I decided to build a Home Theater PC (HTPC), and with SageTV at its core, it is proving to be an excellent choice. Read on to learn why I decided to build a HTPC, what componets I chose, the issues I had, and my plans for the future….

Why did I build an HTPC?
I’ve been a long-time DVR user, having used several ReplayTV models and a Moxi HD DVR. Each of these "standalone" DVR’s have excellent features, are very capable, and have stood the test of time (I purchased the first ReplayTV box very shortly after its initial release.) That said, there are three issues that were bugging me that caused me to decide to build an HTPC to replace them:

1. None of my ReplayTV boxes could reliably control our Motorola DCT-2000 Cable box. Unfortunately, cable companies don’t give you a lot of choice in Digital Cable boxes, so the DCT-2000 is what I have. My ReplayTV 2xxx series boxes worked fairly well, but my 5xxx box wouldn’t control reliably. Yes, I read the workarounds. Yes, I searched Google and the AVS Forum, and followed countless instructions on getting it to work, but it was never unstable. The setup required an IR blaster, and the remote control codes were repeatably unreliable. Despite the fact that both ReplayTV and the DCT-2000 had serial connectors, ReplayTV couldn’t control the Cable box via the serial port. It could control several DirecTV Satellite receivers just fine, but not the DCT-2000. Apparantly, it wasn’t a priority to ReplayTV. So, we ended up switching to a Moxi DVR through our Cable company–which leads me to my next gripe….

2. Moxi is an EXCELLENT DVR offering many great features. I loved it. My wife loved it. My in-laws all loved it enough that they got them too. But the problem was that Moxi was becoming cost-prohibitive. Like most cable companies, initially, we had a great subscription package, but after the homeymoon as a new cable customer was over, the overall price of cable went up…way up. Every month, we had to shell out multiple fees that included such things as "Digital Receiver", "Digital Access", and "Moxi PVR service", all of which added up to just under $20.00 per month just for the privilege of using a Moxi DVR that we did not own. And that was before any actual programming was added it. My brother-in-law has two Moxi boxes, so for him, the Moxi-specific cost was doubled.

3. Both ReplayTV and Moxi imposed limitations that they simply wouldn’t lift. I was very active on several ReplayTV and Moxi forums, and I even did beta testing for both, so I was intimately familiar with the functions and features available. I feel that I could also objectively reveal excellent features as will as the shortcomings and lacking features of both. Specific to ReplayTV, users asked and asked for various features, but more often than not, it fell on deaf ears. Specific to Moxi, while it is an amazingly feature-rich product, the entire Moxi feature set is completely controlled by the cable company. Though Moxi itself offers excellent features and functions, the availability and configuration of these features and functions is controlled exclusively by the Cable company. If they decide it’s not profitable for them to enable existing functionality, or to configure a certain function in a specific way, then they won’t. The user is at the mercy of the cable company’s decisions.

So, determined that I wanted reliability, extendable features, and full control, I decided to roll my own.

The components
I worked with an experienced colleague at work who helped me pick out the components best suited for the task and within my price range, and settled on the following setup:

ASUS M2N-E Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Orleans 2.0GHz Socket AM2 Processor
1GB Kingston RAM
NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD±R DVD Burner
Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Antec Overture II Piano-black/Silver Steel ATX Desktop Computer Case
2 x Hauppauge WINTV-PVR-150
Windows XP Pro SP2
SageTV v6 Beta

I purchased everything through NewEgg.com. Unfortunatly, the Seagate Hard Drive was damaged with lots of bad sector errors, and the front of the Antec case had three broken clips, but RMA’s to both Antec and NewEgg.com yielded quick replacements. Both Newegg and Antec provided great customer service, and I highly recommend them both.

While waiting for the new hard drive, I decided to install an older IDE Hard Drive to serve as the "OS Drive". I later added the 320GB Sata drive as a "media storage" drive. I did this to physically separate out the application from the data, improving performance and reliability. I’ll probably replace the IDE OS drive with a small SATA drive in the future.

Setup was pretty straight forward. I installed Windows XP Pro, installed all the required drivers, and connected to the Internet to update to the latest drivers and download the latest apps. Next, I installed the two Hauppauge PVR-150 tuner cards, and the installed SageTV following the setup instructions. In short order, I was watching live TV and scheduling recordings.

