George L. Schmauch Jr.

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I was actually torn between whether or not they got into the underlying Red John storyline enough throughout the seasons.  On one hand, I was happy they didn’t focus on it every single episode and they had “regular” crimes/issues to deal with.  At the same time, it seemed like there weren’t enough small developments regarding Red John.  It almost felt like the writers had all these ideas for episodes, they’d get those written and in order and then someone would go, “Hey, what about Red John?!”, and they’d throw in an episode on that.

I wonder if they weren’t sure how many seasons they were going to get, so they went back and forth.  Then, in the 3rd season, they were really unsure if they were going to get renewed for a 4th season or something.

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If anyone is interested in how season 3 was wrapped up (with the big spoiler), how the network felt about it, what the original plan was, as well as how season 4 is going to go, I thought this article was great.  Again, don’t read it if you haven’t watched all of season 3.  The finale was SO worth the wait.

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Thanks for the info.  It sounds like I should check out The Sopranos when I get a chance.  These are the shows my wife won’t take the time to even see if she’ll like them, so I watch these after she goes to bed (Boardwalk Empire, SG, Spartacus–yeah, SG doesn’t seem to belong in this list).

I think Aaron’s reply said it best, especially considering he hasn’t seen Boardwalk Empire.  That’s pretty much how I would describe that show, as well.  It’s more character driven.  What really matters is what each person is up to and how they got to where they are in life.  For example, I think that the very demure Mrs. Margaret Schroeder is going to become a powerful woman and will use that power in not quite so valiant ways.

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I can’t help with industry pricing, but I can tell you that Michael is right on with “everything is negotiable”.  Every software company I’ve dealt with (I work for a pretty large company) makes almost all their profit from maintenance and contracted work.  Maintenance is your support (800 numbers, 24/7 coverage, fixes*, etc.).  Contracted work is everything that you want the system to do which it doesn’t do natively.  The more you can adjust your business to work with the native application, the more you’ll save (you have NO idea!).

Also, many companies will tell you “upgrades are included” which sounds like a great bonus, but that’s only if you keep everything completely native (no customizations).  As soon as you have those, upgrades are going to cost you big time.

If (when) you have them do customization work, get clear, written technical specs for what they are doing and make sure you and your company STICK to what you agree to.  Any deviation from that will most certainly cost you a “change fee”.  Those specs will also be what they’ll use when you approach them with a bug.  They’ll come back with, “That wasn’t part of the design.  See?”

A tip for negotiations:  As I said, most software companies make their profit on contracted work.  That means they have the most leeway to negotiate there, as well.  Think outside the box with negotiating.  You can negotiate on the hourly rate or on the number of hours they include.  For instance, say they come back with a price that’s $10k above what you’re looking to spend on maintenance and they won’t budge, yet you want to stick with them.  Ask them to include some hours of development (customization) work as part of that price.

Finally, TEST, TEST, TEST, TEST, TEST!  Then, RE-TEST!  Again, once you agree that they’ve delivered what you asked for, anything else (not covered by the maintenance agreement) is going to cost you.  This includes functionality, usability, interface, reporting, formatting, etc.; in a word:  everything.  It’s pretty much like Windows.  Once you buy it, you’ve said, “This is exactly what I asked for.”  You can’t go back to MS and say something isn’t how you want it.  Anything else is now a customization in Windows.

*Make SURE that bug fixes are included in any contract.  If they break it, they should fix it entirely for free (no hidden fees for the fix, even if it breaks a customization they did for you).

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[quote=SpacemanSpiff2000]

Still can’t kill the full quotes.

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Fixed for ya.  😉  And, Mikinho is working on a permanent fix.

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Just thought of this…  wrap and seal the TV in plastic (off the stand), buy some Instapak foam and pack it into a box, standing up.  You’d just need to use the foam to support the 4 corners.  I did some quick searching for the foam and only found it in case quantities, though.

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Keep it on the stand and just strap it to the roof.  No tools required.  Problem solved. 

Honestly, I’d go the pallet route.  That’s probably how it got to you originally.  Stop by a store that gets large deliveries (grocery, electronics, appliance, club store, lumber yard, etc) and ask if you can have one pallet.  If you see nice, blue pallets, don’t bother, since those are rented from the CHEP company.  But, (GMA, blonde, white, brown…  whatever your neck of the woods calls them) pallets should be pretty easy to come by.

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[quote=sumrtym]

Thanks, I’ll look into that.  I’m thinking that with BMT and Pheonix, the coverart / posters / backgrounds will get downloaded automatically in SageTV without needing to chose to do so during ripping.  Regarding audio, are you saying I have to make a choice of just one (or again, will there be some way to choose which I want to listen to)?

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That’s correct.  The cover art will absolutely get added via BMT, assuming it can correctly identify it.  I like to future proof as much as possible, so I wanted to add the cover art directly to the MKV.  This should allow me to take the file with me to any media manager and utilize the embedded cover art.  SageTV doesn’t actually use embedded cover art, BTW (hence the “should”).

As far as the audio goes, no, you certainly do not need to choose one or the other.  Adding the HD track will normally include the AC3 core audio, by default.  Add as many or as few audio tracks as you desire.  Most programs will allow you to choose whichever one you want to play back and will usually choose the proper one by default.  MKVs actually allow you to set default flags to assist with that, but support for those flags varies.  Again, with my future proofing attempts, I set the flags.  I’m not sure if SageTV supports those, either.  If you do decide to add multiple audio tracks, ensure you name them something which is obvious, so you know which one is being played back.  ffdshow will show you the name of the audio track, as will many other programs, but something like “audio track 1” isn’t very helpful.  🙂

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[quote=Mike Garcen]

there’s definitely more than a few MythTV users here, i know George is about to become one.

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Hey now, don’t go putting words in my mouth.    I’m still a devoted SageTV user.  However, I am actively pursuing XBMC as a front-end to SageTV’s PVR back-end.

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I wonder if it’s not selling as well as they had anticipated?  Not that it would come as a surprise to anyone outside of MS.

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Sadly, you’re looking at the most annoyingly complex scenario.  For the record, it’s almost the same thing I do.  🙂  I chose to go with MKV containers, using this as the GUI for EAC3to.  This allows everything you want, but it still requires some manual intervention and it’s a bit time consuming.  Where I diverge from your desire is that I remove the standard AC3 track and only put in the HD audio, plus I add cover art to the MKV.

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I just did a quick search on them and came up with a 24 port for ~$200, so I didn’t know if they even made smaller ones.  So, I was trying to save him $80.  😉

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Michael’s big on the enterprise hardware.  Personally, I say just pick up a somewhat cheap Netgear, like this one.  Or two of them.  I have two in my attic for my media closet and they work just fine.

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My plan is to move my server to either Windows 7 or SBS.  I’m also moving off of DE ahead of that move for multiple reasons.  Keep in mind that SageTV can easily manage multiple recording folders, so it’s not that big of a deal to lose DE.  (Honestly, I never thought I’d be saying that, but it’s true.)

Regarding SageTV and EPG…  you know that they’ll continue providing EPG for at least a year and that there are alternatives (XMLTV and Schedules Direct) which will work with SageTV, right?  So, technically, EPG won’t ever really go away.

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That was my thought, too, but since I don’t use MCE, I didn’t want to guess.  I assume it’s for people who want to ensure they record the very first airing of a show.  This would probably be important to some people for “reality” TV.

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