PVR Wire

SageTV, the popular provider of PC PVR software, has announced support for AMD LIVE! Home Cinema And Home Media Server.

An AMD LIVE! PC is much like a Windows Media Center PC offering a complete solution for video, music and photo access through an easy to use interface. With SageTV an AMD LIVE! Home Cinema will also provide the popular complete PVR functionality from SageTV too.

Click here to learn more about AMD Live!

Good news if you're a user of the Linux-based commercial desktop operating system Linspire or Freespie; SageTV has released SageTV Media Center Version 6 all for you.

I've neve used SageTV myself, but I understand it's pretty nifty.

Get yourself along to the one-click download and installation location at www.linspire.com/sagetv if you want to get your hands on a copy right away for $99.95.

This week, we speak with Mike Machado, CEO of SageTV.

SageTV has two major announcements this week. First, the company has released version 6.0 of its software, which, among other things, adds an interface for browsing and viewing Google Videos on your TV screen.

SageTV has also released a version of its Placeshifting software for Mac, allowing Mac users to set up SageTV on a PC or Linux machine and access their setting via a Mac.

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SageTV 6.0 is out today.

What can you expect from the latest version of this software-based PVR?

• Browse, select, and watch Google Video on your TV
• Support for DVB-T and DVB-C digital broadcast standards, with DVB-S support on its way. ATSC, NTSC, and PAL standards are already supported
• Play unencrypted DVD libraries on a TV using SageTV Media Extender, including menus and special features
• Video thumbnails
• Expanded file support, including unprotected AAC, WMA, FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis, MOV, 3GP, MPEG4, and H.264
• Video Playlists

SageTV is available for both Windows and Linux PCs. The full program will set you back $80, although it's a free upgrade for SageTV 5.0 users. If you've got 4.0, you can upgrade for $30.

SageTV also announced Placeshifter software for Mac today. The software will be available as a $100 bundle with SageTV Media Center for PC or Linux, and will let Mac users connect to a SageTV Media Center machine to watch live or recorded programs, or schedule new recordings.

While this seems useful if you happen to have a couple of computers lying around the house, and one of them is a Mac, I would imagine most Mac users would rather have a Mac client of SageTV, and not just a placeshifting 2-computer solution.

My co-writers here at PVR Wire have been giving you some gift ideas for the Festive season, but I thought I'd be a little different and tell you what not to buy.

• TiVo Series 3. Before you start shouting 'TiVo is great' -- hold it right there. I know TiVo is great, I know the Series 3 is a damn fine PVR and I know HD is the must-have thing this Christmas, but I just don't think it's the right time to buy a Series 3. Most stores are selling it at $799 although Yahoo Shopping found one at $670. That's pretty expensive for a PVR, no matter how good it is. But I can guarantee the Series 3 will have a substantial price drop shortly after Christmas, and that will be a much better time to buy.
  
  
• XP Media Center without an Express Vista Upgrade. If you're planning on buying a media center PC running Windows MCE, then make sure it has an Express Vista Upgrade. With the right manufacturer you can get a free upgrade to the Vista operating system when it comes out before March 31, thus saving yourself the hefty cost of upgrading later on down the line. If you decide you don't want to upgrade to Vista, then you don't have to, but at least you have the option.
  
  
• Microsoft Zune – With so many excellent digital media players out on the market the Microsoft Zune just doesn't cut it. It's full of DRM and you have to hack it to do things that I would expect it to do as standard. I agree with Brad, the Archos 604 is a much more attractive option.
  
  
• ReplayTV PC Edition – Turning a PC into a PVR is a great idea, but ReplayTV PC Edition is not the software to use. It lacks some much-needed features such as multiple tuner support, HDTV support, ability to stream video to other computers, and a free electronic program guide. It will cost you $99.95 with an additional $19.95 yearly fee. Sage TV and Beyond TV are a better option in my eyes, and you can always get basic PVR functionality for free with GB-PVR.

Sure, it's great to have a Slingbox if you want to watch live or recorded TV on the go. You can plug it in to your TiVo, cable company PVR or other set top box. You can even plug it into a DVD changer to watch movies from your hotel room while you're on vacation.