OK, I have admit that it wasn’t really that easy. I did have to content with a hard disk crash, and I messed things up in SageTV’s configuration way beyond repair, so I did end up re-installing a couple times, but the truth is that setting up a SageTV system really is not a difficult process. It’s not a newbie task, but you certainly don’t need to be a computer expert.

Video quality
One thing that bugged me was that I was quite disappointed with the S-video output quality on my TV. I tweaked and tweaked and tweaked my nVIDIA and SageTV settings, and it just wasn’t what I had hoped it would be. Watching shows like Fox News or CNN Headline News seemed jerky and choppy. It was mostly noticable while watching the "crawl" at the bottom of both of these shows. After some advice from the SageTV forums, I purchased nVIDIA’s PureVideo drivers, and the results on my S-video TV were worth every penny. It’s still not as quality a picture as our Moxi DVR, but it does look good. Down the road, I’m planning on purchasing a new LCD tv, so that should significantly improve the picture quality over my old tube TV.

Plugins
I next visited the SageTV Customizations forum and found several excellent "plugins" that extended and improved some of SageTV’s core functions. For example, I can now search the Internet Movie Database right from within SageTV with the results integrated very nicely. I next installed an enhancement to the "Stop" button function that adds much needed features. I also installed a Plugin that lets you customize all of the menus letting you order them as you wish, and add and remove entries. Finally, I installed a plugin that provides remote Web access that lets me manage SageTV’s recording functions from anywhere I have Web access. It’s so nice to be able to schedule a recording without having to be sitting in fornt of the TV. These plugins are excellent examples of how SageTV lets users tailor things to their specific needs.

Clients
I next installed the Hauppauge MediaMVP box. This is a small hardware device that connects to the network and any TV. It looks on the network for a SageTV server, and if it finds one, it downloads and runs a SageTV client application. It comes with a remote, so you can control all SageTV functions frmo another TV in your house. It was really cool to be able to start watching a recording in our living room, and then stop it and resume watching where we left off in our bedroom. And the MVP lets you also listen to MP3’s and watch ripped DVD’s.

I then installed the PlaceShifter client on my laptop. This client lets me remotely access SageTV from anywhere I have an Internet connection. We went on a vacation, and I was able to watch both live TV and recorded shows remotely. The quality was not great, but it was watchable.

What I now have
So I now have a Home Theater PC that provides two tuners (one analog cable, and one digital cable) for programming content, and I can add more tuners later if needed. We view everything through an older 27" tube TV, and it looks pretty good. The user interface is clean, and I have tweaked it to make it more intuitive for us. we can listen to my MP3 collection, and we can watch favorite DVD’s. Every morning, we can check the latest weather conditions through SageTV. I was able to (fairly) easily burn to DVD a show that my parents had missed.

All of this was very seamless (except the DVD burning, but that’s for another article) and all from a single box. For me, SageTV is what ReplayTV could have been…

The future
Our setup works very will, but like everything else, I have to look to the future. I am considering the following additions and upgrades:

• Add additional storage to accommodate more ripped DVD’s. We have a sizable collection of DVD’s, but it’s s much easier to manage them and watch them if they are ripped.
• Move lots of other digital pictures over to SageTV.
• Organize and move lots of other MP3’s over to SageTV.
• Upgrade our old tube TV to an LCD TV. I have been looking at a Westinghouse 42" LCD HD monitor, and it looks very, very nice for the money.
• Add a UPS to the mix for protection.
• Improve and simplify the DVD burning process.
• Investigate RAID or other backup method.
• Look into a Universal Remote to consolidate remotes.

SageTV Tips case, find, Google, Moxi, news, ReplayTV, SageTV

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After reviewing the major Personal Video Recorder (PVR) software offerings, I decided that SageTV was my application of choice. Its feature set and price point made it very attractive, and there were several other "features" that swayed my decision. Read on to see why I chose SageTV over the competition….

There are several excellent PVR offerings to choose from, and they all have their benefits. These range from free applications like GB-PVR and MythTV to commercial applications like BeyondTV and SageTV. These applications are all excellent, offer feature sets that are surprisingly complete (although, some are more complete than others), and have excellent user and developer support.

