andy vt's tools & blog

I want to thank everyone in the MCE community for all your help over the years.  I feel sad to say this, but I’m leaving the MCE community and switching over to SageTV.  I’ve been playing around with Sage every since they released their extenders.  I’ve been running Sage and MCE side by side for a few weeks (to make sure Sage is reliable), however, last Wednesday I shut off MCE and I’m only running on Sage now.  I won’t go into all the details on why I’m switching, I don’t want this to turn into a “bash” Microsoft post, however, Sage just does a few things that I’ve been looking for.  Of course, they have a few features missing in their Commercial Skip Add-in when compared to the Dtb product, so I’ll have to work with their developers and “steal” ideas from Andy’s great product.  I just wanted to thank everyone for all their help.  The MCE community is a great community and without it the MCE product would be really lacking.  So, thank you for everyone’s kindness and help.

Before I started playing around with Sage I was working on Mencoder so it could encode directly to the IPod format.  I gave Coyote a beta version to test (I don’t have an IPod myself to test with).  I will keep working with him to see if I can make this work, so you may still see a new version of Mencoder from me (this will probably be the last version you see from me).  However, if anyone wants to take up the Mencoder source code and start maintaining it, just contact me and I’ll be happy to work with you; you don’t have to maintain the ffmpeg source, all the changes to support dvr-ms are in the SVN so any updated version of ffmpeg should work fine (Celtic Druid maintains the latest compiles for Windows).

Thank you once again to everyone that helped me over the years, and a special thanks to Andy for your great application (and time you dedicate to support).  Who knows, you may see me back in the community again someday if Microsoft adds some feature I just can’t live without.

Take Care,

Jon

Say it ain't so!!!

Thanks for your help with mencoder/ffmpeg, and good luck with Sage!
 

wow...

With a little encouragement from Babgvant, below are the big reasons I decided to move to Sage. I didn't share this in the beginning because I didn't want it to sound like I was Microsoft bashing.  I loved my MCE system, it was an awesome application that got me hooked on this whole HTPC movement, and I give Microsoft a lot of credit for that.  However, Babgvant has convinced me that I need to share this with the community.

 

1) The biggest reason I moved to Sage was the extenders.  In my home I use 5 extenders (which was the max for MCE, but in Sage you can have more) so this is important for my setup.  I was very disappointed in the price point, and capabilities of the Microsoft V2 extenders.  Adding Divx support was nice, but in my opinion didn't go far enough (plus based on all the posts on the Green Button it looks like their Divx support is pretty limited).  The Sage extender is quiet (no fans at all), it is priced at $199, and it supports all the codecs and containers (Video: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4/Divx/Xvid, H.264, WMV9/VC-1 - all video codecs supported up to 1080p   Sound:MP2, MP3, WMA, AAC/multichannel AAC, Vorbis, AC3, FLAC, DTS(pass-through)  Containers: MPG, DVR-MS, MP4, TS, WMV, VOB, AVI, MKV, and others).  This is what I thought Microsoft's V2 extender should have been.

 

2) Being able to display compressed shows in "Recorded TV".  In Sage you can choose the shows you would like to convert to another format (Xvid/MP3 for example), they will convert and replace the original MPG file.  Not only can you select which shows convert automatically, but you can manually select a show in Recorded TV and tell it to convert it now.  I love this feature because it not only means that all those kids shows I'm storing are taking up less space, but they show up in "Recorded TV" so only I know they are watching the converted show and not the original (they don't have to go hunting through My Videos, or use another GUI to access them).  Also, this is nice for my shows that I convert for my portable player.  I have them converted to Xvid/MP3 and I only have the one copy.  With MCE I would convert my shows and store them in a XVID directory, keeping the DVR-MS file as well, just in case I decided to watch the show at home.  Of course, this meant that I had to have two copies of my shows on the system and I had a script to keep the lists in sync.  One other big advantage that I'm not using yet, but plan to start playing with, is in Sage you can record directly to formats other than MPEG-2 (like Xvid or H/264).  Right now you can purchase cards that will use hardware to encode directly to Xvid, or with Sage you can use software to encode directly to Xvid or H.264 if you really want to tax your CPU (I haven't played with this yet, but it may take less CPU resources just to encode it directly to Xvid instead of recording it in MPEG-2 and converting it to Xvid).  However, Sage has said they are working with Hauppague on the new Component Input card to support HD encoding in H.264 with Multichannel AAC (all using Hardware to encode).  Wow, if this really happens (they said April, but we'll see), then this will be almost perfect for me.

