roussell
Active Member
Warning, looooong post ahead - thanks in advance for taking the time to read/reply!
Frustrated by the multitude of cable boxes, AV switchers, TiVos, DVD players, an PCs that seem to congregate around our TVs - the wife has given unprecedented clearance to move to a consolidated system. For what seems like an eternity, I have read about other CT members sweet SageTV systems and longed for the day that I would have the same. Well, that day is now, kind-of...
First off, let me say that I'm a Mac guy. I like Linux, Mac, and most things different. My only Windows box is the HouseBot server. I have nothing really against MS or Windows, I just prefer the *X side of the street. That being said, if I do go with SageTV - I would most likely install it on Windows, from my observations; the support/options/stuff available for the MS platform seems to eclipse whats available for Linux or Apple with respect to SageTV. I'd love to hear from alternative installations though.
I made the mistake(?) of downloading Plex on my Macbook and playing with it. For those that don't know, Plex is a fork of the XBMC media center that has been specifically tailored to the Apple platform. Anyway, it works brilliantly. I pointed it at a server share containing several hundred ripped DVD movies, to another share containing almost as many TV shows and it indexed them all, found ratings, episode/movie info, posters, fan art, etc. all automatically. I literally did nothing except define the folder location and tell it the folders contained movies or TV shows. Plex found my itunes playlists and imported those and pictures as well. It was about this time that my wife walked up and said "ooh, what is that?". Now, rarely is my wife interested in anything that is happening on my computer, so, seeing the opportunity in front of me, I began showing her my new toy. She fell in love, hard. I explained that doing this would involve putting a Mac mini at each TV and purchasing a Harmony remote - quite a costly investment for watching Desperate Housewives... But in return, we could go back to "expanded basic" cable and have nothing but the Mini at each TV, plus she could watch Netflix movies and Hulu shows instantly in addition to whatever the TiVo records. I thought she was going to faint.
Not forgetting Sage, I said: "If you think that's good, wait until you see SageTV!". then went about downloading and installing the SageTV server trial on a virtual XP install and the Sage Client on my Macbook. I explained to her that we could do everything with SAge and also watch record live TV without the expense of multiple Mac Minis. I went thought the the explanations of how the HD200 extenders would work and how we'd put SD and HD tuners in the SageTV server to capture shows, commercial skip, place shifting, the whole works. She was ready for a demo!
Knowing that I didn't have a tuner card for the demo, I knew I couldn't show her the live-tv gooey goodness so I went about setting up the save movie and tv shares that I had working in Plex.
I fired everything up (sage client on the macbook) and her smile turned upside down - "Sage is ugly, Plex is pretty", she said. "We can customize Sage to look however we want" I responded. I went to the media center section and then to the videos. Hmm, all the TV shows and Movies are intermingled together, getting "more info" for a show only shows the file/pathname - low WAF there too. I was losing her fast, actually she was already gone, now playing with the dog on the floor in our office. "Don't you want to see more", "Nah, I don't like it. It's ugly, and the movies are all jumbled with the TV shows". I say; "But it's a lot cheaper, plus don't forget the Live TV capabilities with Sage, I'm sure I can customize it to separate the Movies and downloaded TV shows. Let's just try a movie and see how easy it is." I pick a movie from the list and it starts playing - regular DVD rip, not HD. The movie starts skipping, pausing, etc. Not good, "What about Hulu and Netflix?" she asks. We can do it, but it's through a separate application that we have to buy and plugin on Sage" (playon) I said. This was the death nail for Sage, she left the room.
I want Sage, but is what I'm seeing normal? Do people just put up with the poor navigation, skipping movies, etc. Will a HD200 be better or worse performance than the client on my dual-core Macbook? Plex's default theme is based on the Mediastream theme for XBMC. Is there anything like that for Sage? I downloaded SageMC and installed it but it wasn't much better than the default. Perhaps I'm missing something.
