SageTV has been acquired by Google
I didn’t see this coming! I just received the below e-mail. Congratulations to Jeff and the rest of the SageTV team.
Greetings,
We’re writing to let you know that SageTV has been acquired by Google.
Since 2002, we’ve worked to change the TV viewing experience by building
cutting-edge software and technology that allows you to create and control
your media center from multiple devices. And as the media landscape
continues to evolve, we think it’s time our vision of entertainment
management grows as well. By teaming up with Google, we believe our ideas
will reach an even larger audience of users worldwide on many different
products, platforms and services.We’ve seen how Google’s developer efforts are designed to stimulate
innovation across the web, and as developers have played a core role in the
success of SageTV, we think our shared vision for open technology will help
us advance the online entertainment experience.Although we will be shutting down the SageTV store, we will continue to
support existing users. We’d also like to continue our dialog with the
SageTV community by keeping the forum open for discussion.We really appreciate everyone’s support over the years, and we hope you’ll
stay tuned as we embark on new projects at Google.The SageTV team
So what are people’s thoughts
So what are people’s thoughts on this?
I’ve always used MCE, but
I’ve always used MCE, but with the rumors of Windows 8 not having tuner capabilities and now with Google involved in SageTV, the future looks interesting.
Probably Google acknowledges
Probably Google acknowledges that Google TV’s execution was far away from ideal?
I find this fascinating that
I find this fascinating that another big name is entering this “hobby” market.
wow. I’m stunned. Not sure
wow. I’m stunned. Not sure what to think.
I sure hope it goes better than when yahoo acquired Meedio…
flips wrote:I sure hope it
[quote=flips]
I sure hope it goes better than when yahoo acquired Meedio…
[/quote]
QFT
When yahoo bought Meedio it
When yahoo bought Meedio it was obvious they simply wanted the technology and not the software, but the community carried on and we now have MeediOS which is far superior 😉
It might put some pressure on
It might put some pressure on Microsoft and make the htpc world grow faster. That’s pretty cool!
Wow
That’s all I got
Wow
That’s all I got
This is probably great news
This is probably great news for GoogleTV but probably not good news for SageTV users.
Time will tell but I think my TV setup just took a hit. I just setup MCE again last week on my Sage Server and the Xbox360. No comparison, Sage is much better on all fronts.
Just hope they support SageTV long enough to make make GoogleTV a real alternative.
Sage doesn’t have cablecard
Sage doesn’t have cablecard support… or does it???
No SageTV does not have
No SageTV does not have direct cable card support. Third party plugins that utilize media center in the background is currently the only way to record cablecard shows in SageTV.
http://hd.engadget.com/2009/10/20/cablecard-tuners-come-to-sagetv-via-sagemctuner/
umdivx wrote:No SageTV does
[quote=umdivx]
No SageTV does not have direct cable card support. Third party plugins that utilize media center in the background is currently the only way to record cablecard shows in SageTV.
http://hd.engadget.com/2009/10/20/cablecard-tuners-come-to-sagetv-via-sagemctuner/
[/quote]
That is no longer accurate. Andy has developed SageDCT. It has no dependencies on Media Center
that’s how much I know about
that’s how much I know about Sage 😉 pretty cool setup there, looks complicated though, which brings me back to the reason I like MCE, much much easier to setup and run.
I dont know what to
I dont know what to think.
I’ve been a happy Sage user for years and hope they dont get lost in megacorporate quagmire.
apap1 wrote:
I dont know
[quote=apap1]
I dont know what to think.
I’ve been a happy Sage user for years and hope they dont get lost in megacorporate quagmire.
