PVR Software for HTPC : SageTV, SnapStream, MythTV, WinXP MCE, myHTPC, Freevo etc.

[psxjunky]

<update - 11/28/03>

We have received feedback on many PC based PVR solutions so far, but surprisingly VERY little comment on the myHTPC TV Plugin. If you have used this PVR functionality of myHTPC, we would love to know your experience (good or bad) with this product.

If you can also provide some comparisons with the other products discussed here (SageTV, SnapStream, MythTV) that would be even better ... but some comment about myHTPC TV Plugin alone will be very helpful too !



<update - 11/19/03>

WinXP MCE added to the pro-cons list. Also added a detailed comparative summary (see below pro-cons list) of SageTV vs. SnapStream. Thanks very much to "cayars" for researching and supplying this table.


<update - 11/15/03>

This thread is now open for discussion about ANY PC based PVR solution. Please vote for your favorite solution, and post with the details of why you do or don't like certain features.

Here are a couple that comes to mind ... let me know if you know about more -- SageTV
SnapStream
MythTV
Windows XP Media Center (PVR functionality only)
myHTPC (PVR functionality only)
Freevo
ShowShifter
Other (what?)
The only request I have is that [color=red]PLEASE RESTRICT THE DISCUSSION TO PVR SOLUTIONS ONLY ... AND NOT A GENERIC HTPC FRONT END DISCUSSION.[/color] So feel free to discuss HTPC apps like myHTPC and WinXP MCE, but please restrict the discussion to only the PVR functionality of these apps.

With that, fire away :)

</update - 11/15/03>



There seems to be lot more votes cast for both SageTV and SnapStream recently, but hardly any new comments. If you voted for either of these, please share your experience ... even if briefly. It helps judging the solutions side by side, even if your experience is a reaffirmation of some of the things already stated here.


<UPDATE>

I was pleasantly surprised to see that a LOT of people on this board are considering these two particular PVR solutions ... just like I was doing. Given the interest so far, I am including a summary of the pros and cons of these two solutions here. There are a lot of good info sprinkled throughout this thread, so I strongly encourage anyone interested in either or both of these products to read the entire thread; however, the summary should give a quick overview of all the comments made on this thread so far.

My original disclaimer on this subject still applies for this summary ;) I am STILL not biased towards either of these two solutions and feel both have their own strengths and weaknesses. In fact I haven't personally used either of these products yet ... so this summary is merely a collection of the various comments made on this thread so far by other members ... plus some information I gathered by reading the product FAQs and user forums for SageTV and Snapstream.

I will try to keep this summary updated as new comments are made. Also, eventhough I am personally looking for an Windows only solution, I am willing to add MythTV to this list as well if there is sufficient interest ... just ask :).

The ordering of the products is based on the poll results so far (i.e. Sage is leading in the poll right now, so it is mentioned first)

Quick info on the legend used --
+ the feature is considered positive
- the "feature" is considered negative
+/- can be considered positive or negative based on the readers viewpoint (e.g. Windows vs. Linux ... to each his own)
[INDEV] feature is known to be in development and coming in version to be released very soon
? not known if this feature is supported. waiting for confirmation.



SageTV (http://www.sage.tv/sagetv.html)
+ Supports Multiple Tuners
+ Supports Network wide streaming and in-network remote recording scheduling using client software
+ Support HDTV recording using the AccessDTV card
+ Supports use of third-party (preferred) filters/deinterlacers (http://www.sage.tv/3rdparty.html)
+ Version 2.0 with lot of improvements is due to be released soon and will be a FREE upgrade for current registered owners (http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1417)
+ Offers a 15 day free evaluation
+ Stability has been great based on user experiences so far
+ Includes FREE integrated Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
+ For each partially played recorded shows, remembers the position where it was stopped and starts playing back from there
- Interface not pretty (http://www.sage.tv/stvscreenshots.html) in current ver 1.4 (version 2.0 interface is a lot better (http://www.sage.tv/beta.html))
- Does NOT support remote scheduling thru the internet (but coming in ver 2.0 which is in Beta right now)
- Power management feature is lacking. Can't keep the PC on standby and automatically wake it up when a recording is scheduled (lead developer Jeff commented this is one of things on the TODO list)
- Does NOT support any TV tuner that uses software encoding. Supported cards (http://www.sage.tv/requirements.html).
- Does NOT support Close Captioning and the support is not coming soon (at least not in the initial release of v2.0 (http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=451&perpage=20&pagenumber=1))

[INDEV] Much nicer and skinnable interface in version 2.0
[INDEV] Web based scheduling in version 2.0

* SageTV Features (http://www.sage.tv/stvfeatures.html)
* SageTV System Requirements (http://www.sage.tv/requirements.html)
* Cost - $59.95 for SageTV, $29.95 for SageTV Client (both available for download only). Hardware bundles available at a discounted price. See online store (http://store.freytechnologies.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PLST&Store_Code=SOS) for details. All registered users of current version (1.4.10) will get free upgrade to version 2.0.

(See a much more detailed feature description of SageTV and SnapStream below)





Snapstream (http://www.snapstream.com/Products/Products_PVS3.asp)
+ Very nice interface (http://www.snapstream.com/Products/Products_PVS3_screenshots.asp)
+ Allows remote scheduling of recording management thru the internet and other devices (such as WAP enabled cell phones)
+ Allows a wider range of supported TV tuners - both with software and hardware encoding. Supported cards (http://www.snapstream.com/Products/Products_PVS3_SysReq.asp#compatiblecards)
+ Supports keeping the computer on standby and waking up when a recording is scheduled
+ Includes FREE integrated Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
+ Allows keeping the PC on standby and automatically wake it up when a recording is scheduled
+ Offers a 21 day free evaluation
- Many people have reported problems with stability of Snapstream
- Proprietary filters/deinterlacer
- Does NOT support multiple tuners yet (but this capability is being developed)
- Unknown HDTV support
- Requires internet connection for settings
- Does NOT support Close Captioning and the support is not coming anytime soon

+/- Future versions of SnapStream are going to be based on Microsoft .NET framework. Consider this as a pro or con depending on your liking or disliking for .NET

[INDEV] SmartSkip feature, which automatically detects different scenes in a program and allows quickly jumping to the beginning or end of a scene
[INDEV] Multiple tuner support

* Snapstream Features (http://www.snapstream.com/Products/Products_PVS3.asp#features)
* Snapstream System Requirements (http://www.snapstream.com/Products/Products_PVS3_SysReq.asp)
* Cost : $64.99 for Personal Video Station 3 download version, $74.99 for CD-ROM version. Hardware bundles available at a discounted price. See online store (http://store.snapstream.com/) for details. Upgrade policy ?

(See a much more detailed feature description of SageTV and SnapStream below)





MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/)
+ FREE and open source Software
+ Very nice interface (http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures)
+ Can skip commercials without manual intervention during playback, and optionally flag (i.e. detect & mark) commercials after a recording is complete.
+ Support multiple heterogenous tuners at the same time, for example PVR-250 and a SW tuner.
+ Can be networked (in mutiple PVR configuration), or fat server/multiple thin "frontend" client configuration. PIP works for remote network tuners!
+ Some HDTV support
+ Multi-tuner/multi-soundcard support. Supported cards (http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1)
+ Quick support available. There is an active mailing list and #irc channel for mythtv. Any bugs, problems, etc. people may have with myth gets resolved in a matter of *days*, not months like commercial products.
+ Very stable. Stable even when using SW encoders
+ Remote recording scheduling possible. If you run a web server (apache) that's accessible via the internet then you can schedule recordings remotely via the internet, if you run the mythweb module.
+ Remote control support. Basically, any remote that is supported by lirc in Linux is supported.
+ Full support for intra network streaming. It was designed with this in mind. mythbackend (server) and mythfrontend (clients) can run as separate network processes. Does music, pictures, etc. off the network too.
+ Can support timeshifting (i.e. watch a pre-recorded program while recording) reliably, even with a SW encoder.
+ Supports Closed Captioning with software encoder cards.
+ Caller ID (in conjunction with modem) [New feature]
+ Intelligent/automatic bookmarks
+ Frame-accurate seek and editing (option)
+ Remote only operation (including shutdown, once you set everything up)
+ Supports music, weather etc. thru different modules. MythMusic, MythMovie/Video, MythWeb, MythWeather, MythGame etc.
- Relies on XMLTV for EPG data. Since XMLTV depends on zap2it.com, XMLTV sw needs more frequent updates due to changes in zap2it format/layout. In the past when this format has changed, it required updating XMLTV to keep the EPG working. Note that not all users of MythTV think this is a serious issue, but beware that you have to keep an eye for the format change and upgrade XMLTV when this happens. Also, legality of XMLTV has been questioned here due to the way they rip the data from Zap2it listings.
- Some limitation in TV card support. Especially, does NOT support ATI All-in-Wonder cards. See details here (http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1)
- Limited software encoding codec support (open source only) - default is either RTJPEG or MPEG-4; can decode MPEG-2, though
- Partial power management support
- Built-in filters/deinterlacer ... doesn't support 3rd party filters yet (but work is in progress to fix that)

+/- Available only on Linux. If you can deal with Linux, it's great. If you can't, it's not. There are pre-packaged distributions available, which make the initial installtion easy, but still needs more tweaking to get in perfect for most users.

? Close Captioning support with Hardware encoder cards ???

* MythTV Features (http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures)
* MythTV System Requirements (http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html)
* Cost : FREE





Windows XP Media Center (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/)
+ Very nice and clean interface, designed well to be viewed on a TV screen. Demo (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/evaluation/tours/default.asp)
+ Supports closed captioning
+ Built-in Video calibration wizard works great
+ Natively support 16x9 displays
+ Includes FREE integrated Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
+ Excellent conflict resolution options and ability to prioritize shows for automatic conflict management
+ Supports full power management; able to bring PC back from standby automatically when a recording is scheduled and put back to standby when it is done. Though this is a little buggy with some hardware configurations.
+ Supports remote scheduling thru Internet using free third party software (http://www.showtell.com/mce_webguide/2/)
+ Comes with a dedicated remote control (http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=80-100-201-02.JPG/80-100-201-01.jpg) that supports full control over the application, right out of the box (no configuration needed)
+ Shows Live TV in a PIP window while in other menus
+ Supports caller ID display
+ Supports time shifting reliably. Supports multiple speed fast forward/rewind, quick skip ahead (30 sec) and quick jump back (7-9 sec)
+ For each partially played recorded shows, remembers the position where it was stopped and starts playing back from there
+ Has Music, Video, Picture, DVD playback, Weather/Net services integrated
- NOT available for purchase as a separate software. Can only get it with a new Media Center PC or with an MSDN subscription.
- Does NOT support multiple tuners yet
- Limited support for TV Tuners. Supports only hardware encoder based tuners. Does support Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250/350.
- No support for network streaming (though it will let you point to shortcuts on the network to view stored videos, pictures, etc.)
- Shows are recorded in proprietary DVR-MS format, which are really MPEG2 files at heart, but are not directly usable by most MPEG2 editing utilities. Free DVR-MS to MPEG2 ripper application available though.
- Does NOT support third party filters/deinterlacers
- No HDTV recording support


+/- Available only on Windows (obviously). If you like Windows, it's great ... if you don't like Microsoft/Windows, this is not for you. Comes pre-installed with Media Center PCs, so no installation issues. If you get the MSDN edition, you have to install it yourself, but it is a no hassle, very easy installation with no maintenance needed thereafter.

+/- Has support of Microsoft behind future development (they just released version 2 and next version is heavily in development)

* Windows XP Media Center Features (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/evaluation/features.asp)
* System Requirements : N/A since it only comes preinstalled in Media Center PCs. If anyone knows the minimum system requirements for installing the MSDN version, let me know and I'll put it here.
* Cost : Varies across Media Center PC manufacturers. Software alone can not be purchased yet.





General Comments/Suggestions that apply to any PC based PVR solution
Do yourself a favor and use a TV tuner that uses hardware encoding. The picture quality will be lot better than the best software encoder solutions and the PC will be more usable while a recording is going on. Note that this includes all the current ATI All-in-Wonder cards, since they use software encoding (or as mentioned in some places, "hardware assisted encoding")
WinTV PVR 250 seems to be the most popular TV tuner card used by many people with proven result




Please feel free to mention if I have missed/misstated anything for any of the apps listed above and I will update/correct the summary.

Thanks for all the feedbacks on these two products so far ... keep the discussion going :)

</UPDATE>


Detailed comparative summary of SageTV vs. SnapStream. Courtsey of user "cayars". See this post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=2944534#post2944534) for the original comments.



SageTV & SnapStream - Ultimate Comparison

This comparison is for the current downloadable versions of each product.
Current Versions used for comparison:
SageTV 1.4.10
SnapStream 3.4.795

If a feature is already complete but not available to the public yet, it is marked as "In Dev." = In Development

Sage/SnapStream

Built In Features Overview
Yes/Yes - Live TV Viewing, Recording & Playback
Yes/In Dev. - DVD Control/Playback
Yes/Yes* - Music/MP3 Playback *Unlike Sage, SS does not have seperate program section for music

EPG - Electronic Program Guide & Search
US Only/Multiple - FREE integrated Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
No*/Yes - Additional Show Information Displayed on Main Screen of EPG *Information available on secondary screen by pressing "info" Will be on the same screen in Sage 2.0
Yes/Yes - XML EPG Import for other regions
In Dev./Yes - Can use Transparent Overlays *Already complete for Sage 2.0
In Dev.*/No - Ability to add Favorites by Actor & Keyword (like TiVo's Wish List functionality) *Already complete for Sage 2.0
In Dev.*/Yes - Transparent Overlay of EPG Data while watching a video/LiveTV *Already complete for Sage 2.0

EPG/Search Features
Yes/Yes - Search By Title
Yes/Yes - Search By Person/Actor
Yes/Yes - Search By Description
Yes/No - Search All Fields
Yes/No - Show Recent Searches

TV Tuner Cards
Yes/Yes - Hardware based TV-Tuners
No/Yes - Software based TV-Tuners
Limited/In Dev. - Some HDTV support
Yes/In Dev. - Supports Multiple Tuners

Interface & Control
Yes/Yes - Full Screen Interface
Yes/Yes - Windowed Interface
In Dev./Yes - Web *Already possible with Sage 2.0
Yes/Yes - Support for Keyboard
Yes/Yes - Support for Mouse
Yes/Yes - Support for Remote Control
Yes/Yes - Infrared or control of your cable or satellite set-top box
Yes/Yes - Serial Control of your cable or satellite set-top box
Yes/Yes - Support for Girder

Playback PVR Features
Yes/Yes - Resume playback of recorded shows at the position where you last stopped watching
No/Yes - Ability to choose between starting at the beginning of a show or where you last left off (if previously watched)
Yes/Yes - Pause LiveTV
No/Yes - True Rewind & Fast Forward
No/Yes* - Multi-Speed Rewind & Fast Forward *3 speeds available (click once for normal FF/RW, click FF/RW again for double speed, etc)
Yes*/Yes - 30 second Skip Ahead (You set the jump a head time) *SageTV also has a 2nd adjustable FF/RW as well as a "Time Scroll" option that allows you to jump as much as 2.5 minutes.
Yes/Yes - 7 Second Jump Back (You set the jump back time)
Yes/Yes - Playback of MPEG Videos
No/Yes - Playback of Windows Media Videos
Yes/Yes - Playback of DivX Files

General Recording PVR Features
Yes*/Yes - Remote Record Programming *Sage supports remote scheduling using the SageTV client software only ($29 per client)
Yes/Yes - Pad Recordings
No/Yes - Volume Normalization During Recording
No/Yes* - Multiple Record Format *if using a software decoder other Mpeg
Yes/Yes - Variable Bit Rate (VBR) recording
Yes/Yes - Records to MPEG Format (Hardware Encoder)
No/Yes - Records to MPEG Format (Software Encoder)
No/Yes - Records to Windows Media Format (Software Encoder)
No/Yes - Records to DivX
Yes/No - Intelligent Recording
No/In Dev. - Intelligent Suggestions for Recording - same as above but instead of just doing the recordings it lets you choose to do so.
In Dev.*/Yes - Ability to Easily View/Set Priority Manually for Your Favorite Recordings *It is believed this will be in Sage 2.0
Yes/Yes - Time Shifting of Live TV
No/Yes - Turn On or Off Time Shifting
No/Yes - Smart Chapters & Smart Skipping
No/No - Close Captioning Support
Yes/Yes - Parental Controls

Specific Show (Favorites) - Recording PVR Features
Yes/Yes - Record Control - Choice of First Run, Re-Run or All-Episodes
No/Yes - Record to Specific Folder
Yes/Yes - Recording Quality Setting
No/Yes - Video Source (Selection of Tuner Card)
No/Yes - Target Video Folder
No/Yes - File Format
No/Yes - Create Fixed Content (Show/Series will not auto-expire)
Yes/Yes - Keep at Most/Max Number of Recording
No/Yes - Security Level (Public/Private)
No/Yes - Video Recompression (Enable/Disabled)
No/Yes - Video Recompression - Raget Format (Windows Media, DivX)
No/Yes - Video Recompression - Target Quality
No/Yes - Video Recompression - Target Video Folder
No/Yes - Delete Source After Video Recompression?
No/Yes - Manual Setting of Genre
No/Yes - Manual Setting of "Rate this series" (1 is worst, 5 is best)
No/Yes - Manual Setting of MPAA Rating (movie rating system)
No/Yes - Manual Setting of Parental Rating (V-Chip rating system)

Music Library Features
Yes/No - Music by Album
Yes/No - Music by Artist
Yes/No - Music by Genre
Yes/No - Music by Artist-Album
Yes/No - Music by Genre-Artist
Yes/No - Music by Song Title

Other Unique Features
No/Yes - Remote recording scheduling
3rd Party/Built In - Filters/Deinterlacers (different oppions as to which is better)
No/Yes - Power Management/Standby Mode Recovery
No/Yes - Archiving Support (Burn to CD or DVD)
No/Yes - Automatically use spare CPU time to recompress your recordings to another format to save space
In Dev.*/Yes - Remote Recording/Scheduling via WEB *Already done in Sage 2.0
No/Yes - Remote Recording/Scheduling via WAP (cell phone)
In Dev.*/Yes - Integrated Brightness, Gamma & Contrast Controls in the player *Already done in Sage 2.0
In Dev.*/Somewhat - Skinnable *This is complete in Sage 2.0. From all accounts this is a major feature/upgrade of Sage 2.0 and the term "skinnable" is probably not giving it the justice it deserves.
No/Yes - 1 & 2 pass video recompression
15/21 - Trial Evaluation Period in Days
Using Sage Client/Web - Supports Network wide streaming. See additional comment below on streaming.

Commentary
Sage does true streaming of video files including live TV. Snapstream does streaming from it's built in web server. Snapstream does not stream Mpeg files but instead allows you to download them to play back locally.

In addition to the "true" streaming methods mentioned above, you can use the un-supported method ,of using Windows Drive Mapping over your LAN. To do this you will need software on the LAN attached PC that can play Mpeg2 files off a hard drive (i.e. WinDVD, etc). This however is not true streaming.

One of the more controversial differences between the products is the use of TimeShifting. Sage records all shows that you view as Live TV and saves them to your "library". You then have to manually remove what you don't want or wait for the show to auto expire. If you're watching a movie/show live and decide you wished you had recorded it you actually already have it with Sage. SnapStream on the other hand uses a buffer (first in/first out) approach that is configuable in size. SS does not ever record shows for you unless you set a show to record. The TimeShift approach used by SS is for pause/resume/ff/rw type functionality.

When it comes to folders SS hands down has better folder management for your shows. This is completely functional in the Web (client) but not yet in the GUI. It is probably going to be in the next release. This functionality should be accomplished in Sage 2.0 along with Playlists.

As far as "Clients" go, SnapStream doesn't really have a client per say. You can however manage your system from the web. You can schedule shows, download shows and stream some type of shows. There is no added cost for this with SS as it's built in. With SageTV you have to purchase a client license for each device at $29 a shot. The client is pretty much a fully functional copy of SageTV except for support/setup of the capture device and channel lineups which naturally would be done on the main SageTV "server" where the capture device is located.

I wanted to do a comparison of the features each program has for recorded programs but can't do these off the top of my head. I'll edit this later to include this information. There are some real differences here if memory serves me correctly and SS has better support.

As far as graphic presentation goes, most people would say SS looks more profession. Well have to wait and see what SageTV 2.0 has in store for us. Looking at the prototype screens from SageTV 2.0, I'd still say SnapStream is better. However, one of the goals of Sage 2.0 is to allow the customer complete control over the application's look and feel.

Carlo

PS This is not meant to be pro or con for either product. If you notice any information that is not correct or tends to give the wrong impression let me know so it can be fixed accordingly.

















~ ORIGINAL POST ~





In light of the recent heated debate on a similar issue here, let me start with the following disclaimer ;)

<DISCLAIMER>
I am not promoting any particular manufacturer here; I do not have any positive or negative bias towards any particular solution, but based on my research so far SnapStream and SageTV seem most suited for my particular situation; hence I am seeking opinion on these two primary candidates in this thread. If you want to recommend a third solution, by all means please do so - the only request I have for you is to post a bit of detail justifying your suggestion instead of posting "XYZ rules!" or "XYZ sucks!"
</DISCLAIMER>


Okay, now that that is out of the way, here is my real question. I am looking to build my second HTPC which will be exclusively used as a PVR box. In this thread I am looking for suggestion from people as to which of the following two PVR solutions is better.

SnapStream
SageTV


I already have one HTPC up and running with Windows XP MCE, and while I am very happy with it, there are a couple primary limitations that is making me look at a different solution for my second HTPC PVR.

lack of network wide streaming of recorded TV
doesn't support multiple TV tuner cards
occasional hanging of the PC when it tries to wake up from standby mode to start recording



I have been doing some research about SnapStream and SageTV and I am having a real hard time deciding which one to go for. Hence I am looking for some feedbacks from actual users who have direct experience with either or both of these solutions.

Here are a couple of points/questions/issues worth mentioning ...


I have already decided to use the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 or 350 as my TV tuner, so software encoding is not going to be a bottle neck

Although I will be starting with one TV tuner in this PC, I plan to add more in the future. SageTV wins here with existing support for multiple tuners. Question is how well this actually works ? Feedback from people using SageTV with two or more tuners is VERY welcome here

Anyone know what SnapStream's plan is with regard to multiple tuner support ? Based on what I can gather from the website FAQ, they have no such plans immediately.

I like the look and feel of the SnapStream interface. I absolutely hate the SageTV look and feel ... but functionality is a more important criteria for me, so I am willing to give up look and feel if SageTV is really that much better than SnapStream

How is the stability of each one ? If you have used both, which one is more stable ?

Does either or both allow the following scenario -- the PC will be running 24x7, but will be in standby mode; when a recording is scheduled, it will be woken up by the software, and when the recording ends it will be automatically put into standby mode. Note that this is where I have a problem with the WinXP MCE right now ... the machine occasionally hangs when trying to wake up from standby mode

My second HTPC is going to be on my homenetwork, but AWAY from my TV ... so streaming of recorded shows over the network is going to be a very important feature for me. I know both SanpStream and SageTV support streaming, but I want some feedback from actual users on how this works. Again, if you own both, please compare them in terms of streaming support.

From what I understand, I need to purchase the server as well as the client software for SageTV in order to do streaming ... which makes the total cost of SageTV almost $90 as opposed to the $65 cost of SnapStream. Does anyone know if SnapStream has any such restriction, or will the $65 license allow me to do streaming between multiple PCs ?

Picture Quality: Is one better than the other in terms of picture quality of recorded TV ? Remember that I will be using a hardware encoder ... shouldn't THAT dictate the picture quality ?

Support for remote control - how does each one fare ? I already have both the StreamZap PC Remote as well as the ATI Remote Wonder that I can use.

How does each one fare in terms of remote administration and remote program scheduling ?

Finally, this may be a difficult one to answer, but can anyone comment on the future survivability of either company ? If the company goes down for some reason, the EPG service will go away with it ... leaving me with a $65 or $90 piece of software that is basically useless (to me at least ... since I don't care much about the manual recording capability).

Another manifestation of the above point is, the subscription fee for the EPG service. One of the main reasons I am interested in a software based PVR solution is to avoid a monthly subscription fee. However, my guess is that if either of these companies sense any financial difficulty, the first thing they will do is impose a subscription fee for the EPG service. Has anyone read the contract for their EPG service to see if either one offers any protection against a future subscription fee ?

Any other pros and cons you want to throw on either side



Much thanks in advance for any feedback ! If you want to suggest an entirely different solution, please feel free to do so, but please judge it in light of the above points. And before someone suggests MythTV or Freevo, let me mention that I am looking for a Windows based solution only :)

[cowtown]

As far as company viability goes you could figure that both programs allow XML importing of EPG data into their respective applications so that could help mitigate that problem.

Note that I voted for Snapstream mainly because I like's it's interface more than Sage's. But given my recent quality and reliability issues with Snapstream it's only the EPG I score it on.

[SHS]

SageTV only 60 where did you get $90 at? I take it you add SageTV Client in this and as for streaming you don't need SageTV Client you need map the the drive but that all so mean you don't do any of cool thing like Scheduling.
The SageTV Client is just like SageTV with a less few thing just so you know that.
SnapStream has no Client so you need map the drive on other PC and maneul load the MPEG files and it has Web Scheduling which I don't like it to slow for me.
From the look your message it sound like you haven't even try SageTV or SnapStream for that matter.

Try looking for some my older post here and you find hot debate on this same issue on AVSforum.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by cowtown
... But given my recent quality and reliability issues with Snapstream it's only the EPG I score it on.

Could you please explain a bit more what were the quality and reliability issues you encountered with SnapStream. This is exactly the kind of information I am trying to find out, so your explanation will help a lot ! Thanks very much in advance !

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by SHS
SageTV only 60 where did you get $90 at? I take it you add SageTV Client in this and as for streaming you don't need SageTV Client you need map the the drive but that all so mean you don't do any of cool thing like Scheduling.


Yes, I did add the cost of the client+server to get the total cost of $90. It appeared to me that in order to do proper streaming, I'll need to install both the client as well as the server. From your comment it sounds like I may not need the client. So here are two questions for you --


1. Can you explain a bit what features the SageTV client provides ? What are the "cool things" that you can do with the client ? can't you just install the server in both machines ? Or does the server come with a single machine license ?

2. How will I do streaming without the SageTV software installed ?


As mentioned in my original post, my primary "recording server" will be located away from the TV. I have my primary HTPC (which is NOT the recording server in this context) that is directly connected to the TV. The way I understood it I will have to install the SageTV server on the primary recording machine, and the client will be installed on the second PC (connected to the TV) which will stream shows from the server machine ? Is this not the case ? If it is, then it sounds like you DO need both the server and the client software, don't you ?

Thanks in advance for clarifying these doubts ! If these features are already documented in detail somewhere, please point me to the resources; I haven't found any so far in my limited research.



The SageTV Client is just like SageTV with a less few thing just so you know that.
SnapStream has no Client so you need map the drive on other PC and maneul load the MPEG files and it has Web Scheduling which I don't like it to slow for me.


Can someone (who has used SnapStream) explain how the streaming works in SnapStream. If it is as lame as playing the MPEG2 file over the network using Windows Media Player (or some other software), then I am not ready to call it streaming support. I am hoping SnapStream allows more than this.

Also, does anyone know if SnapSream license is a single machine license as well ? Or can I install SnapStream in two PCs with the same license. Only one of these two installations will actually do the recording ... the other one will simply be an interface to the first SnapStream to schedule recordings and playback pre-recorded files.

SHS: Does SageTV have any Web Scheduling support ? From your comment it sounded like it doesn't, but I still wanted to confirm.

And what exactly do you mean by SnapStream's web scheduling being "slow" ? Are you talking about the 15 minutes lag time that it takes before the guide is updated ? Well, if that is the case, I'd say it is great, assuming that both TiVo HMO and ReplayTV take way too much time than this.



From the look your message it sound like you haven't even try SageTV or SnapStream for that matter.


Yes, that is absolutely correct. I am still researching the two to find out which one I want to go with. I don't even have my second HTPC completely ready yet, so I can't install the trial versions of either one yet ... that's why I am trying to complete as much ground work before hand as possible.


Try looking for some my older post here and you find hot debate on this same issue on AVSforum.

Got a link ? Thanks !

[mlbdude]

SnapStream cannot stream MPEG2 content. It can only stream WMV. I have SageTV installed with 3 tuners and it works great. Longest run time 42 days. It would have gone longer but I updated my video drivers.

NOTE: Sage does not support standby mode. I have it running 24x7 with the HD's set to sleep after 15 minutes of down time.

SageTV has way better image quality. Partly because it allows you to integrate more advanced filters like DScaler.

SageCLient can stream any open standard file. Including MP3 and DivX (basically anything not MS). The Client also has jsut about all the funtionality of the Server. Including watching LiveTV. I have two client PC's connected on my network. If you don't use the client, you could do like SnapStream and just use something to access the MPEG2 files via a network share. myHTPC could be used for this. Though your network could be bogged down since it is not realy streaming (but if you have only one client going it should be fine).

Both of your remotes will work with SageTV. ATI has a plugin for Sage, I think StreamZap will need Girder.

SnapStream for every release has not run for more than a few days without a hickup. FOr a windows app on my PC that gets rebooted every day that is fine. Not good for my 24x7 HTPC.

The interface in Sage is plain. The free upgrade to 2.0 will come in 4-6 weeks. The interface will be completely redone and will be skinnabls so soon there will be lots of looks and feels to choose from.
http://www.freytechnologies.com/beta.html

[DFA]

Sage.

Tried SS and uninstalled it after about one hour (did not uninstall clean and required extensive "hand weeding" through the Reg and original system file recovery; no "roll back" w/ W2K).

Did not like the "settings" being accessed through IE. SS thinks this is cool feature but if you lose the network connection, the settings will not come up. I suppose you could set up a loopback network connection to overcome this but just so one can get to the settings for an app? Also, immediately started having system lockups with SS. The SS UI was nice and intuitive (a pretty face) but beyond that way too much "stuff" trying to go on behind the curtain. I got scared when the "IIS" word started being used. The price was the final straw.

Sage all the way now. Just hoping / waiting for Jeff to implement the Sage OSD / UI in XCard. He says it is doable and I think / hope is on his to-do list. This would be a big trump in the HTPC world (read this thread (http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1638), starting about halfway down the first page for XCard OSD discussion). I think this would make Sage part of the "Holy Trinity" of HTPC software once this feature is implemented.

Sage, Hauppauge, XCard, PDI, dscaler, OH MY.
Sage, Hauppauge, XCard, PDI, Holo, OH MY.