As I see it now, below are my goals and options:
Goals:
Currently 3 TV's in the house, could expand to 5 over the next year
Desire to drop to expanded basic cable and remove need for cable boxes
Remove multiple DVD players from TVs
Will rely on Vuze/ShowRSS (torrent downloads) and Hulu for TV beyond basic cable offerings.
Netflix stream and rental for Movies
Will keep the current Gen II TiVo until it dies (lifetime subscription)
Would like to watch TiVo content on whatever solution
Optionally would like to integrate a "10 foot" interface to Housebot on whatever solution
After seeing Signal15s post on his kitchen TV with Boxee, we've though about something similar - It would be nice if either solution could display recipes from a local/web recipe database - I'm not aware of anything existing though. Anyone know of anything for Plex or Sage for recipes?
OPTION 1 - SageTV
Sage on Virtual XP on existing Linux server or standalone box
3 HD200s
1 hauppage video card (1600?, 1850?) and one HDhomerun to grab live TV
Playon application to stream Netflix, Hulu (How well does this work? I know you drop out of Sage on the HD200, is it easy, seamless?)
Shared DVD on Sage Server (Blueray maybe, no need at the moment and I assume this would mean Win7 over XP)
A prettier face for Sage - preferable one like the Plex offering
A way to separate TV shows from Movies (Ideally, I could plut downloaded TV shows in the same location with Sage-recorded ones - possible?)
3 Harmony remotes? (Do I need Harmony remotes or are the HD200 ones fine?)
OPTION 2 - Plex on Mac Minis
3 Mac Minis
Plex
Live TV would be either switching the TVs inputs from the Mini to cable/antenna or installing EyeTV units/software on each Mini(That's another $200...). Plex isn't integrated with EyeTV yet, but I could switch between the apps with a harmony remote.
3 Harmony remotes
Obviously, the Plex/Mini solution is much more costly and we wouldn't buy everything all at once - probably outfit one TV to test, then another in 6 months or so. Am I crazy for even considering Plex? Am I crazy for considering Sage?
I'm going to cross-post this on the Sage forums, but I'd love the un-biased opinions of CTers too.
Sorry for the long explanation, thanks in advance for your help/opinions.
Terry
Frustrated by the multitude of cable boxes, AV switchers, TiVos, DVD players, an PCs that seem to congregate around our TVs - the wife has given unprecedented clearance to move to a consolidated system. For what seems like an eternity, I have read about other CT members sweet SageTV systems and longed for the day that I would have the same. Well, that day is now, kind-of...
First off, let me say that I'm a Mac guy. I like Linux, Mac, and most things different. My only Windows box is the HouseBot server. I have nothing really against MS or Windows, I just prefer the *X side of the street. That being said, if I do go with SageTV - I would most likely install it on Windows, from my observations; the support/options/stuff available for the MS platform seems to eclipse whats available for Linux or Apple with respect to SageTV. I'd love to hear from alternative installations though.
I made the mistake(?) of downloading Plex on my Macbook and playing with it. For those that don't know, Plex is a fork of the XBMC media center that has been specifically tailored to the Apple platform. Anyway, it works brilliantly. I pointed it at a server share containing several hundred ripped DVD movies, to another share containing almost as many TV shows and it indexed them all, found ratings, episode/movie info, posters, fan art, etc. all automatically. I literally did nothing except define the folder location and tell it the folders contained movies or TV shows. Plex found my itunes playlists and imported those and pictures as well. It was about this time that my wife walked up and said "ooh, what is that?". Now, rarely is my wife interested in anything that is happening on my computer, so, seeing the opportunity in front of me, I began showing her my new toy. She fell in love, hard. I explained that doing this would involve putting a Mac mini at each TV and purchasing a Harmony remote - quite a costly investment for watching Desperate Housewives... But in return, we could go back to "expanded basic" cable and have nothing but the Mini at each TV, plus she could watch Netflix movies and Hulu shows instantly in addition to whatever the TiVo records. I thought she was going to faint.