[/quote]
As a former Meedio user, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
I’ve been using Sage since
I’ve been using Sage since version 2. I recently switched to Win 7 Media Center strictly to get cable card support. Sage TV is by far more capable. MCE can only record to 1 drive, Sage records to whichever drive has the most space available (there is a plug-in which will change the recording drive every 20 minutes based on the available space for MCE now, but that is just a workaround). In MCE using an Xbox 360 as an extender I cannot play my ripped movies unless I re-encode all of them, but using MCE on the computer the movies play fine. In Sage the movies play fine on the extender, I haven’t burned a DVD in years. Sage’s extenders are completely silent and play every format I’ve ever thrown at it. My Xbox will play my old Sage recordings, but they skip like every 5 seconds (again they play fine under MCE on the computer). In MCE there are only 3 sort options for the recorded TV folder, Sage has like a dozen, plus folder support
I don’t know what Google’s intentions are. Hopefully they want to use Sage as the basis for the 2nd generation Google TV. It could really turn into something awesome with the money and resources Google can put behind it (cablecard support would get me back in a hurry).
While its not the “best”
While its not the “best” solution but MCE when combined with WHS gets be the best of both worlds. I record a show on my MCE box, then when completed and during down time MCE moves to the show to my WHS box, which has redundancy built in for all my recorded tv shows and allows for me to not to have to run any form and raid in my HTPC.
While SageTV does have a one up on the extender side, still can’t beat cable card support 😉
as you can tell I am a MCE zelot through and through, won’t ever change me of that. But what could be interesting is to see the google tv hardware basically replace the HD300 extenders. I could easily see google expanding on SageTV, bringing a “app centric” plugin model to the enviornment, and expanding in terms of funding to what the sage guys already did.
-Josh
What I am hoping for all of
What I am hoping for all of this, is SageTV access to google’s deeper pockets. Meaning more development research, built in decoders, and gasp…. even native support for cable card tuners. Remember play ready license is pretty expensive.
Also make it so that SageTV is usable out of the box. While I know my shit, and pretty well inclined technically I hate, aboslutely hate supporting my own hardware/software at home.
I am one of those “make it easy for me” kind of guys. When you get a family and life starts getting busy the last thing you want to do is do tech support on your DVR at home. I just want to get home, open up a beer, turn the tv on and have it just work.
SageTV wasn’t that way for me when I tried it back in V2 days. Way too complicated of a setup, way too much to learn and figure out and tweak to get it up and running. That is what was great about Media Cetner when I started to use it, I could be up and running watching and recording tv in under 30 minutes with Media Center.
Only time will tell how this acquisition goes but I truly hope it goes for the better.
I’m a former SageTV user who
I’m a former SageTV user who currently uses MCE . My first thought upon reading this news was exactly what flips mentioned regarding Yahoo acquiring Meedio, as I also was a huge Meedio fan a few years back and it was devastating watching what happened with that.
Maybe I’m too much of a Google fan, but I think with their backing, SageTV won’t be in danger of succumbing to Meedio’s fate. In fact, I’m quite excited at the possibilities… namely the possibility for this to tie together with Android@Home in some way. I thought GoogleTV was a stupid idea, but bringing it together with SageTV makes for a pretty interesting product. I always felt SageTV was a bit ugly looking compared to other offerings, so perhaps Google’s large resources can fix that as well. All in all, I’m happy for the team and hope only good things will come of this. Perhaps in a year or two I’d even be tempted to switch back.
just so this is in writing
just so this is in writing for future blogs, I think this is the end of SageTV software as we know it. I think this is Google’s way of admitting they failed on GoogleTV, and the SageTV team will be put over there to make it work better/faster all around. But SageTV as a standalone application for HTPC users I think is GONE.
Which is totally a shame. I think this puts yet even less pressure on Microsoft to be innovative at all. If anything this just supports the notion from those in MS who feel the XBox is the living room answer, not a WMC box. It’s ashame.
5 years ago, we had WMC, SageTV & BeyondTV, along with all the freebies…and now the only largely backed HTPC software is WMC, if you can even say they back it.