DFA

[cowtown]

Could you please explain a bit more what were the quality and reliability issues you encountered with SnapStream. This is exactly the kind of information I am trying to find out, so your explanation will help a lot ! Thanks very much in advance !

Well lets see, where to start? I have a ATI TV Wonder PCI that works fine as a cable card for recording shows with ATI software the main downside being the Guideplus software that comes with the ATI gear. In looking for a better UI I came across Sage and Snapstream of course and after even further reading found that Snapstream users had created some third party utilities to bring in Canadian EPG data. You see the only program that allows native Canadian EPG data to be downloaded to that point was Guideplus, with the utilities that were written and the strong UI Snapstream was looking good. Testing proved that it worked (more or less) so I figured I'd wait it out and see if Snapstream added the support natively.

About a month after Snapstream announced that they had figured out how to make it work and with some .ini file tweaking it was possible. After some fumbling around with that process (still in beta) it was/is working with native Canadian EPG downloads and it doesn't require any third party software to make it work either. Seeing as it was downloading the EPG properly I bought the full retail copy of the product and rebuilt my HTPC at the same time.

Now the TV Wonder PCI card worked with the software fine for a good half week and then for whatever reason the software just tanked, recordings would fail within a few seconds of starting, it was all a mess. After hacking another .ini file for a fix that applied to a different card all together it seemed to start working...

That is until after 2 or three recordings the software started crashing again. I do have to say though after my last iron man test I did yesterday it seems to be working properly now (though for how long I can't say). I recorded 7 or 8 different shows from 30 minutes up to a 3 hour hockey game just fine without crashing and each file appears to be intact so perhaps that issue is resolved now.

The quality issues come from the frustration of ATI card owners in that they have this workable card that can record RAW video through the Guideplus software and it looks fantastic. With Snapstream everything is encoded and compressed into MPEG, DIVX or WMP formats so of course you get quality issues. These issues are amplified 10 fold when you watch it on a 50" screen (garbage in garbage out). There are ways to improve the quality and tweak it up but the real issue is that the software won't allow for recording without compression even if you don't want to use timeshifting or streaming abilities. I've been told as much that I pretty much have to buy the Hauppage PVR-250 if I want to see any major improvement in quality and even then it still won't match the ATI software, ARG! That's another $200cdn for that card and I'm thinking at this point I may as well just buy a set top PVR because it's getting silly. I have another week I think in my return period for the software and I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it yet but we'll see how it goes this week I guess.

Sorry for the long ramble but there is a lot that's gone on in the past while. As I said I like the EPG, I like the rest of the software but the recording abilities WRT quality is what is mainly frustrating me and the fact that I don't think I can necessarily trust the software to stay running as long as I need it to is a concern.

[stanger89]

Here's another very happy SageTV user. I can't really add much that hasn't already been said but I'll add this. SageTV was designed from the ground up to be HTPC type software. It really shows it's colors when you run it on a dedicated HTPC where everything (except the detailed settings which you generally don't mess with) is useable without a keyboard or mouse, it has a very set-top-box feel to it.

Snapstream on the other hand began as PC TV recording software, designed to be run on a desktop type PC where you've got a keyboard/mouse handy those are the prefered input devices. Only recently has Snapstream started adding the UI to be useable on a TV with a remote.

Dan had a very good comment in the interview where he said Sage and Snapstream target different markets. Sage targets us HTPC types that want a to add PC to our TV needs while Snapstream caters more the those who want to add TV to their PC. (That actually sound kind of cool, I like it).

I've been watching most any thread involving SageTV since I got it and the most common requests for SageTV are prettier interface, Web scheduling, and 350/Xcard OSD support. Nearly all of that is comming in V2.0 (except the Xcard OSD).

Here's a good interview with Dan Kardatzke, CEO of Frey Technologies (SageTV). It's got lots of info on the theory behind SageTV, and what's coming with V2.0.
http://www.htpcnews.com/main.php?id=interview1

My grand scheme for my home media system is to have a server with 2+ tuners (hopefully HDTV as well) and have all of my DVDs and CDs stored online with clients (probably MediaMVP based for everyday TVs and an real HTPC for the "Theater") so that I have access to all of my media from any display in the house. SageTV fits the bill perfectly for that, and if that's something like you want (kind of sounds that way) SageTV would fit you're needs perfectly.

Now that I've worn out my keyboard, good luck with you're search.

[SHS]

SHS: Does SageTV have any Web Scheduling support ? From your comment it sounded like it doesn't, but I still wanted to confirm.
That rigth psxjunky this is the one thing SageTV badlee need.

[psxjunky]

Wow ! Lots of great feedback. Thanks VERY MUCH everyone ... this really helps !

Does anyone know if SageTV 2.0 will be adding any support for allowing the HTPC to be in standby ? This is kind of a big deal for me, since I have noticed a HUGE difference in my electricity bill (as much as $100 per month) when I keep the computers in my house running 24x7 versus only turn them on when needed.

Apart from this issue, so far everything sounds good about SageTV. I can overcome the ugly interface issue and web scheduling is nice to have but not absolutely essential for me. I think I will give them a try as soon as my second HTPC is completed.

[psxjunky]

Can someone in the SnapStream camp (if any ;) ) comment on how SnapStream handles the standby issue ?

[trpltongue]

Well,

I had the snapstream demo and was impressed with it's look, but it's function was something else altogether. I have a pretty stout system (3200+, 512MB Ram 400mhz) and when running snapstream my cpu usage was at about 30%, no big deal. However, the software had a big lag in channel changes and the actisys ir unit could not change my cable boxes channel while snapstream was running. If I shut off snapstream, it worked fine.

Regarding the standby issue. I do believe that it resumed my pc from standby without incident.

Russ

[mlbdude]

I doubt Stanby will come any time soon. The developer has a vision for the product to be recording almost 24x7. It uses Intelligent Recording (another feature of Sage that gets overlooked) and keeps a revolving cache of shows that you may like. It gets smarter over time with what you watch.

BTW, if your bill is is $100 more cause of your PC's you have something else wrong :). I have 3 PC's running 24x7 and my bill is never more than $150 (and that is with AC here in Florida). Not sure what you location is maybe that is having an affect.

Good luck.

[Anubi]

Just last weekend I decided to give both SnapStream and SageTV a try. Being a Fusion II user for my tuner card I was quite disappointed that I couldn't get SageTV to work as everything I had read convinced me I would be happier with Sage over SnapStream.

SnapStream did work with my Fusion II so I played around with it for about an hour before Uninstalling it and going back to Dscaler.

First of all having to select Window or Full screen mode with out any quick way to switch in between really sucks. I really didn't like the web interface for the setup and kept wishing I could just right click and access an options menu but instead you have to load up a seperate app in a web browser to be able to change settings.

Next I noticed the picture quality looked significantly worse than using straight up Dscaler and even after finding how to set the bit rate to the maximum quality setting it still looked pretty bad.

My Fusion II card has several inputs 2 RF and others but the SnapStream setup utilities only let me select 1 of the RF inputs and not the other one.

And finally my HTPC is connected to a 42" Panasonic Plasma which unfortunatly will not do a non-linear stretch to fit 4:3 source to the 16:9 display on the component inputs. It will only do a non-linear stretch using the video inputs so I'm stuck with the stretch features of the software and SnapStream only does a linear stretch. Which results in everyone looking short and fat.

[mlbdude]

Mmmmm Dscaler..... I use it in SageTV (non HD content) and love it.

[DFA]

The poll stands 21 to 4 in favor of Sage as of this writing. Sure hope these guys have more customers than what is represented in this forum.

I'd like to see a poll to convince Jeff of the importance and customer desire of implementing the Sage OSD / UI in XCard. Only one button need be pushed: "Yes" if it means something to you.

Sage, Hauppauge, XCard, PDI, dscaler, OH MY.
Sage, Hauppauge, XCard, PDI, Holo, OH MY.

As you can tell, I'm very keen on this one. It will tie everything together on my HTPC. Hardware MPEG decoding and everything (needing decoding or not) viewed through dscaler: DVD, PVR, VCR, Satellite STB, Cable STB, etc.

DFA

[dcdave]

Does anyone have any experience with MythTV? I've just installed it via a very easy install with the KnoppMyth distribution, and am putting it through its paces. So far, it appears very full featured with a good looking UI, but seems to require more tweaking than Sage or Snapstream.

[olyar15]

Count me as another satisfied SageTV user. Like Theatertek, SageTV has become "invisible" to me. I control it entirely with my Pronto remote. The UI is a bit plain but quite functional, don't really know why every complains about it. For me, the software just plain works.

[rkuo]

Hi, I'm the lead developer for PVS. I'll try to answer some of your questions.

Anyone know what SnapStream's plan is with regard to multiple tuner support ? Based on what I can gather from the website FAQ, they have no such plans immediately.I've already prototyped multi-tuner support in-house. I'd probably expect it within a couple of releases (we typically release on month to month and a half cycles).

Does either or both allow the following scenario -- the PC will be running 24x7, but will be in standby mode; when a recording is scheduled, it will be woken up by the software, and when the recording ends it will be automatically put into standby mode. Note that this is where I have a problem with the WinXP MCE right now ... the machine occasionally hangs when trying to wake up from standby mode.We do support waking up out of standby, but we actually try to prevent the PC from going into standby because as you can probably tell by now, standby is not something that vendors make sure works well.

Picture Quality: Is one better than the other in terms of picture quality of recorded TV ? Remember that I will be using a hardware encoder ... shouldn't THAT dictate the picture quality?SnapStream uses newer API's to display video, aka Direct3D and DirectX9. On older hardware these things don't always work or perform as well and people tend to blame the software, which is their right. With the proper hardware installed there is no difference in video quality.

I currently have an engineer looking into displaying video using more traditional methods. This should resolve most of the quality complaints for people using downlevel hardware, but we won't be able to support such upcoming niceties like the transparent guide over LiveTV unless you run the video in Direct3D mode.

Support for remote control - how does each one fare ? I already have both the StreamZap PC Remote as well as the ATI Remote Wonder that I can use.We support both of these and a few more.

How does each one fare in terms of remote administration and remote program scheduling?I would say SnapStream pretty much covers your bases on that one. We support remote recordings through our website that currently get picked up every 15 minutes by your home PVS. You can schedule recordings via WAP through mobile.snapstream.net. We also have a full web administration interface.

The poll stands 21 to 4 in favor of Sage as of this writing. Sure hope these guys have more customers than what is represented in this forum.We do. SageTV seems to have a very active user community pulled directly from this forum. Which is unfortunate for us, because I like this forum. However we are better represented in most other places.

[psxjunky]

rkuo: Thanks very much for coming to this forum and address some of the issues directly. I greatly appreciate this, and believe this is an excellent way to build up customer loyalty in this forum !



SnapStream uses newer API's to display video, aka Direct3D and DirectX9. On older hardware these things don't always work or perform as well and people tend to blame the software, which is their right. With the proper hardware installed there is no difference in video quality.


Can you give an idea of what you mean by "proper" hardware ? Are you talking about the CPU power, Video card or TV Tuner card ?

What would you recommend for a WELL BUILT system (not just a bare minimum required system) that can run SnapStream PVS3 ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESSLY ? Assume that this system is going to be used as a dedicated PVR HTPC connected to an HDTV (not a PC monitor)

Which AMD CPU would you recommend for this system ?
Which motherboard ?
How much RAM ?
Which Video Card ?
What TV Tuner ?
Which Remote ?



Also, can you comment on the stability issues with SS that quite a few people have reported here. Have you seen these issues during your in-house testing ? If so, how are you planning to tackle them ?

Once again, thanks for taking the time to address these issues directly on this forum ! Like I said, I personally feel this is one of the best ways to build up loyalty among users of this forum !

Now I hope someone from SageTV will come here and comment on some of these issues ;)

[psxjunky]

Another manifestation of the above point is, the subscription fee for the EPG service. One of the main reasons I am interested in a software based PVR solution is to avoid a monthly subscription fee. However, my guess is that if either of these companies sense any financial difficulty, the first thing they will do is impose a subscription fee for the EPG service. [COLOR=red]Has anyone read the contract for their EPG service to see if either one offers any protection against a future subscription fee ?[/COLOR]





Since no one has commented on this one yet, I am bringing this up again. Has anyone read the contracts in detail and can comment on this issue ?

I am guessing there is no such protection in either contracts ... in fact there is a higher possibility of the opposite, i.e. there may be a statement like "The EPG service is free for now, but we may start charging for it anytime we feel like it" ;)) ... but it doesn't hurt to be hopeful :p

[DFA]

rkuo:

"The poll stands 21 to 4 in favor of Sage as of this writing. Sure hope these guys have more customers than what is represented in this forum."

I was not poking at the SS number but the total responses ("these guys" being both SS and Sage).

But yes, Sage is strong in this cubby.

I actually (attempted) tried SS before Sage. I found it to be overkill and overly invasive (for my tastes; KISS) from a software perspective. Maybe you all should think about an SS lite version.

DFA

[rkuo]

Originally posted by psxjunky
rkuo: Thanks very much for coming to this forum and address some of the issues directly. I greatly appreciate this, and believe this is an excellent way to build up customer loyalty in this forum !

Can you give an idea of what you mean by "proper" hardware ? Are you talking about the CPU power, Video card or TV Tuner card ?

What would you recommend for a [b]WELL BUILT system (not just a bare minimum required system) that can run SnapStream PVS3 ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESSLY ? Assume that this system is going to be used as a dedicated PVR HTPC connected to an HDTV (not a PC monitor)

Which AMD CPU would you recommend for this system ?
Which motherboard ?
How much RAM ?
Which Video Card ?
What TV Tuner ?
Which Remote ?

Any relatively new CPU/mobo should be fine. From experience an average joe may be better off using Intel components since more things can go wrong when dealing with third party mobo vendors supplying AMD motherboards.

RAM: 256 MB should be adequate...you can get more if you are doing other stuff with it.
Tuner: Most people go with the PVR250/350 and are very happy with them.
Video Card: Newer DX9 cards from ATI or nVidia are optimal for PVS use. We recently worked with nVidia to work out some kinks in their deinterlacing and from what we've seen the GeForce 4 and FX lines work very well.

Also, can you comment on the stability issues with SS that quite a few people have reported here. Have you seen these issues during your in-house testing ? If so, how are you planning to tackle them ?Well, where to start first? First of all, SnapStream has a larger and less technical base of users. Part of our job is educating the market about PVS and HTPC's and I'm sure you can imagine the downsides as well as the upsides to this. We've chosen to do this, so we're not complaining.

Second. We try to do more. We support software encoding. We ask the user to have up-to-date drivers with a decent video card that isn't going to crash when running our Direct3D UI 24/7. Unfortunately adding more pieces to the puzzle adds more things that can go wrong. When a customer's hardware isn't up to the task of running fullbore day in and day out or when one of those extra pieces doesn't interact well with the other pieces, we get blamed. Leaving your computer on 24/7 doing nothing and leaving it on doing video encoding and decoding pushing massive amounts of data across the bus are two entirely different things. Hardware encoders often mask the issues here from customers.

Third, we've moved to requiring the .NET framework. It's an extra download but our testers have indicate that they're OK with it if it means faster and more stable development from us (which it does). I'm very jazzed that our customers have given us the go-ahead to do this.

Fourth, we've been cleaning up parts of the architecture to operate more cleanly. This is a guts level type of thing.

Fifth and finally, as part of the rearchitecture we've been separating the actual foundation of PVS into multiple separate processes. Even if one section of PVS goes down now, it can't take down the rest of the application. Basically it's simply impossible to propagate crashes from one component of the app to the rest of it.. We're already seeing big payoffs from this.

As you can see, we take stability very seriously and are and have been making significant strides in this area in direct response to our customers.

[mechou]

Originally posted by rkuo

<snip>
Third, we've moved to requiring the .NET framework. It's an extra download but our testers have indicate that they're OK with it if it means faster and more stable development from us (which it does). I'm very jazzed that our customers have given us the go-ahead to do this.
<snip>


In my opinion, this (overkill philosophy) is exactly why SS is doomed to fail when compared to the competition. It makes life easier for the developers, but has no value-add for the customer besides requiring more CPU (since .NET is "slower") and disk space, and adding *more* complexity.

I'll bet you can't offer even one substantive reason why moving to .NET would be good for the customer as far as SS is concerned. And don't use some lame excuse like .NET will allow customers more features (because it speeds up the development cycle).

And "requiring" DX9 for display/encode is a complete overkill for a PVR....

[billeR]

"Doomed to fail"...well, maybe. But maybe not. They are after all the most successful pvr, err...pvs software on the market - are they not? Isn't success in their business measured by number of paying customers.

I personally use Sage because I think the pq is better, so I recognize that the biggest isn't the same as the best, but I think that SS has decided to go after the less technically oriented consumer while Sage has target the tweaker/enthusiast. I think there are more of the former than the latter. Now this will all start to get more interesting if Sage2 really does offer a decent user-interface (the current one is functional, but mediocre at best) and start to move downmarket & if SS really does develop a rep for stability and picture quality - moving upmarket. Who will win - who knows? Is Sage's Frey Technology still a 2 man company? Does SS have an affiliation w/MSFT? I guess I'm just trying to say that I think that "doomed to fail" is a little too strong...

[rkuo]

Originally posted by mechou
In my opinion, this (overkill philosophy) is exactly why SS is doomed to fail when compared to the competition. It makes life easier for the developers, but has no value-add for the customer besides requiring more CPU (since .NET is "slower") and disk space, and adding *more* complexity.

I'll bet you can't offer even one substantive reason why moving to .NET would be good for the customer as far as SS is concerned. And don't use some lame excuse like .NET will allow customers more features (because it speeds up the development cycle).

And "requiring" DX9 for display/encode is a complete overkill for a PVR.... Making life easier for developers means a higher quality product. I spent months worrying about the impact of requiring the download for our customers, but finally I posed the question to our customers and testers and the vote was unanimous. Like I said, we take our customer relationships seriously and this isn't something that we did without consulting our existing customers first.

[DFA]

Mechou:

Easy big fella. Technically, I agree with you but the bed-side manner is a little rough. Fortunately, we have choices and I made mine. You have them too.

It is more positive to offer suggestions to SS that would make for a product more appealing to this class of users as opposed to challenging SS to a fight to the death.

My problem with SS, besides the overkill and invasiveness, is the stability. I have all up-to-date (2003) hardware and software and I had serious system level problems right of the bat. Could I have resolved them? Sure but when I looked at the other objections I had, I threw in the towel right away (thank God for demos). I realized SS was not for me but that does not speak for others. Here I have a chance to tell him why I didn't care for it and what it would take for me to like it (big diet).

DFA

P.S.: .NET I will avoid at all costs for personal / political reasons. Anything that links itself to MS too closely (exclusive use of IE, .NET, IIS, WMA, DRM, etc.) is a non-starter. While I am fanatical about this to a fault, I'm not alone by a long shot (currently using Mozilla as I speak/ type). But that's me.

[mechou]

Guys (DFR & billieR), you're quoting me out of context. I stated "doomed to fail when compared to the competition."

So maybe I did come across a little strong. But I feel that SS just don't "get it." There's a reason why the vote is 22 vs 4 (Sage vs. SS, besides PQ). SS needs to first focus on the *basics*: reliability, stability, features, more or less in that order. SS doesn't even work reliably, and I'm certain that's not due to some "rogue" capture driver....

Moving on to .NET and DX9 just means (to me) that SS has the wrong priorities, that's all...

[Ursa]

Richard,
You and Rakesh have done a good job with Snapstream, but when is HDTV support coming? I've used most of the packages mentioned so far, except Sage, and as of right now, MythTV is still the best. Have you guys done a feature set comparison with some of the freeware? The lack of alternate media handling (e.g. MP3 jukebox, etc.) was a major downside, and now Myth is getting HDTV while Snapstream is not. I've held off getting a HD card until now, but if Sage supports HDTV, then I'm lost as a Snapstream customer.

...and I went to school with Rakesh!

Later,
Bill
SRC '95

[HeinePaul]

What is the current status of HDTV PVR by either SnapStream or Sage?

What's the Beta outlook for these functions, and what HD cards are supported?

Finally, will the software support both a HD and 250 card recording/playing back at the same time?

My local CompUSA has the 250 on sale for $120 and I've got a $100 gift card burning a hole in my pocket. I've met with Rakesh at CES (or was it COMDEX) here in Las Vegas, but it sure seems like I'm leaning toward Sage unless SnapStream has functional HD support now.

[stanger89]

Sage has experimental support for the AccessDTV and Hipix. Haven't heard much about the Hipix but with the latest ADTV drivers recording works fine but playback isn't quite there yet. Full support for the ADTV seems likely since it already has beta support, there's an active AVS driver/app developent team for the ADTV, and I've seen Murray Kerdman (one of the AVS developers) on the SageTV forums.

This is all speculation on my part, but I've been watching this with great interest myself.

[Ursa]

To do a quick summary:
SageTV
+ Some HDTV support
+ Use of third-party (preferred) filters/deinterlacers
- Interface that is less well-developed
- Can't turn off recording while watching TV (??)

Snapstream
+ Great interface
- Proprietary filters/deinterlacer
- Unknown HDTV support
- Requires internet connection for settings
- Can't turn off recording while watching TV (??)

Later,
Bill

PS: We're still not mentioning MythTV - aren't we good!! ;)

[DFA]

Ursa:

Good Summary and that's about the way I see it. However, you might want to add "stability" to the point list. More than a few have stability issues with SS. Multiple card support and client options are a couple more.

DFA

[mlbdude]

Don't forget Sage also has network streaming, multiple tuner card support, and intelligent recording.

ALso, SnapStream has remote web interface scheduling, ability to record in smaller lower quality wmv format, and supports auto transcoding of high quality files to smaller lower quality files.

[heckheck]

I'm glad I found this thread because I'm deciding between these two programs right now too.

The decision is crystal clear and simple. I won't use any software that requires .NET. It's way too M$FT and is a bloated piece of software that gives WAY too much control of my PC to Bill and his friends. It's bad enough that most of the PVR software requires Windows at all, but there is little reason why such applications should swallow hook line and sinker the M$FT line. This road leads directly to Palladium and big media's ultimate control of your entertainment PC. These are the same folks who are lining up to give us "trusted" computing platforms that comply with such total garbage as the newly approved HDTV broadcast flag.

I find it hard to believe that a group of informed users would be unanimous in favor of .NET, if they knew where it was heading.

Just my .02

heckheck

[rkuo]

heckheck,

This obviously isn't the appropriate place for a platform/language discussion, but I would argue very strongly that most of the points you have made are not factually correct. I can respect your own opinion and the opinions of others regarding MS, etc, but as a platform and framework .NET simply makes it easier for developers to produce applications. It also certainly does nothing more on your PC than any other piece of code can do.

I don't think I'm going to be able to convince you of this in one post, but at least try to look at it from my point of view. I consistently find that we're able to turn out higher quality code using .NET for our customers. If you can get past the initial hurdle of believing that :) , then I think you probably wouldn't mind the 20mb one time hit on download either.

I can pretty much guarantee that couple of the neato features in v3.4 wouldn't be making it into this version if we didn't make the switch now.

==========================
Anyway, back on topic. I appreciate all of the feedback and that's why I'm posting here. It's important for me to understand what you do and don't like about PVS so that I can incorporate that into a product that you *will* want to use.

[DFA]

Thanks rkuo. For myself and others, you're always welcome here. You hold up well under fire. Your comments and responses are very important ard have been heard.

DFA

[mlbdude]

Thanks rkuo. I am kind of skeptical of the whole .Net thing myself (another corporate wage slave forced to use it), but we all appreciate your candid feedback. SnapStream is a great product and continues to get better.

[RTK]

rkuo,
What is the holdup or your reluctance to adding Dscaler deinterlacing as an option or plug-in to SS? If you are seriously interested in attracting members of this forum, there is no way you are going to do that with your current offering (yes I have tried it). I can tell you that this issue completely makes SageTV more attractive than SS even with SageTV's rather primitive interface.

[dguns]

rkuo,
Does Snapstream plan on introducing their own frontend like Sage 2.0?

SS looks great BTW!

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by Ursa
To do a quick summary:
SageTV
+ Some HDTV support
+ Use of third-party (preferred) filters/deinterlacers
- Interface that is less well-developed
- Can't turn off recording while watching TV (??)

Snapstream
+ Great interface
- Proprietary filters/deinterlacer
- Unknown HDTV support
- Requires internet connection for settings
- Can't turn off recording while watching TV (??)

Later,
Bill

PS: We're still not mentioning MythTV - aren't we good!! ;)

Bill: It was a great idea to summarize the pros-cons of both these products in a nice clean format. I like it so much that, with your permission, I would like to include a similar table in my original post (the first post in this thread). I will also add the other pros-cons mentioned by other members in this thread and try to keep the table as updated as possible.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a fair amount of interest among members here about these two particular PVR solutions, and I hope adding the summary right in the first post will help new members that read this post.

[psxjunky]

Okay, I have added the summary of pros and cons for both SageTV and Snapstream in the first post.

Let me know if you see something missing in the list, and I'll update the post.

[Ursa]

Originally posted by psxjunky
Bill: It was a great idea to summarize the pros-cons of both these products in a nice clean format. I like it so much that, with your permission, I would like to include a similar table in my original post (the first post in this thread).

No problem! ;)

[salsbst]

I find it comical the way people refuse to use any software that is based on the .Net Framework. Better fire up Linux right quick, folks. Longhorn is going to make .Net the only reasonable choice for Windows developers in competitive markets.

[mlbdude]

Can any SS users comment on their reasons for staying with SS once Sage 2.0 is out? I am curious. Besides the initial investment part.

[mlbdude]

.Net the only reasonable choice for Windows developers in competitive markets.

As much as I loved MS development technology, there is a reason why .Net is so slowly being implemented and Java is seeing a surge in usage.

[nuthead]

Originally posted by dcdave
Does anyone have any experience with MythTV?

Yup. I've been running it since last spring (0.7 release). What amazes me most that it uses my 5 year old tuner in ways I could never imagine before.

[Ursa]

Originally posted by nuthead
Yup. I've been running it since last spring (0.7 release). What amazes me most that it uses my 5 year old tuner in ways I could never imagine before.

Shhh. We're not supposed to talk about those other products (Myth, Freevo, etc.). However, if someone could get a PC version of MythMusic and MythWeather going, that would be sweet. And a source of revenue since you could probably get the Weather Channel to sponsor it (just allow a choice of which radar maps to pull).

Later,
Bill

PS: I will say this, what Isaac has done as a free effort makes the commercial efforts look bad, IMHO.

[mechou]

Originally posted by Ursa

<snip>
PS: I will say this, what Isaac has done as a free effort makes the commercial efforts look bad, IMHO.

Ursa (Bill), couldn't agree more regarding merits of mythtv vs lame (pc pvr) commercial products. It is by far superior to *all* the (consumer) commercial pc pvr products in terms of stability, features, HW compatibility (SW and HW encoders supported), and ATSC support in the works, and I've tried them all.

And to the poster who "finds it comical that people refuse to use .NET," I've got news for you. Maybe you ought to give linux a try before you laugh. I converted all three of my machines to linux 2+ years ago and haven't looked back. And I used to be a Windows developer. And judging by the responses, this thread, I'm not the only one who is using mythtv. Mythtv is an example of doing more with less (HW & SW).

Quite frankly it's rather disturbing to find people who haven't even had any direct experience with the linux alternative scoff at it. I mean any commercial entity that can't code a quality PVR without resorting to using .NET (or java) probably doesn't deserve to have a long term future....

[mechou]

Originally posted by salsbst
.Net the only reasonable choice for Windows developers in competitive markets.

Yeah, by this measure we would all be using apps coded up with VB. :) Instead Windows gets plagued by viruses and script kiddies, to the point that enterprises are starting to look for alternatives to Windows.

It used to be said that nobody in IT ever got fired for using IBM. And for the last 6 years (since WinNT), the same probably could be said of Windows. But I have witnessed recent firings of system administrators whose Windows mail/web servers got attacked, resulting in significant down time and costs to the organization.

Perhaps you really ought to look where your "Windows competitive market" is going....

[Geneva]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Can any SS users comment on their reasons for staying with SS once Sage 2.0 is out? I am curious. Besides the initial investment part.

Good question. I certainly like and dislike aspects of both (all of which are mentioned above in previous posts), but the main dislike of SS for me is lack of support music and HDTV. They'll eventually have to have these features to stay alive long term!

As a side note, I have a myHD tuner card and have always been dissappointed with the NTSC recording ability because it requires software encoding. The included codecs and various other codecs i have installed don't perform that well either. There is either slow frame rate or A/V sync issues. I even downloaded MS WMV9 codecs and the performance just hasn't been there on my machine (P4 1.5 GHz). Believe it or not, when i installed SS, this all changed. I can encode WM9 at 1.2Mbps quite easily which i would call above VHS and sub DVD quality (with the myHD tuner card and my cable reception --- probably not the best one could do). I can encode MPEG2 in software but i can't encode at the much higher bit rate in order to get the same quality as WMV.

This leads me to what i do like about SS over Sage in that I can do the encoding in software and don't need to purchase a hardware encoder. I really like this ability to use one tuner card for both NTSC/HD (of course it would be better if the SS software supported the HD).

One other drawback with SS is that i can't pause live TV with WMV9 (only with MPEG2) and i can't stream MPEG2 (only WMV9) with SS. Of course, you could encode in MPEG2 and then transcode for streaming, but i'd rather start with the best quality and be done with it.

Clearly, WMV9 encodes are much better quality for a given file size over mpeg2, which leads me to another interesting comment. I wonder if SS and others can survive with .net? What i mean by this is that MS has been rolling out their Windows XP Media Center Edition which includes PVR, music, photographs, etc. As soon as MS finds themselves competing with SS, they will crush them. They can do this by stalling on new .net features and allowing their Media Center Edition to steam roll ahead.

Finally, as an additional bizzare comment maybe it's been posted before but i had quite a good laugh when i discovered the current versions of Windows XP Media Center Edition encode in MPEG2 --- only until HW assisted WMV9 becomes available sometime next year will they make the switch.

[rkuo]

RTK,

Technically, there's not a lot of reason to add DScaler support. We use a widely accepted deinterlacing algorithm that is quite good and because we implemented it ourselves the architecture is much cleaner than the DScaler DirectShow filter, which doesn't seem to be under development or maintenance.

I'm still considering adding DScaler support because I get asked this question every so often. The name recognition matters a lot for people. But from a technical standpoint it would be expending effort on a mostly sideways improvement.

dguns,
We've been looking into it. I've played around with various frontends myself and I definitely think there's room for improvement.