The free offerings are amazingly robust. I found that GB-PVR and MythTV to be very interesting solutions. There are other free offerings, but these two were the "biggies" that caught my eye.

GB-PVR
GB-PVR is clean, and feature-rich, and has a close user following. It runs on Windows, and offers some nice functions in a slick UI. But from what I understand, GB-PVR is a closed-source application with limited development resources. It also fell short in a couple areas that I was looking for.

MythTV
MythTV is an Open Source PVR application that runs on Linux. It really is the benchmark for most PVR software offerings. It has a huge user community, and offers many features found nowhere else. Its Linux dependence, however, is both a blessing and a curse. Linux is an wonderfully stable, robust, and powerful free Open Source operating system that can very easily handle all the tasks of a PVR. But it also comes with the baggage of administering a Linux system. To its credit, Linux is now a lot easier to setup and manage these days, but to be used effectively, it still requires a lot of technical knowhow.

As much as I respect and like the free offerings, two things swayed me toward commercial products: First, I wanted to keep things Windows-centric. My home PC’s are all Windows XP boxes, so I wanted to keep things consistent. Second, I felt that if I was going to invest the money into an HTPC, I also wanted to invest in a PVR company that provides good support and continued R&D. That brought me to two other excellent choices:

BeyondTV
I next looked at BeyondTV, and it looked very solid and feature-rich. As a PVR, it really packs a punch. It’s feature set is very complete, and its user interface is simple and slick. But unfortunately, it fell short in other areas, notably in its integration of photo viewing, MP3 management, and video playing capabilities. These were integrated as an add-on to the core package that lacked the seamless integration I was looking for. If you want a solid PVR, BeyondTV is an excellent choice. But if you want to manage other media, you may want to check other options.

SageTV
When I tried SageTV, I was immediately hooked. SageTV integrated everything I was looking for: PVR, MP3, Photos, Video, and DVD Playback–all in one slick UI. The integration of the media functions is very tight, making the overall user experience consistent, easy, and pleasing to use. SageTV also integrates other goodies like Weather forecasts into its UI, and as of the latest beta version (v6), includes two other Online capabilities: Google Video, and TV Editorials. SageTV, the company, seems to be very solid and innovative, and their support is very responsive. In fact, not more than a week after I purchased version 5, they came out with a much-improved, beta release! And for a beta, it is very, very stable.

SageTV also has a very active user community of very dedicated users. The users are knowledgeable, kind, and have a real passion for making SageTV a success. You can find solid and reliable answers to any SageTV-related question in the user forums.

Another thing that hooked me on SageTV is in how its architecture was designed. It has an open API that enables developers to create third-party "plugins" and enhancements that extend and improve upon the core product. In fact, several of these plugins are, in my opinion, so well written that they really should be part of the core! All registered users gain easy access to SageTV’s Studio application that allows complete customization of the product. While it’s not for the faint of heart, it’s also not rocket science. I was able to make a couple tweaks without too much hassle.

One point of note: You may notice that I excluded Windows Media Center edition 2005 (MCE). While MCE is an excellent, mature, and feature-rich product, it also comes with the baggage imposed by Microsoft that I simply didn’t want to deal with. Overall, MCE is an excellent product, and if you are fully Microsoft-centric, the go for it. But if you want total control over your PVR, you have to look elsewhere.

So, is SageTV perfect? No. But it is maturing into a very powerful media center application. And with its varied client applications, and its extendibility through third-party plugins, it is not a limited product. Coming from the "standalone" DVR world having used ReplayTV and Moxi DVR’s for years, I can say that SageTV is very refreshing. It really packs a lot in, and works very, very will as a home theater PVR solution.

SageTV Tips find, Google, Moxi, ReplayTV, review, SageTV

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SageTV is a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) software application that runs on a Windows or Linux PC. It provides not only excellent PVR function, but also integrates the management and playback of your Music, Photos, DVD’s, and Video files. Read on to see just what SageTV is, and what it can do for you….

