Hauppage Recommends SageTV over SnapStream

[nasttcar]

I am trying to decide on which PVR card to get and I was talking with Hauppage today. I told the tech that I was planning on the PVR 350 and Snapstream. He suggests that I take a hard look at SageTV.

Incidentally, I call SageTV and talk with one of the owners; I call SnapStream and all I can get is voicemail.

Hmmmmmmmm

SageTV does not do output to my TV with their current version but their Beta version does. SageTV claims their product is for higher end PC's and has few crashes or conflicts as compared to Snapstream.

Since I could not get anyone on the phone at Snapstream, I would like to know the differences between these two products.

Thanks, John

[Kupe]

I'm a new Snapstream user myself, but I chose it over Sage due to:

- Greater stability (runs for days without a problem - not true with Sage - locked up several times on me - often several times per day)
- Cheaper net streaming (Sage makes you purchase individual client licenses)
- Higher quality at a lower performance cost (I get the highest DVD recording quality with Snapstream at 25% CPU on the system listed in my sig.)
- Easy integration of my Hughes DirecTV box via IR Blaster - never could get Sage to work (even with phone calls to them)

Sage does have integrated DVD play, which I would like to have, but I have a front end menu system using myHTPC that takes care of that for me (with WinDVD)

That's the big differences I saw in my purchase decision last month - hope that helps.

Kupe

[shaneric1972]

I also bought SS because it is very very stable on my little p3-600. I get DVD Resolution with the pvr 250 and live tv looks great. I have recorded tons of stuff and have never had it lock up on me once. Sage was very screwy sometimes on my system. Sage may have currently more features, but SS is constantly adding features, and the interface actually looks like a Tivo-type machine (very wife friendly). Sage is Ugly and more computer like. For a Home Theater PC Snapstream is the answer.

shaneric1972

[Treetop]

PVR-350's tv output is currently unsupported in snapstream, and from what I have read, probably wont be any time soon, if at all.

If you are going to use snapstream your best bet would be to get the PVR-250, take the extra savings, and put em towards a good video card.

Im sure that others will chime in hear as to whether Sage even supports the PVR-350.

Regardless of which pvr package you go with I highly recommend nothing less the PVR-250/350 series of cards. Hardware decoding is essential for great "Tivo-like" recording.

Others may have some insighful (and more accurate) ideas about which card and program (ie. PVR-350 supported in Sage?)

[SHS]

Base on SageTV 1.4 and SSPVS 3.3 biuld 714

SageTV:
MPEG1 (Record Only), Mouse Support, Multi-Source, Multi-Tuner, Multi-MediaFolder, Multi-HardDrive, Media Sever, Network Encoders, Client Software, Intelligent Recording, MP3, DVD, Picture, Integrated Search Capabilities, Channel TV Logo and support Hardware Decoder card like the REALmagic Xcard, NetStream 2000, NetStream 2000TV, NetStream 4000.

SSPVS:
Better looking UI, Web (Mobile) Remote Scheduling, Color Adjustable Features, Mics Odd/In Features and coolest of all Video Recompression.

Add Notes on both product:
SSPVS need to Integrated everything under one UI also SSPVS has a build-in Media Sever support but dosen't do the MPEG streaming which should work very well over the any Local LAN or Fast InterNet pipe and lack a Client Software for this.
SageTV dosen't have Web Remote Scheduling nor Video Recompression mode like SSPVS.
SSPVS and SageTV both don't have CC support but this is really not there fault we user need keep crying at the manufacturer about support this.
SSPVS and SageTV both don't have Radio support for recording nor Scheduling with FM tuner.
SSPVS can't Record nor Timeshifting MPEG1 with PVR 250/350.
SageTV can't Timeshifting MPEG1.
As for which product to chosse will this is eazy.
I can only think of one real reson to choess SSPVS over SageTV rigth now as it is and that is are on go all time YES or NO? (Then SSPVS would be a better option for it Web Remote Scheduling as it stand).
My final words both product are very good but they both have there up's/down's but plases keep in mind both probuct are gear for diff type people as it stand rigth now.
As for cost that pointless

As for who has better device support well SSPVS dose becuase it also support reg YUV/RGB TV card but in my book thoses card don't count becuase there are base on Soft encoding which SageTV also has the code in place for it to but like SSPVS you need major CPU hosepower in order to get High Rez recording that if your lucky enough.

Kupe

- Greater stability (runs for days without a problem - not true with Sage - locked up several times on me - often several times per day)

I have been runing SageTV for 181days and so far it only crash 2 time.
And as for SSPVR it been stability for the last few months.

- Cheaper net streaming (Sage makes you purchase individual client licenses)

And what in SSPVR nothing

- Higher quality at a lower performance cost (I get the highest DVD recording quality with Snapstream at 25% CPU on the system listed in my sig.)