But Sling Media hasn't includes codes to control PC-based PVRs like BeyondTV or SageTV.

Well, as Richard over at FreshArrival points out, you can create your own custom set of Slingbox controls, and that's just what he's done. He's created a file that allows a Slingbox to control his BeyondTV 4.x setup, as if he were using the IR remote that comes with a Hauppauge PVR-150 TV tuner card. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to modify the settings to get a Slingbox to work with different remote controls or software.

I'm not entirely sure why you'd choose a Slingbox over the free Orb if you plan to stream content on your PC to another PC. But if you happen to be a Slingbox enthusiast, or have a Slingbox in the living room that you'd like to move into the office, this tweak might be what you're looking for.

Not to be outdone by BeyondTV's release of a DVD-burning plugin, the folks over at the SageTV forum have released an updated version of a DVD burning plugin that integrates with SageTV, another popular PC-based personal video recorder.

It takes a little more tinkering under the hood to install than the BeyondTV plugin, but for advanced users that means you can tweak the SageTV plugin to suit your needs. I tried out SageTV for a while before purchasing BeyondTV, and that was my general impression of most of the software in general. It's extremely powerful and customizable, but overall not quite as user friendly. And since I'm not the only person in my house using the PVR, I went with BeyondTV's simpler interface.

Okay, back to the SageTV plugin. It can create video or data DVDs with your SageTV recordings. You can customize the video compression settings. And you can use comskip to cut commercials before burning to DVD. I've always found comskip to be a risky venture. It does a pretty good job of detecting commercials, but when it's off, it can delete chunks of a TV show along with the commercials.

Unlike BeyondTV's plugin, the SageTV DVD burning plugin is free.

For more details and installation instructions, check out the forum post.

Thanks to Jason Meudt for the tip.

I recently came across a blog post that mused over the possibility of TiVo buying SageTV. Alan Cooke of Missing Remote beleives that SageTV would be a good acquisition choice for TiVo allowing them to move into the PC PVR market.

Many people have already suggested that they would like to see the TiVo service available on a media center PC, much like the Microsoft Media Center, Sage TV and Beyond TV..

However, I do not think buying SageTV is the answer, SageTV is a different product to TiVo and buying them simply buys out a competitor. TiVo is not a company making a profit so any acquisitions it makes should be extremely vital to its success.

I'm sure TiVo is very capable of bringing its product to PCs should it want too, even with the TiVo EPG being a Linux based software.

I have personally never seen a comment from TiVo on the matter of bringing its service to a PC and would be very interested in what the company has to say. Does anyone else know of TiVo's opinion on this?

Back at the beginning of the month SageTV 6.0 Beta was made available to the public, and as with any beta software there were a few hiccups which is why version 6.0.13 was released yesterday. Looking at the release notes, it appears that it is more of a bug fix than anything else, although there are a couple of small newly added features.

This new release contains 38 different updates to the core program alone, as well as a few extender and STV changes. There does seem to be new features in the way of transcoding recorded media, but judging from the user forum it is still a tad buggy.

If you do decide to go ahead and try out the latest beta, then you may want to follow SageTV's advice and go take a look at the forum post that is available for the original version 6 beta. The page in question has information on upgrading previous installs to the beta including the current licensing agreements.

One of the things that I love about SageTV was the whole idea of having a server / client model with its Placeshifter technology. Hopefully when version 6 gets out of beta they might be able to stream HDTV.

Found via.

Koelec over at the SageTV forum has released a Slim Player plugin for SageTV. The plugin allows integrated playback of internet and local audio streams using SlimServer software.

The Slim Player plugin supports mp3, FLAC, OGG, AAC, and WMA audio formats. SageTV will display artist information including bios and pictures if they're available. And you can access SlimServer to browse a large selection of radio streams.

The plugin doesn't work with SageTV's Placeshifter or the Hauppauge Media MVP client.

via eHomeUpgrade

Although MythTV is probably the best known PVR software available for Linux, it is definitely not the only one. SageTV has had a commercial version available for Linux for awhile now.

With that in mind, Nathan Willis from Linux.com ventured into the do-it-yourself PVR world and gave SageTV Media Center 5 for Linux a try.

