SageTV Information

Information about SageTV
Home Theatre PCs

Networked TV

What it does

SageTv is a centralised system for all your TV, your movie collection, your music and your photos and more! I cannot over-state how convenient it is to have all your media, news and weather together under an interface that is so simple to use its wife/child friendly! all on your TV. Add a microsoft remote and it really is like using a DVD player, no keyboard or mouse required.

What makes it special

Over the years I've played with media centres and software including mediaportal and mythTV. I've found all the alternatives are tinkerer projects meaning you'll spend your life running them, where as sageTv for the most part just WORKS. If you wish to have a media centre in several rooms then SageTV really comes into its own. You can have a central big noisy server somewhere out the way where all the arial wires come in and harddrives run to store your media. This leaves you the option of having quiet, simple and discrete media PCs sitting under your TVs. SageTv also sell dedicated media appliances such as the HD200 (http://www.sagetv.com/hd_theater.html) which is smaller than a CD drive, totally silent and just work.... no more playing with codecs and figuring out why the PC has crashed! For $200 it is totally worth the investment.

SageTv has too many features to list here, however here are a few that caught my eye:
 * Client/Server - Simple media PCs at your TV, complex noisy media server somewhere out the way.
 * Choice of clients, Media PC with full client, place shifter for when your on the move (like slingbox), windows, linux, mac.
 * Automatically add info to the tv guide (EPG) from IMDB.
 * HD ready.
 * Superb sheduling system for TV recordings, conflicts, best tuner card, series auto record etc.
 * Auto record new shows based on your viewing habits.
 * Cheap dedicated hardware to use instead of a PC media client.

Please visit the site to read more. http://www.sagetv.com/stvfeatures.html?sageSub=tv

Tuners prooved to work well

PCI - Hauppauge wintv DVB-S S2 (http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_novahds2.html)

PCI - WinTV-NOVA-T 500 (http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_novat500.html) Latest drivers are a must!

Firewire - FloppyDTV-S2 (http://www.digital-everywhere.com/en/alcms/index.php?sid=1187859689)