I get 0% how that with SageTV only beuase I using a REAL Hardware Decoder know as Xcard

- Easy integration of my Hughes DirecTV box via IR Blaster - never could get Sage to work (even with phone calls to them)

That really odd they both the use them IR Blaster

[cmasters]

I agree with SHS. I don't want to bash SS, but almost every statement about SageTV here is not correct.

Video quality is superior to SS (and can use DScaler)

CPU usage is less (I get 15% with a Radeon 9000 watching and recording two shows).

SS only streams low quality wmv content. It CANNOT stream MPEG2. So far only Sage offers that (though you must pay for clients).

Biggest complaint against SS is that it is NOT as stable.

SS has two advantages. Excellent web interface for remote scheduling and transcoding. Transcoding is only good though if you don't mind lower quality video so it may not be a benefit to all. These two alone may justify SS.

A possible advantage (though I guess ending soon) is a slicker interface. THough this is not important to all. ANd SS does not have a complete interface so you need to use it like a PC (mouse and keyboard) but this is being corrected in next release.

The 350 is currently supported fully by Sage, and the OSD will be coming in 2.0.

Both products are good, but please be accurate.

[cgrey]

I have had personal experience with both.

After almost 3-weeks of trying, Snapstream was FAR inferior to Sage when it comes to stability. I encountered frequent BSODs (Blue Screen of Death), scheduled recordings that never happened, and all sorts of other 'oddities'.

Installed Sage just about a week ago, and have had no such issues. In 10-minutes I was up and running, and haven't run in to a single issue with stability, crashes, or any other strange happenings. Haven't needed to reboot the system once since, and I've recorded and viewed around 30 programs since the installation. With Snapstream, the system wouldn't stay up without a crash or other recording error for more than 2-3 days (or about 5-10 recordings) at a time. And I'm using brand new, high-quality hardware (Dell P4 2.4Ghz, 1GB of RAM, PVR250 and AIW cards, 7200RPM HD, etc.)

I'm currently experimenting with myHPTC as a front-end to Sage, which allows me to bypass the sage interface entirely (which, agreed, is not as polished as Snapstream's), and fully customize my HTPC.

Finally, dealing with Snapstream's support has been a hit-or-miss experience. I haven't had to talk to Sage's support department yet (because their product actually works on my system), but when I contacted Snapstream about some of my issues, the only response I got from them was to tell me I was out of luck.

[ctebo]

I've tried both products over the past 8 months... And my conclusion comes down to several simple assesments:

1) Snapstream's interface is hands down a winner by a mile. The Sage folks need to hire some graphics designers to redesign their interface to produce an experience that makes sense for Joe user. In the venture capital world, they have a term to describe an interface akin to sage's - "A UI that no-one but the coder of the UI could love." My test has been with my girlfriend... She had no problems navigating the snapstream UI, but never could make sense of the sage ui. Guess what she's now running on her rig at home... Yup... snapstream

2) Stability. My testing on this front shows snapstream as the hands down leader. My snapsream installs have never had stability problems (this has been with both PVR-250 and ATI AIW 9700 setups). My sage installs (on 2 machines) can be categorized on 2 fronts - 1) buggy, causng one machine to blue-screen about once a day, 2) stable unless the machine is under load (ie. CPU > 60%), where it at best louses up its own clock, ad in the worst case. gemerates recordings with glitches and sync problems.

To be fair, I haven't pursued any of the issues with sage tech support. Basically. my conclusion was that snapstream worked as promised right out of the box, so why should I waste my time helping sage get their act together... But in the spirit of fairness, if the sage system stabilized, and their user interface progressed to reflect modern user interface standards (heck... the simple way to describe this would be to say that the sage UI actually impressed someone rather than disappoint my friends as it does today) then I'd have to spend some time doing comparsion testing across the 2 prodiuts.

[RobertH]

Ive been a snapstream user since version 1.2

I havent had any stability problems with it, ive used wintv software encoder cards in the past and now use pvr250's for excellent tv quality. Ive tried both sage and showshifter, I dont like sage and showshifters interface is just horrible to say the least. Only times Ive ever had a stability problem with snapstream was duing the quartz (3.0) beta cycles as they would come out with a new build and I would slap it on my box it would crash occasionally but it was BETA software so I was ok with that (as long as it worked when i wanted it to)

With the current 3.1 and later builds the only time snapstream isnt running on my 800mhz box is when it is off (rarely unless the power goes out or im doing hardware replace/upgrade/maint) the only other time it isnt running is when im upgrading it from one version to the next.

Im not one for streaming mpegs and i cant stand the quality of wmv after ive tasted the quality of the pvrs, ive got an mvp and I have ss installed on my development box (1.8) and it is running dedicated on the 800 directly to the tvset.