But what’s a PVR? A is a program that simply captures video input from a variety of sources (typically Cable, Satellite, or OTA antennas) records them to a hard disk, and then provides a facility for you to playback the recordings either immediately (live TV) or at a later time (recordings). You can pause, rewind, and fast forward the recordings just like a with VCR, but unlike a VCR, you don’t have to wait for the show to finish recording and rewind the tape before you can watch it. Also unlike a VCR, your recording capacity is not limited to the length of a single tape–it’s limited only by your hard disk space. PVR’s also provide various functions to help you find shows t record, and to manage those recordings.

Enter SageTV. SageTV provides all of these PVR functions plus many other advanced functions including sophisticated search capabilities, advanced scheduling options. And by installing some of the free "plugins", you can add Internet Movie Database lookups, remote control via a Web interface, Internet Radio, DVD burning, Caller ID, and a slew of other features and enhancements.

SageTV also tightly integrates playback and management of Music (MP3, WAV, FLAC, etc.), photos, and video files. And it can even play DVD’s and DVD files. In one place, you can manage all of your diverse multimedia from your entire MP3 collection to the photos of your latest trip. SageTV also integrates several online features including updated weather reports and Google videos.

The SageTV PVR software currently comes in four flavors: SageTV Media Center, SageTV Client, SageTV PlaceShifter, and SageTV Media Extender. Each has its own purpose, and all work together in harmony.

SageTV Media Center
This is the "core" client/server product that runs on several flavors of Windows and Linux. This is the main application that runs on your Home Theater PC (HTPC) and manages all recordings, Electronic Program Guide (EPG) updates, and all "backend" processing having to do with SageTV. It includes a client application that runs on the server which provides the user interface. SageTV Media Center is the essential SageTV application providing complete PVR functionality. If you purchase nothing else, you purchase this application. The remaining applications are "extensions" to this core that allow you take the SageTV "experience" to other locations.

SageTV Client
The Client application is run on another computer on your LAN. It connects over your local network to your SageTV Media Center server, and provides full access and control of your SageTV system. It can run on a desktop or laptop, and can be run wired or wirelessly. It’s an excellent way to leverage a spare PC. Just like on the main HTPC, you can view Live TV, watch recordings, etc. The small cost of the SageTV Client inexpensively extends your SageTV throughout your house.

SageTV Client License for MVP
This client application runs on Hauppauge’s MediaMVP box. This box is a small hardware device with an ethernet jack and video and audio outputs that connects directly to any TV in your house. The MediaMVP client lets you watch and manage SageTV over your LAN on another TV. The main difference between the Client and the MVP client is that the MediaMVP does not require a PC to run. The MediaMVP includes a hardware decoder providing excellent quality output. And connecting is typically as simple as plugging in a few cables and powering it on. So for about a hundred bucks, you can extend almost all of your SageTV capabilities to any other TV in the house without having to invest in additional PC’s.

SageTV PlaceShifter
This is a remote, over-the-Internet, client that is similar to SageTV Client, but is designed to run remotely, putside your LAN and over the Internet. For example, say you are in a hotel room with your laptop. You connect your laptop to your hotel’s wired or wireless Internet conenction, fire up SageTV PlaceShifter, connect to your home SageTV server over the Internet, and voila, you are watching Live TV, watching previously recorded shows, scheduling new shows to record, listening to MP3’s, viewing photos, the list goes on! Because video compression is done to make the video more transporable over the Internet, the video quality is not as good as viewed on the Server, but it is very watchable. Though SageTV PlaceShifter is watchable fullscreen, I recommend watching it in a smaller window to make the video appear crisper.

Important Note About Clients
There is one important thing to understand about these client applications: They all interact with SageTV Media Center separately and independently from the Server’s client application. This means that what you see on these client applications is is separate from what you see on the Server’s client application. In other wirds, someone can be at home watching SageTV (live TV, a recorded show, a DVD, whatever) and you can be away watching a different recorded show through a PlaceShifter client, and it won’t interfere with whoever is at home. There are some limitations based on how many tuners you have. That said, it’s all very transparent and easy to use.

SageTV is not without its idiosyncracies, but it provides a solid, pleasent viewing experience that competes very will with the competition. If you want specific details about SageTV’s products, first check out SageTV’s site. Then, do a Google Search on SageTV and SageTV reviews. There are many excellent reviews and descriptions of SageTV.

SageTV Tips find, Google, import, review, SageTV

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