Sage TV

[echoes]

Hi,

I resent paying Sky or Virgin for the pap that generally passes for TV, so I have a PC with DVB-T and DVB-S2 cards running Sage TV and get all the the free-to-air terrestrial and satellite channels.

I was wondering if anyone else out there used Sage TV, and if they had plans to migrate to something else since Google bought them up?

 

[Donkmeister]

I tried Mediaportal for a while, but I found it pretty inconvenient, possibly because my PC at the time was multi-purpose.

Windows Media Center (Microsoft's spelling, not mine) is pretty good and is built into the Home Premium versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. You can integrate tuners as well and it has an EPG... I use neither of those features as I have cable and Virgin make it very difficult to use a media centre with their cable TV service.

I do however use WMC as a DVD/BluRay library, very nicely too. I use it with MyMovies and you get all sorts of metadata too.

Placeshifting is a feature sadly lacking in WMC though, to the point that I did consider Myth or Sage a while back. I found a third-party add-on but it couldn't handle DVD folder structure.

 

[echoes]

I tried WMC (Vista Home Premium) a while back, but ran into trouble integrating my third tuner card (which was DVB-S; the existing cards were DBV-T). I gather this has changed with Windows 7 though.

It was slick though and it did very nicely as a PVR.

I have spent too many late nights fiddling with MythTV - it seemed very powerful but a configuration nightmare.

 

[Donkmeister]

I have spent too many late nights fiddling with MythTV - it seemed very powerful but a configuration nightmare.

What put me off was the need to have a dedicated backend server regardless of the number of clients. Also whilst being based on Linux makes it (in theory) more stable, most of my Linux experiences have resulted in spending hours sorting out minor niggles. Mythbuntu probably reduces that embuggerance though...

Now I've got a bigger house my longterm plans are to build a Windows Home Server with MyMovies server. I've been putting in Cat-6 cables in preparation, but the house is a long way from finished so don't fancy building boxes to get dusty in the meantime!!!

 

[Monkeh]

What put me off was the need to have a dedicated backend server regardless of the number of clients.

So? Nothing says you can't have a client on the backend.

Also whilst being based on Linux makes it (in theory) more stable, most of my Linux experiences have resulted in spending hours sorting out minor niggles. Mythbuntu probably reduces that embuggerance though...

Eh, just because you can't hack it..

But no, really, MythTV is an abominable pile of dung which shouldn't exist.