[RTK]

Originally posted by rkuo
Technically, there's not a lot of reason to add DScaler support. We use a widely accepted deinterlacing algorithm that is quite good and because we implemented it ourselves the architecture is much cleaner than the DScaler DirectShow filter, which doesn't seem to be under development or maintenance.

I'm still considering adding DScaler support because I get asked this question every so often. The name recognition matters a lot for people. But from a technical standpoint it would be expending effort on a mostly sideways improvement.


Which "widely accepted deinterlacing algorithm" is SS using? I think you will find that many/most people on AVS can appreciate the differences in deinterlacing algorithms which is the reason so many people use Dscaler. Considering a high percentage of the material recorded with a PVR is video and not film, the best deinterlacing possible becomes even more important. High picture quality is never a sideways step, especially for those with a HTPC setup. Best of luck with SS and thank you for making an appearance here at AVS.

[salsbst]

Originally posted by mechou
And to the poster who "finds it comical that people refuse to use .NET," I've got news for you. Maybe you ought to give linux a try before you laugh. I converted all three of my machines to linux 2+ years ago and haven't looked back. And I used to be a Windows developer. And judging by the responses, this thread, I'm not the only one who is using mythtv. Mythtv is an example of doing more with less (HW & SW).

Quite frankly it's rather disturbing to find people who haven't even had any direct experience with the linux alternative scoff at it. I mean any commercial entity that can't code a quality PVR without resorting to using .NET (or java) probably doesn't deserve to have a long term future.... That poster was me. I manage some Linux servers and I like the OS. I think you misunderstood me. I am not in any way knocking Linux. I am knocking the idea that a user can gain some sort of benefit by avoiding the installation of the .Net framework on a Windows machine.

In addition, when I mentioned "competitive markets" I wasn't talking about operating systems. I was talking application development markets, such as the one for PVRs.

Sorry for any confusion that my previous post caused. I was not trying to make a case for or against Windows or Linux. I should have tied my remark to the point I meant to imply: for a Windows HTPC, I believe that there are good reasons to choose SageTV over Snapstream based on current feature sets. But I don't think the use of .Net should be used as a strike against a Windows application since more and more applications made for Windows will be using the .Net framework.

Regards,
Stuart

[mechou]

Well, in some ways, you could be right. Windows users may be "swimming upstream" if they want to avoid .NET. On the other hand I see more and more "regular (corporate) users" asking "Is there any substantive benefit to moving to Office 2003 (as an example)." A few years ago when I posed this very same question (except it was Office 2000) I was almost cast out of the organization as a pariah. Those very same "Einsteins-come-lately" are now posing the same questions I posed a few years ago.

I think "the market," to some extent, is wising up. The flagging economy has made people think seriously about these kinds of upgrades and other alternatives, which is a good thing. On this very thread people are questioning the wisdom of using .NET for *any* application. You probably wouldn't have seen such a response a few years ago.

Just because processors keep improving and disk space keep increasing doesn't mean that the consumer has to buy/install all those MIPS-sucking apps. When when the consumer has a choice between similar programs that uses less resources and one that uses more at similar price points, guess which one they're likely to pick?

I'd love to see PVR timeshift (i.e. decoding a full resolution ATSC show and recording another ATSC stream at the same time) performance based on .NET. I bet even when Longhorn comes out the CPU may still be busy to do much else (like surf the web).

And, Longhorn, if I'm not mistaken, is going to be delayed for yet another year. I wouldn't be holding my breath....

Originally posted by salsbst
That poster was me. I manage some Linux servers and I like the OS. I think you misunderstood me. I am not in any way knocking Linux. I am knocking the idea that a user can gain some sort of benefit by avoiding the installation of the .Net framework on a Windows machine.

In addition, when I mentioned "competitive markets" I wasn't talking about operating systems. I was talking application development markets, such as the one for PVRs.

Sorry for any confusion that my previous post caused. I was not trying to make a case for or against Windows or Linux. I should have tied my remark to the point I meant to imply: for a Windows HTPC, I believe that there are good reasons to choose SageTV over Snapstream based on current feature sets. But I don't think the use of .Net should be used as a strike against a Windows application since more and more applications made for Windows will be using the .Net framework.

Regards,
Stuart

[Ursa]

So, now do we get to talk about MythTV? :D

Richard (rkuo) - take some marketing advice from the forum: even if you don't see any benefit to Dscaler now, it is better to build in plug-in support now, than to have to re-write the architecture (again) later. A primary market segment requires the ability to use third party (FFDShow, etc.) filters and deinterlacers, and that market will gravitate to the package that provides it.

Also, look into MythTV and see if you can add functions like MythMusic and MythWeather. My WIFE loves MythWeather. It is perhaps the only home theater app she likes.

Later,
Bill

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by Ursa
So, now do we get to talk about MythTV? :D
...
Later,
Bill

Okay Bill, you win ;)

Tell me the pros and cons of MythTV in the same format, and I'll add it to the first post.

Seriously though, I have looked at the MythTV screenshots (http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures) ... and they are absolutely amazing. No doubt one of the best out there !

It is just that in my particular situation I am not ready to run Linux (yet) on this PC. If there was a Windows port available for MythTV, I would try that in a heartbeat :D

However, since there seems to be at least some intereste for MythTV, tell me about it and I'll add it to the comparison table for benefit of anyone interested.

Thanks in advance !

[Ursa]

Since we have been cleared for takeoff. Here are the relative merits of MythTV:

Pro's:
+ Interface is among the best (at least as good as Snapstream)
+ MythMusic - music jukebox program that displays cover art on screen
+ MythWeb - using Apache, it gives as much or as little control over your Myth box as you want from your own server
+ MythWeather - pulls information from the national weather service and weather.com to give you local forecast information (I wish it were easier to change the default map, though)
+ MythGame - embedded MAME support (SNES, etc.)
+ HDTV support that is coming along as quickly as Linux HDTV in general
+ MythMovie/Video - classifies movies and shows cover art or IMDB (??) data where available; plays any video file on your computer
+ Multi-tuner/multi-soundcard support - PIP goodness
+ Rips music - put in a CD and go
+ It's free

Con's:
- Linux. If you can deal with it, it's great. If you can't, it's not. There are pre-packaged distributions available, though.
- Limited card support (see above)
- Limited software encoding codec support (open source only) - default is either RTJPEG or MPEG-4; can decode MPEG-2, though
- High hardware requirements - if you do not have a hardware encoder, you need some serious hardware to run it
-------- (BIG minus) relies on XMLTV for EPG data


With everything that they have done (mostly Isaac), Myth is a fantastic package. If it were a commercial product on the Windows platform, it would blow away everything else out there. With a commercial business, they could also include a subscription to a fee-based listings guide that would not break every few days. If you have some savvy and you have the hardware, the only thing that is really a downside for Myth is the d*n EPG. Other than that, there is no real reason not to consider it.

Howzat?

Later,
Bill

[mlbdude]

There have been a number of new votes for SnapStream. How about listing some reasons you use it SnapStream users? Don't just vote for no reason!

[mechou]

I'd just like to add a few items to Bill's (Ursa) list regarding mythtv:
Pros:
+ Can support timeshifting (i.e. watch a pre-recorded program while recording) reliably, even with a SW encoder. Not many Windows PVR products are capable of this.
+ Can skip commercials without manual intervention during playback, and optionally flag (i.e. detect & mark) commercials after a recording is complete.
+ Support multiple heterogenous tuners at the same time, for example PVR-250 and a SW tuner.
+ Can be networked (in mutiple PVR configuration), or fat server/multiple thin "frontend" client configuration. PIP works for remote network tuners!

Now regarding the cons Bill listed, I'm not sure exactly what he meant by
1. Limited card support: it supports v4l tuners, and pvr-x50 capture cards. Which really means only the newer Conexant 10-bit capture cards aren't supported.
2. Steep HW requirements if using SW encoder. As I stated earlier, an old Athlon T-bird 1.4 will easily support timeshifting and still have enough headroom for web surfing. Yes, there may be a possibility of dropping a few frames here and there if you do all that simultaneously, but it certainly is not often enough to warrant a HW capture card....However, there is no doubt SW encoding requires more CPU than a HW encoder.

And one additional correction to Bill's "Cons:"
mythtv can *decode* mpeg-2; it doesn't encode mpeg-2 though (unless you got a pvr-x50.

[Ursa]

mechou,
Given the popularity of the ATi All-in-Wonder cards, I would say that there is limited support for the S/W encoding cards. BT878-based cards are no problem, and those do make-up a significant chunk of the add-on PCI market, but there are others out there with which it won't work.

As for hardware, you may not have had any problems with S/W encoding on a T-Bird 1.4, but my XP 1800 dropped frames while doing S/W encoding. Live TV was almost watchable (nForce, 512MB 2100, 7200 rpm Seagates). I'm not sure why my HTPC couldn't keep up, but it couldn't. I'll stand by my recommendation that it needs processing power if you are going to do software encoding.

Good catch on the encode con - I'll update my list.

Later,
Bill

[mechou]

Ah yes, good catch re. AIW. I had forgotten about those. Yep AIWs certainly *don't* work with mythtv. And I wouldn't hold my breath for ATI to release v4l drivers for AIW, either.

Regarding CPU power for SW encode, I don't know what's "wrong" with your nforce setup, but that's more than sufficient CPU for SW encode. IDE DMA enabled for your nforce? Perhaps you're encoding at an extremely high bit-rate or resolution? On my 1800+, 640x480, 3100 bps is just dandy. Fry's routinely now has XP2000+ and m/b combos for sale for less than $70. It's only going to get cheaper as we approach the new year....

Which brings me to another pro regarding mythtv:
+ There is an active mailing list and #irc channel for mythtv. Any bugs, problems, etc. people may have with myth gets resolved in a matter of *days*, not months like commercial products.
+ Source code availability: If you're so inclined, you can fix any shortcomings (not that there are any :)) yourself (or other contributors) instead of waiting for some commercial entity to fix it.
+ Due to the above two points, support for mythtv is far better than any commercial product.

Originally posted by Ursa
mechou,
Given the popularity of the ATi All-in-Wonder cards, I would say that there is limited support for the S/W encoding cards. BT878-based cards are no problem, and those do make-up a significant chunk of the add-on PCI market, but there are others out there with which it won't work.

As for hardware, you may not have had any problems with S/W encoding on a T-Bird 1.4, but my XP 1800 dropped frames while doing S/W encoding. Live TV was almost watchable (nForce, 512MB 2100, 7200 rpm Seagates). I'm not sure why my HTPC couldn't keep up, but it couldn't. I'll stand by my recommendation that it needs processing power if you are going to do software encoding.

Good catch on the encode con - I'll update my list.

Later,
Bill

[psxjunky]

Okay, I have added MythTV to the comparison list in the first post :)

Couple clarifying questions for Bill and/or Mechou and/or any other MythTV users so that I can make the comparisons look more consistent.

- Does MythTV support power management so that you can keep the computer on standby or hibernation mode (or whatever is the low power consumption mode under linux) and automatically wake it up when a recording is scheduled ?
- How stable is MythTV ?
- Does MythTV support remote recording scheduling/management over the internet ?
- Does MythTV support multiple filters/deinterlacers a la SageTV ?
- What remote controls are supported by MythTV ?
- Does MythTV support intra network streaming of recorded shows ?

[mechou]

I'll address your questions in numerical order:
1. There is partial support for power management. There is a patch, but there are some instances where it doesn't work for multiple networked frontends, so has not made it into the mythtv baseline code. I use it, and it has always been reliable enough for me, and I have up to three networked myth machines. There are at least three possible modes of operation: rtc alarm, wake-on-lan, and suspend/wakeup.
2. More stable than any other commercial pc pvr solution (windows or linux) I've used, any other questions re. stability? :) And this stability even with SW encoders, something that Windows has virtually given up on.
3. Yes. If you run a web server (apache) that's accessible via the internet then you can schedule recordings remotely via the internet, if you run the mythweb module.
4. No, the de-interlace algorithm is built-in. However I believe there is some preliminary work being done on this front.
5. Too numerous to mention. Basically, any remote that is supported by lirc in linux is supported.
6. Yes. It was designed with this in mind. mythbackend (server) and mythfrontend (clients) can run as separate network processes. Does music, pictures, etc. off the network too.

I still maintain that Bill (Ursa) has something wrong with his mythtv setup if his XP1800+ can barely handle live tv (one encode stream + watch at same time). To quote the mythtv documentation (emphasis and parenthesis mine):
"As a general guideline, plan on 1GHz per (SW) encoder.... The developer states that his AMD1800+ system can almost encode *two* MPEG-4 video streams and watch one program simultaneously."

Certainly the SW-encode CPU requirement is considerably less than Windows.

At some point this just becomes to cumbersome to discuss. You could have tried it two times over in the time we took to discuss it. If all the advantages of mythtv doesn't convince you now, nothing will. Just try it. I'll personally guarantee that you will love the results. :) And I haven't used it, but apparently there is a distribution of myth that's designed to boot off cdrom, knoppixmyth or something like that. Heck, if you don't like it just throw the CD away, and you wouldn't have touched your harddisk.


Originally posted by psxjunky
Okay, I have added MythTV to the comparison list in the first post :)

Couple clarifying questions for Bill and/or Mechou and/or any other MythTV users so that I can make the comparisons look more consistent.

- Does MythTV support power management so that you can keep the computer on standby or hibernation mode (or whatever is the low power consumption mode under linux) and automatically wake it up when a recording is scheduled ?
- How stable is MythTV ?
- Does MythTV support remote recording scheduling/management over the internet ?
- Does MythTV support multiple filters/deinterlacers a la SageTV ?
- What remote controls are supported by MythTV ?
- Does MythTV support intra network streaming of recorded shows ?

[dcdave]

For anyone interested in trying Mythtv, the folks over at www.mysettopbox.tv have created a base linux distro that automatically installs Mythtv. Takes about 3 clicks and 10 minutes to get a complete working Mythtv system up and running.

[nuthead]

Wow, Mythtv made the list...

As far as hardware requirements concerns, I use it with a 1.4 Celeron Conexant-based card. Some people even use it with asub-1G processor and lower the capture requirements. Regarding All-in-Wonder cards, few people have reported them working, while most didn't succeed. Bottom line--if there's a driver for the card, Myth will work.

Oh, and the interface is themeable.
Also, relying on XMLTV is not such a bad thing--the XMVLT guy works on it constantly, with frequent new releases.

[Ursa]

Originally posted by nuthead
Also, relying on XMLTV is not such a bad thing--the XMVLT guy works on it constantly, with frequent new releases.

Yeah, that's part of the problem. :D Because XMLTV is essentially screen-scraping listings from a commercial website, every time the website's layout changes, XMLTV breaks. :( That plus a desire to play with DScaler/FFDShow prompted me to switch.

As for my settings, you mean everybody doesn't capture deinterlaced video at DVD resolutions? Yes, I know I could drop my framerate or resolution, but if I wanted VCR quality, I'd dust off the VCR... :D If you are willing/able to use a PVR-250, Myth is nearly flawless. Except for XMLTV (sorry, I just wish I could pay to have an integrated, non-breaking EPG. Heck, I'd pay $$ for Myth in a heartbeat if a couple of the open source peculiarities were remedied...).

Later,
Bill

[psxjunky]

There seems to be a lot more votes cast for both SageTV and SnapStream but hardly any new comments. If you voted for either of these, please share your experience ... even if it is a reaffirmation of some of the things already stated here.

Come on, don't let the MythTV enthusiasts take over this thread ;)

[jkdufair]

Had Showshifter. Lack of a real EPG finally drove me nuts. Had a setup going with some cool app out of the UK for a while (can't remember the name) but they gave up on the US market. I tried XMLTV -> Showshifter and was ready to kill someone after messing with that for a while. Tried to sell my copy - EULA doesn't permit license transfer.

SageTV didn't have listings for my area as of this summer, so I went with SnapStream.

Overall, it's been pretty nice. WAF/SAF factor is very high. Integrated with MyHTPC, it has everything I could need - music, photos, weather, plus PVR functionality. I *highly* recommend using a Hauppauge PVR250 card. Picture quality is good and system load is minimal. I've had a few lockups since I rebuilt my system (el cheapo Thunderbird 1GHz), but I'm currently suspecting the latest Detonators as SnapStream was simply solid before this. Had some errors recording also (with auto-deletion of old shows), but my config is a bit unusual and not supported by Snapstream - record on my 2.8GHz P4 160GB RAID0 system and access recorded files via a 100Mbit switch from the Thunderbird rig. I use an ASUS TV880 for recording on the P4 and a PVR250 for timeshifting live TV and some recording on the Thunderbird. Dual tuner support is apparently forthcoming, at which point, I'll move everything to the Thunderbird.

Anyway, Snapstream looks nice, works well, and is well designed. I actually like the web admin and Snapstream.net (web scheduling) is really a nice feature. Its 10 foot interface is very well designed and works great with the ATI Remote Wonder.

I may try Sage now that there are listings for my area. Reading the specs and feature lists, however, I doubt I'll find reason to switch.

MythTV sounds pretty cool and I'm sure I'd have no trouble getting it going, being a Linux enthusiast and developer for many years, but I think XMLTV is a no-go for me, both hassle-wise and legal-wise. Too bad someone doesn't offer a no-hassle xmltv feed for a small fee.

[mlbdude]

Reading the specs and feature lists, however, I doubt I'll find reason to switch.

Yeah, nobody would want multi-tuner support, Intelligent Recording, better image quality, or a full client server architecture. :)

[mechou]

Originally posted by Ursa

<snip>
As for my settings, you mean everybody doesn't capture deinterlaced video at DVD resolutions? Yes, I know I could drop my framerate or resolution, but if I wanted VCR quality, I'd dust off the VCR... :D If you are willing/able to use a PVR-250, Myth is nearly flawless. Except for XMLTV (sorry, I just wish I could pay to have an integrated, non-breaking EPG. Heck, I'd pay $$ for Myth in a heartbeat if a couple of the open source peculiarities were remedied...).

Later,
Bill

The settings I stated in one of my earlier posts are way above vcr quality (in fact it's fairly close to DVD resolution, and has a higher bitrate), and even the "default (Windows)" pvr-250 capture quality. So clearly you're off on this one. :)

And capturing SDTV to DVD quality, all joking aside, is just plain silly, unless you want to do some archiving. Even then it's debatable, because I certainly wouldn't archive anything with pvr-x50. PQ still leaves too much to be desired.

At least do a fair comparison between HW and SW encoding (resolution, bitrate, etc.) before you declare "SW encode requires too much CPU." I think you're off base on this one. What I really think is that you don't have IDE DMA enabled with your nforce. :)

While I don't deny HW encoding is "nice" to have, with modern processors, there is less and less need for them. Remember those HW DVD decoders? Who uses them now? :)

Full resolution ATSC decoding/timeshift, on the other hand, can probably use some HW assist. But maybe with PCI-Express bus saturation wouldn't be an issue as much....

In fact, I postulate there is at least one reason that SW encoding is better than HW encoding in myth: no postprocessing (decode+flag) for commercial detection. With SW encoding, commercial flagging occurs in real time, as you record.

[psxjunky]

Updated the first post to add latest pros for MythTV mentioned by mechou

[Ursa]

Originally posted by mechou
At least do a fair comparison between HW and SW encoding (resolution, bitrate, etc.) before you declare "SW encode requires too much CPU." I think you're off base on this one. What I really think is that you don't have IDE DMA enabled with your nforce. :)

Nope, DMA was the first suspect. It's alive and kicking, but Myth still stuttered a bit. There are reports that the Abit MV7m board had some quirks to it, so this may be one of them. I also had RAID 1 on it, but rebuilding with a standard set-up didn't work, either. I don't do deep magic, so I may have just had too many other processes going. I'd definitely say "I'm off". No doubt about that.

No big deal, really. I've read many people report having flawless execution with far less hardware than I had, so if we want to edit the con to "lower hardware requirements than other SW-based encoders" (oooh, that's a downside? hurt me. ;) ), I'd be more than happy to defer to the masses. (Note: my hardware issues DID NOT prevent me from enjoying the quality or features of Myth once I bypassed SW encoding. I am still a big advocate of MythTV!)

Some folks should chime in here on myHTPC (which is not in this class of product) and other Windows-based products (Anyone want to give a low-down on the garbage that was the pre-8.1 ATi suite? I haven't seen the new stuff, but I've got three copies of the old...). We could also talk about Freevo, but I think that would be pushing my luck! :D

Later,
Bill

[mechou]

Actually I'd be more interested in hearing any "preliminary" accounts of nVidia's Forceware PVR. Perhaps nVidia will do a better job than ATI.

The most charitable thing that could be said regarding ATI multimedia center is that it's a "novelty" or "proof of concept." I bought that crap on a whim, and I would never buy another ATI product again, consider they can't even write a decent driver for display, never mind an PVR app. The best advice to anyone here regarding multimedia center is save your money and don't waste time on that roach motel "AIW Multimedia Center." Get a separate tuner card, you would be much better off.

Cyberlink PowerVCR, Intervideo WinDVR, Snapstream, Showshifter are all plagued by unreliable operation. They would arbitrarily miss scheduled shows, crash, etc., basically undependable. There would also be twitchy problems like unsynchronized audio, can't FF/RW/seek reliably, various annoyances that just made them completely unusable as PVRs. And it's clear most of that code is no longer maintained by their respective companies, since some of them had no patches to address their long-standing problems.

And all these offerings had UI's that were less than ideal. I hated scheduling via titantv, especially back in the day when all I had was dial-up. Now that most ppl have "always on" broadband, maybe it's not as big a problem, but that interface still sucks.... I'd rather live with xawtv anyday, even though that too is less than ideal, but it beats scheduling via titantv.

[stgdz]

Does sage have support for Dish or directv set top boxes?

What if I had three dish set top boxes in my house, could I use one computer box in my house and run three pvr-250's off of it.


As I am writing this I am starting to thinking about picking up regular cable again....

[audible]

Quote from mechou:
Actually I'd be more interested in hearing any "preliminary" accounts of nVidia's Forceware PVR. Perhaps nVidia will do a better job than ATI.

I've been looking into this with anticipation as well. The specs certainly look promising, especially the networking features. I'm just hoping this isn't a wish list product with nothing behind it. I've said elsewhere that nVidia has the resources and deep pockets to make this thing workable and reliable, but there again, ATI is not a small company and according to many they don't have it right yet.

The other caveat is the compatibility with various hardware capture cards. Reading the requirements it indicates that a Personal Cinema card is required. They currently have a 5200 series card on the market and a 5600 series based card is due out soon so there may be viable choices for people.

For others who don't know about this software the spec sheet can be found at:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20030916956445.html

Is this what a full featured HTPC should be like?

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Yeah, nobody would want multi-tuner support, Intelligent Recording, better image quality, or a full client server architecture. :)

I don't know about "nobody" as I was only representing myself.

For my needs, the first two are apparently already implemented in development and will be forthcoming soon (and will be less hassle for me to wait than to switch), the third is simply not an issue for me with the PVR250, and as a user, I couldn't care less about the architecture of the system on point 4.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by stgdz
Does sage have support for Dish or directv set top boxes?

What if I had three dish set top boxes in my house, could I use one computer box in my house and run three pvr-250's off of it.


Based on what I have gathered so far, I believe the answer to both your questions is "Yes" ... however, I haven't used Sage personally so I'll let one of the Sage users here confirm this.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by jkdufair
I... the third is simply not an issue for me with the PVR250...

Jason - about the image quality, I was also under the impression (initially) that the image quality is dictated by the capture card and not the software.

However, based on the comments on this thread so far, it seems the superior image quality of SageTV comes from its support for third party filters/deinterlacers ... like DScaler.

So, arguably, with identical hardware configuration, Sage will give you a better IQ than SnapStream.

Or you could ditch both and get MythTV ;)

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by psxjunky
Jason - about the image quality, I was also under the impression (initially) that the image quality is dictated by the capture card and not the software.

However, based on the comments on this thread so far, it seems the superior image quality of SageTV comes from its support for third party filters/deinterlacers ... like DScaler.

So, arguably, with identical hardware configuration, Sage will give you a better IQ than SnapStream.

Or you could ditch both and get MythTV ;)

Ah, yes. I neglected to mention that I'm using SnapStream on a 32" (or is it 36"?) Sony Trinitron regular-old-tube-tv. So deinterlacing isn't an issue for me. Perhaps if I were watching on my flat panel monitor or had a projector, I might feel differently. I'll check back in after I win tonight's lottery... :-)

[mlbdude]

Not all of us have dedicated hardware decoders (though that is a strength of SageTV that it does support the 350 and XCard). Some use a Matrox but I am not convinced to go over to that because of possible driver limitations. So the rest of us ATI and nVIdia users must deinterlace. So DSCaler is very nice :). If I had a HDTV it would be OK to use any deinterlace (in fact I would REALY want DScaler then) but for stanard TV it is nice to have a good deinterlacer that works well for it.

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
but for stanard TV it is nice to have a good deinterlacer that works well for it.

Why deinterlace output going to an interlaced device - i.e. a regular TV?

[salsbst]

It seems silly, doesn't it? I think it's necessary because I don't think you can send interlaced video to a typical PC graphics card. Then again, I could be wrong.

[mlbdude]

salsbst is correct. The Matrox using its DVDMax feature is the only video card that can send a proper signal to a standard TV. Otherwise you get scanlines. Some shows and channels show this more that others. All goes back to how picky you are on video quality. Some don't mind or even notice.

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
salsbst is correct. The Matrox using its DVDMax feature is the only video card that can send a proper signal to a standard TV. Otherwise you get scanlines. Some shows and channels show this more that others. All goes back to how picky you are on video quality. Some don't mind or even notice.

Could you explain what you mean by "a proper signal" and how you can have scanlines on a standard TV? Am I missing something here?

[salsbst]

Ok, I'm ready to accept that I'm also among the confused.

While I was under the impression that the video sent *to* the graphics card had to be progressive, I thought that many cards could do a decent job of interlacing that progressive data and sending it to a TV. For instance, my Radeon 9600 TV Out (while a crappy signal) was interlaced *by* the graphics card or driver (I think). That same card is (I think) interlacing a progressive signal to send 1080i out via the DVI-> component adapter. Granted that is not a standard TV but it is an interlaced mode.

So, are you (mlbdude) saying that one of the problems is in the interlacing algorithm of the graphics cards? And that is on top of the fact that somebody has to deinterlace NTSC before giving it to the graphics card?

[mlbdude]

Unfortunately I am not an expert on the subject so will not try to explain it. I have wrestled with it myself for awhile.

http://www.100fps.com/

People have explained it to me but I never grasp it completely. However, I have confirmed that both my nVidia and ATI cards do not display proper interlaced video. Maybe someone else can chime in.

[salsbst]

What's with the tan lines on that dancer's ankles ( http://www.100fps.com/flashinterlacing_big.jpg )?

Thanks for following up, mlbdude.

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Unfortunately I am not an expert on the subject so will not try to explain it. I have wrestled with it myself for awhile.

http://www.100fps.com/

People have explained it to me but I never grasp it completely. However, I have confirmed that both my nVidia and ATI cards do not display proper interlaced video. Maybe someone else can chime in.

Unfortunately, nothing at that URL addresses the question "why deinterlace video destined for an interlaced device?". The closest thing I could find was

That means that when you deinterlace a movie for your computer or your projector or your TFT monitor, and you want to play it on a standard TV set, your software (or your hardware) have to interlace it again.

Note, it starts with the premise "when you deinterlace a movie...". I say there's no reason to deinterlace video headed for a standard TV. It seems to me that interlaced_signal->deinterlace->interlace->display is, at best, going to give you what you started with.

mlbdude - maybe you could just explain what you mean by "I have confirmed that both my nVidia and ATI cards do not display proper interlaced video".

[mlbdude]

Simple. By recording content that is obviously interlaced (I used the Simpsons), and pausing during scene changes it is obvious that scan lines are present. It is something that you notice affecting the fluidity of the image particularly during motion scenes. Some stations and shows are worse than others. I was told that some stations broadcast differently than others.

If you don't notice it then just go on as is. For me it has become an obvious imperfection (especially once I knew what to look for). Perhaps ignorance is bliss on this one.

I would assume you are using the nVidia codec to disable deinterlacing since the SS codec is so bad. What setting do you have for deinterlacing?

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Simple. By recording content that is obviously interlaced (I used the Simpsons), and pausing during scene changes it is obvious that scan lines are present. It is something that you notice affecting the fluidity of the image particularly during motion scenes. Some stations and shows are worse than others. I was told that some stations broadcast differently than others.

If you don't notice it then just go on as is. For me it has become an obvious imperfection (especially once I knew what to look for). Perhaps ignorance is bliss on this one.

I'll have to check that out tonight. I have many Simpsons episodes saved up to check. I've never noticed scan lines at all on my TV. I can see them as clear as day on my flat-panel monitor, so I do know what I'm looking for. I have noticed compression artifacts, depending on the codec I'm using, but I've never seen interlacing effects/scan lines

[/B]I would assume you are using the nVidia codec to disable deinterlacing since the SS codec is so bad. What setting do you have for deinterlacing? [/B]

I think one of us is confused again. A codec is a compressor/decompressor. Deinterlacing is orthogonal to compression/decompression. I'm using either WMV or MPEG2 for my codec (depending on the show). I'm using NVDVD to enable my GeForce2 MX440's MPEG hardware-assist decoder (which should really be called a decompressor). I have disabled any deinterlacing algorithm in ShowShifter. Hope that clears it up.

[mlbdude]

I meant decoder, not codec sorry. If you are using NVDVD then in order to disable deinterlacing you have to set "De-Interlace Control" to "Film". I think that will override anything in ShowShifter (did think you were using SnapStream).

Not sure about how this affects WMV myself. That codec may have some kind of deinterlacer built in. But I have no experience with that one.

Let me know what you find.

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
I meant decoder, not codec sorry. If you are using NVDVD then in order to disable deinterlacing you have to set "De-Interlace Control" to "Film". I think that will override anything in ShowShifter (did think you were using SnapStream).

Not sure about how this affects WMV myself. That codec may have some kind of deinterlacer built in. But I have no experience with that one.

Let me know what you find.

OK - first of all, I'm an idiot. I am using SnapStream. That's what I get for working late.

I did some tests on both of my systems. On my P4/Asus TV880/LCD monitor, I looked at a saved up Simpsons show (recorded to WMV). Made sure interlacing was turned off in SnapStream settings. No interlacing artifacts at all. Looked at "live" TV (never quite live with SnapStream as it's playing out of the timeshift buffer) with WMV as the codec. No interlacing artifacts. Switched to MPEG2 as the codec (with the built-in decoder). Live TV had interlacing artifacts. So my conclusion there is that, yes, WMV does its own deinterlacing.

