Tuesday, November 27, 2007

SageTV HD Extender Details & Photos - STX-HD100

4862-Front-with-RemoteAfter months of hearing their SageTV customers clamor for more juicy details and pictures of the coming-soon SageTV HD Extender, SageTV posted a bunch of photos and details of the STX-HD100 extender on the forums early this morning. 

The new extender will be priced $199.95 (includes a SageTV server-side license for the extender) and should be available December 10, 2007 per Jeffrey Kardatzke, CTO & Founder of SageTV, LLC.

UPDATE:  A FULL REVIEW OF THE STX-HD100 HAS BEEN POSTED READ IT HERE  

Here's a rundown with photos of the extender right from the SageTV forum:

The extender is basically a hardware extender much like the Microsoft Media Center extenders that were sold for the old XP version of Media Center.  This one of course was made especially for SageTV and allows the streaming of content from a computer running SageTV.  All menus and functionality should be built-in to the box.

Confirmed Features/Details:

  • HDMI output
  • 1080p upscaled output
  • H.264 decoding
  • Digital Audio S/PDIF (optical)
  • Wired Lan: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet RJ45 Connection (I'm a little surprised it isn't Gigabit although it should be fine for streaming content regardless)
  • Includes S-Video, Composite and RCA Component Outputs
  • Dimensions: 14 3/16" Wide, 1 15/16" High and 9 1/4" Deep (with connectors)

 

Screen-shots of the front & back of the SageTV HD Extender

4867-Front

The front shows LED's for Power, Link, Data and IR

Also on the front are buttons for Menu, Up, Left, Right, Down, "OK" and standby.

USB 2.0 Mass Storage Interface connector - Not sure if this is for connecting additional storage, optical media or something else, but if it's optical media you could use it to play DVD's via a USB DVD-Rom Drive.  UPDATE: THE USB2 PORTS ARE UNUSED AT THIS TIME, BUT COULD ADD FUNCTIONALITY IN THE FUTURE

4870-Back

On the back you see an on/off switch and power cord.

Output's include HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite and Optical.

The Power Supply (90-250V / 50/60Hz) is built in so there is no power brick

10/100 Mbps Ethernet RJ45 Connection on the back

 

This is a photo of the new HDX remote vs. the Hauppauge MVP remote for comparison

4858-Remote-vs-RemoteRemote-Layout

 

And finally, here's a shot of the box the extender will come it (click the photo to enlarge)

4853-Box

UPDATE 11/28/2007:

STX-HD100 Supported File Formats & Codecs:

File Formats:

  • AVI, ASF, MPEG, MKV, QuickTime, MP4, Ogg, WMV

Video Codecs:

  • MPEG-1, MPEG-2 MP@HL (This includes xvid and divx), MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5, H.264 up to 1080p, WMV9/VC-1 up to 1080p

Audio Codecs:

  • MPEG Audio, AAC, Vorbis (stereo only), AC3 (decode/pass-through), WMA, FLAC, DTS (pass-through)

Also can view unencrypted, streamed DVD's from the SageTV Server.

 

You can find these photos as well as comments in the SageTV Forums.

I should note that SageTV does not support CableCard, but it does support many  QAM tuners (unencrypted HD only) as well as the R5000HD (modified DishNetwork Tuner for encrypted HD) and OTA HD.

The extender will be a great seller - especially if the price is right.  I'll update this page as more information including price - comes available.

SageTV 6.3.2 Beta Version Details

SageTV 6.3.1 Beta Version Details

 

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