His biggest complaints throughout the process was the initial install (limited hardware support and firmware upgrades), the menu layouts and the lack of plugins that the Windows version has.

On the good side he was impressed with the video quality overall and once SageTV was installed, the guided setup was fairly easy.

Overall the biggest issue seems to be the lack of support, both from a technical and hardware standpoint. I tend to agree with him that if users are expected to pay $80 for the software, then the support will need to be brought up a few notches.

Hopefully these problems will be rectified with the 6.0 release.

SageTV has released a public beta of version 6.0, and there's a ton of new features.

Here's a few of them:

• Search and play Google Video files from you SageTV machine or from a media extender
• Playback more file types, including MOV (Quicktime), 3GP, MP4, H.264 Playback
• Convert files to play on a PSP, iPod or cell phone (3GP/MPEG4)
• Improved conflict resolution user interface
• Support for compressing HDTV recordings to MPEG4 while preserving the AC3 surround sound
• File conversion is now fully integrated into the maini user interface. You can also manage encoding jobs from within the UI.
  

For a full list of changes, visit this thread in the SageTV forums.

SageTV users with a valid license for version 5 or later can upgrade for free. Users of SageTV 4 or earlier can upgrade for $30 (a new software license costs $80). It seems a little odd to me that you'd buy an upgrade key for the beta, but I assume the key will be good for the official release of SageTV 6 as well.

SageTV is looking for users willing to beta test a Mac version of their personal video recorder software.

SageTV is already one of the few PVR programs that will run on Windows and Linux computers. A brief glance at their user forums show that a number of folks have already been running SageTV on their Mac minis, but have had to boot into Windows to do so.

In order to participate in the closed beta, you need a PowerPC or Intel Mac running OS X 10.4 or later, have an existing SageTV license for Windows or Linux, be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and you can't work for a competitor. They're also looking for users who already own a Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2, which, for now, will be the only capture device supported by the SageTV Mac client.

There aren't as many options for Mac users looking to make their computers into home theater/PVR systems as their are for windows users right now. The best seems to be Elgato's EyeTV which integrates with Front Row. But with SageTV jumping into the market, that could all change.

Thanks to Jason Meudt for the tip.

Okoro has just announced the OMS-SX100 media center PC.

For $1350 you get an Intel Core Duo Yonah processor, 1GB ram, 250 HDD, a DVD burner, 8 channel sound, HDMI-output, an internal TV/radio tuner and a USB ATSC tuner.

Most of those specs are upgradeable, including the sleek 15.4" W x 2.7" H x 13.7" D case. For an extra $550 you can get a much more cumbersome case, which includes a 7" touchscreen display.

The OMS-SX100 comes in WinXP Pro, Home, and MCE 2005 editions. You can also order it with BeyondTV or SageTV preinstalled.

Thanks to Engadget for pointing this out.

If you've ever had the urge to build your own media center PC, but weren't sure where to begin, you're not alone. While there are a number of excellent resources on the net, HTPCnews has updated their already fantastic writeup of a variety of hardware mpeg2-encoding cards. This article should be required reading for anyone looking to set up a new system or upgrade a current home theater setup.

HTPCnews looks at cards by Hauppauge, ATI, and NEC, as well as several reference designs that found their way into PCI cards from a number of different manufacturers.

One type of card that I hadn't been too familiar with were those based on the ViXS XCode II video processor. This chip is powerful enough to encode 4 separate MPEG2 streams at the same time. Most cards currently on the market only capture and convert one or two television signals. But with this processor, we could see 3 or 4-tuner cards down the road.

Possibly the handiest feature of this article is the chart on the last page that shows which cards are compatible with various PVR software packages. It only shows BeyondTV, SageTV, Windows Media Center 2005, and MythTV 0.19, which probably accounts for the majority of HTPC setups. But it would be nice to have a chart that includes GB-PVR, Media Portal, and other free solutions.

The long and short of it is, I would recommend any of these cards over the cheaper software-based MPEG2 encoding cards on the market. You get what you pay for, and all hardware-based cards encode video with relatively low strain on your CPU, allowing you to get high quality video without crashing your computer.