Looked at same Simpsons episode on my TBird/PVR250/Television setup. No interlacing artifacts (obviously). Live TV (through the PVR250) - no interlacing artifacts. Paused in hi-motion scenes. Still no interlacing. Couldn't find any interlacing effects whatsoever on the TV, no matter what settings I tried. Will play with the NVDVD settings and see what happens.

[mlbdude]

Good info on WMV. I know the NVDVD is set to deinterlace by default and its settings are not exactly clear on how to disable it. According to the manual though you set "De-Interlace Control" to "Film". Film content is at just under 24 FPS which is why you would NOT want deinterlacing on. TV content is at 50 FPS I believe (again I think shows and stations matter - when I run with deinterlacing off some shows are fine).

[Valnar]

I've been following this thread, but am posting late because I'm still playing with SageTV. I paid for Snapstream, Showshifter and SageTV. My PC specs are as follows:

ASUS TUSL2-C - i815EP chipset
Intel PIII - 1.2Ghz
256MB RAM
ATI Radeon 7500 using VGA out (not S-video!)
Hauppauge PVR250
ASUS TV880 TV Tuner (not used with Sage, of course)
C-Media 8738 sound card
Hard drive, wireless keyboard, etc.

Output to a Hitachi 36SDX01S 36" TV - support for native 800x600 SVGA!
(basically just acting as big PC monitor.)


I've played with all the above apps at various times, and am using SageTV mostly now. I echo all the comments made in previous posts, but here are some others.

1) If you're going to watch live TV without a care for PVR functionality, the ASUS TV Tuner or one of the better input cards (S-video, component video, etc) with dScaler will give the best output. A Holo3D card is also probably a good choice from what I've read.

2) If you want a PVR, it doesn't seem to matter how fast your PC is. I don't care if you have a 3.2Ghz P4. My experience is the hardware encoders just look better, especially the Hauppauge PVR-250. I played with Snapstream and Showshifter on my main PC, which is a P4 2.8Ghz, and it just didn't look or work as good as the Hauppauge.

3) Showshifter is out. If I want to record a TV show uncompressed (or slightly compressed like with HuffyUV), so I can convert to DivX later, I'll just use VirtualVCR interactively. Edit later with VirtualDub, convert to DivX with good deinterlace post-processing and burn away. Showshifter doesn't really compete with Snapstream or SageTV as a PVR. It competes with your VCR.

4) SageTV is really slick. I can watch TV one most of my PC's in my house through the tuner in my 1.2Ghz HTPC. It requires a SageTVClient license, but works well. I have a problem with hiccups on a P650, but thats a low end machine, so I'm currently working with Sage support to fix that.

5) Snapstream stayed on my PC for about 3 days. After I got past the great user interface, it just didn't compete in functionality with Sage. As others mentioned, Sage version 2.0 should be the clincher.

6) SageTV is the best. Snapstream is not. Anyone want to buy my copy?

-Robert

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Good info on WMV. I know the NVDVD is set to deinterlace by default and its settings are not exactly clear on how to disable it. According to the manual though you set "De-Interlace Control" to "Film". Film content is at just under 24 FPS which is why you would NOT want deinterlacing on. TV content is at 50 FPS I believe (again I think shows and stations matter - when I run with deinterlacing off some shows are fine).

I set deinterlacing on NVDVD to "film" which, according to the help file, does indeed completely disable deinterlacing. Went to live TV and it looks better! It's actually (understandably) sharper. Thanks for the pointer. When I pause, I don't see scan lines, but I do see the two frames interlaced (like you normally would if you could just pause the signal and replay the last two frames from your analog cable feed anyway - similar to http://www.100fps.com/scene1_2.jpg, but without the visible scan lines). When it's in motion, the picture quality (set on SnapStream's highest quality built-in profile) is excellent. If I turned the deinterlacing back on, paused images would probably look better, but (to my eyes) video in motion looks worse. I think I might turn the PVR250's motion compensation down a bit, but otherwise, I'm set.

So, to sum up: on a progressive scan display, SageTV may look better, given that it has the ability to use DScaler for deinterlacing. I don't have a PVR250 in my system with the LCD monitor, so I'm not able to do a side-by-side on a progessive scan device. On an interlaced display, SnapStream (to my eyes) is effectively indistinguishable from the original signal.

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by Valnar


5) Snapstream stayed on my PC for about 3 days. After I got past the great user interface, it just didn't compete in functionality with Sage. As others mentioned, Sage version 2.0 should be the clincher.


Being more concerned about functionality myself than PQ, what is it, functionality-wise that Sage has that SnapStream doesn't? Are you referring to the ability to use the client piece or something else?

How's the WAF/SAF (in terms of usability, not necessarily UI polish)?

(I suppose I should just try it... If only I weren't working 2 jobs, I'd sit and tweak my HTPC all day :) )

[mlbdude]

Those tearing between the images (superimposed) are the scanlines I was referring to. It sounds like you were deinterlacing and are now not. I did that for a few days, but there are some shows that are worse than others with the tearing. It just depends on how much you can tolerate. Using DScaler I can get a beautiful image free of both interlacing and deinerlacing artifacts. I still think it is slightly better with deinterlacing turned off a lot of the time, but again some shows were so bad I just got sick of switching back and forth.

Glad you are happy with your setup now, good luck!

[Valnar]

Yah, the SageTVClient is really nice. It's just as good as viewing live from the HTPC with the PVR-250. If I wanted to watch TV on my main computer or my laptop, I don't need a TV tuner.

UI and WAF are similar. She can navigate either assuming I set it all up properly in the first place. I have SageTV start automatically if the PC shutdown for whatever reason. I leave it off in bad weather, or if I don't have anything scheduled to record when I'm not at home.

The web interface of Snapstream is nice of course, and each person has to decide if that is worth it. My home cable-modem has a router attached with VPN capabilities, so my laptop (or work PC) is always available to get to my HTPC with PC Anywhere. WOL allows me to boot my PC remotely with my 3COM NIC. It works fine for me.

I'm going to buy a MX-700 remote, so once that is configured, either app will be just as easy. We use an Airboard keyboard for everything now. I don't use Girder or any other IR devices. Other applications include FFDShow, BSPlayer, TheaterTek and PowerDVD. What I can't play with those isn't worth watching.

-Robert

[BrentSalwasser]

I'm a SnapStream user and I'm happy with it for the most part. It's been very stable and I like the direction they are going in with some of the new features like a transparent EPG and future dual tuner support. PQ has been great.

One of the main reasons I initially went with SS instead of Sage was because of the remote scheduling and integrated support for the ATI remote. I have a firewall and VPN setup like another poster mentioned, but it's nice to able to connect from any internet connection without the need for addition software or VPN configs.

Sage 2 looks really promising and I'll probably try it out when it's released. Dual tuner support, web scheduling, cleint/server are great features.

[L1st3r]

This is kind of off topic, but if you get Sage, and you record shows, how do you get rid of the commercials? Is there software out there that can just cut the commercials out? Or do you have to re-encode the MPEG2 (and lose some quality) to get rid of the commercials?

[mlbdude]

The 250 comes with some crappy software that allows you to splice different segments together into a new file without reencoding so it can be done.

[Valnar]

There are tons of MPEG2 editor programs that allow you to cut out commercials without reencoding much more than a frame or two at the splice.

Some of the best ones are here:
http://www.mediawaresolutions.com/ProductInfo/index.html

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by L1st3r
This is kind of off topic, but if you get Sage, and you record shows, how do you get rid of the commercials? Is there software out there that can just cut the commercials out? Or do you have to re-encode the MPEG2 (and lose some quality) to get rid of the commercials?

Like Valnar said there are a multitude of programs that allow MPEG2 editing without need for a re-encode.

My personal (and all time) favorite is Womble MPEG2VCR (http://www.womble.com/products.htm). It is VERY FAST, frame accurate and makes cutting commercials a breeze.

It takes me altogether about 15 minutes or less to cut about 6 segments of commercials from an hour long show (with single frame accuracy) and get a "clean" MPEG2 file on disk.

At $120 a pop it is by no means cheap ... but if you regularly edit MPEG2 files, it is sooo worth it. I do it enough to easily justify the price; if your needs are more lightweight, try out some of the other solutions.

[psxjunky]

Hmm ... so I just found out (http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=451&perpage=20&pagenumber=1) that SageTV doesn't support Closed Captioning ... and is probably not going to support it in the near future (not in the initial release of v2.0 at least). This is pretty bad ... so I am putting this down as a big con for SageTV.

Anyone know whether SnapStream and MythTV supports Close Captioning or not ?

[mechou]

mythtv supports closed captioning (at least in USA). Don't know about other countries. At least it does so with a SW encoder card (live stream and recording). Don't know about pvr-x50.

It's just so fun to find that commercial products can't measure up to an open source project, as each day goes by....

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by mechou
mythtv supports closed captioning (at least in USA). Don't know about other countries. At least it does so with a SW encoder card (live stream and recording). Don't know about pvr-x50.

It's just so fun to find that commercial products can't measure up to an open source project, as each day goes by....

You know, I HAVE to agree with you now ... and this time I am not kidding :(


I just found out (http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9690&highlight=Caption) that SnapStream doesn't support Close Captioning either ... and has no plans to support it in the near future :mad:

Aaarghhhh ...

When is the Windows port for MythTV coming out :p ... no seriously, I would LOVE that ...

[L1st3r]

A windows port of MythTV would be pretty amazing...If I didn't have a few windows apps that had to run on my HTPC, I'd go Linux...just because of MythTV!

[jkdufair]

I was thinking this morning that a good way to get legit guide data for MythTV would be to buy SnapStream but not use it. Write a client for the Snapstream.net service (you'd still have to have an account, obviously) that could download listings (and remote recordings for that matter). If only I wasn't working 2 jobs...

Perhaps Snapstream should just sell subscriptions to Snapstream.net (not likely as it would only enable their competitors)

[mechou]

Originally posted by psxjunky

<snip>
When is the Windows port for MythTV coming out :p ... no seriously, I would LOVE that ...

All kidding aside, while a Windows port of mythtv in theory shouldn't be that hard, I wouldn't hold my breath. The low-level "exclusive" use of the overlay in Windows is a deal killer, at least as far a time-shifting is concerned. And as Issac would say, you're welcome to port mythtv to Windows anytime :)

And I say this in all seriousness: Quite frankly, perhaps you can enumerate what Windows programs you use, and find out whether they have linux equivalents. Linux has come a long way in the last two years, there really aren't that many things that windows can do that linux can't do or do better. Mythtv is a perfect example of that.

Grow some backbone and make the switch today! :)

[BrentSalwasser]

I think that Sage and SS should take a cue from MythTV and implement a skinning/theme feature. I just set up a test MythTV system (with KnoppMyth, mentioned earlier in this thread) and I've got to say that the program is just beautiful.

I think Sage is working on something for 2.0, but I don't think SS is working on anything at the moment.

[mlbdude]

Sage 2.0 won't have a "skinning" feature exactly. I think it will be something more like a RAD development IDE (kind of like Visual Basic) with PVR components.

I guess you could skin with that. You could also develop your own PVR applications.

This blends in nicely with their desire to license their technology. It would allow companies to get all the foundation of a solid PVR and do what they want from there.

[rkuo]

Technically, SnapStream is skinnable now. All files are stored as simple PNG's, etc. The reason we don't officially support this is because we still change the UI around to accommodate UI changes as the product evolves. It would be annoying for people's skins to break every time we made a change.

Also, I didn't say that we don't have plans to support CC. I said I want to get other things out of the way first...aka multi-tuner and several other types of issues that have been raised. I wouldn't have spent the type figuring it out if I didn't plan on doing it.

[mechou]

psxjunky,

Some suggested corrections to pro/con list:
I wouldn't say that mythtv EPG is "much more poor" than Sage or SS. It is something I rarely think about, and I actually think myth EPG layout is better. You might want to say something like:
- since mythtv relies on xmltv, and xmltv depends on zap2it.com, xmltv sw may need more frequent updates due to changes in zap2it format/layout.

And about "serious HW" if you run with SW encoder. Bill (Ursa) already admitted that his experience was singular (i.e. not ordinary), likely a problem with his setup/motherboard. I think you should say something like:
- minimum 1.4Ghz CPU to run with SW encoder with DVD encode rates. SW encode requires more CPU than HW mpeg encoder.

Originally posted by psxjunky

<snip> [this is the mythtv section]
- Relies on XMLTV for EPG data. The EPG support is much more poor than the above two
<snip>
- High hardware requirements - if you do not have a hardware encoder, you need some serious hardware to run it

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by mechou
psxjunky,

Some suggested corrections to pro/con list:
I wouldn't say that mythtv EPG is "much more poor" than Sage or SS. It is something I rarely think about, and I actually think myth EPG layout is better. You might want to say something like:
- since mythtv relies on xmltv, and xmltv depends on zap2it.com, xmltv sw may need more frequent updates due to changes in zap2it format/layout.


Agreed. I have updated the list.



And about "serious HW" if you run with SW encoder. Bill (Ursa) already admitted that his experience was singular (i.e. not ordinary), likely a problem with his setup/motherboard. I think you should say something like:
- minimum 1.4Ghz CPU to run with SW encoder with DVD encode rates. SW encode requires more CPU than HW mpeg encoder.

After thinking about this a bit, I removed this point altogether from the list. Higher hardware requirement is inherent for software encoding ... and that is not specific to MythTV. In any software encoding solution, you need more powerful hardware if you want to get the same image quality as a hardware encoding solution ... so instead of listing this as a con for all three, I removed is altogether. I think the general suggestion at the bottom of the list covers this anyway.

[Ursa]

Originally posted by jkdufair
I was thinking this morning that a good way to get legit guide data for MythTV would be to buy SnapStream but not use it. Write a client for the Snapstream.net service (you'd still have to have an account, obviously) that could download listings (and remote recordings for that matter). If only I wasn't working 2 jobs...

Actually, all that you need is the program data itself. You would need a subscription from whomever SS, Sage, etc. use (Zap2it offers one for developers, I believe), not an actual license from SS, et al. However, if you could get the data into an XMLTV-like storage format, then Myth would take over from there.

In fact, you don't need anything else to do web recording, etc. It is handled by Myth (MythWeb, etc.) itself - once it knows what is on. You could create dummy time slot data and do it without any inbound data, but what fun would that be? :D

Originally posted by mechou
I wouldn't say that mythtv EPG is "much more poor" than Sage or SS. It is something I rarely think about, and I actually think myth EPG layout is better. You might want to say something like:
- since mythtv relies on xmltv, and xmltv depends on zap2it.com, xmltv sw may need more frequent updates due to changes in zap2it format/layout.

mechou - I'll disagree with you this point. I believe that the interface should be judged as a whole (EPG interface included). Myth really shines here. Having a pretty face on functionality that breaks a few times a month is a big minus, IMHO. Changing the con to "may need more frequent updates" is a bit misleading. Myth depends on XMLTV, and XMLTV will need more frequent updates versus the other packages. If we are talking about interfaces within each function, then we need to be consistent on this (interface for playing a show, interface for playing a recorded file, etc.). Since we already have one big bucket for interface, we should judge the EPG on its technical merits/functionality. This leaves us with having to judge Myth in concert with its dependency on XMLTV.

From a less technical person's perspective, this would probably be irritating enough to abandon the product and create a bunch of "playa haters" out there. I would rather people knew what they were getting into, rather than create an army of anti-Myth folks who took our advice without being fully informed.

Later,
Bill

[psxjunky]

Ursa, Mechou : Here is the new wording for the XMLTV con for MythTV. If this is still not correct, discuss it among yourself and give me a new, mutually agreed, correct statement and I will put it up there --

- Relies on XMLTV for EPG data. Since XMLTV depends on zap2it.com, XMLTV sw needs more frequent updates due to changes in zap2it format/layout. Apparently this format changes quite frequently and everytime the EPG service breaks and is down for a few days.

[mechou]

I don't have any issues with removing the word "may" from my original suggestion.

But I really think you're exaggerating about "breaks a few times a month." I'm still using xmltv0.5.19, release on 9/27. (latest is 0.5.21, released on 11/02). So that's at least 1.5 month of no upgrades and counting....:)

And mythtv hasn't "broken" just because I'm not using the latest and greatest xmltv. Even though xmltv gets released, on average, about twice a month doesn't mean you have to upgrade twice a month. Some of the xmltv upgrades address other (relatively minor) issues than zap2it format changing. Which is why I originally put "may" in my original suggestion.

Originally posted by Ursa
mechou - I'll disagree with you this point. I believe that the interface should be judged as a whole (EPG interface included). Myth really shines here. Having a pretty face on functionality that breaks a few times a month is a big minus, IMHO. Changing the con to "may need more frequent updates" is a bit misleading. Myth depends on XMLTV, and XMLTV will need more frequent updates versus the other packages. If we are talking about interfaces within each function, then we need to be consistent on this (interface for playing a show, interface for playing a recorded file, etc.). Since we already have one big bucket for interface, we should judge the EPG on its technical merits/functionality. This leaves us with having to judge Myth in concert with its dependency on XMLTV.

From a less technical person's perspective, this would probably be irritating enough to abandon the product and create a bunch of "playa haters" out there. I would rather people knew what they were getting into, rather than create an army of anti-Myth folks who took our advice without being fully informed.

Later,
Bill

[mechou]

I saw your post only after my last response to Bill. I think you have a misconception about xmltv. Myth (by default) downloads 7 days of listings in advance. It does this every day by default. So even when zap2it changes format, you still have 6 or so days worth of "good" data in myth. xmltv usually gets fixed well within that timeframe, so there is absolutely no EPG interruption (provided you upgrade xmltv during this time frame).

Is it a PITA to have to keep upgrading xmltv? Yes, it's a pain to have to "keep an eye" on it (cron can email you whether myth/xmltv didn't download zap2it data successfully, so you know immediately), compile it, etc. But I've got this process automated via some scripting, and no longer think about it.

Originally posted by psxjunky
Ursa, Mechou : Here is the new wording for the XMLTV con for MythTV. If this is still not correct, discuss it among yourself and give me a new, mutually agreed, correct statement and I will put it up there --

- Relies on XMLTV for EPG data. Since XMLTV depends on zap2it.com, XMLTV sw needs more frequent updates due to changes in zap2it format/layout. Apparently this format changes quite frequently and everytime the EPG service breaks and is down for a few days.

[DArthur]

I've tried ShowShifter, SnapStream (v2.xx) and am currently using SageTV.

I actually like showshifter - it ran fine on my PIV 2.8Gig XP box. Image quality was excellent using an XCapture card/DScaler. The deal breaker was the EPG.

Older version of SnapStream was buggy, and the interface was too busy/non-intuitive. Also had problems getting it to work "out of the box".

SageTV with a PVR250 runs trouble free. The simple UI is easy to use, image quality is excellent, supports DScaler plug-in. Rock-solid.

I always get a chuckle when *nix proponents insist that setting up both a *nix distro and applications are simple/easy as MS Windows. I considered using Linux on my Epia M10000, but no current distribution supports the onboard MPEG acceleration of the CLE266 chipset, and just getting the onboard I/O (Sound, USB, etc) to work required patching, compiling, etc.

So MythTV might be a great application (the info on the website is impressive), but I have a hard time believing it's a snap to install, esp. if your using some exotic, new hardware.

Some of us spend too much time on other pursuits and just want plug and play. SageTV provides this for me.

Darryl

[mechou]

Then you obviously missed reading this:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/Users_F11/SUCCESS_-_Gentoo_and_Nehemiah_hardware_decoding_P89688/

And how would you _know_ whether *nix solutions are "plug 'n play" or not w/o having tried it? This is precisely the kind of closed-minded "Micro-serf" attitude that MS wants you to have. Find out for youself. Let's face it, some people like yourself are just too intellectually lazy (insert rationalization here) to try something out of their "comfort zone."

Originally posted by DArthur

I always get a chuckle when *nix proponents insist that setting up both a *nix distro and applications are simple/easy as MS Windows. I considered using Linux on my Epia M10000, but no current distribution supports the onboard MPEG acceleration of the CLE266 chipset, and just getting the onboard I/O (Sound, USB, etc) to work required patching, compiling, etc.

So MythTV might be a great application (the info on the website is impressive), but I have a hard time believing it's a snap to install, esp. if your using some exotic, new hardware.

Some of us spend too much time on other pursuits and just want plug and play. SageTV provides this for me.

Darryl

[salsbst]

mechou, tone it down, man. There is absolutely no reason to insult people over this. You're doing harm to your cause.

[DArthur]

mechou,

I was expecting this response :) I actually am quiet fond of linux/unix (having worked with it extensively several years ago). I just read your link - Good news - MythTV may indeed work on my Via system. Unfortunately, the rest of that thread lends credence to the other part of my comment - loading the OS is not a walk in the park. When you have to know what versions of libs you need, and what directories they need to go in, you've just moved out of plug and play.

Let's keep the insults in check - you don't know me well enough yet to determine whether I'm "intellectually lazy".

I just recently installed RedHat 9.0 on an old E Machine - worked great. The latest distributions of Linux are getting closer to prime-time for the average user. But until new hardware routinely ships with linux drivers, the "average joe", or just someone who doesn't want to spend a lot of time on setup, will be turned off.

Look at your own response in this thread wrt using XMLTV. You need to write scripts and event handlers to keep the EPG up-to-date? Obviously, you know your stuff, but the average user might not be willing to do that. The original poster was looking for information on PVR software, he should know exactly what he'g getting himself into.

You need to step back a bit - it's just software!

remind me not to discuss politics or religion with you...

Darryl

[mechou]

We have discussed the merits/non-merits of mythtv for seven pages. If after all this discussion you still don't feel like trying it, you don't have to. No skin off my back.

Other people (besides me) have mentioned that there are distributions out there that pretty much allows you to install myth from "bare metal" in about 4 steps. Then someone like you comes along complaining that linux HW-assisted decode doesn't work on a nehemiah and suggesting *nix folks make it look too easy, when you have clearly not done your homework, what would you call that? Never mind the fact that the lack of Nehemiah HW-assist decode is not the "fault" of linux, but of VIA?

I don't hear too many people in this thread complaining about the fact that they've got to patch their OS every few days with WindowsUpdate, and yet people complain about a relatively minor thing like updating xmltv via linux once a month or so? As Shakespeare wrote, "me thinks he doeth protest too much."

Come on people, don't forget you're getting xmltv, mythtv, & linux for free (as in beer). Maybe you are the one who doesn't have things in perspective, complaining about this and that, when commercial SW you paid for don't even have anywhere near the number of features?

As to the script to update xmltv I wrote, it's a three line script. Not much different from a batch file. That's what computers are good for, doing repetitive things quickly and automatically.

Yeah, it's only SW, but people are endowed with brains. A mind is a terrible thing to waste....;) It's all about attitude. Had you said something like "I had trouble getting mythtv to use HW decode on a nehemiah..." instead of complaining "linux is hard to install on the latest & greatest HW" you wouldn't have gotten the reception you did.

Originally posted by DArthur
mechou,

I was expecting this response :) I actually am quiet fond of linux/unix (having worked with it extensively several years ago). I just read your link - Good news - MythTV may indeed work on my Via system. Unfortunately, the rest of that thread lends credence to the other part of my comment - loading the OS is not a walk in the park. When you have to know what versions of libs you need, and what directories they need to go in, you've just moved out of plug and play.

Let's keep the insults in check - you don't know me well enough yet to determine whether I'm "intellectually lazy".

I just recently installed RedHat 9.0 on an old E Machine - worked great. The latest distributions of Linux are getting closer to prime-time for the average user. But until new hardware routinely ships with linux drivers, the "average joe", or just someone who doesn't want to spend a lot of time on setup, will be turned off.

Look at your own response in this thread wrt using XMLTV. You need to write scripts and event handlers to keep the EPG up-to-date? Obviously, you know your stuff, but the average user might not be willing to do that. The original poster was looking for information on PVR software, he should know exactly what he'g getting himself into.

You need to step back a bit - it's just software!

remind me not to discuss politics or religion with you...

Darryl

[DArthur]

mechou,

As for not doing my homework, up until two days ago, the last post at the MythTV bulletin board stated that there was still a problem with it. I guess that if I had spent a considerable amount of time looking at several sites, I might have seen that the CLE266 was now supported (oh, but with some extra effort to get it installed). I haven't tried it because from what I have seen on the MythTV site, and what I have read at Linitx.org and the viaarena forums led me to believe that a substantial amount of work would be required to get it working. I haven't seen anything yet that leads me to believe that there wouldn't be a substantial learning curve/effort involved in getting it up and running on my system.

I'll try to make my point very clear. MythTV looks like a great application. But what is really involved in using it? The prospective HTPC'er should know, esp. if they have not used Linux before. And yes, Linux may install just dandy on most systems, but take a look in our own linux forum to get an idea of what may be involved in setting up an HTPC. Or you can look at the forums I already mentioned, or just take a look at the MythTV forum.

The fact that it is free is only relevant if the end-user is cost concience.

I completely agree with you about attitude. I think you've done an admirable job in displaying yours :)

It's great that we can have this discussion because there are so many options. As always, to each his/her own.

Darryl


**** EDIT *****

Let's just agree to disagree - I really had no intention of hijacking this thread. Some great information is presented here - let's keep it coming.

mechou, I'd be happy to continue the discussion via PM or maybe we could start a new thread. At this point, I respect you position, let's let it go for now :)

Darryl

[MikeSM]

I'll chime in here too. I'm an old time Unix hack (was at UCB when the CSRG was working on BSD). I think Linux has brought Unix to the masses, and it's way easier to install a Unix distro today that it ever has been. I prefer mandrake in terms of ease of install and use, but many distro's in pretty good shape here.

And I'm also considering moving to MythTV, because it offers a single package that has multi-tuner PVR (including HD), DVD Ripping, built-in transcoding and internetworking between systems (Myth has a database that all the systems share, so you can access any media on any device). They even have an xbox frontend for it now. All very cool.

That said, I would gladly pay for a commercial windows product that did the same. While I enjoy building systems, having a good commercial product that is supported, and has others developing drivers and new applications for it is much more desirable than tracking a great, though immature, product through it's development. You'll never see things like parental control and such in the Linux community, and program guides usually have to be hacked or paid for in some other way.

That said, vendors often times fail to build products that works as well or have the feature set of open source products. Look at Apache as an example. Huge market share in spite of lots of commercial offerings... Look at the demise of Sun microsystems at the hands of Linux, a market they should have completely owned!

I am hoping that Sage 2 will be able to do this without me having to do a lot of integration with DVD ripping software and doing convoluted things to share media in my home. If so, I won't go the Myth route. Otherwise, if I simply won't be able to get the features otherwise, then I'll deal with the hassles and go the Myth route. If a lot of other people make the same decision, that software will get easier and easier to install, and eventually dominate the field. If commercial software can't fill the need, Open Source will eventually fill it, and won't easily be displaced after that.

Thanks,
Mike

[Ursa]

Hey guys, I think that Myth has been fairly represented, and that the linux pros/cons belong in other sites/fora (ars technica battlefront, anyone?). At the point at which the thread starter has given us license to discuss a great application in a thread which wwas originally devoted to a more narrow scope, that's a good sign. When others' interest is piqued as a result of a discussion, I'd say that's another good sign.

So, should we continue to talk about some of the merits of other packages? Freevo is also popular (on the linux side), and I haven't heard anyone talk about the merits of a "roll-your-own" with myHTPC. Bueller?

Later,
Bill

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by Ursa
So, should we continue to talk about some of the merits of other packages? Freevo is also popular (on the linux side), and I haven't heard anyone talk about the merits of a "roll-your-own" with myHTPC. Bueller?


Sure ! I have no problem with that ... in fact I was just thinking about adding at least myHTPC to the list of applications being discussed here ... however, since this thread is still about PVR software only (and not a general purpose HTPC front end) please discuss only the PVR capabilities of myHTPC.

If Freevo is a worthy contender along with Myth, Sage and SnapStream, feel free to include that too.

If someone cares to list the pros and cons of myHTPC PVR plugin and Freevo I'll gladly add them to the original post.

I must admit that I was a little selfish with my original intention when this thread was started ... I wanted to find out which one of the two solutions (Sage or SS) will be good for my particular situation. Based on my prior research (which did include a cursory look at MythTV and myHTPC) I was convinced that I wanted to go with either SageTV or SnapStream. While I am still determined to go with a Windows based solution (I won't go into the details, but all I can say is that I have used both Windows and Linux and am much more comfortable staying in the Windows land ... at least for the time being), I would love to open up the discussion for any PC based PVR solutions.

I am pleasantly surprised to see that this thread has taken a nice turn and is becoming a great resource for a general information about various PC based PVR softwares. So please go ahead and list the details of your favorite PVR software and I'll add them to the original list. If there is sufficient interest in a particular solution, I'll even request the moderators to update the poll to include a separate selection for that.

Keep the nice discussion going ...

[nuthead]

WRT Mythtv:
- Relies on XMLTV for EPG data. Since XMLTV depends on zap2it.com, XMLTV sw needs more frequent updates due to changes in zap2it format/layout. Apparently this format changes quite frequently and everytime the EPG service breaks and is down for a few days.

This is not entirely true. You can have your own XML file with guide data if you wish (there is a manual option to populate the database). BTW, the last time XMLTV broke was end of May or very early June--I wouldn't associate that with "quite frequently."
Maybe saying "the format changed twice this year" is more correct. And when the last incident happened, XMLTV was fixed within 2 days ( at most)--hardly a problem since there's already 8 days of data in the database.

[mechou]

Completely agree with nuthead on this. Bottom line is that the xmltv issue has been overblown from a molehill into a mountain. It's not as if there isn't a simple workaround for this. And I've never had mythtv miss a recording, either due to xmltv/zap2it format changing, or any other reason (other than operator error), period.

With regards to people saying "people should know exactly what they should be getting themselves into (with mythtv)." At some point, all this "talk" is at best going to give you just an abstract feel for what's involved and the potential results. This xmltv issue is a clear example that people still have misconceptions. At the risk of being harsh, it's not as if these things are not freely available on the net for you to try. The *only way* for any of you to find the beauty (and the warts) is to "find out for youself by trying it," and not rely on hearsay, or second hand information. Then make up your own mind on whether it's a keeper or not. This is what I meant by "intellectual laziness."

Yes, it will involve time and effort, and maybe even HW investment, but if you haven't got the hint by now, then you aren't really "listening" to the discussion anyway. That old aphorism "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink" comes to mind. Nobody is going to go over your house and install it for you.

Originally posted by nuthead
WRT Mythtv:


This is not entirely true. You can have your own XML file with guide data if you wish (there is a manual option to populate the database). BTW, the last time XMLTV broke was end of May or very early June--I wouldn't associate that with "quite frequently."
Maybe saying "the format changed twice this year" is more correct. And when the last incident happened, XMLTV was fixed within 2 days ( at most)--hardly a problem since there's already 8 days of data in the database.