Not forgetting Sage, I said: "If you think that's good, wait until you see SageTV!". then went about downloading and installing the SageTV server trial on a virtual XP install and the Sage Client on my Macbook. I explained to her that we could do everything with SAge and also watch record live TV without the expense of multiple Mac Minis. I went thought the the explanations of how the HD200 extenders would work and how we'd put SD and HD tuners in the SageTV server to capture shows, commercial skip, place shifting, the whole works. She was ready for a demo!
Knowing that I didn't have a tuner card for the demo, I knew I couldn't show her the live-tv gooey goodness so I went about setting up the save movie and tv shares that I had working in Plex.
I fired everything up (sage client on the macbook) and her smile turned upside down - "Sage is ugly, Plex is pretty", she said. "We can customize Sage to look however we want" I responded. I went to the media center section and then to the videos. Hmm, all the TV shows and Movies are intermingled together, getting "more info" for a show only shows the file/pathname - low WAF there too. I was losing her fast, actually she was already gone, now playing with the dog on the floor in our office. "Don't you want to see more", "Nah, I don't like it. It's ugly, and the movies are all jumbled with the TV shows". I say; "But it's a lot cheaper, plus don't forget the Live TV capabilities with Sage, I'm sure I can customize it to separate the Movies and downloaded TV shows. Let's just try a movie and see how easy it is." I pick a movie from the list and it starts playing - regular DVD rip, not HD. The movie starts skipping, pausing, etc. Not good, "What about Hulu and Netflix?" she asks. We can do it, but it's through a separate application that we have to buy and plugin on Sage" (playon) I said. This was the death nail for Sage, she left the room.
I want Sage, but is what I'm seeing normal? Do people just put up with the poor navigation, skipping movies, etc. Will a HD200 be better or worse performance than the client on my dual-core Macbook? Plex's default theme is based on the Mediastream theme for XBMC. Is there anything like that for Sage? I downloaded SageMC and installed it but it wasn't much better than the default. Perhaps I'm missing something.
As I see it now, below are my goals and options:
Goals:
Currently 3 TV's in the house, could expand to 5 over the next year
Desire to drop to expanded basic cable and remove need for cable boxes
Remove multiple DVD players from TVs
Will rely on Vuze/ShowRSS (torrent downloads) and Hulu for TV beyond basic cable offerings.
Netflix stream and rental for Movies
Will keep the current Gen II TiVo until it dies (lifetime subscription)
Would like to watch TiVo content on whatever solution
Optionally would like to integrate a "10 foot" interface to Housebot on whatever solution
After seeing Signal15s post on his kitchen TV with Boxee, we've though about something similar - It would be nice if either solution could display recipes from a local/web recipe database - I'm not aware of anything existing though. Anyone know of anything for Plex or Sage for recipes?
OPTION 1 - SageTV
Sage on Virtual XP on existing Linux server or standalone box
3 HD200s
1 hauppage video card (1600?, 1850?) and one HDhomerun to grab live TV
Playon application to stream Netflix, Hulu (How well does this work? I know you drop out of Sage on the HD200, is it easy, seamless?)
Shared DVD on Sage Server (Blueray maybe, no need at the moment and I assume this would mean Win7 over XP)
A prettier face for Sage - preferable one like the Plex offering
A way to separate TV shows from Movies (Ideally, I could plut downloaded TV shows in the same location with Sage-recorded ones - possible?)
3 Harmony remotes? (Do I need Harmony remotes or are the HD200 ones fine?)
OPTION 2 - Plex on Mac Minis
3 Mac Minis
Plex
Live TV would be either switching the TVs inputs from the Mini to cable/antenna or installing EyeTV units/software on each Mini(That's another $200...). Plex isn't integrated with EyeTV yet, but I could switch between the apps with a harmony remote.
3 Harmony remotes
Obviously, the Plex/Mini solution is much more costly and we wouldn't buy everything all at once - probably outfit one TV to test, then another in 6 months or so. Am I crazy for even considering Plex? Am I crazy for considering Sage?
I'm going to cross-post this on the Sage forums, but I'd love the un-biased opinions of CTers too.
Sorry for the long explanation, thanks in advance for your help/opinions.
Terry