Josh, Sage TV setup has
Josh, Sage TV setup has gotten much better since the version 2 days. And once I switched to the extender in my living room instead of a PC I virtually never had any problems with Sage. There is no doubting that MCE has a much slicker interface than Sage does. In fact it is probably one of the biggest complaints I hear about Sage, I am more concerned with reliability than with style. You’re right the extender is a big plus for Sage. It is totally silent, the Xbox works well, but is not totally silent (especially if you have the old model). I’ll adjust to MCE eventually, but assuming Google does not trash Sage, cable card support would probably pull me back from the dark side.
I really hope Google does not
I really hope Google does not kill Sage TV.
I’m a long time Media Center user, but I did try and buy a Sage license about 3 years ago. At that time I tried Sage but didn’t like it. I went back to MC, and have been there ever since.
Competition is good, especially in such a narrow market as diy dvr software. Hopefully Google doesn’t destroy Sage.
Just my 2 cents.
I have to echo the feeling
I have to echo the feeling that SageTV as a standalone home product is probably dead 🙁 Google is way too into “the cloud” to support a product that requires local storage of media.
I hope that this isn’t the case, and instead we see it continue with the added benefit of Google’s money and influence, bringing things like cablecard support, a new music interface, and built-in online content from Netflix, Hulu, etc. Maybe even see TVs pop up with something similar to the HD300 hardware built-in to access a backend server without a seperate set-top box.
I will say that due to the lack of cablecard support, I’ve toyed with the idea of moving to Media Center. But the SageTV extenders and the portability of the recorded material keeps me in SageTV land. With 4 SageTV extenders in the house, that would be 4 Xbox’s I would have to buy… and my extenders in the bedrooms are much quieter than any XBox I’ve ever heard. It’s also nice to be able to just unplug one of my HD200 boxes, throw it in the suitcase with my clothes and a portable 500GB drive full of media, and take it with me on business trips. I hate watching anything on a laptop screen unless absolutely necessary, and most hotels I stay at have 32+ inch LCD’s now with HDMI connections.
The portability of SageTV has always been important to me. We stick to the analog and local HD channels for TV content because of this. Being able to strip the commercials out, re-encode to MKV or even MP4 (for the iPad, which doesn’t happen often) to save space, and play it on any TV in the house, any laptop, placeshifter, or extender in stand-alone mode is critical to me.
Honestly, if the current SageTV design goes away I’ll probably give up the HTPC PVR functionality and move to U-Verse with their whole-home DVR and start looking at other options for stored media content (Popcorn Hour, WDTV Live, etc.) for ripped/converted media…
Wow, the doomsday scenario
Wow, the doomsday scenario from the SageTV forums made its way over to Missing Remote.
I realize most people over here, sadly, are MCE/WMC (pick ONE name, will ya?!) fanboys and I’m in the minority, but I can’t understand why everyone wants to just throw SageTV on the fire. Am I concerned? Sure. But, all we know right now is that Google bought SageTV. Not a single other fact has been released about Sage’s future, yet most of its own fans, as well as the other camps’ users are ready to put the final nail in the coffin. I just don’t get it. 
Since most people here are heaping on the WMC/MCE praise, I’ll explain my position. I just don’t get the appeal of MS’ solution. First and foremost, as a DirecTV subscriber, there’s absolutely no way for me to even use WMC/MCE, and I’m not going back to cable(vision) hell. With WMC/MCE, can I buy PPV events and keep them for more than 24 hours? Nope. Can my family copy off TV shows when someone goes on a business trip or vacation? Nope. When I rebuild the server, can all my recordings be put back on it and played back? Nope. Do I need to manage all my recording directories myself? Nope. Do I need to copy all my shows over to my server after they’re recorded? Nope. Do I need to worry about accidental (?) broadcast flag utilization? Nope. These cover most of the reasons I left the Tivo world, as well as DirecTV’s DVR solution.
