went back and ordered another with the software for the computer. I am thinking I can ditch both my tivo (unencrypted qam and ota use only) and my dtvpal (ota use)
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I did the moment I saw the heading on a post saying it was released.

I don't pre order as a rule for anything, and I certainly wouldn't preorder from any of these other streamer companies, but Sage has earned my respect for putting out extenders that do what they claim.

-Suntan

I have both the SageTV HD300 and Dune D1 pre-ordered, but I'm wondering if I really need the Dune.

Ditto

I stockpiled a bunch of them from Ebay . I have a lot in mkv, but every once in a while I like using a disk.

madpoet, to be honest, the only things making me hold on to my Dune D1 pre-order are the Zappati movie/TV jukebox and the D1's front VFD display. MyMovies for SageTV doesn't do TV shows (yet) and the other TV capable jukeboxes for Sage don't look mature enough. But, I'm on the fence as I don't need two players for my home theater, especially since I plan to buy the Boxee Box for my family room.

Shoot.., so my rips of tv show sets won't display in MyMovies on Sage? Didn't know that.

Suntan> Is there a way to set SageTV's extenders to use folder.PNG files, rather than the MM-created folder.JPG files?

Or, better yet, can I somehow prevent MM from downloading/creating the folder.jpg files altogether?

I use starkcovers for my collection, but MM keeps reverting back to standard JPG covers in each folder, which is screwing up my catalog.

EDIT: Well, I figured out how to stop MM from creating a folder.JPG, so now I just need to know what the SMM plugin will use as the priority image on the extender. Will it work with the folder.PNG?

Trying to decide between this and Dune. I really want to consolidate to 1 streamer type

OK, thanks for the info. I figured out how to stop the folder.jpg creation just before you replied, but I can't find the "stark-like covers" function you're referring to...?