[stanger89]

Jeff Kardatzke (co-founder) just announced on the SageTV forums that it, after being purchased by Google in 2011 and put to use in their Google Fiber service, is to be Open Sourced "soon".

The plan is to port non-Google Fiber specific functionality back into the pre-purchase code base.

Official Announcement:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=569373#post569373

Discussion with more details from Jeff (aka Narflex):
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=569455&postcount=56

Gotta say, I'm cautiously excited/optimistic about what the future holds.

 

[rc05]

I still don't see this helping with our quest to have an alternative to WMC for copy protected content

But Sage seemed pretty cool back in the days, even having hardware extenders like WMC does. Good to have another (supported and developed again) alternative to Live TV/DVR along with MB and Kodi, etc

 

[Aleron Ives]

Does SageTV handle everything on its own? A major drawback (IMO) to going the HTPC route is the whole frontend/backend thing where no single program seems capable of handing your PVR needs all by itself. If SageTV can be the MythTV of the Windows world, it could be quite handy.

 

[rc05]

I believe it does handle everything on its own!

EDIT: Actually I'm not sure haha

 

[Dark_Slayer]

I was more interested to see what else Google night have eventually done with it.

As much as everyone dings them for their project graveyard, sometimes they just take a long time to roll projects out

Like MMS to and from all four major us carriers in hangouts

Them there was the fact that they bought gizmo5. Around the year they bought sage IIRC. Back when Google voice was new and cool. Everyone thought they bought an SIP provider and Google voice would include SIP calling soon. About 5 years later it does (through hangouts)

 

[TornadoTJ]

How about an Android version of WMC, with support for encrypted channels tuned through HDHR.

 

[Valnar]

I came here to say the same thing, but stanger89 beat me to it. I've been using Sage for over 10 years.

Kodi, MythTV and NextPVR don't compare in regards to live TV recording. For those not familiar with the SageTV platform from before, this is the greatest news to hit the HTPC community in a very very long time.

SageTV, Plex and Squeezebox will pretty much handle any needs I have now.

 

[Dark_Slayer]

Kodi, MythTV and NextPVR don't compare in regards to live TV recording

Can you elaborate? What does it do specifically better?

 

[captain_video]

I still don't see this helping with our quest to have an alternative to WMC for copy protected content

For copy protected content, there is no alternative nor will there likely be any. Cable Labs certification is simply not within financial reach of any third party DVR software developers. Now, if your provider doesn't flag all of your content then SageTV and several other programs, like MythTV, NextPVR, XBMC/Kodi, Media Portal, and probably a few others, will work just fine with cablecard tuners.

 

[SHS]

How about an Android version of WMC, with support for encrypted channels tuned through HDHR.

As captain_video point out also note that WMC is RIP any way they never even update it in the last 6 years.
Best of all now we can fix one biggest problem with SageTV and that get the Newer device and the HD-PVR 2 to work right.

 

[benjamintm]

Can you elaborate? What does it do specifically better?

* SageTV had extenders that "just worked" (well at least the HD200 and HD300 did). Because they were part of the same family, there was no configuration needed.
* The extenders handle 1080i programming better then any Kodi system I've built. Not that Kodi is bad, just my HD300, a 4 y/o fanless box does a better job with showing 1080i better.
* This may no longer the case, but SageTV could visualize EDL markers whereas Kodi couldn't the last time I played with it a few months ago. This made it really easy to use when skipping commercials.
* SageTV is also cross-platform and had an active development community (which is still pretty active, though nowhere near its high).

SageTV was ahead of everything else at the time (and some would argue still is), which is probably why Google used it as the base for Google Fiber. It handled everything from recording (in my case) 8 simultaneous shows to playing back uncompressed Blu-Ray mkvs without skipping a beat. While the extenders were limited to 1080i, they could handle just about any video I threw at it (audio was a different beast). I am still using it today as my main TV interface, it is just that good.

None of this is to say that NextPVR is bad or that Kodi doesn't work, but like Apple the integration of the hardware and the software made for an excellent experience for the family.

Open sourcing SageTV is an exciting announcement. I think that ultimately it will become a PVR backend for Kodi as well as a alternative.

Ben

 

[stanger89]

Does SageTV handle everything on its own? A major drawback (IMO) to going the HTPC route is the whole frontend/backend thing where no single program seems capable of handing your PVR needs all by itself. If SageTV can be the MythTV of the Windows world, it could be quite handy.

SageTV is entirely self contained, but it's also very expandable. You can have a system from as simple as one PC with a tuner running SageTV, to a headless server running SageTV as a Windows (or linux) service, with extenders and client PCs. And there's no difference in functionality between the main Server and the Clients, and for core SageTV functionality (not plugins) there's essentially no difference between Server and Extenders.

I was more interested to see what else Google night have eventually done with it.

Well Google is using it, it's the platform they built their Google Fiber hardware on. It's just never going to go public (as in software to download/use) from Google.

Can you elaborate? What does it do specifically better?

You know it's honestly kind of hard to say, but that's mainly because whenever I try something else I can't bring myself to spend any time with it since it's so far behind Sage. The most recent example, I just setup WMC/ServerWMC on a spare PC to play with as a backend for Kodi. Firstly WMC's handling of tuners, ClearQAM and lineups is terrible compared to Sage. Well terrible in the way that iTunes is terrible compared to J River Media Center. I really don't like things that you have to figure out how to "trick" into doing what you want because they want to automate everything for you. And maybe I'm being too hard on WMC, I was just disappointed/frustated, that it couldn't take advantage of the channel mapping that I'd done in the HDHR software like Sage does.