SageTV setup was quite easy for me. I went through multiple programs a few years ago and SageTV was the easiest. The only problem I ran into was with the HD-PVR’s buggy hardware and software. Once that was sorted out, it was smooth sailing. You’re bound to run into that with any solution, though.
Am I looking into alternatives? Sure. Who wouldn’t be? But, I’m surely not jumping ship before I know the details. That would be like quitting my job the day they announced the company was sold. It’s just silly… until you have all the details you need, in order to make an informed decision.
So, to all the doomsday predictors: Chill out and go have a beer. Its’ 4 o’clock somewhere!
skirge01 wrote:Wow, the
[quote=skirge01]
Wow, the doomsday scenario from the SageTV forums made its way over to Missing Remote.
I realize most people over here, sadly, are MCE/WMC (pick ONE name, will ya?!) fanboys and I’m in the minority, but I can’t understand why everyone wants to just throw SageTV on the fire.
[/quote]
I definitely don’t think this is true. There are some but the fact that we are having this conversation and most of the threads state a preference to SageTV I think you are being the judgmental fanboy 😛
[quote=skirge01]
Since most people here are heaping on the WMC/MCE praise, I’ll explain my position. I just don’t get the appeal of MS’ solution. First and foremost, as a DirecTV subscriber, there’s absolutely no way for me to even use WMC/MCE, and I’m not going back to cable(vision) hell. With WMC/MCE, can I buy PPV events and keep them for more than 24 hours? Nope. Can my family copy off TV shows when someone goes on a business trip or vacation? Nope. When I rebuild the server, can all my recordings be put back on it and played back? Nope. Do I need to manage all my recording directories myself? Nope. Do I need to copy all my shows over to my server after they’re recorded? Nope. Do I need to worry about accidental (?) broadcast flag utilization? Nope. These cover most of the reasons I left the Tivo world, as well as DirecTV’s DVR solution.
[/quote]
You are comparing apples to oranges. Your SageTV solution is with a HD-PVR Colossus since it is DTV but your criteria for judging 7MC (throwing another name at you :P) is based on CableCARD recordings. If you compare apples to apples, i.e. both solutions using a HD-PVR Colossus, then everything stated above is wrong. Can you buy PPV events–yes. Can you copy them off–yes. Can you rebuild and back them back–yes. Do you need to worry about a broadcast flag–nope.
SageTV is superior in many ways over 7MC but at least do an accurate comparison. When 7MC uses the HD-PVR Colossus there is no DRM. There is no broadcast flag. Is the SageTV HD-PVR Colossus support better–hell yes. SageTV natively supports capture cards, Media Center does not. The HD-PVR Colossus is not a tuner but the 7MC implementation for it has to trick Media Center into thinking it is. I’ll take real native support any day.
[quote=skirge01]
SageTV setup was quite easy for me. I went through multiple programs a few years ago and SageTV was the easiest. The only problem I ran into was with the HD-PVR’s buggy hardware and software. Once that was sorted out, it was smooth sailing. You’re bound to run into that with any solution, though.
Am I looking into alternatives? Sure. Who wouldn’t be? But, I’m surely not jumping ship before I know the details. That would be like quitting my job the day they announced the company was sold. It’s just silly… until you have all the details you need, in order to make an informed decision.
So, to all the doomsday predictors: Chill out and go have a beer. Its’ 4 o’clock somewhere!
[/quote]
While I normally find doomsday threads a bit too much I think there is valid concern right now due to the fact that you can not purchase a SageTV license or hardware at the moment. Any time you are dependent on a product that is no longer readily available I think concern is justified. For instance, what if I had a SageTV HD300 in every room, including my primary HDTV that my family “depends” on. If one were to fail I can’t replace it, I can’t buy a license and use a HTPC, I don’t even know if my warranty would be honored. As a paying SageTV customer I would be concerned with the lack of up-front information provided.
I started a new thread about
I started a new thread about the SageTV vs. MCE suff. Head over there to continue the debate.
-Josh