[DArthur]

"With regards to people saying "people should know exactly what they should be getting themselves into (with mythtv)." At some point, all this "talk" is at best going to give you just an abstract feel for what's involved and the potential results. This xmltv issue is a clear example that people still have misconceptions. At the risk of being harsh, it's not as if these things are not freely available on the net for you to try. The *only way* for any of you to find the beauty (and the warts) is to "find out for youself by trying it," and not rely on hearsay, or second hand information. Then make up your own mind on whether it's a keeper or not."

Couldn't agree with you more. At some point, if you're really interested in something, you really need to try it out.

Now I'd like to get some feedback on MyHTPC. I looked at it a while back, and it showed some promise (TV/PVR modules, DVD, etc...). At the time, the documentation was pretty fragmented.

What state is it in now?

Darryl

[psxjunky]

Okay, I have updated the XMLTV related issue for MythTV in the first post to reflect reality as close to as I understand it. I have no personal experience with it and I am not going to install MythTV just yet to find this one thing out, so I have to rely on opinions from actual users.

I just want people to be aware that there is some issue with EPG data (which, in my opinion, is one of the most important part of any PVR system) based on XMLTV and it is not as "set-and-forget" simple as the other two solutions.

Also, I would like to mention one thing about the comment about "there is already 6-7 days worth of data in the EPG ... so why worry if it breaks for a day or two". Having the buffer is effective only when the networks are not changing the program schedules over that peiod of time. However, as we all know that that is simply not true and networks do change the times/duration of our favorite programs at times to accomodate sports/president speeches/etc. Here lies one of the most powerful features of PVRs -- that they can automatically track these kinds of changes and automatically re-adjust the recording times based on the priority you have set. That is the reason all PVR solutions that I know of, try to call the "mothership" once everyday ... and not once in 7-14 days.

Thanks everyone who provided feedback on this, but let's not divert the thread too much on this single issue :)

Lets hear the good (and bad) things about Freevo, myHTPC and [insert your favorite PVR sw here] :)

[mechou]

Well, while you might have a *theoretical* point, this is not how EPGs work in the real world. Let's consider your example.

Your favorite program comes on after the sports program. Just to be specific, let's say your favorite program starts at 7pm. The prior sports program was scheduled to end at 7pm, but runs overtime due to some tiebreaker for say 15 minutes.

Do you think in this circumstance the EPG data would have changed?

Hint: "We now return to your regular scheduled program". Fact is no-one can tell a priori how long those special programs are going to last. And this is true of all epg data in general. So every solution suffers the same fate.

Originally posted by psxjunky
Okay, I have updated the XMLTV related issue for MythTV in the first post to reflect reality as close to as I understand it. I have no personal experience with it and I am not going to install MythTV just yet to find this one thing out, so I have to rely on opinions from actual users.

I just want people to be aware that there is some issue with EPG data (which, in my opinion, is one of the most important part of any PVR system) based on XMLTV and it is not as "set-and-forget" simple as the other two solutions.

Also, I would like to mention one thing about the comment about "there is already 6-7 days worth of data in the EPG ... so why worry if it breaks for a day or two". Having the buffer is effective only when the networks are not changing the program schedules over that peiod of time. However, as we all know that that is simply not true and networks do change the times/duration of our favorite programs at times to accomodate sports/president speeches/etc. Here lies one of the most powerful features of PVRs -- that they can automatically track these kinds of changes and automatically re-adjust the recording times based on the priority you have set. That is the reason all PVR solutions that I know of, try to call the "mothership" once everyday ... and not once in 7-14 days.

Thanks everyone who provided feedback on this, but let's not divert the thread too much on this single issue :)

Lets hear the good (and bad) things about Freevo, myHTPC and [insert your favorite PVR sw here] :)

[nuthead]

I just realized that even though I replied to this thread, i never actually voted for the poll... OK I just did it. :-)
As far as Freevo, i don't have any personal experience with it. It does have a vrey slick interface, the only drawback i can think of is that doesn't have time-shifting.
Installation should be super easy since they provide an all-inclusive binary package.

I, too, would be glad to hear from people who have actually used it. Heck, for this thread's sake, I might download it and try it.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by nuthead
I, too, would be glad to hear from people who have actually used it. Heck, for this thread's sake, I might download it and try it.

Go nuthead ... we need some more people like you :D Go ahead and try it out and then report back in a couple days :)

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by mechou
Well, while you might have a *theoretical* point, this is not how EPGs work in the real world. Let's consider your example.

Your favorite program comes on after the sports program. Just to be specific, let's say your favorite program starts at 7pm. The prior sports program was scheduled to end at 7pm, but runs overtime due to some tiebreaker for say 15 minutes.

Do you think in this circumstance the EPG data would have changed?

Hint: "We now return to your regular scheduled program". Fact is no-one can tell a priori how long those special programs are going to last. And this is true of all epg data in general. So every solution suffers the same fate.

I agree it won't help in situations like you mentioned, but it *does* help in situation where networks change the program schedule with at leat a days notice. I think very recently NBC did the same thing where Freinds was suddenly supersized and Will & Grace and a couple others were shifted by half an hour or so. I didn't have to do a thing and all my PVRs automatically adjusted the recording times and recorded every show ... and this is not the first time it happened.

Anyway, like I said, there are good points on both sides of the fence, but this thread is not about Linux vs Windows or XMLTV vs Zap2It or other EPGs ... the purpose of this thread is now to discuss any PVR software solution that is out there and discuss their pros and cons .... so lets please try to keep it in track :)

We all have our personal likes and dislikes about certain features, and we sure have the right to mention those. But I think it will help people if they know the true facts about a system and then judge for themselves if it is good or bad for them.

We still need more information about myHTPC PVR plugin and Freevo but not getting enough info on these :( May be the thread title is not encouraging people to look in ... I'll request the moderators to update the thread title as well as to update the poll to add separate choices for MythTV, myHTPC TV Plugin, Freevo and Windows XP MCE.

[mechou]

"You want the truth?? You can't handle the truth!" [Jack Nicholson impersonation :)]

Again, this is not how networks work. They don't arbitrarily change schedules on a whim, without giving *some* prior notice. It would upset their advertisers too much. Now since I timeshift everything, I don't watch commercials. But from my past experience, channels advertise that a supersized episode of "Friends" is coming up at least a week in advance.

That's not to say that EPG data don't get corrected "at some time." But what's the likelihood of this happening while you're updating xmltv? Zero to none. Like I said, I've never missed a recording, thanks to mythtv. I have with other pc pvrs. Missing programs is a non-issue. If you want to say you need to upgrade xmltv (say up to 4 times a year), I don't think I'd have any issues with that.

All joking aside, I'm a bit puzzled and hurt by the tenor of your last post. Are you accusing me of not being objective? On this thread, Bill (Ursa) and someone else complained xmltv was a nuisance (to update). nuthead and myself say it's no big deal, spend a few brain cycles, write a script to update xmltv automatically. Now who would you rather believe?

Without being pendantic I think there's a pervasive "couch potato mentality" in this thread. It goes like: "Hmm, why should I spend time and effort finding how this pvr program works for myself when I can get the sucker over there on the web to give me a detailed report and competitive analysis?"

Now I'd understand the reluctance if you had to spend $400 for each one of these pvr solutions, but evaluation copies are available free from the web. What's the excuse to not to try it for yourself?

PS: If it makes you feel any better, I too had doubts when I was considering the switch to mythtv. The "scuttlebutt" was it was a PITA to install, yada yada. After I did made the move, I wondered what the fuss was all about. Quite frankly, I was kicking myself for not having made the move sooner. My GF loved myth as soon as I showed it to her. She was even more pleased when she discovered myth never missed a recording, unlike other PVR's we've tried earlier.

Originally posted by psxjunky
I agree it won't help in situations like you mentioned, but it *does* help in situation where networks change the program schedule with at leat a days notice. I think very recently NBC did the same thing where Freinds was suddenly supersized and Will & Grace and a couple others were shifted by half an hour or so. I didn't have to do a thing and all my PVRs automatically adjusted the recording times and recorded every show ... and this is not the first time it happened.

Anyway, like I said, there are good points on both sides of the fence, but this thread is not about Linux vs Windows or XMLTV vs Zap2It or other EPGs ... the purpose of this thread is now to discuss any PVR software solution that is out there and discuss their pros and cons .... so lets please try to keep it in track :)

We all have our personal likes and dislikes about certain features, and we sure have the right to mention those. But I think it will help people if they know the true facts about a system and then judge for themselves if it is good or bad for them.

We still need more information about myHTPC PVR plugin and Freevo but not getting enough info on these :( May be the thread title is not encouraging people to look in ... I'll request the moderators to update the thread title as well as to update the poll to add separate choices for MythTV, myHTPC TV Plugin, Freevo and Windows XP MCE.

[psxjunky]

mechou: I am terribly sorry if I inadvertently hurt you in my previous comment ... but I can assure you that was not my intention :( You have provided a wealth of information in this thread so far and I am grateful for that. I still apologize if my comments were rude ... but I can assure you that it was definitely not intentional.

I do disagree with you on certain points, but that's our democratic right, correct ? You mentioned the "couch potato mentality" in your post, and frankly I SEE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Some of us love tweaking our PCs to death, and some prefer spending their time in other ways ... both are right ! So if someone prefers a solution that needs the least amount of tweaking, and are willing to spend more money for that, what's wrong with that ?

Sure, it is good to do all your research on your own ... but none of us will complain if someone else takes the time and effort to do the research and present you with a summary of the results ? I prefer doing my own research most of the time, but at times I am in hurry and just want a quick and dirty answer ... and I strongly believe that forums like this are great for that.

It is with this intention that I want this thread to become a general discussion about ALL PC based PVR solutions so that someone looking for a quick answer may come and take a quick peek and decide for themselves which one is best for their unique situation. Is the quick answer always right ? Definitely not ... but one should know that and are willingly taking the risk ... or they are free to do their own thorough research.

I have already made up my mind about which PVR solution I am going with (at least for now), but in spite of that I have tried to be impartial and objective enough in representing the facts about each solution ... because this thread is not about my choice anymore ... I want this to become a central resource for anyone looking at various PC PVR solutions in order to pick one. I will strive to provide neutral, impartial and truthful (to the best of my knowledge) information about any solution and let each person make their own decision based on the information and their particular situation. If you (or anyone else) ever feel that I am diverting from this goal, I will appreciate feedback on that and will do my best to correct it ASAP.

I have already requested the moderators to change the title of this thread to "PVR Software for HTPC : SageTV, SnapStream, MythTV, WinXP MCE, myHTPC, Freevo etc." and have requested them to add more direct choices in the poll for MythTV, WinXP MCE, myHTPC and Freevo.

MytvTV is great and the more I am learning about it, the better it sounds. I surely will try it sometime down the road ... just not right now. It is great that it is FREE, but for some of us cost may not be the most important criteria to decide on a solution. Some of us would rather spend a bit more for a solution that "works right out of the box" and that you can just "set and forget" ... even if you have to pay a premium to get that. I for one, am liking MythTV more for the set of features it provides ... not so much because it is FREE.

I do enough of my share of PC tinkering and tweaking, but there are also times when I want a solution to "just work" without me having to spend any more effort that absolutely necessary. From this point of view, honestly I don't *think* any Linux based solution is there yet ... not at least for me. I am MUCH more comfortable working in the Windows environment than in Linux ... and will take a comparable Windows based solution over an equivalent *nix based solution any day of the week just because I am more confident that I will be able to resolve any issues with that quicker. The last time I tried a Linux installation was about a year back, and I understand that things have changed a great deal since then; but even now when I speak to a couple of current Linux user friends of mine, I gather Linux hasn't reached the ease of maintenance that Windows XP provides.

For many non-Windows users this may sound surprising, but I have been running Windows XP Media Center in my current HTPC for about 8-9 months now and so far I haven't had to do a SINGLE maintenance on it. I use it only as a PVR and it is working at least as good as a TiVo or ReplayTV. Sure, Windows pops a message once every few days letting me know that there is a new update available and if I would like to install that. All it takes from my side is to say 'yes' twice and a reboot and things keep on running as it was before (BTW, this too can be entirely automated or turned off with 2-3 clicks of the mouse). This is the kind of simplicity I want from my HTPC solution. Just because I *can*, is not a good enough reason for me why I will *have* to keep tweaking my machine just to keep it working.

So on that note, let's agree to disagree :) I can assure you once again that I didn't want to hurt you intentionally, but apologize nonetheless if I inadvertently did that.

Let's get back to what this thread is really about ... that is discussing PC PVR solutions on their own merit, and not based on which platform they run on.

[mechou]

psxjunky,

Now this is interesting. Time for you to start volunteering information. You are using MS MCE (works fine & dandy, according to you), but are now evaluating Sage and SS? Clearly you aren't satisfied, or there is *some reason* to motivate you to switch? (BTW: I understand about the network streaming/resume stuff you mentioned earlier, but is that it?)

I think you mis-understood me regarding mythtv. The issue is not about being "free." It's about best in class. It's about value. And it's about a tweak free PVR appliance (maximizing my time). And about minimal HW requirements to get the job done.

Now I'd be lying to you if I told you price is no object (in my case). But it is relatively low on the list. But if you value your time more than money, I don't think you would be wasting time on pc pvrs. You'd go get a Tivo or Replay, and that will be the end of it. I think there are PVR appliances that have component/VGA out by now, so PQ shouldn't be an issue; Replays support networking, so that too shouldn't be an issue. Nor would care much about convergence (like music, dvd jukebox in one box), cause you'd just pay to get that.

Now regarding tweaking: On my two HTPCs, I spent about 30 minutes to install linux, 30 minutes to compile/install mythtv and related components, about 10 minutes to manually upgrade xmltv twice, and about 2 minutes to write the script to automate xmltv upgrades. I haven't "tweaked" my HTPC since. Believe me, the same could not be said of all other solutions I tried.

One last point: You mentioned democracy and research. I believe democracy requires *active* participation. To me, this is tantamount to "finding the truth yourself," "do your own legwork." I don't believe in focus groups, and blind acceptance of what some else says, going with the "prevailing" opinion just because it happens to be the prevailing (but perhaps incorrect) opinion. The point I made was the *evaluations* are available free. You don't want to do the research, that's your choice. But you shouldn't confuse couch-potato data-mining with democracy. :)

PS: Reboot? what's that?? My HTPC uptime: 9 months, 21 days. :) Could have been longer but I had a power outage. :(

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by mechou
psxjunky,

Now this is interesting. Time for you to start volunteering information. You are using MS MCE (works fine & dandy, according to you), but are now evaluating Sage and SS? Clearly you aren't satisfied, or there is *some reason* to motivate you to switch?


Time for me to start volunteering information ? I am sorry, but I seriously doubt if you have ever read my original post fully. I clearly mentioned on day one that I already have an HTPC based PVR running WinXP MCE, that I am very happy with, but I am in the process of building a second HTPC PVR for which I am looking for a different solution.

So why am I just not using WinXP MCE again ? First and most important - I don't have a second license to use it. Secondly, there are a couple key features that are missing in WinXP MCE that I would love to try out in my new PVR solution. XP MCE doesn't have features like streaming shows across home network, multiple tuner support, web scheduling and some others which seem intriguing to me.

Don't misunderstand me - my MCE based HTPC PVR is not going anywhere anytime soon. I have been a TiVo user for about 3 years and a ReplayTV user for little over a year ... despite this I like the MCE PVR the most right now. MCE does pretty much everything that TiVo and Replay does, and then some. Even after my new HTPC is up and running with the new PVR solution, the MCE PVR will probably remain my primary PVR until the new PVR solution proves its worth and turns out to be a better one.

I *do* think MCE is a near perfect solution for most people who can fork over the money to get a new MCE machine (or who have legal access to the MSDN version). I really wish Microsoft had started selling MCE as a stand alone version, but until they do so, most of us will have to look for something else ... which is unfortunate because, like it or not, MCE is a great product in its very first release !


I think you mis-understood me regarding mythtv. The issue is not about being "free." It's about best in class. It's about value. And it's about a tweak free PVR appliance (maximizing my time). And about minimal HW requirements to get the job done.


I don't know your definition of "tweak free", but any PVR solution where you have to keep a close eye on the EPG service to make sure it is still functioning correctly is certainly not my idea of a tweak free solution. And I don't even want to get started on the ease (or lack thereof) of doing other things to extend the capabilities, like extracting shows, burning DVDs, editing out commercials, add a new hardware etc. ... especially for someone who is a computer novice.


Now I'd be lying to you if I told you price is no object (in my case). But it is relatively low on the list. But if you value your time more than money, I don't think you would be wasting time on pc pvrs. You'd go get a Tivo or Replay, and that will be the end of it.


Time to disagree again ;)

Like I mentioned, I own *both* a TiVo and a ReplayTV and I still think the PCs are where the real future of the PVR is. TiVo and Replay are great ways to get started to the concept of using PVRs ... but once you get comfortable and want to extend your use of the PVR, these units are simply too inflexible and you are at the mercy of the manufacturers to provide you with certain features that you are dying for. Just see to what length TiVo has gone to discourage people from extracting shows for the purpose of archiving on DVD. Look at the wrath ReplayTV is taking for allowing show sharing over the internet and commercial skipping.

I too thought at one time that the PC based PVRs can never compete with the ease of use and shear "out of box experience" provided by stand alone PVRs like TiVo and Replay, but thanks to MCE, I am a believer now.

Now that this thread is open to discussing other PVRs, I will post my detailed experience with MCE, but that will be in another post in this thread :). I doubt that it will be of any help to Linux users like you, because most Linux users I have come across seem to be blinded by the myth that anything "Microsoft" is evil, and anything open source is the best thing since sliced bread ;). I for one appreciate the fact that there are great things in the open source world just as there are some great commercial products from Microsoft and other companies ... but alas, I wish at least some of my Linux fanatic friends were a little open minded to realize that ;)


I think there are PVR appliances that have component/VGA out by now, so PQ shouldn't be an issue;


I use the DVI out from my HTPC and the component out from my Replay ... both going to the same HDTV ... and there is simply no comparison between the PQ of the two (DVI is SO MUCH better). Also, I use the WinTV PVR 350 card in my HTPC which seems to have a much better tuner than both the TiVo and Replay tuners (they all are fed the same signal source, but recorded shows are simply better in the HTPC)


Replays support networking, so that too should be an issue. Nor would care much about convergence (like music, dvd jukebox in one box), cause you'd just pay to get that.

Because of the pressure from Hollywood, Replay has just discontinued the "Internet Video Sharing" in the newer Replay models (5500 and above). Also, it is always nice to have a multipurpose box that can do music, jukebox, picture slideshow etc all in the same unit. I may not be keen on using my HTPC beyond the PVR use yet, but I am sure there are many others who would like to do this.



Now regarding tweaking: On my two HTPCs, I spent about 30 minutes to install linux, 30 minutes to compile/install mythtv and related components, about 10 minutes to manually upgrade xmltv twice, and about 2 minutes to write the script to automate xmltv upgrades. I haven't "tweaked" my HTPC since. Believe me, the same could not be said of all other solutions I tried.


With all due respect and fully trusting your experience, I beg to disagree once again. It may be true for you, but I have a very hard time believing you can say this for anyone out there, even those who are just novice computer users.

I understand that there are Linux distros available now which bundle MythTV and makes installation of MythTV a snap. But at some point, when I get comfortable with using Myth, I'd like to go ahead and tinker with the machine a bit more, like put it on my network, get web scheduling up and running, try different filters etc. ... and this is where I fear Linux will start showing its ugly Unix root based "user unfriendliness" again.

I may not have tried out Linux personally in the last year or so, but I have a couple of friends who have tried various Linux distros over the last one year and based on their experience I will HAVE to say that they had a much tougher time getting everything up and running (some gave up altogether) than a comparable Windows installation. Admittedly not all of them were computer geniuses, but all of them had the basic knowledge of putting a PC together, yet failed or had a hard time to get Linux up and running.

I know Linux has come a long way since I first played around with the Slackware distribution in 1993, but so has Windows. I have absolutely no offense against Linux, and will be perfectly happy to try it out once again soon, but when I am in a time crunch I *do* rely on Windows to get my things done, simply because I feel much more comfortable in a Windows environment ... and many who know me will say that I am a computer nerd ;)

For all you brave souls out there, feel free to take the voyage ... for me, I will stick with my Windows environment for the time being, thank you very much. I will make the permanent switch the day I hear from enough other people that Linux has finally come to the masses. Go ahead and call me a chicken ;) but given that there are equivalent solutions available for Windows, I see no compelling reason right now to burn my time unnecessarily just to get a working solution ... and keep it that way without having to take an aspirin every night ;)


One last point: You mentioned democracy and research. I believe democracy requires *active* participation. To me, this is tantamount to "finding the truth yourself," "do your own legwork." I don't believe in focus groups, and blind acceptance of what some else says, going with the "prevailing" opinion just because it happens to be the prevailing (but perhaps incorrect) opinion. The point I made was the *evaluations* are available free. You don't want to do the research, that's your choice. But you shouldn't confuse data-mining with democracy. :)


Okay, I really really really don't want to start a political debate here (it's been bad enough already without any help from politics ;) ) so let me just close by saying this one last time - Please lets agree to disagree (at least on some of the points you mentioned above) ! ;)

[DArthur]

It seems strange for ME to say this, but:

Let's get back on topic! I'd love to hear about other potential PVR/Front ends available.

Both Linux and windows...

Darryl

[mechou]

Originally posted by psxjunky

I don't know your definition of "tweak free", but any PVR solution where you have to keep a close eye on the EPG service to make sure it is still functioning correctly is certainly not my idea of a tweak free solution. And I don't even want to get started on the ease of doing other things on Windows, like extracting shows, burning DVDs, editing out commercials etc. ... especially for someone who is a computer novice.


My definintion of tweak free means that exactly. Zero administration. If you read and understood my earlier post, I kept a close eye after the first zap2it "incident", after the second incident, I wrote a script that no longer requires me to keep a close eye on epg. I believe I mentioned (at least twice now) that I no longer think about it, and xmltv updates are done automagically.

Originally posted by psxjunky

Now that this thread is open to discussing other PVRs, i will post my detailed experience with MCE, but that will be in another post in this thread :) I doubt that will be of any help to most Linux users, because most Linux users I have come across seem to be blinded by the myth that anything "Microsoft" is evil, and anything open source is the best thing since sliced bread ;) I for one appreciate the fact that there are great things in the open source world as there are some great MS products too ... but alas, i wish at least some of my Linux fanatic friends were a little open minded ;)


I think you're confusing me with your "Linux fanatic friends." Either on this thread or another recent PVR thread I said "Linux isn't for everybody and his grandma." I did get P.O'ed at DArthur and for not doing his linux homework and for blaming linux when VIA is at fault, but you can hardly blame me for that :). A direct quote from the mythtv.org page, at the very top of the page (emphasis mine):

"Time for a new release. Not too many big sweeping changes this time around, but here's the major changes:
Support for the PVR-350 MPEG decoder / TV out, the MPEG decoder on the VIA EPIA-M motherboards, and XvMC acceleration on some video cards. All of these work pretty well, the only major thing not really working is the built in edit mode. (10/18/03)"

Gee, I wonder how the mythtv developer got his Nehemiah HW decoder working in linux....

Originally posted by psxjunky

With all due respect and fully trusting your experience, I beg to disagree again. It may be true for you, but I have a very hard time believing you can say this for anyone out there, even those who are just novice computer users.

I understand that there are Linux distros available now which bundle MythTV and makes installation of MythTV a snap. But at some point, when I get comfortable with using Myth, I'd like to go ahead and tinker with the machine a bit more, like put it on my network, get web scheduling up and running, try different filters etc. ... and this is where I fear Linux will start showing its ugly Unix based "user unfriendliness" again.

I may not have tried out Linux personally in the last year or so, but I have a couple of friends who have tried various Linux distros over the last one year and based on their experience I will HAVE to say that they had a much tougher time getting everything up and running (some gave up altogether) than a comparable Windows installation. Admittedly not all of them were computer geniuses, but all of them had the basic knowledge of putting a PC together, yet failed or had a hard time to get Linux up and running.


And here I would disagree with you again for the following reasons:
1. Anyone who is on the HTPC forum most likely built his/her own HTPC from parts, and have installed Windows (from scratch). I say the following unequivocally: Anybody who has installed Windows wouldn't have many problems (if at all) installing a major Linux distro (gentoo excepted) and getting it up and running, provided they read instructions carefully.
2. Documentation (in linux, mythtv, and others) provide detailed, step by step instructions, especially aimed at newbies. If one carefully reads and follows those instructions, there should absolutely be no difficulty.
3. You're again basing the "linux=user-unfriendly" on second-hand experience, and on your own experience that's 10 years out of date. That would be like me comparing DOS to WinXP, and me saying "I've tried DOS and it sucked, therefore I'm not going to try WinXP." And I'll argue that as long as you rely on others to do the work, you'll never do it (because you'll always find some rationalization to justify a decision you have already made). Times have changed. I'll even use your example about making a commercial-free dvd archive of shows. I use GOPChop (no transcoding!) and the myth commercial cutlist to cut commercials. Then I use k3b to burn to DVD (as data, not as video DVD, like those you would get at Blockbuster). Couldn't be simpler. Try that in Windows without losing audio sync (without spending beaucoup $$$)....

[nuthead]

Originally posted by psxjunky
Go nuthead ... we need some more people like you :D Go ahead and try it out and then report back in a couple days :)

Oh boy, what did I get myself into.... I probably won't have time untill the thanksgiving weekend. Until then, I have to tackle some school and work projects.

The reality is, i have my own ideas for modest enhancements to Myth, but I am just swamped.
In fact, this thread has given me ideas for a Windows PVR, seeing that there are capture drivers available from sourceforge. Who knows, next semster I might even get a chance to try it...

I would like to share what influenced my PVR choice:

1. Myth was the first PVR that 'just worked' with my 5 year old hardware. I tried showshifter before and it was a no go.
2. Price is way up on my list. Being a student, it is easier for me to hack away with linux than to come up with the dough.
3. I looked long and hard into buyng a Tivo or Replay, I really wanted one. But neither offers a local number for downoading guide data.

I, too, was very intimidated prior to installing Myth. But i dare to say that the instructions on the website were excellent, and since then some guides that are distribution specific have appeared and are very well maintained. Also, after using Linux for a while, I find the command line more expressive and easire to understand than configuring stuff through some GUI tab-hidden options. In fact, I find the new Myth config sceens (GUI) more difficult than it use to be, but that's just me.

That said, I will give Freevo a go, I promise. I just can't promise when...

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by mechou
My definintion of tweak free means that exactly. Zero administration. If you read and understood my earlier post, I kept a close eye after the first zap2it "incident", after the second incident, I wrote a script that no longer requires me to keep a close eye on epg. I believe I mentioned (at least twice now) that I no longer think about it.


I do remember you mentioned that you used a script. I don't know the details of your script or how it works, but are you 100% sure that it will be able to handle any future situation and any kind of change that happens in the future and breaks the Zap2It/XMLTV integration ? If you can answer "Yes", then I have a LOT of respect for your coding skills ... if your answer is "No" or "Maybe", then I go back to the argument that it is not a tweak free solution, since you will ahve to keep an eye on it.

Just as a comparison - I didn't have to do a SINGLE upgrade just to keep my MCE PVR up and running (including any change for EPG) over the past 8-9 months since I have had it ... and it has worked like a charm. Did I have any problems with it ? Sure I had, but most of those were due to user errors or trying to use the system in a way that is not supported.


And here I would disagree with you again for the following reasons:
1. Anyone who is on the HTPC forum most likely built his/her own HTPC from parts, and have installed Windows (from scratch). I say the following unequivocally: Anybody who has installed Windows wouldn't have many problems (if at all) installing a major Linux distro (gentoo excepted) and getting it up and running.


Disagree to your disagreement ;)

A very close friend of mine, who has been building his own PCs for about 3-4 years now recently tried getting Mandrake 9 up and running on his home network. After trying for a week he still couldn't get Mandrake to see his network, so he just gave up and went back to Windows XP, which didn't even ask for the driver disks and things just started working after about 35 minutes of installation time. I doubt he is going back to Linux anytime soon ;)

I will repeat myself - Linux ease of installation and usage has come a long way in the past couple years ... BUT SO HAS WINDOWS. And frankly, I believe Windows is STILL way ahead of Linux in terms of ease of installation, usage and (most importantly) maintenance. And it is still the number one OS when hardware support comes to mind.



3. You're again basing the "linux=user-unfriendly" on second-hand experience, and on your own experience that's 10 years out of date.


If you cared to read my last post in detail you'd see that 1993 was when I first tried out Linux. My most recent experience with Linux has been with Redhat 7.2, which was within the past year as far as I remember it.


That would be like me comparing DOS to WinXP, and me saying "I've tried DOS and it sucked, therefore I'm not going to try WinXP."


I don't think comparing Redhat 7.2 to Windows XP SP1 was an uneven comparison ... since both were available at the same timeframe ... and (as far as I remember) were the latest releases at the time.


And I'll argue that as long as you rely on others to do the work, you'll never do it (because you'll always find some rationalization to justify a decision you have already made). Times have changed.


And for the last time, I am NOT saying this purely based on hearsay ... I have tried it MYSELF, and I have gathered input from a varied range of users whose opinions I can trust.


I'll even use your example about making a commercial-free dvd archive of shows. I use GOPChop (no transcoding!) and the myth commercial cutlist to cut commercials. Then I use k3b to burn to DVD (as data, not as video DVD, like those you would get at Blockbuster). Couldn't be simpler. Try that in Windows without losing audio sync (without spending beaucoup $$$)....

As far as the MPEG editing example goes, Womble works like a charm for me. Is it cheap? No. Does it do the job well ? Exceeds my expectation everytime I use it. No transcoding, perfect audio sync ... takes about 10 minutes to cut all commercials from an hour long show with 5-6 commercial segments AND write the new "clean" MPEG2 file to disk.

And why stop at only one example ? Why don't you comment on the "ease" of adding some new hardware to your Linux system ? When was the last time you were shopping for that brand spanking new hardware and gave up at the last moment simply because it had no Linux drivers ? Not in the too distant past, I guess. Me ? I don't even look at the supported OS list when shopping for a new hardware knowing fully well it WILL be supported under XP.

Trust me or not, I am really feeling bad that I am being forced to bash Linux like this ... which I really don't want to do. I do fundamentally applaud at the open source OS initiative, but painfully realize it STILL isn't "there" yet (based on MY experience).

