SageTV - Approaching State of the Art in PVR Software?
Written: Sep 04 '05 (Updated Sep 05 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stable, free, feature packed Electronic Program Guide, Highly configurable, community support
Cons: Requires TV tuner card with hardware encoder
The Bottom Line: SageTV is a strong alternative to Windows Media Center. If you are considering setting up a home theater PC, SageTV is a program that should definitely be considered.
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| nc10's Full Review: Frey Technologies Sage TV PVR Software for PC |
Frey Technologies SageTV is a feature packed “Media Center” software package for PC’s equipped with TV Tuner cards that include onboard hardware encoders (such as Hauppage's WinTV PVR cards). Sage TV provides the wide range of features that you would expect from a personal video recorder , including time shifting, “intelligent” recording of shows, and the use of a free integrated online Electronic Program Guide (a guide which provides programming data for every channel lineup in the United States). In addition to the PVR features, SageTV can handle all the chores of a asked of a media center PC, multiple tuner support, a full screen interface with large menus suitable for viewing on TV screens, DVD and music playback, photo viewing, and tools to organize your media library. SageTV lists for $80 at the SageTV store, although you might also consider purchasing SageTV bundled with a Hauppage tuner at www.pcalchemy.com. Prices for the SageTV/Hauppage TV tuner bundles start at $115 at pcalchemy's web site.
I’ve used several types of TV tuners and PVR software packages, including an ATI All-in Wonder card and TV Wonder VE card (both with ATI’s MultiMedia Center software), a Pinnacle Systems PCTV Pro (with Pinnacle’s TV software), a Hauppage PVR 150 tuner card (with both Hauppages WinTV 2000 software and Snapstream’s BeyondTV3 PVR software, and a Hauppage WinTV PVR USB2. Having never used SageTV, and being well aware of its reputation among home theater PC enthusiasts, I requested a review copy, a request which was quickly filled. So for the past two months, I’ve been using SageTV successfully on my PC, a Dell 4550 desktop with a 2.66ghz P4 cpu running Windows XP equipped with a Hauppage WinTV PVR USB2 TV tuner box.
Installation and Setup
After receiving the download link and license key by email, I downloaded the 30mb file from the SageTV website, and installed the software on a Dell 4550 desktop with a 2.66 pentium 4 cpu and 768mb ram PC running Windows XP. I had previously installed a Hauppage WinTV PVR USB2 on the system, a very good external TV tuner/ hardware encoder connected to a USB 2 port on my PC. During the installation I installed both the Sage TV software and user interface, and a second utility called the Sage TV Service Control application. The optional Sage TV Service application starts running when windows starts (as a “service”, and will control all the recording duties in the background. Another option during the installation was to setup the remote control included with my Hauppage tuner to work with SageTV, but I chose to skip this step. I don’t use the remote, and only watch TV when I am setting in front of my PC.
After installing the software and starting the program, users are walked through steps needed to identify your TV tuner and the right TV channel lineup for the electronic program guide. I was only using SageTV with a single TV tuner attached to my PC, and was able to use that tuner to change channels without the use of an external tuner or decoder box, and I found SageTV pretty easy to setup. But you have an external cable decoder box, SageTV can be setup to operate the external tuner box either via a serial connection or ir blaster, or SageTV can be setup to control more than one tuner.
Using SageTV
The Electronic Program Guide and Intelligent Recording
The single feature that makes PC based personal video recorders stand out is the free web based electronic program guide included with most programs. SageTV claims to offer channel lineup and programming information for every channel lineup in the United States. I can’t verify that, but I was able to access the lineup for my local cable TV provider (Cox Cable) and that programming information is now integrated into the copy of SageTV running on my PC.
Launching SageTV opens the SageTV Main Menu. I usually run Sage TV in a small window covering about 15% of my desktop, in the upper right hand corner. Each time I open SageTV it opens in the right size and position, displaying the Main Menu. The menu options include playback of record shows, accessing the Electronic Program Guide (called Live TV Guide), the menu to schedule recordings, and other multimedia features, including music and DVD playback.
Selecting Live TV Guide brings up the current program listing for your selected channel lineup. The listing is displayed as a table showing 1.5 hours worth of programming at a time for five channels at a time. You can scroll across the table, either a day at a time or 1.5 hours at a time, to see future listings up 13 days in advance. Similarly, you can scroll up or down to see all the other channels in your lineup. To this point, its pretty much like any other online program guide, but there are a lot more options that set SageTV apart from the GuidePlus or other EPG's included with most tuner cards. However, I do wish I was able to change the amount of listing data displayed at any time.