 

3) Linking into item #2 above, no DRM with Sage.  The Microsoft/DirectTV tuner card sounds great for me (I have Directv).  However, I realized that there is no way Microsoft is going to implement this without DRM.  This is a big deal to me.  I'm not trying to do anything illegal, I don't even want to share my shows with family and friends.  I just want to be able to convert the show into some compressed format, watch a recorded show on another PC or portable device I have, and scan the show to mark the commercials and automatically skip them.  DRM just doesn't give me the freedom to do what I want with the show (again, just for my own personal viewing purposes).  Because of the DRM, and the fact that I really want to start getting more HD content, I think the "promised" Hauppague Component Card is going to be a better option for me than the "promised" Directv card (and I know it will be a while before the Hauppague Component Card will work with MCE because of the H.264 stream).

 

4) Multiple guide sources in Sage.  In MCE I had Directv and a ATSC card.  Of course, I couldn't get guide data for all my ATSC channels because Directv didn't carry all my local sub-channels.  I played around with the Schedules Direct hack in MCE, but it is "clunky" at best (you loose things like telling MCE to only record "first run" shows, and it records all episodes even episodes that just recorded).  With Sage I just tell it the source I have for each capture card and it downloads the guide data for each source and presents me a "unified" guide for all the sources.  I even threw in a spare analog capture card I had laying around and pointed it to my cable company (my Internet access is supplied by my cable company so I get about 20 analog cable channels from them for the price of my Internet connection).  So, now with Sage I have Directv, ATSC, and my analog cable channels all in one complete guide.

 

5) No software limit to the number of tuner cards.  I was starting to have a few issues where I really needed more tuners for my Directv receivers because of conflicts.  I know with MCE you can hack it to add more tuners, but this doesn't work with Directv because you can still only have two IR blasters.  In Sage you can have any number of tuners and IR blasters you want.  Also, you don't have to have the blasters because the Serial/USB control is built into Sage (in MCE you don't have the option of USB control, there is only an add-in for Serial Control, however, all the new Directv receivers require the new USB control).  Plus with Sage you can link the Sage servers.  I haven't done this yet, but I can see its potential.  When I have too many tuners I could put some in another server and offload some of the recording, ShowAnalyzer, and conversion process to an old spare machine I have lying around, but the "User" never knows they are watching something from the second server - this is an interesting concept.

 

6) Sage has the client software (the softsled solution that every MCE user wanted).  It's really nice to finally be able to have the full UI extender experience from my desktop.

 

7) Sage supports Babgvant's bookmark feature standard.  So, for My Movies it remembers where I left off when I move to a different room, or come back and watch it another day.

 

8) It's my hobby...  I know this one sounds weird, however, I like Sage better because the Media Center is my hobby and I like to "mess" with it.  Sage has many more ways to "hook" into the base application and enhance it.  As a result, there are many, many, add-ins that people have developed for it.  As well as many options in the base product.  Honestly I'm still a little overwhelmed by the number of options and what combinations I like best, but again, this is part of the fun.  Also, they don't develop in a vacuum.  You can participate in their beta releases so you can always see the new things they are working on and provide feedback.  Plus, they have new releases very regularly, so you don't have to wait two years for a release only to have it be Vista.  Sorry, but I didn't see anything that Microsoft did in Vista other than give us a pretty User Interface.  I'm a functionality guy, so features are more important to me than how it looks (besides this is a Media Center, the only thing the needs to look good is the Video - the Video is what you should spend most of your time looking at).  Also, if you want something in Sage that looks good check out SageMC (the default Sage GUI is pretty ugly).  This is an add-in that is really nice and powerful.  The default install of SageMC basically copied MCE.  However, the real power comes in the easy way you can customize the entire GUI.  Some really creative guys are creating really nice looking GUI's and posting them for people to use.  Check out these forum threads below and you can see them.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29331