However I can probably attribute my stability to my maticulas care of my machines. I keep them updated and stable, they get wiped clean every 4-6 months (or when I get a new harddrive) I dont have loads of crap or worthless programs and I keep the systems clean, this is all from years as a pctech/lab tech for a college, so i know the ins/outs of the system and keep them tidy and running smooth. But I do loads of testing with other software, my own programming, video editing, and of course my game play

[cmasters]

SnapStream is not the most unstable app I have used. The statement is only meant when in comparison to SageTV which will always be more stable because of its lower level architecture. Overall I think SS is a good app.

BTW, I think SS support is great and they are constantly evolving to handle user concerns. Here is a quote from a SS team member(maybe THE team member) which outlines what they are currently doing to address the stability concerns.

Well, where to start first? First of all, SnapStream has a larger and less technical base of users. Part of our job is educating the market about PVS and HTPC's and I'm sure you can imagine the downsides as well as the upsides to this. We've chosen to do this, so we're not complaining.

Second. We try to do more. We support software encoding. We ask the user to have up-to-date drivers with a decent video card that isn't going to crash when running our Direct3D UI 24/7. Unfortunately adding more pieces to the puzzle adds more things that can go wrong. When a customer's hardware isn't up to the task of running fullbore day in and day out or when one of those extra pieces doesn't interact well with the other pieces, we get blamed. Leaving your computer on 24/7 doing nothing and leaving it on doing video encoding and decoding pushing massive amounts of data across the bus are two entirely different things. Hardware encoders often mask the issues here from customers.

Third, we've moved to requiring the .NET framework. It's an extra download but our testers have indicate that they're OK with it if it means faster and more stable development from us (which it does). I'm very jazzed that our customers have given us the go-ahead to do this.

Fourth, we've been cleaning up parts of the architecture to operate more cleanly. This is a guts level type of thing.

Fifth and finally, as part of the rearchitecture we've been separating the actual foundation of PVS into multiple separate processes. Even if one section of PVS goes down now, it can't take down the rest of the application. Basically it's simply impossible to propagate crashes from one component of the app to the rest of it.. We're already seeing big payoffs from this.

As you can see, we take stability very seriously and are and have been making significant strides in this area in direct response to our customerst.

Excellent response in my opinion.

[crush157]

I have to put in 2 cents on the client portion. SS now can have a streaming mpeg 2 client via the MediaMVP as this will work with Sage as well.

SS - UI is much better, VMW recording, transcoding to WMV or Divx. Web scheduling, remote access to SS on your internal lan.

Sage - Multiple tuners with pvr 250 = multiple records at once, search in epg, MP3 player. With 2.0 coming, it will include some features like SS.

These products have very different user bases. They both have trials so, checkem out first.

[DrSpy]

I started with the whole PVR thing about two weeks ago. I first bought a Hauppauge 250 and then examined my options for software. I looked at SnapStream, SageTV, and MythTV. I ended up purchasing SnapStream.

SnapStream was easy to install and I have never had it crash. The User Interface was nice, elegant, and clean. I especially like the remote scheduling.

I have had SnapStream running 24/7 since 2 weeks ago recording various shows. I have not had any stability issues. I think the quality of the video is real good.

I don't have a need for multiple tuner card support, so that is not an issue for me. I don't require DVD playback either.

I record the shows, watch them, and maybe create a dvd out of them. SnapStream works great for all that.

I even looked at Microsoft Media Center, I'm a MSDN subscriber, and I will say Media Center is the best piece of software out there, but it saves all the files in ms-dvr format which I really don't want to spend time converting to mpegs and having to deal with audio sync issues.

If i want to listen to MP3s I'll use my iPod or my desktop computer.

So for me, SnapStream had all the features I was looking for and needed. I don't care for DVD player, MP3, or Picture display support.

[rempson]

... my two cents ---

I had my heart set on a Media Center Edition PC - but it seemed there was a one month wait every place I tried. Meanwhile I read about SnapStream and began to think I could do my own, with much better components that came in your basic MC PC.

I checked out TitanTV, Sage TV and SnapStream - I know they probably all do the same, but SS seemed most attractive. In less than two weeks since getting my new pc & Hauppauge 350, I have done a lot of recording with SS, I set up a wireless network and am able to watch recorded shows using my laptop and network - SS does ALL of the things I want it to - so I am very satisified. The one question I emailed support with was answered in less than one hour - so no complaints here.

As for the first topic in this thread, stating "Hauppauge recommends Sage TV...", when I received my new 350PVR card last week, there was nothing in the box or directions regarding Sage TV - but there was a coupon worth $10 in savings for purchasing SnapStream with your Hauppauge...

Couldn't be more happier with the way it all works and this board has been very informative.
Thanks to all that contribute -
Robin

[SHS]

rempson re-read what he said QUOTE I was talking with Hauppage today /QUOTE as in he was talking to them on the phone.

[rempson]

I did read that he was talking with them on the phone - and I understood it too.

Like I began "my two cents" - that's all