In my dream world I would be able to mix and match any application from any domain without regard to the OS it runs on ... and if I was still dreaming, one of the first things I would try would be MythTV on Windows XP. But unfortunately in this world (enter the matrix ;) ) things come in a package ... and that means that if I want to try out MythTV, sooner or later I would have to deal with the "unfriendliness" of Linux that lies deep within its Unix root. Given that I have more than one VERY VIABLE alternatives available on Windows, I will save myself the trouble and use it FIRST since I KNOW I will be able to resolve the few issues that I may come across.

I WILL try MythTV some day when I have time. I already have a spare machine lined up for that. And I WILL also consider making a permanent switch to Linux when I get enough positive opinion from a wide variety of users ... because, unlike you, I DO trust in people and their opinions.

[mechou]

Originally posted by psxjunky
I do remember you mentioned that you used a script. I don't know the details of your script or how it works, but are you 100% sure that it will be able to handle any future situation and any kind of change that happens that breaks Zap2It/XMLTV integration ? If yes, then I have a LOT of respect for your coding skills ... if no, then I go back to the argument that it is not a tweak free solution.

Just as a comparison - I didn't have to do a SINGLE upgrade just to keep my MCE PVR up and running over the past 8-9 months since I have had it.

You contradict yourself here. You mentioned Windows update and reboots. It's fine if you turned Windows Update off, but then you'd be quite vulnerable, considering MCE runs as "Administrator" :).

And you're still under some misconception about xmltv. xmltv handles zap2it changes, so from mythtv perspective, there is at least one level of indirection. So fundamentally, all that's required is a updated download and compile. It's almost akin to downloading a self-extracting zip archive and installing it in Windows. Not hard to write a batch file for that in Windows. And yes, my script has been well tested, and it works just fine for all future xmltv.

Originally posted by psxjunky
A very close friend of mine, who has been building his own PCs for about 3-4 years now recently tried getting Mandrake 9 up and running on his home network. After trying for a week he still couldn't get Mandrake to see his network card, so he just gave up and went back to Windows XP (which didn't even ask for the driver disks and things just started working) after about 35 minutes of installation time. I doubt he is going back to Linux anytime soon ;)


From what you have revealed about yourself and your friends' linux experiences, you are really shooting yourself in the foot with your examples. You've really got to do better than this. Linux is a networking operating system, and network drivers are the most complete (even more than Windows, if you can believe that). Now I might get my timeframe mixed up, but there were only two network proprietary cards in recent linux history: nvidia (on nforce/nforce2) & broadcom. Mandrake 9 came before WinXP and these two pieces of HW. So naturally you can't expect an old distribution to support new hardware "out of the box." It would be like asking Win2K to support these "out of the box" (which I believe it doesn't). Win2K will prompt you for the driver disk. BTW, they are both supported in linux now. See below for details.

Originally posted by psxjunky
I will repeat myself - Linux ease of installation and usage has come a long way in the past couple years ... BUT SO HAS WINDOWS. And frankly, I believe Windows is STILL way ahead of Linux in terms of installation, usage and (most importantly) maintenance.

Right, which is why system administrators in companies are sick of patching Windows against trojans and other exploits every few days, LookOut (oops, Outlook) & Exchange, not to mention virus updates. :) In the company where my brother works a senior admin. got fired because he made the fateful decision to use Exchange, and it failed under SO.BIG and couldn't be restored till a week later. They've since made the switch to Suse.

Originally posted by psxjunky
If you cared to read my post in detail you'd see that 1993 was when I first tried out Linux. My most recent experience with Linux has been with Redhat 7.2, which was within the past year as far as I remember it.

I don't think comparing Redhat 7.2 to Windows XP SP1 was an uneven comparison ... since both were available at the same timeframe.

And for the last time, I am NOT saying this purely based on hearsay ... I have tried it MYSELF, and I have gathered input from a varied range of users whose opinions I can trust.
[/B]
Redhat 7.2 came out ~11/02. So Did WinXP (SP0). Point is, that's one year ago. And can no longer be considered recent as far as linux is concerned. And by the time Longhorn comes out. Fedora/Redhat will probably be around 11.

Originally posted by psxjunky
As far as the MPEG editing example goes, Womble works like a charm for me. Is it cheap, no. Does it do the job - exceeds my expectation everytime. No transcoding, perfect audio sync ... takes about 10 minutes to cut all commercials from an hour long show with 5-6 commercial segments AND write the new "clean" MPEG2 file.
[/B]
GOPChop does all that in about 4 minutes on my system. Plus I feed it the mythtv cutlist, so I don't have to manually seek cut points and whatnot.

Originally posted by psxjunky
And why stop at only one example ? Why don't you comment on the "ease" of adding some new hardware to your Linux system ? When was the last time you were shopping for that brand spanking new hardware and gave up at the last moment simply because it had no Linux drivers ? Not in the too distant past, I guess. Me ? I don't even look at the supported OS list when shopping for a new hardware knowing fully well it WILL be supported under XP.

Trust me or not, I am really feeling sorry that I am having to bash Linux like this ... which I really don't want to. I do fundamentally applaud at the open source initiative, but painfully realize it STILL isn't "there" yet (based on MY experience).

Now this is really starting to sound like hearsay. Care to provide specific examples on what "new" hardware hasn't worked? ATI used to not work, but they are finally on the linux train now. They still are balking on AIW "tuner," but that's nothing "new." I'm running latest and greatest HW, haven't had one device that hasn't worked, and that includes a USB laser printer I purchase 2 months ago.

Originally posted by psxjunky
In my dream world I would be able to mix and match any application without regard to the OS it runs on ... and if I was still dreaming, one of the first things I would try would be MythTV on Windows XP. But unfortunately in this world (enter the matrix ;) ) things come in a package ... and that means that if I want to try out MythTV, sooner or later I would have to deal with the "unfriendliness" of Linux that lies deep within its Unix root. Given that I have more than one VERY VIABLE alternatives available on Windows, I will save myself the trouble and use it FIRST since I KNOW I will be able to resolve the few issues that I will come across.
[/B]
I think we already pretty much proven in this thread, at least at this point in time, mythtv is best in class, as far as features are concerned. Otherwise we wouldn't still be having this discussion, no would you be fondly looking for at a port of mythtv to windows.

And here lies the fundamental misconception (and reluctance). You've made up you mind based on outdated info of the OS based on user-unfriendliness. If that's the case I'll submit you haven't tried KDE 3.1 or Gnome 2.4.

Originally posted by psxjunky
[/B]I WILL try MythTV some day when I have time. I already have a spare machine lined up for that. And I WILL also consider making a permanent move to Linux when I get enough positive opinion from a wide variety if users ... because, unlike you, I DO trust in people and their opinions.
[/B]
It has nothing to do with "trust in other people." On the contrary, it has to do with trusting that I know my own needs best, intellectual honesty, and the recognition that I would be losing big time if I chose to live vicariously "through other people's experiences."

I'll make you an offer you can't refuse, a virtual "pepsi challenge," so to speak. You don't need a spare machine, and it will take you almost no time, since you can download the 600MB iso while you sleep or work. Download the latest Knoppix iso from here: http://www.knoppix.net/. Burn the iso to a CD-R (or CD-RW). This is a bootable CD, which doesn't write to your hard disk at all. It is the ultimate Linux demoware. By default, I think it boots up in KDE 3.2, with a "live filesystem" in memory. If it doesn't recognize any HW you have (besides maybe AIW and PVR-x50) I owe you $10. If it recognizes all your hardware, well, all you have to do is acknowledge that I'm at least right about the HW. :)

PS: If you have NForce2/broadcom network chip knoppix won't work, then try overclockix instead. Google for it.

[mlbdude]

Will http://www.knoppix.net/ work out of the box with my hardware?

Older Intel MB (815 Chipset) with integrated 10/100 nic
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 (using digital out)
ATI Radeon 9000 using SVideo out with Overscan
Dual Hauppauge 250's

I would also like the decoder(not sure what MythTV uses) to use DXVA for video acceleration and deinterlacing.

Also, will it have DSCaler setup?

Will I have to configure xmltv or is there a setup program to guide me through it?

Will xmltv properly identify shows as first run/rerun for me? I have used XMLTV in my area before on Windows and it labeled all shows as rerun.

Thanks!

[nuthead]

Will http://www.knoppix.net/ work out of the box with my hardware?

Looking at your list, most likely:D. The range of hardware supported by knoppix is amazing. Hjowever, that still doesn't have Mythtv installed with it.

There's something called knopmyth if I am not mistaken, as well as few others myth-distributions. Check which one supports PVR250 right out of the CD. The myth user list (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/) is a good place to start. I wouldn't mind looking it up for you, but I have to get started on homework.

As far as deinterlacing, Myth has its own deinterlacing. Also, it uses the XV extension for displaying the video. I am not sure I am answering your question correctly on this one, I wouldn't consider myself familiar with DXVA. Best would be to drop the question on the myth user list, you will get an answer better than mine.

[jimwhite]

This thread is beginning to get a bit tedious..... now I know why some prohibit discussions of Politics, Religion, Linux, and Pedophelia....

:rolleyes:

[cayars]

Originally posted by mechou
In my opinion, this (overkill philosophy) is exactly why SS is doomed to fail when compared to the competition. It makes life easier for the developers, but has no value-add for the customer besides requiring more CPU (since .NET is "slower") and disk space, and adding *more* complexity.

I'll bet you can't offer even one substantive reason why moving to .NET would be good for the customer as far as SS is concerned. And don't use some lame excuse like .NET will allow customers more features (because it speeds up the development cycle).

And "requiring" DX9 for display/encode is a complete overkill for a PVR....

Long time reader, first time poster her. I had to register for this thread!

Why will .NET development tools cause SS to fail? .NET has numerious advantages for the end user. The no longer have to worry about DLL hell on their computers. The libraries themselves RUN FASTER then the previous development environments (don't know why you said slower). It really simplifies things and does not make things more complex.

1) No DLL hell
2) Faster execution times
3) Better installation that have much less problems
4) Better memory management then previous development environments
5) Better development/tools to work with (even on client side) to help diagnose/fix problems easier.
7) All most anyone developer that has spent any time using the .NET Development Studio/Environment will tell you it is 2nd to none.
8) etc, etc, etc. Lot of very valid reason

The .NET platform is an evolutionary upgrade to Visual C++. Don't you think it's wise for software development people to upgrade their tools?

On a side note. You seem very apposed to .Net but like SageTV. How is it BAD that SS is moving to .NET but Sage uses JAVA? Just about every benchmark out there comparing JAVA to .NET clearly shows the .NET framework is a much faster executing environment. This is a good thing.

Carlo

[cayars]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Can any SS users comment on their reasons for staying with SS once Sage 2.0 is out? I am curious. Besides the initial investment part.

Yep, I can. I own SnapStream, SageTV, SageClient & SageRecorder. I presently use BOTH camps software and know the ins and outs of both environments. I'm going through the thread now making a couple of replies but I'll answer this shortly with my list of features from both peices of software. It's much more in depth then the first message in the thread.

Carlo

[mlbdude]

1) No DLL hell
2) Faster execution times
3) Better installation that have much less problems
4) Better memory management then previous development environments
5) Better development/tools to work with (even on client side) to help diagnose/fix problems easier.
7) All most anyone developer that has spent any time using the .NET Development Studio/Environment will tell you it is 2nd to none.
8) etc, etc, etc. Lot of very valid reason


As a MS developer moving from the previous generation to the next I can say that only 5 and 7 seems true (no 6? :)). I won't even comment on #1 until you go play with the GAC some more. All other seems to be MS marketing. Even our VB 6 apps run faster than any of our .Net apps (C# included). I think it is just the nature of a program compiled straight to machine code. MS basically decided that Java was the future so they made their own version. Anything they touch is prone to bugs and flaws. At least early on. I am sure .Net will mature with time (or will the ever increasing CPU speed hide its issues?) just like Java.

The main issue is that I certainly would not want this in an app that is required to run 24x7. Java gets a lot of the same negatives, but at least it is mature and platform independent.

Anyway, I agree this thread seems to have degraded into nothingness and here I go adding to that!

Ahhh!

[DArthur]

************ original rebuke deleted ***********

I originally posted a response to Mechou's continued criticism of my "research ability", and the tone of his posts.

My original goal was to get an accurate idea of what PVR's and HTPC front-ends are available. Up until recently, this thread was doing an admirable job - the Original poster deserves a lot of credit.

unfortunately, this thread has headed south for a while now.

I'll take my leave, just wanted to say thanks for all the contributors, and esp. the OP!

Darryl

[Bob Sorel]

This thread started out as a nice, friendly discussion of PVR software and now seems to have degenerated into a Linux vs. Windows deathmatch. Enough already! If any of the interested parties wish to continue that debate, you are more than welcome, but not in this thread. Let's keep the discussion here centered on the merits of various PVR solutions, regardless of which platform they run on.

[cymro]

psxjunky,

I admire your restraint in replying to Mechou, but we'd all be better off if you ignored him (or her).

I have some question for you:

Do WinXP MCE or WinXP MCE2004 allow the sending of recorded video files over the internet?

If not, is there a work around?

Is there any way to schedule recordings over the internet on WinXP MCE (or 2004) using GoToMyPC or something similar?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

[cayars]

Originally posted by mlbdude
As a MS developer moving from the previous generation to the next I can say that only 5 and 7 seems true (no 6? :)). I won't even comment on #1 until you go play with the GAC some more. All other seems to be MS marketing. Even our VB 6 apps run faster than any of our .Net apps (C# included). I think it is just the nature of a program compiled straight to machine code. MS basically decided that Java was the future so they made their own version. Anything they touch is prone to bugs and flaws. At least early on. I am sure .Net will mature with time (or will the ever increasing CPU speed hide its issues?) just like Java.

The main issue is that I certainly would not want this in an app that is required to run 24x7. Java gets a lot of the same negatives, but at least it is mature and platform independent.

Anyway, I agree this thread seems to have degraded into nothingness and here I go adding to that!

Ahhh!

I pulled out a bunch of the original list as I thought they may be objectionable. When I renumbered them I messed up :)

1) Number one is unquestionably true. This alone has been the number one reason why some companies have moved to .NET. You can now have multiple versions of a DLL on your system (even in memory) at the same time and each app will use the "proper" one. This is a far change from VC++ and VB where the latest version or the one in your path that gets loaded first "wins".

2) Generally speaking most internal library calls executre faster in Net 1.1 then they did in VB or in VC++. Managed code normally always runs faster. This does assume your writing good .NET code and not simply trying to port old VC++ or VB code. I've seen some VC code get slower in .NET until parts were re-written using the "new" way of doing things. Most of the magazine articles I read (non MS) also show .NET to usually out perform their older counter-parts.

I've had people object to the speed benchmarks before when I've talked to them. I always offer to do a comparison of code so if anyone thinks the old way is faster, just write up a short program and I'll re-write in .Net and we'll compare :)

3) I should have elaborated on this more. In the world of Net you can write programs using managed code and never need to touch the windows registry. You can actually copy files (ala DOS) into a directory with a config file and it can run. So #3 may or may not be relavant here, but in general can be a big plus for NET. It's actually more of a switch back to the old days of Windows 3.x and .INI files.

4) I'm not sure why you didn't at least agree with this one also. The .NET platform has some of the best memory management of any programming environment yet. It has build in classes for caching information. This can be web, database, etc.. It also has brought to the table very good garbage collection. Garbage collection alone is worth the upgrade for many VC++ users.

5) Of course this is a personal thing but even before .Net most developers gave the nod to Visual Studio. The Dev environment in .Net is an evoltuionary step up from Visual Studio.

6) What six :) Actually 6 was originaly going to mention that you can have people co-deving in multiple languages easier in .NET with little downside in soing so. I pulled it before posting because I didn't want to open this can of worms :)

I won't comment on #7 since we agree. However I do want to comment that these are from my observations and not marketing material.

I will add one thing to your speed comment comparing VB6 apps. You do know that VB6 doesn't really truely compile your code right? If you can't get any type of C program to outporm normal VB code the developer is probably not doing something correctly. VB.NET is much faster then VB in 90%+ of it's function library, sometimes by a great factor. There are a few things that VB is slightly faster at doing then VB.NET however so your milage may vary.

.NET really isn't anything like JAVA per say. Visua J++ (sure) but not the platform as a whole. It's just that a "platform". In reality it's just an evolutionary product of VB and VC that uses central libraries.

Carlo

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by cymro
psxjunky,

I admire your restraint in replying to Mechou, but we'd all be better off if you ignored him (or her).


I figured in order for this thread degeneration to end, one of us will have to stop ... so I will :)


I have some question for you:

Do WinXP MCE or WinXP MCE2004 allow the sending of recorded video files over the internet?

If not, is there a work around?


No, MCE or MCE2004 doesn't have any built-in support for sending shows to someone over the internet; however, this can be done failrly easily if you have the ability to send large files thru some means (FTP, ICQ, IM etc).

There is a free third party application that apparently enables sharing of recorded shows, but I have never tried that. It is available from the downloads section of TheGreenButton forums. Here (http://www.thegreenbutton.com/downloads/files/Share_Recorded_TV.zip) is a direct link to the file.


The shows that MCE records are all placed in the same "recording" directory that you specify thru setup. The filenames are very descriptive, that includes the showname, date etc ... so it is very easy to figure out which file is which show.

The files are stored in a format called DVR-MS, which is really MPEG2 files at heart with some show related "meta" information wrapped into the same package. You have two options - either you can send the DVR-MS file directly, or you can convert the DVR-MS file into a MPEG2 and then send the MPEG2 to the recipient.

AFAIK the DVR-MS file can (currently) only be played by Windows Media Player 9, however I am sure other media players will soon be able to play this format directly. In fact this might already be possible ... I just haven't kept up with the latest happenings in the past couple months.

Alternatively, if you want to convert the DVR-MS file to MPEG2 for the purpose of sending or converting to DVD, you can use a freeware tool called "DVR-MS Ripper" that is available from the downloads section of TheGreenButton.com forums. Here (http://www.thegreenbutton.com/downloads/files/RipSetup.zip) is a direct link to the file.

Finally, here (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/using/tips/recordedTV.asp) is some information from Microsoft about viewing DVR-MS files on another machine.

You show be aware that if the broadcaster enables the broadcast protection flag, then the DVR-MS files will not be playable in any machine other than the one that recorded it; however, currently I am not aware of anyone doing this ... so share and enjoy while you can ;)


Is there any way to schedule recordings over the internet on WinXP MCE (or 2004) using GoToMyPC or something similar?


Yes, but again this is not a built-in feature of MCE. Look at the MCE Webguide (http://www.showtell.com/mce_webguide/default.asp) to get info on a free app that will allow you to do this.



Thanks in advance for your replies.

No problem ... if you have any more questions about MCE, feel free to ask. I will try my best to answer.

[cymro]

psxjunky:

Thanks for your prompt and comprehensive replies.

I'll start looking into your suggestions.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by DArthur
************ original rebuke deleted ***********

I originally posted a response to Mechou's continued criticism of my "research ability", and the tone of his posts.

My original goal was to get an accurate idea of what PVR's and HTPC front-ends are available. Up until recently, this thread was doing an admirable job - the Original poster deserves a lot of credit.

unfortunately, this thread has headed south for a while now.

I'll take my leave, just wanted to say thanks for all the contributors, and esp. the OP!

Darryl

Darryl, feel free to come back now ... we are not fighting anymore ... at least I am not fighting anymore, can't speak for anyone else ;)

With that, can we now get some more information about other PVR solutions out there ? I know there are a lot of myHTPC users out there -- can some actual users of the myHTPC PVR plugin comment on how it works ?

I myself will post a pros-cons list for WinXP MCE sometime soon, but can't do it today.

Also, I forgot to include ShowShifter to the list ... any ShowShifter users out there ? How do you feel about it ?

nuthead is already on the hook ;) to give us feedback about Freevo, but if anyone else is already using it and want to chime in, that would be very welcome.

Any other major PVR apps we are still missing ? I knowingly didn't include the ATI Media Center and Hauppauge WinTV PVR software, as my impression was that they were not at the same level as some of the other dedicated 3rd party apps (like Sage, SS etc.) ... but if anyone is interested I can include these in the list too.

[cymro]

psxjunky:

I note your comment about the broadcast flag, but I assumed that the MCE records from analog sources (NTSC tuner or cable or satellite) by converting an analog signal (tuner output or cable/sat box output) to digital.

In this case, there is presumably no broadcast flag issue?

On another subject, I read somewhere that there were some stability issues with MCE that have now been resolved with MCE2004, but your experience indicates that the first generation MCE was pretty stable anyway. Do I interpret your coments correctly?

[cayars]

This comparison is for the current downloadable versions of each product.

This has been removed and a newer version has been posted at the end of the thread to make it easier to find. You can find it here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=2944534#post2944534) .

Carlo

[psxjunky]

cymro: You may very well be right about the broadcast flag issue ... I am not very clear about it myself. You are right that the MCE currently converts the analog signals to digital using a hardware encoder based TV tuner (Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250/350, AverMedia M179 etc.). However, whenever the broadcast flag is supported and in whatever form, Microsoft made it pretty clear that they will use it to prevent playing DVR-MS files in machines other than the original one which recorded it.

Stability wise, MCE has been rock solid for me right from the first release (note exception below). I didn't notice any change in stability in MCE 2004.

There is one big exception to the stability issue I mentioned above - MCE is really stable when I keep in running 24x7. However, to save power consumption, I prefer to keep it on standby most of the time. When I do this. most of the time MCE wakes the machine up, records the show and puts is back to sleep just fine ... but occasionally it hangs the machine when trying to wake up to record a show.

Note that this only happens if I keep the machine on standby ... which apparently other PVR softwares have an issue with as well (Sage and SnapStream at least ... because Myth doesn't fully support this scenario).

Also, there are many many people on the TheGreenButton forums who are doing this same thing as me and have never had a lockup, so it is quite possible that this issue has something to do with my specific hardware/driver setup.

But yes, in general MCE as well as MCE 2004 is VERY stable.

[dcdave]

To get things back on track, I wanted to give my initial thoughts after about a week of playing with Mythtv.

Set-up: Install was incredibly easy using the Knoppmyth distribution (www.mysettopbox.tv). As long as you have an extra hard drive lying around, you can get up a running for the most part very easily. That said, once it was installed, it still takes some tweaking. First, it appears that the themes are designed to be used on a computer monitor, not a large screen at 10 feet away. The font size of the theme and program guide are unreadably small. The configuration options seem to allow you to change the font sizes of certain menus, but not of the theme itself. I understand that those settings are in an XML file someplace, but those settings should be in the configuration menu (and I haven’t used vi in years, and didn’t like it much then anyway). I never did get the sound working. I believe that my soundcard (Fortissimo III) is not supported in Linux. I suppose I could have used the motherboard’s sound, but for the HTPC, I want digital to the receiver. Finally, encrypted DVDs will not play. I know the legal issues surrounding this, but that’s not really my concern. All I want is for the DVDs to play. I understand that with the download of a couple of files one could get DVDs to play, but, it will take more time and effort than I’m willing to put into it. Finally, Myth works fine with the cable plugged into the PVR-250, but the thought of trying to configure Lirc to control my cable box seems daunting. To sum up the configuration, although the initial setup was easily, to really get Myth to work as I would want will take far more time and effort than I’m willing to put into this.

Operation: The interface itself is very nice, and the included themes look great. Video quality was pretty good, but was choppy for about 20 seconds after each channel change. Neither snapstream or sage behave this way on my system (Athlon 1800, 512 megs of ram). Also, compared to both snapstream and sage, channel changes are very slow. Finally, menus were also very slow. For example, when trying to select a recorded show (Myth, by the way, has a fantastic menuing interface to select recorded shows), Myth takes a couple of seconds to become responsive once the menu is displayed.

Overall, I think Myth shows an incredible amount of promise, but is still a little rough around the edges. I’ll definitely keep my eye on it, and probably try new versions in the future, but for right now, I’ll be sticking with Sage.

[psxjunky]

Carlo: Awesome summary ! I am having a little difficult time readin thru the list ... is there something you can do with the formatting to make it easier to read ?

Also, once you are done finalizing the table, I would like to include this in the fisr post (with your permission). I think this will be very halpful for people considering these two solutions to compare them head to head.

[DArthur]

psxjunky,

OK, I just couldn't stay away once your information on MCE came in. What's the difference between the current (older?) version and 2004?

Did you buy a PC with it installed, or did you have an MSDN subscription?

How does it handle DVDs (or is this past the scope of PVR)?

Thanks,

Darryl

[stanger89]

Couple of corrections about Sage.

Originally posted by cayars
Sage SnapStream
<snip>
No Yes -Show Information Displayed on Main Screen of EPG
Sage can display show info in the guide if you want and Sage 2 has a better interface: http://www.sage.tv/beta.html
Call it In Dev to Yes
<snip>
nO Yes -Web
Web interface is comming is 2.0, I believe, let's say In Dev
<snip>
No Yes -Resume playback of recorded shows at the position where you last stopped watching
Sage does this for whatever you are currently watching, you can leave a show go the menu and resume where you left of. That's a Yes.
No Yes -Remote Record Programming
Sage client schedules recording from over the network, and Sage server schedules when networked encoders record shows, this is a Yes.
Yes Yes -Pad Recordings
No Yes -Volume Normalization During Recording
Yes Yes -Pause LiveTV
Yes Yes -Rewind & Fast Forward
No Yes -30 second Skip Ahead (You set the jump a head time)
Sage has this, it also has "Time Scroll" where you hit the Time Scroll button, you can move back and forth in 2.5 min increments (that's probably adjustable) and when you press the TS button again you jump to that point in the show, very effective for skipping to the end/beginning of something. That's a Yes.
No Yes -7 Second Jump Back (You set the jump back time)
Sage does this a well, Yes.
<snip>
No Yes -Intelligent Recording
Sage also has IR, it can record shows it thinks you will like based on what you've watched. Say Yes.
No In Dev. -Intelligent Suggestions for Recording
Sage has this in a way. All recordings (Favorites, Manuals, and IRs) show up in the Recording Schedule where you can easily see what will be recorded and adjust it as necessary.
No Yes -Ability to Easily View/Set Priority for Your Favorite Recordings
I think this is coming in 2.0
Yes Yes -Time Shifting of Live TV
<snip>
No Yes -Remote recording scheduling
Sage client does this.
<snip>
No Yes -Remote Recording/Scheduling via WEB
I think this is coming in Sage 2.0 as well.
<snip>
No Yes -Integrated Brightness, Gamma & Contrast Controls in the player
Coming in 2.0. In fact 2.0 is supposed to have per source color controls
In Dev. Yes/Somewhat -Skinnable
No Yes -1 & 2 pass video recompression
15 21 -Trial Evaluation Period in Days

One of the more controversial differences between the products is the use of TimeShifting. Sage records all shows that you view as Live TV. You then have to remove what you don't want or wait for it to auto expire. If you're watching a movie/show live and decide you wished you had recorded it you actually already have it. SnapStream on the other hand uses a buffer (first in/first out) approach that is configuable in size. SS does not ever record shows for you unless you set a show to record. The TimeShift approach used by SS is for pause/resume/ff/rw type functions.

There is no need to bother deleting shows manually Sage does all the disk management automatically.

When it comes to folders SS hands down has better folder management for your shows. This is completely functional in the Web (client) but not yet in the GUI. It is going to be in the next release.

This is supposed to be improved with Sage 2.0

<snip>
As far as graphic presentation goes, most people would say SS looks much more profession (for now). Well have to wait and see what SageTV 2.0 has in store for us :)
Yup, I can't wait to put 2.0 through it's paces.

Carlo

Good list, just thought I'd correct a couple of the glitches in your list.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by DArthur
psxjunky,

OK, I just couldn't stay away once your information on MCE came in.

Glad to have you back :)

What's the difference between the current (older?) version and 2004?

The original MCE was the first version and MCE 2004, the current version, is an upgrade to it. It is more like the first service pack, since MCE 2004 is not a full release. You will first have to install the original MCE, and then apply the MCE 2004 upgrade.

MCE 2004 added quite a few nice features. I will mention a couple here off the top of my head, for more info I will refer you to Microsoft's official "What's new in MCE 2004" page (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/evaluation/whatsnew.asp).

- 16x9 display support
- Excellent set of audio/video adjustment tools
- Support for FM Radio if you have a compatible Tuner card (e.g. WinTV PVR 350)
- More options to organize recorded shows (by date, by named group etc.)
- better conflict resolution option for recorded shows
- Keyword record support (which allows scheduling future programs that are not in the guide yet)
- More fast foward and rewind speeds
- Movie on demand support


Did you buy a PC with it installed, or did you have an MSDN subscription?

I installed the MSDN version on my custom built HTPC.

How does it handle DVDs (or is this past the scope of PVR)?

Never used the DVD playback feature of MCE, so I can't comment on that. I use TheaterTek to play DVDs from this machine. As far as I know, you can NOT use a different DVD player under the hood in MCE ... but I may very well be wrong.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by dcdave
To get things back on track, I wanted to give my initial thoughts after about a week of playing with Mythtv.

Set-up: Install was incredibly easy using the Knoppmyth distribution (www.mysettopbox.tv). As long as you have an extra hard drive lying around, you can get up a running for the most part very easily. That said, once it was installed, it still takes some tweaking. First, it appears that the themes are designed to be used on a computer monitor, not a large screen at 10 feet away. The font size of the theme and program guide are unreadably small. The configuration options seem to allow you to change the font sizes of certain menus, but not of the theme itself. I understand that those settings are in an XML file someplace, but those settings should be in the configuration menu (and I haven’t used vi in years, and didn’t like it much then anyway). I never did get the sound working. I believe that my soundcard (Fortissimo III) is not supported in Linux. I suppose I could have used the motherboard’s sound, but for the HTPC, I want digital to the receiver. Finally, encrypted DVDs will not play. I know the legal issues surrounding this, but that’s not really my concern. All I want is for the DVDs to play. I understand that with the download of a couple of files one could get DVDs to play, but, it will take more time and effort than I’m willing to put into it. Finally, Myth works fine with the cable plugged into the PVR-250, but the thought of trying to configure Lirc to control my cable box seems daunting. To sum up the configuration, although the initial setup was easily, to really get Myth to work as I would want will take far more time and effort than I’m willing to put into this.

Operation: The interface itself is very nice, and the included themes look great. Video quality was pretty good, but was choppy for about 20 seconds after each channel change. Neither snapstream or sage behave this way on my system (Athlon 1800, 512 megs of ram). Also, compared to both snapstream and sage, channel changes are very slow. Finally, menus were also very slow. For example, when trying to select a recorded show (Myth, by the way, has a fantastic menuing interface to select recorded shows), Myth takes a couple of seconds to become responsive once the menu is displayed.