Rolling your mouse pointer over any listing brings up a few more details, describing the show. Clicking on it brings up more details, the description, actors, rating, original date, etc. Another menu allows to watch the show, record it, check for additional air times, or add it as a “favorite”. As with the well know PVR services like TIVO, once a show is added as a favorite, SageTV will record it each time another episode airs. Optionally, you can tell SageTV to record all airings, or only new airings not recorded before. If you haven’t recorded it before, but have seen the episode, you can tell it not to record that episode.
Selecting the Schedule Recordings menu button brings up a few more options for scheduling future recordings. You can search for shows by title, person, description, or category, or set up recordings by Title, Actor, Category (over 100, from Action to Western) or Keyword. For example, I currently have Sage TV setup to record "new" (to SageTV, at least) episodes of the TV shows Rockford Files, Early Edition, and Battlestar Galactica, as well as any shows where James Garner, Bob Newhart, or Charles Grodin appear. Of course, you can also set up recordings by specifying start and stop times and the channel.
Another nice feature of SageTV is that you can sync your system clock with the SageTV server, which is sync’s with the US Military Atomic clock. Although you can pad your recordings with extra time at the beginning and end, I’m not using any padding, starting and ending recordings on the hour, since now my PC is sync'd perfectly with the start times of the stations in my channel lineup. When SageTV is recording in the background, it uses only a few percent, less than 10%, of my system resources, taking advantage of the hardware encoding offered by the TV Tuner cards it supports.
Watching TV
Watching TV on my PC with SageTV works well, though part of the credit goes to the Hauppage WinTV PVR USB2, which is handling all the encoding chores on the fly, freeing my PC to do everything else I want to do. You can pause, fast forward and rewind while watching, although options are limited, jumps ahead or back can only be made in 10 second increments. There are customizations for SageTV that you can download that allows commercial skipping. Using SageTV to watch TV on my PC requires 30-40% of my system’s resources, not enough to keep me from using it to do other things, but it’s a bit more than I expected. Since the Hauppage tuner is handing all the encoding chores, most of this load is for Sage TV to play back the video.
One of the neat features is that it high configurable. If you don’t like the default video decoders SageTV is using for Video playback, you can tell SageTV to use a different encoder. If you have CyberLink’s PowerDVD installed on your system, you can tell SageTV to use the CyberLink Decoder for playback, which seems to be a bit more efficient than the SageTV decoder. Combined with the high quality encoding provided by my Hauppage tuner (I’ve chosen one of the high quality settings offered by the WinTV PVR USB2) , SageTV provides a high quality playback experience when played back full screen or in a small window on my PC’s 19” Planar LCD monitor.
Other Multimedia Features, Plug Ins and Customizations.
SageTV can be used for for viewing/listening to any of the digital media files on your PC, including DVD’s, music files and still images. These applications work well, but lack some of the advanced features you might find in well established stand alone applications which are also available. One of he features of PowerDVD (an excellent software DVD player for PC’s) that appreciate is that if I stop watching a DVD, and then put it back in a few days later, PowerDVD remembers my stopping point, and offers to restart at that point. SageTV lacks this feature. On the other hand, there are customizations available that will add other features that you might appreciate more, including an RSS reader, weather reports and other options. More customizations are listed here in the SageTV forums:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=7953.
Other Comments
SageTV offers email support (but not phone support) for their products, as well as online FAQ’s, user forums, and downloads. The online forums are enthusisastically supported by users, enthusiasm which grows on you, helping to make SageTV a fun product to use, and provide an excellent support option for users. SageTV’s strengths included the accurate program guide, the large number of intelligent recording options, stable operation (not a given in the PVR software world) and the product’s extremely high degree of configurability. On the downside, even though SageTV can only be used with TV cards with hardware encoders, it is a little sluggish on my system. It takes several seconds to load and sometimes selecting menu options takes a couple of seconds to accomplish. The other multimedia components of SageTV, the DVD player and picture viewer, are completely adequate, but they aren't nearly as exciting as the TV functionality, and fall a good bit short of the best software DVD players and photo organizing and viewing programs. Still, if you want to create a feature packed home theater PC, installing SageTV and one of Hauppage’s hardware assisted TV tuners is a good way to start.
Links
SageTV: http://www.sagetv.com/
SageTV Feature List: http://www.sage.tv/stvfeatures.html
Hauppage (an excellent manufacturer of TV tuners with hardware encoders): http://www.hauppage.com
Recommended:
Yes
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