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30279

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30285

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30313

 

So to summarize, I loved my MCE setup and I really appreciate what Microsoft has done (and what Babgvant added to MCE).  If you look at the Sage forums there are plenty of complaints about Sage, and I've found plenty of things I don't like, so Sage isn't a perfect product.  However, my personal view is that MCE is a great setup for someone that wants the basic "setup and forget it" system.  However I love Sage's "hobbyist friendly" vision.

 

Babgvant thanks again for everything you did over the years.  I absolutely loved your product and it was really the thing that got me hooked on HTPC being a hobby.

Jon

 

um that's almost identical to what I'm going thru right now (in terms of thought process)

 

where does Sage get it's guide data from now?

 

I know that the Myth community is now having to pay for EPG 

Tikker:

um that's almost identical to what I'm going thru right now (in terms of thought process)

 

where does Sage get it's guide data from now?

 

I know that the Myth community is now having to pay for EPG 

Sage gets their guide data from Zap2it (the same place MCE get's it's data).  Also, you don't have to pay extra for the guide data, it's just part of the license fee you pay Sage. 

edit
 

Ideally, I'd like someone from MS to find this thread and get specific, actionable feedback that they can use to make Media Center a better product for everyone.  I think it's fine to flush out the feedback that has already been provided, but commenting on the technical savvy of a specific person is not relevant to that goal; and could lead to the valuable parts of this discussion being dismissed.

edit

jelwood:

Sage gets their guide data from Zap2it (the same place MCE get's it's data).  Also, you don't have to pay extra for the guide data, it's just part of the license fee you pay Sage. 

 

Myth used to get it's EPG from Zap2it as well, and when Zap2it stopped providing that service for free, myth had to look elsewhere

 

if Sage is already licencing the data (and that's where a portion of the sage fee goes to) then that's cool

 

confirmation of that was one of the last few things that was keeping me from doing a big trial 

 

there's about 5 of us at work here that are going to pool all our spare parts together, and cobble together a couple of servers, and different flavours of front end to test it out on

 

did you go the Linux or the Windows route with Sage? 

Tikker:

did you go the Linux or the Windows route with Sage? 

I went with Windows.  ShowAnalyzer (or Comskip) was important to me and I don't know of any Linux versions.  Another reason I went with Windows is because I didn't want to deal with the limited devices supported in Linux.  Plus I really think all the Directshow codecs (PowerDVD 7 for MPEG-2) produce the best picture quality (of course this wouldn't matter if I didn't use the Server for display also and just used the extenders for all my displays).  Someday I may play around with Sage on Linux, but for now I have a big enough learning curve just learning Sage so keeping a few familiar things felt like the smart decision.

fair enough

 

I've been threatening to do a big trial on Sage for a while now, and when my mobo comes back from RMA I think I'll finally get to it. 

Does Sage virtualize?  Whenever my next rebuild comes, I'm thinking of rolling back to WMCE 2005 (unless Vista SP1 fixes the performance issues), and then installing a virtualized Vista Ultimate to play around in (e.g., try out Sage, maybe even run VMC entirely virtualized).

It would be tough to get a real feel for any PVR or media player in a virtual machine.  VPC doesn't expose the available hw (like tuners) to the VM, and the video card emulated by VPC is circa-1996 hardware so no hw assisted playback.  Media Center won't play video at all.  This might be different with VMWare though...

But with Sage, the backend would run in the VM, and the frontend would run in the non-VM OS.  You should still be able to test things like commercial skipping, file conversion, extenders, etc.

Media Center (when I am using it) would still be in the non-VM OS, so everything would work normally there.