Overall, I think Myth shows an incredible amount of promise, but is still a little rough around the edges. I’ll definitely keep my eye on it, and probably try new versions in the future, but for right now, I’ll be sticking with Sage.

dcdave: Thanks for sharing your experience with MythTV. Could you please post a detailed configuration for your machine. You already mentioned some of it (CPU, RAM etc.) but a detailed configuration listing all important components will help.

Also, is this the exact same machine (or one with similar configuration) where you tried SS and SageTV ?

[dcdave]

psxjunky,

My system is:

ECS K7S5A
Athlon 1800
512 mb ddr 2100
PVR-250
Fortissimo III sound card
Radeon 9000
Actisys 220l for cable box control
IO Flex serial card (to add an additional serial port)
Airboard

For the Windows HPTC setup:
Main drive (For applications) - IBM 30 gig 5400
Secondary drive (for media) - Maxtor 160 gig 7200

For the Myth setup:
10 gig compaq 5400 (Salvaged from an older Compaq Pentium II rig).

On the Windows setup, I generally have snapstream or sage record to the 160 gig drive, but have used the main drive with no lag problems at all.

[mechou]

The fortissimo card works fine in Linux. In fact there are two alternative drivers/architectures for all sound cards in linux, OSS and ALSA.

Knoppix (and probably by extension KnoppMyth), due to its demoware nature, has a pecularity: it only auto-detects the first sound card and stops at that. This is not a problem in a real distro.

To overcome this issue in your specific case, when you boot, you must type following magic incantation :) at the boot loader:
knoppix alsa=cs46xx //and whatever other options you want here.
This tells Knoppix to use the ALSA (sound) subsystem, and use the other sound card in you system. Don't forget to run alsamixer or kmix and adjust the volume after its finished booting. It's likely to be set too low and probably won't have the right inputs/outputs activated.

There is a way to do this without rebooting, but would be take me more time to describe than than I'm willing to spend on this. You can also save this such that Knoppix boots with this sound configuration every time.

The choppiness when switching channels could be due to myth "trying to find" the sound device, in all likelihood.

vi? what's that? If you're in X, you can use nedit, kwrite, kedit, which are all equivalents of notepad. Hit ALT-F2, and enter nedit (for example) in the box.

Now assuming that you have played with the EPG layout, (you can adjust how many channels show and how many half hour blocks to show on each page), all the other comments have validity. But I don't think downloading two files (basically libdvdcss) so that encyrpted DVDs play is a big sacrifice. Just my opinion.

I want to thank you for having the courage and spending the time to find out for youself, and posting your feedback here. In case it's not clear, when I say this, I don't mean just myth, but other PVR (including Windows) products as well. At the very minimum, this represents feedback another data point.

PS: There is a little bit of "customization/configuration" you have to do after you install KnoppMyth on disk. I count this as part of the installation. This customization shouldn't take any more than ten minutes at most. This would include lirc, and the the theming font sizes that you mentioned.

Originally posted by dcdave
To get things back on track, I wanted to give my initial thoughts after about a week of playing with Mythtv.

Set-up: Install was incredibly easy using the Knoppmyth distribution (www.mysettopbox.tv). As long as you have an extra hard drive lying around, you can get up a running for the most part very easily. That said, once it was installed, it still takes some tweaking. First, it appears that the themes are designed to be used on a computer monitor, not a large screen at 10 feet away. The font size of the theme and program guide are unreadably small. The configuration options seem to allow you to change the font sizes of certain menus, but not of the theme itself. I understand that those settings are in an XML file someplace, but those settings should be in the configuration menu (and I haven’t used vi in years, and didn’t like it much then anyway). I never did get the sound working. I believe that my soundcard (Fortissimo III) is not supported in Linux. I suppose I could have used the motherboard’s sound, but for the HTPC, I want digital to the receiver. Finally, encrypted DVDs will not play. I know the legal issues surrounding this, but that’s not really my concern. All I want is for the DVDs to play. I understand that with the download of a couple of files one could get DVDs to play, but, it will take more time and effort than I’m willing to put into it. Finally, Myth works fine with the cable plugged into the PVR-250, but the thought of trying to configure Lirc to control my cable box seems daunting. To sum up the configuration, although the initial setup was easily, to really get Myth to work as I would want will take far more time and effort than I’m willing to put into this.

Operation: The interface itself is very nice, and the included themes look great. Video quality was pretty good, but was choppy for about 20 seconds after each channel change. Neither snapstream or sage behave this way on my system (Athlon 1800, 512 megs of ram). Also, compared to both snapstream and sage, channel changes are very slow. Finally, menus were also very slow. For example, when trying to select a recorded show (Myth, by the way, has a fantastic menuing interface to select recorded shows), Myth takes a couple of seconds to become responsive once the menu is displayed.

Overall, I think Myth shows an incredible amount of promise, but is still a little rough around the edges. I’ll definitely keep my eye on it, and probably try new versions in the future, but for right now, I’ll be sticking with Sage.

[jkdufair]

My biggest concern with using XMLTV is not so much the PITA factor (I can script with the best of them), but the questionable legality of using XMLTV (in the normal way it's used, i.e. grabbing data from zap2it.com). The following part of the Terms of Service at zap2it.com give me reason enough to avoid XMLTV via zap2it.com:

You may not, for example, republish any portion of the Content on any Internet, Intranet or extranet site or incorporate the Content in any database, compilation, archive or cache. You may not distribute any Content to others, whether or not for payment or other consideration, and you may not modify, copy, frame, cache, reproduce, sell, publish, transmit, display or otherwise use any portion of the Content. You agree not to decompile, reverse engineer or disassemble any software or other products or processes accessible through Zap2it.com, not to insert any code or product or manipulate the content of Zap2it.com in any way that affects the user's experience, and not to use any data mining, data gathering or extraction method.

I would certainly classify the XML that XMLTV captures as a "database", perhaps a "cache", definitely a "copy". It certainly does "manipulate the content of Zap2it.com in any way that affects the user's experience". You could certainly argue it "affects the user's experience" in a positive way, but it's still "affecting the user's experience".

Too bad TMS or whomever won't sell a simple $5/month XMLTV feed.

[dkardatzke]

I've added the SageTV corrections in the quote below where necessary:

Originally posted by cayars
Sage /SnapStream Built In Features

Yes/Yes -Music/MP3 Playback

- This of course needs to be expanded to say that SageTV has an actual Music Playback interface and doesn't just merely support playing back the specific file type.

No/Yes -Show Information Displayed on Main Screen of EPG

- Already built in for Version 2. Can be done in current version by pressing "Info" on any show.

No/Yes -Can use Transparent Overlays

- Already done for Version 2

Yes/Yes -Integrated Search - By Actor
Yes/Yes -Integrated Search - By Title
Yes/Yes -Integrated Search - By Description

- Also added the ability to add Favorites by Actor & Keyword for version 2 (like TiVo's Wish List functionality)

No/Yes -Transparent Overlay of EPG Data while watching a video/LiveTV

- Already done for Version 2

No/Yes -Web

- Already possible with Version 2

No/Yes -Resume playback of recorded shows at the position where you last stopped watching

- Yes already for SageTV, happens by default when watching a show and leaving to go back into the Main Menu

No/Yes -Remote Record Programming

- Already possible with the SageTV Client across a network. Web scheduling possible with Version 2

No/Yes -30 second Skip Ahead (You set the jump a head time)
No/Yes -7 Second Jump Back (You set the jump back time)

- This is default functionality of SageTV. Time can be modified for 2 different FF and REW options. In addition we also have a Time Scroll option that allows you to jump in much larger segments (2 1/2 minutes by default)

No/Yes -Intelligent Recording

- Actually SageTV is the only PVR for the PC that does Intelligent Recording. We also do recordings by Favorites as mentioned earlier.

No/In Dev. -Intelligent Suggestions for Recording

- Already done for SageTV, been there since version 1.0

No/Yes -Ability to Easily View/Set Priority for Your Favorite Recordings

- Available in Version 2. Of course we also allow you to control how many episodes to keep and for how long and pad your favorite recordings.

Client/Web -Supports Network wide streaming (both can be done using any Mpeg player and Windows Drive Mapping)

- Not entirely true, SageTV supports Live (and recorded) streaming of MPEG-2 video through its native interface. I don't consider streaming using Windows Explorer to access a file.

No/Yes -Remote recording scheduling

- Already capable using the SageTV Client. Web access will be available with Version 2

No/Yes -Integrated Brightness, Gamma & Contrast Controls in the player

- Already done for Version 2

In Dev./Yes/Somewhat -Skinnable

- The word "Skinnable" doesn't even do justice for what the Studio will allow you to do.

When it comes to folders SS hands down has better folder management for your shows. This is completely functional in the Web (client) but not yet in the GUI.

- Folder management and Playlists accomplished with version 2

The only reason I mention the above part about multi-tuners is that the way it will be implemented in SS is a little better in my oppion.

- SageTV let's you save to any local drive or mapped drive across a network. SageTV also allows you to join multiple encoding cards from different machines across a network and have access to all the cards in the same interface.

Carlo

[cayars]

Originally posted by psxjunky
Carlo: Awesome summary ! I am having a little difficult time readin thru the list ... is there something you can do with the formatting to make it easier to read ?

Also, once you are done finalizing the table, I would like to include this in the fisr post (with your permission). I think this will be very halpful for people considering these two solutions to compare them head to head.

I created it in Excel and then moved it over to notepad. I had used tabs but the forum wacked them :) I'll see if I can reformat it a little better. If you want I have an updated version in Excel (fixes wrong data) that I could email (leave a PM if interested). You of course can use this in the first message. It's all about sharing.

Carlo

PS I've updated the current list I originally posted with all the feedback given so far.

[psxjunky]

Three votes for myHTPC TV Plugin so far, but not a single comment yet ? Come on folks, you can do better than that :D

Seriously, if you vote for any solution ... especially one that has not been discussed here before, please consider posting a couple points about what you like about it and what you don't.

Thanks in advance !

P.S. Carlo, please check your PM

[mechou]

I'm no lawyer, and to a certain extent I agree with you. But at best the zap2it.com TOS is vague:


You may use the Content online only, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use, and you may download or print a single copy of any portion of the Content solely for your personal, non-commercial use, provided you do not remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from such Content.


This section comes from the section above your quote. What exactly does this mean as far as xmltv (and mythtv) is concerned? And is xmltv considered a "robot?" (also mentioned in in TMS TOS). But I agree with you. It would be nice for TMS to state explicitly whether things like xmltv is allowed or not, or to provide a subscription service where thing like xmltv is explicitly allowed. This would remove any ambiguity.

Originally posted by jkdufair
My biggest concern with using XMLTV is not so much the PITA factor (I can script with the best of them), but the questionable legality of using XMLTV (in the normal way it's used, i.e. grabbing data from zap2it.com). The following part of the Terms of Service at zap2it.com give me reason enough to avoid XMLTV via zap2it.com:



I would certainly classify the XML that XMLTV captures as a "database", perhaps a "cache", definitely a "copy". It certainly does "manipulate the content of Zap2it.com in any way that affects the user's experience". You could certainly argue it "affects the user's experience" in a positive way, but it's still "affecting the user's experience".

Too bad TMS or whomever won't sell a simple $5/month XMLTV feed.

[mlbdude]

In Dev.*/Yes - Integrated Search - By Actor *Already complete for Sage 2.0
In Dev.*/Yes - Integrated Search - By Title *Already complete for Sage 2.0
In Dev.*/Yes - Integrated Search - By Description *Already complete for Sage 2.0


I think these are reversed too. This already exists in Sage and is coming in SS 3.4.

No/Yes - Ability to choose between starting at the beginning of a show or where you last left off (if previously watched)

Sage remembers what you have watched as well.

No/Yes - Turn On or Off Time Shifting

I thought SS was also always buffering what you were watching? Maybe you mean you can set it to only Time Shift the current show?

[Ursa]

DC Dave - your experiences with Myth sound similar to mine, but I did get the sound and remote to work (ATi Remote Wonder using LIRC/Gatos).

I can comment a bit on Freevo, but I would rather someone who has spent more time with it than I have to lead the way (I installed it, played with it, and let if go). I, too, am also waiting to hear from the myHTPC camp. Let's hear it folks!

Later,
Bill

[cayars]

[QUOTE]Re: Another Comparison of SageTV & SnapStream
I've added the SageTV corrections in the quote below where necessary:



quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by cayars
Sage /SnapStream Built In Features
<snip>
No/Yes -Resume playback of recorded shows at the position where you last stopped watching

- Yes already for SageTV, happens by default when watching a show and leaving to go back into the Main Menu

No/Yes -Remote Record Programming
[QUOTE]

I know this works if you jump back to the menu and then go back into the show. But can this work with multiple shows at the same time. For example lets say I'm watching Law & Order, the kids come into the room and want to watch Spong Bob. The kids fall asleep half way through the the show and get put to bed. The wife decides she wants to watch last night's CSI. She gets tire half way through and goes to bed. Now that I have the TV to my self again can I go back into Law & Order and start where I left off? Can the wife continue tomorrow watching CSI where she left off. Not to worried about Spong Bob :)

This is easy to do in SS but it didn't seem to function the same in SageTV 1.4.10 when I was trying to use it. I admit I use SageTV mostly on my second machine to do mostly recording on since I have 2 PVRs in it.

Hey BTW, if you make Sage TV 2.0 available to your registered users on your website I'll change all the "In Dev." to "Yes" comments. <-- Had to give it a shot :)

Carlo

[psxjunky]

Carlo: I will let someone else comment on how this works in SageTV (since I dont know), but I use this feature all the time in Windows XP MCE and it works great.

You can start show 1, see part way thru it, then stop it and start show 2 and then see part way thru and then start show 3 and stop it again part of the way. Now if you come back to either show 1, 2 or 3, it will start playing back exactly at the point where you had left each one.

It is a great feature and I like it !

[cayars]

Originally posted by mlbdude
I think these are reversed too. This already exists in Sage and is coming in SS 3.4.



Sage remembers what you have watched as well.



I thought SS was also always buffering what you were watching? Maybe you mean you can set it to only Time Shift the current show?

SS does always timeshift the current show you are watching. You also have the ability to set timeshifting to always be on regardless of if you're watching LiveTV or not (using the last channel you viewed). This latter feature is more like the way SageTV works.

Carlo

[dkardatzke]

Originally posted by cayars
I know this works if you jump back to the menu and then go back into the show. But can this work with multiple shows at the same time. For example lets say I'm watching Law & Order, the kids come into the room and want to watch Spong Bob. The kids fall asleep half way through the the show and get put to bed. The wife decides she wants to watch last night's CSI. She gets tire half way through and goes to bed. Now that I have the TV to my self again can I go back into Law & Order and start where I left off? Can the wife continue tomorrow watching CSI where she left off. Not to worried about Spong Bob :)
[/B]

This is exactly how it works already in SageTV. I do this when I'm watching two college football games at once. I'll watch one and then switch to the next at commercial and then switch back and forth. It always puts me right back to where I left off.

This also holds true if you watch a show and then don't come back to it until a few days later. It will resume right where you left off when you select it again for viewing from the SageRecordings list.

Hope that helps.
Dan

[cayars]

Edited: This is now working on another computer with the client installed. Still does not work on one computer (notebook) even after un-install/install. I'll work this out.
---
I just tested this on my system and it didn't do this. I also tried to delete shows from the client and couldn't do this either. So from my standpoint I WAS correct. However, now that I know a few things I originally posted do work (just not on my machine), I'm going to rebuild the machine from scratch and re-install SageTV and give it another go. I will make sure the information is updated if needed.

Carlo

Thanks for the input Dan.

[mlbdude]

Defiantly. You have something very messed up. Are you sure you are running the latest version?

[cayars]

Originally posted by cayars
I just tested this on my system and it didn't do this. I also tried to delete shows from the client and couldn't do this either. So from my standpoint I WAS correct. However, now that I know a few things I originally posted do work (just not on my machine), I'm going to rebuild the machine from scratch and re-install SageTV and give it another go. I will make sure the information is updated if needed.

Carlo

Thanks for the input Dan.

I've gotten 2 PMs since I wrote this letting me know that they are having the same problem with multi-shows (at least 3) when jumping back and forth. I believe SageTV has a bug when you introduce the 3rd show into the "resume". But at least it's not just me :)

Carlo

[mlbdude]

Let us know after you do you fresh install if you find some kind of patter to make it fail. I think people are just confused by the fact that the settings are removed when you flag the file for deletion (watched). But there might be some combination of something causing odd behavior.

There are a lot of new votes, but no new comments. Either people are embarrassed or just happen to use one and don't know much about the others. To bad you can't force a response with each vote.

[psxjunky]

Yeah, too bad you can't force a response with each vote ;)

As far as I am concerned, I am just interested in learning about the capabilities of the PVR softwares in as much detail as possible; if you have used multiple solutions and would like to compare them side by side, that's terrific ... but even if you have used only one solution, it is still very valuable to know the details of it from the user point of view.

So please post *something* about the solution(s) you have used when you vote. Just one or two comments is good enough to get a discussion started and you can simply answer the questions that arise from that point on.

This discussion so far has helped me A LOT in learning about some intricate details of various PC PVR solutions, which I would have never thought of or found otherwise ... and I sure hope that at least a couple other members (and lurkers ;)) have benefitted from this so far.

[HookedOnTV]

Great thread. A lot of good information for those of us trying to decide which way to go.

One "feature" that is on my wish list that hasn't been commented about much is how well each does at making the PC not seem like a PC but a consumer electronics device. I want a system that does not require a monitor, keyboard or mouse.

What's the typical power state of the "client" box when not in use? The noise of a full blown PC in the bedroom running 24x7 won't get past the wife. Can you shutdown/standby from the remote?

[schulzpm]

I use MCE for the WAF and am looking at MythTV and/or doing something custom on top of it (I *am* a programmer) on my development machine. From an ease of use and reliability standpoint I think it is the best out there for what it does. There are some big things missing and if they are important you should skip it (or if you don't want to buy the hardware) :-)

Lets add some pros/cons to page 1 for MCE:

+ Best interface of all PVR software (IMO of course)
+ Includes FREE integrated Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
+ Can support remote scheduling over Internet with the third party webguide (free)
+ Full power management support (though some report a little buggy)
+ Supports closed captioning
+ Support for caller ID display
+ Support for 16:9 displays
+ Supports timeshifting (i.e. watch a pre-recorded program while recording) reliably (I have had 0 problems so I didn't think the MythTV group deserved this one to themselves)
+ Has Music, Video, Weather/Net services integrated

- No support for multiple tuners
- No support for network streaming (though it will let you point to shortcuts on the network to view stored videos, pictures, etc.)
- No HDTV support
- No support for third-party filters/deinterlacers
- No way to purchase without buying hardware

+/- (depending on who you are) Has support of Microsoft behind future development (they just released version 2 and we all know Microsoft's track record with version 3 of their products...)

For HookedOnTV: I haven't hooked a monitor up to my MCE machine since I initially set it up. The remote and interface does everything you need except catalog new MP3 files well (which you can do remotely with Media Player and Remote Desktop.) I configured the power button to ask me if I want shutdown/standby and it works great.

[mechou]

Bah, timeshifting reliably with a HW encoder is no big deal since the HW encoder is basically doing *all* the work. Timeshift reliably with a SW encoder, though, is a completely different ball game. And since the Windows overlay is "exclusive use" only, there are fundamental architectural problems to even support this feature (SW encoder) in Windows.

BTW, please add the following pros to mythtv:
+ Caller ID (in conjunction with modem) [New feature]
+ Intelligent/automatic bookmarks (what all you folks were discussing previously with Sage/SS)
+ Frame-accurate seek and editing (option)
+ Remote only operation (including shutdown, once you set everything up)

Originally posted by schulzpm

+ Supports timeshifting (i.e. watch a pre-recorded program while recording) reliably (I have had 0 problems so I didn't think the MythTV group deserved this one to themselves)

[nuthead]

Originally posted by schulzpm

+ Supports timeshifting (i.e. watch a pre-recorded program while recording) reliably (I have had 0 problems so I didn't think the MythTV group deserved this one to themselves)


Erm, I thought time-shifting means pausing/rewinding/ff live tv. Perhaps that is what you meant?

[cayars]

This comparison is for the current downloadable versions of each product.
Current Versions used for comparison:
SageTV 1.4.10
SnapStream 3.4.795

If a feature is already complete but not available to the public yet, it is marked as "In Dev." = In Development

Sage/SnapStream

Built In Features Overview
Yes/Yes - Live TV Viewing, Recording & Playback
Yes/In Dev. - DVD Control/Playback
Yes/Yes* - Music/MP3 Playback *Unlike Sage, SS does not have seperate program section for music

EPG - Electronic Program Guide & Search
US Only/Multiple - FREE integrated Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
No*/Yes - Additional Show Information Displayed on Main Screen of EPG *Information available on secondary screen by pressing "info" Will be on the same screen in Sage 2.0
Yes/Yes - XML EPG Import for other regions
In Dev./Yes - Can use Transparent Overlays *Already complete for Sage 2.0
In Dev.*/No - Ability to add Favorites by Actor & Keyword (like TiVo's Wish List functionality) *Already complete for Sage 2.0
In Dev.*/Yes - Transparent Overlay of EPG Data while watching a video/LiveTV *Already complete for Sage 2.0

EPG/Search Features
Yes/Yes - Search By Title
Yes/Yes - Search By Person/Actor
Yes/Yes - Search By Description
Yes/No - Search All Fields
Yes/No - Show Recent Searches

TV Tuner Cards
Yes/Yes - Hardware based TV-Tuners
No/Yes - Software based TV-Tuners
Limited/In Dev. - Some HDTV support
Yes/In Dev. - Supports Multiple Tuners

Interface & Control
Yes/Yes - Full Screen Interface
Yes/Yes - Windowed Interface
In Dev./Yes - Web *Already possible with Sage 2.0
Yes/Yes - Support for Keyboard
Yes/Yes - Support for Mouse
Yes/Yes - Support for Remote Control
Yes/Yes - Infrared or control of your cable or satellite set-top box
Yes/Yes - Serial Control of your cable or satellite set-top box
Yes/Yes - Support for Girder

Playback PVR Features
Yes/Yes - Resume playback of recorded shows at the position where you last stopped watching
No/Yes - Ability to choose between starting at the beginning of a show or where you last left off (if previously watched)
Yes/Yes - Pause LiveTV
No/Yes - True Rewind & Fast Forward
No/Yes* - Multi-Speed Rewind & Fast Forward *3 speeds available (click once for normal FF/RW, click FF/RW again for double speed, etc)
Yes*/Yes - 30 second Skip Ahead (You set the jump a head time) *SageTV also has a 2nd adjustable FF/RW as well as a "Time Scroll" option that allows you to jump as much as 2.5 minutes.
Yes/Yes - 7 Second Jump Back (You set the jump back time)
Yes/Yes - Playback of MPEG Videos
No/Yes - Playback of Windows Media Videos
Yes/Yes - Playback of DivX Files

General Recording PVR Features
Partial*/Yes - Remote Record Programming *Sage supports remote scheduling from a client machine only ($29 per machine)
Yes/Yes - Pad Recordings
No/Yes - Volume Normalization During Recording
No/Yes* - Record Format *if using a software decoder other Mpeg
Yes/Yes - Variable Bit Rate (VBR) recording
Yes/Yes - Records to MPEG Format (Hardware Encoder)
No/Yes - Records to MPEG Format (Software Encoder)
No/Yes - Records to Windows Media Format (Software Encoder)
No/Yes - Records to DivX
Yes/No - Intelligent Recording
No/In Dev. - Intelligent Suggestions for Recording - same as above but instead of just doing the recordings it lets you choose to do so.
In Dev.*/Yes - Ability to Easily View/Set Priority Manually for Your Favorite Recordings *It is believed this will be in Sage 2.0
Yes/Yes - Time Shifting of Live TV
No/Yes - Turn On or Off Time Shifting
No/Yes - Smart Chapters & Smart Skipping
No/No - Close Captioning Support
Yes/Yes - Parental Controls

Specific Show (Favorites) - Recording PVR Features
Yes/Yes - Record Control - Choice of First Run, Re-Run or All-Episodes
No/Yes - Record to Specific Folder
Yes/Yes - Recording Quality Setting
No/Yes - Video Source (Selection of Tuner Card)
No/Yes - Target Video Folder
No/Yes - File Format
No/Yes - Create Fixed Content (Show/Series will not auto-expire)
Yes/Yes - Keep at Most/Max Number of Recording
No/Yes - Security Level (Public/Private)
No/Yes - Video Recompression (Enable/Disabled)
No/Yes - Video Recompression - Raget Format (Windows Media, DivX)
No/Yes - Video Recompression - Target Quality
No/Yes - Video Recompression - Target Video Folder
No/Yes - Delete Source After Video Recompression?
No/Yes - Manual Setting of Genre
No/Yes - Manual Setting of "Rate this series" (1 is worst, 5 is best)
No/Yes - Manual Setting of MPAA Rating (movie rating system)
No/Yes - Manual Setting of Parental Rating (V-Chip rating system)

Music Library Features
Yes/No - Music by Album
Yes/No - Music by Artist
Yes/No - Music by Genre
Yes/No - Music by Artist-Album
Yes/No - Music by Genre-Artist
Yes/No - Music by Song Title

Other Unique Features
No/Yes - Remote recording scheduling
3rd Party/Built In - Filters/Deinterlacers (different oppions as to which is better)
No/Yes - Power Management/Standby Mode Recovery
No/Yes - Archiving Support (Burn to CD or DVD)
No/Yes - Automatically use spare CPU time to recompress your recordings to another format to save space
In Dev.*/Yes - Remote Recording/Scheduling via WEB *Already done in Sage 2.0
No/Yes - Remote Recording/Scheduling via WAP (cell phone)
In Dev.*/Yes - Integrated Brightness, Gamma & Contrast Controls in the player *Already done in Sage 2.0
In Dev.*/Somewhat - Skinnable *This is complete in Sage 2.0. From all accounts this is a major feature/upgrade of Sage 2.0 and the term "skinnable" is probably not giving it the justice it deserves.
No/Yes - 1 & 2 pass video recompression
15/21 - Trial Evaluation Period in Days
Using Sage Client/Web - Supports Network wide streaming. See additional comment below on streaming.

Commentary
Sage does true streaming of video files including live TV. Snapstream does streaming from it's built in web server. Snapstream does not stream Mpeg files but instead allows you to download them to play back locally.

In addition to the "true" streaming methods mentioned above, you can use the un-supported method ,of using Windows Drive Mapping over your LAN. To do this you will need software on the LAN attached PC that can play Mpeg2 files off a hard drive (i.e. WinDVD, etc). This however is not true streaming.

One of the more controversial differences between the products is the use of TimeShifting. Sage records all shows that you view as Live TV and saves them to your "library". You then have to manually remove what you don't want or wait for the show to auto expire. If you're watching a movie/show live and decide you wished you had recorded it you actually already have it with Sage. SnapStream on the other hand uses a buffer (first in/first out) approach that is configuable in size. SS does not ever record shows for you unless you set a show to record. The TimeShift approach used by SS is for pause/resume/ff/rw type functionality.

When it comes to folders SS hands down has better folder management for your shows. This is completely functional in the Web (client) but not yet in the GUI. It is probably going to be in the next release. This functionality should be accomplished in Sage 2.0 along with Playlists.

As far as "Clients" go, SnapStream doesn't really have a client per say. You can however manage your system from the web. You can schedule shows, download shows and stream some type of shows. There is no added cost for this with SS as it's built in. With SageTV you have to purchase a client license for each device at $29 a shot. The client is pretty much a fully functional copy of SageTV except for support/setup of the capture device and channel lineups which naturally would be done on the main SageTV "server" where the capture device is located.

I wanted to do a comparison of the features each program has for recorded programs but can't do these off the top of my head. I'll edit this later to include this information. There are some real differences here if memory serves me correctly and SS has better support.

As far as graphic presentation goes, most people would say SS looks more profession. Well have to wait and see what SageTV 2.0 has in store for us. Looking at the prototype screens from SageTV 2.0, I'd still say SnapStream is better. However, one of the goals of Sage 2.0 is to allow the customer complete control over the application's look and feel.

Carlo

PS This is not meant to be pro or con for either product. If you notice any information that is not correct or tends to give the wrong impression let me know so it can be fixed accordingly.

[mechou]

I've heard the term used both ways, i.e ff/rw live or record while watching another pre-recorded program. If there exists separate terminology for each of these modes that anyone knows about, I think we'd all be interested to know.

Originally posted by nuthead
Erm, I thought time-shifting means pausing/rewinding/ff live tv. Perhaps that is what you meant?

[dkardatzke]

Trick Play is the best term for pausing/rewinding/ff for Live TV but it's a Trademarked term of TiVo. That's why we don't use it and use "timeshifting" instead which encompasses the whole range of watching a show at your own time whether it's a 30 second delay or three days later.

[RTK]

Is there any projected or target release for Sage ver 2?

[stanger89]

Using Sage Client/Web - Supports Network wide streaming. Although not "true streaming" you can use Windows Drive Mapping and a player to view your shows from any attached network computer that has the bandwidth.

Carlo, I think this comment is a little confusing. Sage has a true client with full SageTV features and does true streaming, while SS only supports playing files from network shares/web interface. I think that is what you were trying to say but it's hard to tell where the Sage comments end and the SS comments start.

psxjunky,

You could also add Hauppage MediaMVP support to the + list for Sage. This would be a big plus for those who want a true "Thin client". The MediaMVP is a networked media player, it should be quieter than a Tivo/Replay (no fans). It was reported in the HTPCnews interview that the Sage has already got their UI to work on the MVP but no release date has been given.

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by stanger89
Carlo, I think this comment is a little confusing. Sage has a true client with full SageTV features and does true streaming, while SS only supports playing files from network shares/web interface. I think that is what you were trying to say but it's hard to tell where the Sage comments end and the SS comments start.

I think it's safe to say that "true streaming" means a means of watching a recorded show without having to transfer the entire file to the client first.

I believe that SS does this via the web interface, but I'm not positive.

[cayars]

I'll clarify the streaming comment. You guys are correct, I didn't convey the information clearly enough. I've fixed it to be more clear but I've got a hangup on the language and it reads poorly to me. Any help would be appreciated. :)

It's my understanding that the MVP client will be worked on after Sage Studio is release, so I don't know if they have even started working on anything yet. Below is from the interview:

Question: We did the review of the MediaMVP the other day, we are wanting to know if Frey and Hauppauge are working together to bring us a Client version of Sage to the MediaMVP?

Answer: The MVP is something we've tested and there will be down the road a SageTV client for the MediaMVP. Hauppauge is working on a SDK to allow people to write more interfaces for their box. With what we understand is required with the MVP the time to market for us with it will be relatively quick.

[mlbdude]

I believe that SS does this via the web interface, but I'm not positive.