Then there's Kodi, I don't even know where to begin, it might be OK for live TV, but the recorded TV interface is abysmal. No show information, original air date, episode number, channel. I basically gave up on Kodi for TV after trying to watch just one show. It's not even half baked yet.

 

[stanger89]

Open sourcing SageTV is an exciting announcement. I think that ultimately it will become a PVR backend for Kodi as well as a alternative.

It would be really great if SageTV and Kodi could be combined. Kodi is the superior GUI/front end for sure, but it's really lacking in the TV functionality department. They could take a page out of SageTV's book on how to support TV from a GUI/menu/options perspective. If you could replicate SageTV's TV functionality inside Kodi with SageTV recording backend, I'd probably be back to one system again.

 

[Valnar]

Can you elaborate? What does it do specifically better?

Hard to say exactly, but when it comes out you can make that decision. I will say it is the only PVR product I've ever used (and I played with BeyondTV, Myth, etc) that was smooth & rock solid. It was created and developed by paid professionals, so it was more polished than anything else. It was the only app at a stability level of a real DVR, like TiVo. And in some cases, performs better than the DVR boxes cable companies give out now.

 

[Dark_Slayer]

Firstly WMC's handling of tuners, ClearQAM and lineups is terrible compared to Sage. Well terrible in the way that iTunes is terrible compared to J River Media Center. I really don't like things that you have to figure out how to "trick" into doing what you want because they want to automate everything for you. And maybe I'm being too hard on WMC, I was just disappointed/frustated, that it couldn't take advantage of the channel mapping that I'd done in the HDHR software like Sage does.

What type of channel mapping do you mean? I deselect channels in hdhr and they are not scanned in wmc. That's about it. I think there is some pain with initial setups either way. At least you only have to do it once. You can fully edit channels either way, so I can't understand or concede any point here. There is also the part where you say wmc doesn't handle tuners as well? Are you only saying that because it wouldn't import your channel lineup the way you had become accustomed in completely different software? I think that wmc handles a huge number of tuner devices. Best in class really

Then there's Kodi, I don't even know where to begin, it might be OK for live TV, but the recorded TV interface is abysmal. No show information, original air date, episode number, channel. I basically gave up on Kodi for TV after trying to watch just one show. It's not even half baked yet.

Everything except the episode number is there for the real wmc wtv files that are recorded in wmc (it may never pull in metadata for non-wmc recordings, but you could certainly ask the developer)

 

[MKANET]

Wow.. this is very interesting. S

 

[TornadoTJ]

As captain_video point out also note that WMC is RIP any way they never even update it in the last 6 years.
Best of all now we can fix one biggest problem with SageTV and that get the Newer device and the HD-PVR 2 to work right.

I meant Sage could take its place, not that Microsoft would develop an Android version of WMC.

 

[pylor]

Everything except the episode number is there for the real wmc wtv files that are recorded in wmc (it may never pull in metadata for non-wmc recordings, but you could certainly ask the developer)

This, I've never used sagetv since it hadn't been updated in 3 years by the time I got around to looking for a PVR solution, but serverWMC worked great for what I needed. Reliable, robust recordings (in terms of options), a good, free channel listing, and great live TV playback. I haven't used it since I dropped cable (I haven't shelled out for an antenna version of the homerun yet), but my recordings are all still there and I remember them having more information than I needed. "What episode is this, a brief description, and the recorded date" was all I needed.

That said, WMC will die some day, and I'm all for better, newer things. Hopefully someone/some group can take this and run with it. It'd be interesting to see the media browser and/or plex developers do something with it.

 

[SHS]

I meant Sage could take its place, not that Microsoft would develop an Android version of WMC.

That true
We know there are some thing SageTV needs like UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) / DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) for todays newest tech 3rdpraty device and clients app Android, iOS
At least we don't have worry about extender set-top as there a lot option Mini PC / Thin Client / Mini / Booksize Barebone PCs.

 

[stanger89]

What type of channel mapping do you mean? I deselect channels in hdhr and they are not scanned in wmc. That's about it. I think there is some pain with initial setups either way. At least you only have to do it once. You can fully edit channels either way, so I can't understand or concede any point here. There is also the part where you say wmc doesn't handle tuners as well? Are you only saying that because it wouldn't import your channel lineup the way you had become accustomed in completely different software? I think that wmc handles a huge number of tuner devices. Best in class really

I had to map every found channel to the correct virtual channel number and the correct network despite having that all correct in the HDHomeRun setup. So with WMC I "had" to to the channel mapping twice. WMC just found 16.1, 16.2, etc. I suppose that's more of an annoyance than anything, and maybe it's really a silicondust problem, since it was their instructions that said I had to do that in the HDHomeRun setup.

As far as tuners go, you've basically got to scan and setup everything, WMC tries to do it all for you. If for some reason it doesn't find a tuner, you've got to scan again. You can't just go to a list of available tuners and pick the one you want and set it up. Like I said it's very iTunes/Harmony like and I very much dislike setup/programs that think they are smarter than you.

There's also the fact that it took an enormous amount of time for WMC to scan the 3 tuners on my HDHR, on the order of a half hour, even though that was already configured in the HDHR Setup. And after all that it comes back and tells me there are no channels found.

Everything except the episode number is there for the real wmc wtv files that are recorded in wmc (it may never pull in metadata for non-wmc recordings, but you could certainly ask the developer)

This is what SageTV gives you for it's recordings:

A lot more info. But beyond that SageTV gives you way more control over grouping, sorting, filtering of recordings. When I was playing with WMC/Kodi, I recorded a number of episodes from a series I'd already been recording in SageTV. I was trying to figure out which ones were the most recent episodes and it was nearly impossible to figure out what the latest (not necessarily most recently recorded) episodes were. In SageTV I can just look at (and best yet sort by) original air date, and/or episode number