SS can only stream WMV format files and it does so without a client and uses the web interface instead.

[cayars]

Originally posted by RTK
Is there any projected or target release for Sage ver 2?

1st Quarter 2004. However an open beta is approaching.

Carlo

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
SS can only stream WMV format files and it does so without a client and uses the web interface instead.

Which I guess you could call a plus, since this means you can stream to any computer with a web browser.

[psxjunky]

Whew ! Lots of great comments in the past two days. Thanks everyone !

Sorry I didn't get a chance to update the first post with the new comments yet, but I am going to do it right now.

[mlbdude]

Which I guess you could call a plus, since this means you can stream to any computer with a web browser.

I would think that is defiantly a plus for those that are never home or don't mind lower image quality.

Maybe that should be broken into two features? Ability to stream at full quality and ability to stream lower quality over the internet. Heck you could even break it out to specify the file formats that can be streamed by each (if it has not been done already).

[jkdufair]

Originally posted by mlbdude
I would think that is defiantly a plus for those that are never home or don't mind lower image quality.

Maybe that should be broken into two features? Ability to stream at full quality and ability to stream lower quality over the internet. Heck you could even break it out to specify the file formats that can be streamed by each (if it has not been done already).

I would only add that "full quality" and "lower quality" are slippery terms. At the highest setting, WMV could be argued to be "full quality" by some where only lossless HuffYUV would be considered "full quality" by others.

Maybe just the formats is sufficient. Let people make their own judgements about quality from the format type.

[psxjunky]

Okay, first post updated with many more details posted here in the past two days. Let me know if you see anything missing or incorrect and I will update and/or correct the post

[stanger89]

Carlo,

Here's the quote I was referring to about the MediaMVP:

We jump back to the MediaMVP and Dan lets us know:

We already gotten our UI to work on the MediaMVP, the guide works, spoils a little fun but feel free to say something about this. But you can sit on the MediaMVP and do anything you can do on a SageTV client right now.

[cayars]

Originally posted by stanger89
We jump back to the MediaMVP and Dan lets us know:

We already gotten our UI to work on the MediaMVP, the guide works, spoils a little fun but feel free to say something about this. But you can sit on the MediaMVP and do anything you can do on a SageTV client right now.

From what I've read and heard it's just that the "Interface". Nothing about control or guts level stuff. No offence meant here but changing the skin and putting a web based guide on the MVP isn't a big deal. When they have the MVP actually controlling things, then we're getting somewhere :)

You know what's funny, since both SnapStream and MythTV can be controlled via web brower, you'd think somebody would do a SKIN for one of these platforms. It would probably be easier then what Sage is up against.

[stanger89]

I guess I read, "But you can sit on the MediaMVP and do anything you can do on a SageTV client right now." I took it to mean that, in house, they have Sage Client (or something equivalent) running on an MVP.

Yes, SHS has created a new skin for the MVP but that is, as you said, just a skin (although it does look much better than the default skin).

[cayars]

Yea, I guess it depends on how you read it.

"The MVP is something we've tested and there will be down the road a SageTV client for the MediaMVP. Hauppauge is working on a SDK to allow people to write more interfaces for their box. With what we understand is required with the MVP the time to market for us with it will be relatively quick."

and

"We already gotten our UI to work on the MediaMVP, the guide works, spoils a little fun but feel free to say something about this. But you can sit on the MediaMVP and do anything you can do on a SageTV client right now."

I see how you took this to mean what you said as well as what I originally thought. Anybody have more info on this?

Carlo

[Ursa]

Wow, this thread was hiding. How about sending it back to the front...

B^ump! :D

[ianken]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Mmmmm Dscaler..... I use it in SageTV (non HD content) and love it.

Which Dscaler? The crusty dshow filter that hasn't been touched in years and still doesn't do inverse telecine or something else? Becuase if I have to leave the app and play files in the dScaler app: bzzt, no sale. Integration is the way to go.

[otter]

Share Recorded TV (http://www.thegreenbutton.com/downloads/files/Share_Recorded_TV.zip)
The Offie Maven wrote this slick exe. to share recorded tv over a network for MCE.

[Ursa]

Hmmmm... Still no Freevo, and no myHTPC. Anyone? :D

[psxjunky]

Yes, I would love to hear some feedback on the myHTPC TV Plugin

[schulzpm]

I've tried myHTPC a couple of times and each time I gave up because setting it up was too confusing. Until someone writes an easy to use guide or a better instsaller I think it is a waste of time. The thing is harder to get running than MythTV.

[cayars]

Bump

[psxjunky]

Added one more request for myTHPC TV Plugin feedback ... on top of the first post, so that newcomers to the thread see that more easily and (hopefully) offer some comment on myHTPC

[jwtucker]

How does the recording quality of MCE compare to Sage and SS? I'm still evaluating different PVR solutions and I'm leaning toward Sage so far. I've seen several people comment that they feel Sage has better picture quality than SS but no one has mentioned how MCE fits into the picture. I'm a developer and have a subscription to MSDN and I'm considering giving MCE a shot if it seems worth it.

[tbdombrosky]

I have used both the myhtpc plugin and mythtv. I gave up on the myhtpc plugin because it was too much trouble for what it offered at the time. It may have matured by now though.

I think mythtv is unbelievable. It has not crashed on me yet and I have been running it for a month. For anyone wanting to try it out, I recommend using Redhat 9 for it because of the atrpms packages. To install mythtv, I typed:

"apt-get install mythtv-suite"

It installed all the packages associated with mythtv also. To install or update xmltv I type:

"apt-get -y install xmltv"

I have a task scheduled to update xmltv every night so I don't have to worry about it being broken. After xmltv updates, I have mythtv scheduled to update its EPG. It's simpler than you think. You can also run a script to automatically update mythtv every night if you want. Also someone mentioned that mythtv can't play unencrypted dvds (I'm pretty sure that's what they said, feel free to correct me here). It works fine for me though.

[cymro]

jwtucker:

I just received a 2004MCE HP Pavilion computer.

I record from Echostar satellite so I'm not using the tuner card. My display is a Pioneer 50inch Plasma. Almost all of my viewing has been with the VGA output from the graphics card in the HP. Unfortunately, the graphics card is unable to output VGA and Svideo at the same time so I have to use AltF5 to switch between the two modes on the graphics card - very inconvenient.

Compared with replayTV, the PQ is quite soft (looks like a low res. picture) and the colors are very subdued.

It's too soon for me to give a final opinion.

Other features are pretty good - comparable to Tivo.

Inernet Radio seems limited to MusicMatch offerings via the MCE2004 GUI. You have to go to the std. Windows desktop and use RealAudio or WindowsMedia Player if you want to listen to radio stations that MusicMatch does not offer.

Anybody know how to access Real Audio or Windows Media Player stations from the MCE2004 GUI?

It's a pita to switch to & from MCE2004 GUI and Windows GUI just to listen to your favorite internet radio streams.

Another interesting defficiency is that you can't listen to the satellite music (audio) channels from Echostar with MCE2004. This is despite the fact that a video signal (displaying song titles etc.) is present on the Echostar music channels. Anybody else have this problem?

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by jwtucker
How does the recording quality of MCE compare to Sage and SS? I'm still evaluating different PVR solutions and I'm leaning toward Sage so far. I've seen several people comment that they feel Sage has better picture quality than SS but no one has mentioned how MCE fits into the picture. I'm a developer and have a subscription to MSDN and I'm considering giving MCE a shot if it seems worth it.

I have been using MCE for quite sometime and have been trying out Sage for about two weeks now. The picture quality from both looks excellent to me under a similar setup. Sage offers many more choices in recording quality - so this comparison is based on the "Best" quality in MCE versus the "MPEG2 Max quality" under Sage.

Sage also offers 3rd party de-interlacers and filters, which I haven't tried yet ... so I am guessing I can make the picture look even better.

Based on picture quality alone I can't really recommend one over the other ... since both are very very good in my setup.

If you need some of the unique features of Sage (multiple tuner support, streaming over network, ease of creating DVD from the MPEG files etc.) then Sage may be worth it. If you don't need any of those and already have access to the MSDN MCE, it may be worth trying that out first.

The interface of MCE 2004 is definitely way better than Sage, and the MCE remote does an excellent job of making it easy to navigate this interface; whereas in Sage you will have to pick a remote and customize it (except the Hauppauge remote, which is already customized by Sage) to make it work.

If you can get past the ugly interface, Sage actually feels like a very solid product internally ... but I haven't had enough time to try them side by side to make a final decision.

Bottom line is that both Sage and MCE seem to be VERY worthy competitors as a PC PVR solution (I haven't tried SnapStream yet, so can't comment on that) ... so try out both and see which one you like in your setup.

[rempson]

Well - I am a new poster here, have been a lurker for a little bit - and I just voted - for SnapStream, because....

Got my new PC & Hauppauge 350 at the end of October and first found SS, installed the trial version and all was well. Then I thought I would try the trial version of SageTV - it froze my computer the first time and I thought "forget it & go with what I know will work." Used SS for a couple of weeks and was very happy with it. Then it started acting up, losing the program guide and erasing the programs preset to record. It did that twice and then it recorded a show without picture, and sound was a steady buzz. Enough of that - so tried SageTV again. I was unable to use the trial version as it stated my time was up. So I purchased it, "sight unseen" so to speak and although the UI was not SS, it was okay - with both programs I preferred the liveTV from WinTV, much clearer picture, so the quality of liveTV is not an issue with me. However, I have two shows I like to record during the day and both times with SageTV, it would record the first show just fine and the second show would record without sound. Very frustrating - so I reinstalled my TV card & Sage TV and tried again. The third day, it recorded radio stations instead of TV stations.... So back to SS I went - a week later, for the most part, SS is working okay. It occassionally jumps channels and selects stations I do not get, and I have to restart my PC to correct.

Overall, I liked the interface of SS better, but what I liked best about SageTV was that I could use it with TV out on my tv card - with SS, I cannot. Both SS and SageTV have excellent support and I am working with Sage right now to get a refund - maybe someday I will try it again, if the bugs with SS continue, but for now, I am working to get SS bug free on my pc -

Glad I found this forum and this is a very informative thread -

Robin

[mlbdude]

Your issues with Sage are knows bugs in the Hauppauge drivers. You should look into updating those and possibly using the ones provided by SHS.

[rempson]

Actualy, I did just that - uninstalled my drivers/software and downloaded and installed the latest - same problem. Good to know it is a known bug - right now I feel SS is the 'lesser of two evils' -

thanks,
Robin:D

[mechou]

rempson's post echo my findings. You just have to play too many games with buggy drivers, directx updates, registry edits, & whatnot, and still do not have a reliable PVR at the end of the process. This is what I call "tweaking" or "babysitting." After I switched to mythtv, I've never had to subject my HTPC/PVR to such tweaking to ensure reliable operation. It has since become a true appliance, while still preserving the flexibility of why I went the HTPC route in the first place.

Either you do all your tweaking "up front" or you pay the consequences later. Besides the bucks you spent (i.e. wasted) purchashing SS/SageTV/etc., don't forget the lost opportunity costs associated with all that tweaking.

[mlbdude]

The drivers for Windows are fine (especially compared to the Linux ones). You do have to know what you are doing to install them properly. Windows gets a bad rap in this area because you have everyone and their grandma trying to set this stuff up. Just like in Linux if you know what you are doing it is a piece of cake. On an already stable system, SageTV sets up in minutes. The key is an already stable system. Any PVR application will bring out any weaknesses in a system. Also, if MythTV and Linux were as easy to setup as I am told here then why is it not being used by more people? Either it is not as easy as advertised here or the product is not up to par.

rempson, I went back and checked out both your posts at Sage and SnapStream. I think I take back the driver problem you are having. You seem to be experiencing a unique issue. Since you are also having problems with all PVR's you should look a little lower level at your problems. Is this PC an HTPC? Is it a fresh build? How many different PCI slots have you had the 350 in? What other kind of hardware do you have? What IRQ's are all your cards sharing? When working with tech support at either company keep those items in mind.

Good luck!

[rempson]

I have also concluded it is something going on with my PC & PRV software, just unsure what it is. It seems to have less impact with SS, so I decided to stick with that. My Dell PC is just a month old, and has all good hardware in it. I have a wireless home network (MS Base - 802.11G), I have DSL connection to Internet, and latest drivers, as well as the latest DirectX and Windows Media Player. I was hoping the latest and newest would result in problem free...

Actually, my last PC was a Dell also and I had an older Hauppauge TV tuner card in it and the whole time I had it, there was a conflict shutting down the PC that only went away when I would take out the TV card. I read once that there was a problem with Dell and Hauppauge, perhaps there is some kind of conflict going on with the two still. Yet, when I use WinTV to view live TV or record, I do not have any problems...

But as long as I keep some sort of PVR software functioning on my PC, I am a happy camper and truly feel later versions of both SS or Sage will continue to improve. And boards like this give me such valuable information, that I truly do appreciate. :)

Thanks -
Robin

[MikeSM]

Since there seems to be a conflict of opinion on how complicated a MythTV install actually is, I thought I should post a link to a detailed step by step install guide for Myth on Redhat. Check it out here. (http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-page.php?pageName=rh9pvr250)

Nothing very esoteric if you are used to Linux, but pretty challenging if you never have used a Linux system before. At some point, with package automation getting better and better, this will become easier and people will have ISO's built for common configurations, but right now it's a little complicated.

That said, while a windows install of Sage or Snapstream looks easy, you still have to get the drivers installed, devices configured, and if you are trying to implement the same functional capability that Myth has (HDTV, DVD Ripping/archiving and playback, CD Ripping and archiving, http remote access, and weather/news frontends), I think the complexity of integrating the pieces into something as well integrated as Myth would be much more complicated than this Myth install would be.

At this point in time, if you want more than just a PVR, but a true media center, there isn't a simple easy to install configuration available. It's all hard work until someone packages it together in an easy to install way. It may be possible that because of MPAA issues no one will be able to integrate DVD ripping and archiving into a commercial product, so the open source route has some advantages in being able to integrate all those pieces into a comprehensive product.

Thanks,
Mike

[tbdombrosky]

Well said Mike. My personal opinion is that if you can install Linux, Mythtv shouldn't be that difficult. It's even easier if you use the prepackaged binaries.

[mlbdude]

What would the logical conclusion be as to why so few people use it?

BTW, I think the nail was hit on the head with....

Nothing very esoteric if you are used to Linux, but pretty challenging if you never have used a Linux system before.

I wonder if MythTV will ever be ported to Windows. I would try it then :).

[mechou]

I personally happen to think the poll results are skewed because the members of this forum happens to be predominantly Windows users (not counting the linux HTPC subforum). If you went to a forum that's predominantly Linux users (say slashdot) and held a similar poll, that poll would be skewed against SS/SageTV, etc. As I have shown earlier in this thread, apparently its tough enough to convince some people to try even other PVR solutions (including Windows).

And regarding the example cited by MikeSM, that's a *specific instance* of a myth install under a specific distro. I personally think the instructions on that site are needlessly complicated. Knoppmyth (as an example) has made mythtv install considerably simpler. Other people on this thread who have tried it have said as much.

As a driver developer in a prior life, I can tell you for a fact that Windows capture card drivers as a class, are the buggiest drivers out there. This is one area where Windows deserves its bad rap. I'd would have betted against it happening earlier, but now linux drivers for pvr350 support overlays, which Windows can't even handle. This feature for example would allow things like closed captioning, PIP, caller-id, etc. That's why Sage and SS are still futzing around like blind mice on how to support closed captioning on PVR-x50 HW. Another example is the linux bt878 driver allows for direct streaming of sound over the pci bus (btaudio on MSP34xx), for which there is no corresponding feature in Windozeland.

And don't bother holding your breath for a port of mythtv to Windows. Why would anyone want to go backwards? If you aren't concerned about "trusted computing," I'll guarantee that you will be by the time Longhorn is about to be released.

Originally posted by mlbdude
What would the logical conclusion be as to why so few people use it?
I wonder if MythTV will ever be ported to Windows. I would try it then :).

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by mechou
... but now linux drivers for pvr350 support overlays, which Windows can't even handle. This feature for example would allow things like closed captioning, PIP, caller-id, etc. That's why Sage and SS are still futzing around like blind mice on how to support closed captioning on PVR-x50 HW.

Just so everyone knows, WinXP Media Center supports Closed Captioning perfectly well (even better than TiVo or ReplayTV, in my experience) on the PVR-x50 platform ... so obviously there is a way to do this in Windows land.

MCE 2004 has also added caller-id display support.

[MikeSM]

And don't bother holding your breath for a port of mythtv to Windows. Why would anyone want to go backwards?

Well, the real reason this isn't going to happen is that Myth is based on a whole set of Linux initiatives, and moving them to windows would mean going to a different set of semantics, which would make the port very complicated. This kind of modularity is seen by many in the developer community as a big feature, but it also means that a lot of things can be changing at the same time. The pace of development in the Linux community around A/V stuff is quite high, much higher than what you typically see in the windows community because so many things like driver semantics and media interfaces wait for major Microsoft product cycles for key OS support. Linux just moves at a faster pace.

That can make life a lot harder however in some cases. It's not a universally good thing.

However, I think the whole windows vs Linux debate here is very tangental to the development of what most people on this forum want, which is a comprehensive media server that can support a wide range of clients with broad functionality. The points made about Windows capture drivers are very true, but Linux also has issues that limit development in different ways. Certainly the choices of hardware are much for limited because of driver support issues, though this is a lot better now than it was a year ago, and will continue to improve.

I'll retiterate - no product out there allows a consumer to provide very broad media serving capabilities without a lot of work. At some point, I think people will move to a little more of the consumer electronics perspective and start restricting hardware choices where drivers are a big problem and then bundle driver and OS mods into a common package to make the install and configuration process much easier for the consumer. While I can't say I care much for XP MCE 2003, that model has a lot of support advantages to it.

With the right set of functionality and interfaces (so you can import and export media from the server to other systems), someone could make a windows or Linux based media server a very easy to install package that users would rarely have to interact with the OS for install or maintenance purposes. Then mlbdude wouldn't have to learn Linux to use it as a media center. In fact, I think within the next year some of this will happen with Myth and Sage so that custom installers and OEM's can start embedding this sort of technology in consumer installations.

Myth is close to where you want to be for functionality, though it doesn't currently have the ability to burn playlists to CD's or archive video content on DVD's and such. Integrating burning and intra-network sharing of media is the biggest missing piece right now, but that will come soon.

I know, patch management for security issues will make this harder to support safely for Windows, as will frequent kernel releases for Linux, but I still believe this sort of initiative is needed for this whole class of media servers to prosper.

Let me ask it a different way, if you could get Myth in an easy to install package that allowed you to use all of it's functionality without having to deal with Linux (or Windows for that matter), how many here would jump on building a system with it?

Thanks,
Mike

[kelliot]

After reading this thread, I think I'll stick with my ReplayTV and DVarchive.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by MikeSM
Let me ask it a different way, if you could get Myth in an easy to install package that allowed you to use all of it's functionality without having to deal with Linux (or Windows for that matter), how many here would jump on building a system with it?


Very well said Mike ! I certainly would try it :) However, as mentioned before, my real concern is NOT with the initial installation and "getting things up and running" part ... which I am guessing has been made easy with some of the MythTV distros. My real concern is dealing with the nasty Unix unfriendliness that *still* lies at the core of Linux (based on my less-than-a-year-old experience with RedHat 7.x) when I want to go beyond the basic PVR functionalities that MythTV provides, e.g. extracting shows and editing/archiving, getting the machine to talk to my other machines on my home network, adding new hardware as they come out etc. That is the part where I personally am MUCH more comfortable in the Windows land and so far don't see any compelling reason to move.

[psxjunky]

Originally posted by kelliot
After reading this thread, I think I'll stick with my ReplayTV and DVarchive.

Ken: If the ReplayTV/DVarchive setup supports all the features that you expect from a complete PVR solution, you certainly should stick with it :)

However, after using both TiVo and ReplayTV for quite some time now, I have repeatedly had this feeling that any of these custom solutions are just too restrictive when you want to expand the capabilities of the solution and add new features. *That* is when you become at the mercy of the manufacturers to provide the feature -or- independent developers (like gerry of DVarchive fame) are sometimes bound by the limits if the hardware (and sometimes software) architecture.

This ease of expandability is where I think an open platform like the PC shines. There is no doubt that setting up a PC based PVR solution is always going to be harder than a standalone PVR, but if you want to have the luxury of easy expandability, I don't think you have a choice at the moment.

[MikeSM]

My real concern is dealing with the nasty Unix unfriendliness that *still* lies at the core of Linux (based on my less-than-a-year-old experience with RedHat 7.x) when I want to go beyond the basic PVR functionalities that MythTV provides, e.g. extracting shows and editing/archiving, getting the machine to talk to my other machines on my home network, adding new hardware as they come out etc.

PSX, Linux has come a long way in terms of being able to be integrated into home networks, from very easy configuration for DHCP assignment of addresses, and being able to serve and read files in a windows network (Samba 3.0 is quite good and easier to get going). The big item is being able to select the media you want and specify a portable format for export in a windows network environment. That work hasn't been done yet in Myth, though the transcoding support that has been built into Myth provides some tools to make this a lot easier than it normally would be.

Adding disks, modifying filesystems and such is a lot easier these days, even support for USB filesystems and such works pretty much out of the box.

Of course, you have to be able to deal to do all these things in Windows too, it's just that a lot more people are familiar with Windows than Linux. :-) But that's my basic point, the packaging needs to take such issues into account and ideally hide it from the user by default, windows or Linux.

A lot of people are using Linux based devices today without even knowing that Linux is underneath it all. The Media MVP client has Linux at it's core, but it's hidden by the GUI and the server program that runs under windows. Same can be said for the Roku device, and TIVO. That's a good model for where both the Windows and Linux based systems need to go.

I'm not saying that Linux is the best base for what where we want to go, just as I'm not saying Windows is either. What I am saying is that a lot of folks would buy a product that had comprehensive media center functionality with an easy out of the box experience that can hide the issues of the OS and utility integration that make both types of current solutions a pain to deal with. Yet such a product doesn't exist today, for any OS out there, and needs to for the HTPC to go truly mainstream.

Thanks,
Mike

[psxjunky]

Thanks Mike ! I like your attitude a lot better than some others on this thread. I have a couple of questions for you about Linux, but since they are not exactly related to the primary goal of this thread, I am going to PM you with those questions.

[ianken]

Originally posted by psxjunky
Just so everyone knows, WinXP Media Center supports Closed Captioning perfectly well (even better than TiVo or ReplayTV, in my experience) on the PVR-x50 platform ... so obviously there is a way to do this in Windows land.

MCE 2004 has also added caller-id display support.

FWIW MCE doesn't use overlays.

MCE also does Teletext quite well.

I've used Snapstream, Sage, Showshifter, Replay and MCE.

I rank Replay and MCE ahead of the other two and Snapstream ahead of Sage. The Snapstream UI is nice and polished. The remote client streaming stuff is slick. The Sage UI is amaturish and laughably primitive. Showshifter, well even though I paid for it I promptly deleted it after hours of frustration with it's UI that seemed o be designed by an intoxicated toddler with a crayon.

One advantage Sage has is extensibility. There's even a version that supports the big dish 4DTV reciever in the form of the "tapeitall" solution that is quit nice, the lame UI not withstanding.

One thing that annoyes me about all of the PC based solutions is no iverse telecine. At the best they use the VMR/GPU for deinterlacing and MCE of the lot does the best job in this regard. While some of the others support the dscaler dshow filter, that thing hasn't been udpated since the dawn of time plus the filter only works with the elecard decoder, which is a good decoder but I prefer the fidelity of the nVidai codec over it.

I cannot see how anyone who's actually USED WinXP MCE on a good machine with the right tuner card can even compare it to the others. It is fast, slick, the video looks good and I never have to resort to some 3rd party shareware thing to work around some annoying limitation in the app. If it weren't for MCE I would ahve just given up on the HTPC ages ago after getting sick of: "you can fix that with a few hours of work in girder, or this tool, or that tool, with some batch files and this exe from the guy named Bob I got off the net and this other filter, oh and run graphedit first to get things into the right state. Bah. MCE just works. Press the green button and party. End of story.

[psxjunky]

ianken: I HAVE to agree with your comment about "MCE just works" and you also rightly capture my feeling that MCE restored my faith that HTPCs can actually work.

If it were not for lack of multi-tuner support and proprietary recording format, I probably would not be looking for a second PVR solution right now ... even then, I have absolutely NO plans to discard my MCE machine anytime soon. It *is* my primary PVR right now and will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future.

However, you have to realize that MCE is not suitable for everyone. Especially most HTPC enthusiasts like to build their own machines with custom hardware ... and would hate the idea of having to buy a whole new machine just to get the MCE license. And not everyone has access to MSDN to use the MSDN version of MCE.

I certainly would NEVER even think about MCE unless the MSDN subscription was available.

I partially understand why Microsoft is rigidly controlling the MCE solution as a hardware+software bundle, which is mainly due to the support issues. But I also feel sorry that by doing so they are severly reducing the distribution of what I consider one of the BEST products they have ever created.

It would be the best of both worlds if Microsoft also sold a version of the MCE software alone which came with no support or minimal support structure that is different from the support offerred for MCE Hardware bundles.

[mlbdude]

While some of the others support the dscaler dshow filter, that thing hasn't been udpated since the dawn of time plus the filter only works with the elecard decoder

The filter has not been updated because all it does is create an gateway to the DScaler plugins themselves. The plugins are what actually do the work. Also, using ffdshow you can use any decoder with Sage to use DScaler - as long as the decoder supports not deinterlacing at all.

Like psxjunky says, some of us pick a product on functionality and not looks. That is pretty shallow dude :).

[ralphjb]

This ease of expandability is where I think an open platform like the PC shines. There is no doubt that setting up a PC based PVR solution is always going to be harder than a standalone PVR, but if you want to have the luxury of easy expandability, I don't think you have a choice at the moment.

Well said. I have been using SageTV with 2 PC's on a network setup (with a 3rd "media server" PC) with no problems. The ability to increase disk space as needed, the product support with upgrades from SageTV, etc., these are all reasons to take the PC road.

[dkardatzke]

We released a preview of SageTV v2.0 on our website yesterday at www.sage.tv/beta.html. It shows preview screenshots of the new version and has information on how to sign up as a beta tester.

Dan

[eggman51]

Phew .. read through all 13 pages.

Dissapointing to see some degeneration into Windows vs. Linux; refrenshing to see it recover from that.

Great information here. I am in the process of making these same decisions.

I am leaning towards myHTPC as the front end with Snap Stream.

However .... the crashing thing with SS me concerned. I'm in on the 3.4 beta and I must say there is a HUGE list of bugs being worked on in 3.4 (actually the list is alarmingly large).

MythTV definitely looks fantastic. It looks like what a NeXT HTPC woulda been if they were around. I too am stuck in Windows land, but not so much that an MCE PC purchase is in the works.

SageTV 2 looks really promising, but my guess is that it'll need a 2.1 dev cycle before it meets my WAF requirements.

Thanks to all the positive contributors to this thread, it's exactly what I;ve been looking for (and just now mustered up the gumtion to read it all).

[Llamas]

I, too, have just finished wading through this thread. Good discussion.

One of my primary considerations is playing back recordings over the network (one server, multiple clients). What are people's experiences in this regard?

I don't have a cable feed, yet (will be switching from D* and DirecTivos to Motorola 6208s + PC PVR in a month or so), so I am somewhat limited in my ability to test drive things.

Thanks,

--Mike

[mlbdude]

One of my primary considerations is playing back recordings over the network (one server, multiple clients). What are people's experiences in this regard?

Silky smooth with 3 clients running at the same time with recordings encoded at 4GB per hour using Sage.

[MikeSM]

One of my primary considerations is playing back recordings over the network (one server, multiple clients). What are people's experiences in this regard?

If you run a reasonable disk configuration on the server, this should be no trouble with Sage or Myth or pretty much anyone's software. The real issue is the network transport you are using. If you have 100 Base-T through the home, you should be able to support 3 or 4 DVD quality feeds pretty effectively. If you have Giagabit ethernet on the server and a good disk configuration, you could go farther.

If you are trying to run this over an 802.11g system, i'm not sure you could do more than 1 or 2 effectively. With 802.11b, I doubt you could even make one work effectively.

Nothing beats a hardwired ethernet system for this sort of application.

Thanks,
Mike

[MikeSM]

One of my primary considerations is playing back recordings over the network (one server, multiple clients). What are people's experiences in this regard?

If you run a reasonable disk configuration on the server, this should be no trouble with Sage or Myth or pretty much anyone's software. The real issue is the network transport you are using. If you have 100 Base-T through the home, you should be able to support 3 or 4 DVD quality feeds pretty effectively. If you have Giagabit ethernet on the server and a good disk configuration, you could go farther.

If you are trying to run this over an 802.11g system, i'm not sure you could do more than 1 or 2 effectively. With 802.11b, I doubt you could even make one work effectively.

Nothing beats a hardwired ethernet system for this sort of application.

Thanks,
Mike

[FrankieFiero]

I'm still reading through the thread (and need to be somewhere else soon), so I'm not going to comment on anything just yet - but I will explain my vote.

I started my project from the video card selection. My choice was the AIW 9600 Pro. I was trying to build my HTPC into an old CD player, and wanted to have a single-card tuner/GPU solution (the Remote Wonder and free HL2 cinched the deal for me). This choice actually made the PVR software solution for me. Since Sage doesn't do software encoding, and Myth doesn't support the AIW - I really did not have much of a choice. Originally, I wanted to use Myth - and had I known that I would not be able to do so with the AIW before making my purchase I might have gone a different route (especially since the CD player part of the project fell apart).

In all, I was pretty happy with SS 3.3. I've had problems with 'Always Timeshifting', which needed to be disabled and causes a delay in starting Live TV. But, this has been explained as more of an ATI problem than SS (since the same problem exists using the ATI MMC software as well, I believe this to be true). Once that bug was squashed, I've had little/no problems using SS. I like the net recording function (especially since finding shows is easier on the web interface - and I can do it from work), and the DivX recompression is a definite boon.

3.4 was installed yesterday, and I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about it. I didn't like having to install .Net, but since this machine really does nothing else - I'll bite it. There's a couple new features that I haven't fully explored yet, but there's still some notables missing - like a lot of the nice features in Myth.

[flashbacck]

what the-
snapstream is now "beyondTV?"

anyway, has anyone taken this "beyondTV 3.4" out for a spin?

[mlbdude]

anyway, has anyone taken this "beyondTV 3.4" out for a spin?

Let just say it does not do much for their reputation for stability. They released way too early. And again they failed to notify customers of some of the limitation of the new features they did include like SmaptSkip. Sometimes I think they set themselves up for problems.