BeyondTV Plus MediaPortal vs SageTV – Redux Part 2

As many GeekTonic readers know, I was a long-time user of BeyondTV.  I still have BeyondTV installed on a test PC but have since switched to SageTV for my whole-home HTPC needs.  So after posting a how-to on switching from BeyondTV to SageTV I thought I’d share with you a counter-point guest-post by a long-time BeyondTV user who tried to switch to SageTV, but couldn’t make the move in the long run.  ZetaVu is a pretty hard-core user with some pretty specific needs, but you can’t argue that he put some serious time into trying things out.  I’ve noted a few corrections or “clarifying notes” where I thought they would be helpful to other readers, but otherwise I’m posting this review verbatim as provided to me by ZetaVu.  It’s a long one so I’m breaking it out into two parts – one which I posted early Thursday.

NOTE:  This is a guest post by ZetaVu, a GeekTonic reader and frequent guest-blogger on GeekTonic.  Basic guidelines for writing and submitting a guest post at GeekTonic can be found here.

This is part 2 of the article: BeyondTV Plus MediaPortal vs SageTV – Redux   To read Part one click here

 

Part 2 - Non-PVR functionality – SageTV compared Media Portal

Non-TV setup in SageTV is about on par with Media Portal, however Media Portal offers a configuration program similar to BeyondTV’s Webadmin, where all configurations can be entered or tweaked beyond the initial setup of folders etc. SageTV again requires all changes to be made in the Viewscape or directly to its Sage.properties file (their equivalent to BTV's settings.xml). Media Portal seems to have far more configurable settings, and their configuration program seems to be far better suited for dealing with the various external plugins or internal features.

A little more about Media Portal. It has come a long way in its development. Based in Europe, the MP community really is not well suited for developing the US TV market. Setting up channels in their TV Server is a real chore, and guide data is available only by subscription or HTML stripping. However, the setup is vastly improved. They give you the choice of whether to install the TV Server or not, and then walk you through the other features such as weather, music, videos and pictures. The configuration program lets you go in and adjust all settings and update databases in a non-htpc format. I also edit many of the xml files directly, and again, I have an unfair 3 year head start with MP over Sage. I use my remote to launch the BTV or MP interface, so I really don't skip a beat using the two program combination vs the integrated SageTV product. Others have also used MP to launch the BTV viewscape or simply run BTV as a service and view their videos in MP. They lose some of the BTV options, and need to run Comskip instead of Smartchapter.

First in my Media Portal setup is my music library. I can view by lists or album art, sort by Genre, Artist, Album, File, Year, any data in the ID3 files. Album art is cached and can come from ID3 files, folder.jpg or the internet. I added plugins for an information server that lets me control my music library from a wifi PDA, and a lyrics plugin. Visualizations can be added, and you can switch to other music engines like Foobar or Winamp. It also has typical playlist features and options to download info and recommendation online.

By contrast SageMC has many of the features of Media Portal's interface but with some notable exceptions. First, it has less views. If I want to sort by year or one of the lesser ID3 fields I need to make a playlist for that. Second and more important is the playlist or currently playing access. Media Portal lets me use one keyboard shortcut to add songs, albums, artists, genres, folders etc to the current active playlist, then another shortcut to toggle to this list to browse, shuffle etc. Sage doesn't have anything this convenient, more than tripling the time and effort to make a custom playlist on the fly. MP also lets me toggle between the menu and full screen visualizations with a shortcut.

MP also has some different plugins that will let me remotely browse my music library using a wifi or bluetooth enabled device and gives me full playback control (MPBlue for older versions, Information Server or PPC Remote for current versions). This lets me control my music from anywhere in the house without access to a tv, a real bonus since my house is wired for sound from my central stereo. Sage currently has remote and web interfaces in progress but none at near the level of the Media Portal products. I did not explore other music plugins for Sage, nor did I compare the winamp or other engines available, but in the default systems other music and navigation were similar.

Next feature is Pictures, In Media Portal the pictures section is folder based, thumbnails are generated while browsing then cached (no way to generate and store them ahead of time like the music  and video libraries). The slideshows run in order, no slideshow playlist, but has zoom and rotate features. MP also has several slideshow effects, my favorite is the “floating picture” effect. I did not do much with Sage's default picture section as I had been a fan of Craig's PSE photo plugin from back in the Beyond Media days. This plugin lets you use the tags from an Adobe photoshop elements database to sort files, and lets you pick and filter collections of tags for a slideshow. Unfortunately, the slideshow effects for Sage are very limited, no floating picture, zoom or rotate, so this plugin is not as impressive as it was in Beyond Media. If I can only convince Craig to port it to MP...

MP's Video section lets you add videos to playlists so you can navigate a playlist like chapters on a DVD. I use this feature for home movies, which I save as clips and then can join together depending on who the audience is and what pertains to them. You can also change playback filters, aspect ratios, and use the movie database to download info on the movies like a DVD library. You can also add your own video attributes to this database manually. The DVD program is similar to most, no special comments here.

Sage's video information is fairly similar, and they also let you add videos to a playlist, however their playlist is shared with music where the MP playlists are separate. Regarding the other video attribute features, the only difference I will comment on is that Sage downloads its info on the fly and for MP I've only updated it using the movies database in the configuration program. Here they are closely matched and it comes down to personal preferences. Both MP and BTV have far more in video aspect settings which I think is an advantage. The other really annoying thing with Sage is how videos and folders are organized. I prefer to browse videos by folder location, and organize by subfolder. In BTV and MP folders are listed at the top and then the contents. In Sage, folders are stashed away with the files in the parent folders, alphabetically, and all setup video folders are merged together so I can't distinguish between them. I really need to have one empty master folder with all sub folders in there to organize the way I prefer.

Finally the MP weather section really stands out in my mind. It lets you setup multiple locations and has multiple animated maps per location. It provides four day forecasts, detailed forecast, and the multiple animated dopplers to see what's really going on. SageMC has similar forecast info but for only one location, and while the MC version has maps they are generic maps and none are animated.

In addition, the default program has radio, lastFM, some games and file management plugins built in. Additional plugins can be added for email, RSS feeds, movie showtimes and trailers, recipes, caller ID, on and on. I could spend a week comparing the different plugins, but safe to say both programs are well supported by their plugin communities. For Sage online videos, RSS feeds and email are integrated, these are disabled by default in MediaPortal. Neither program offers a guide browser that I prefer over Firefox.

The one integrated Sage feature that stands out is the online services section, easy access to online videos by type, news, even Home and Garden for the wife factor. Sadly, give it a few days and the novelty runs dry. I had tried a few plugins for online video in MP but when they started running into legal wranglings with Hulu and Netflix I opted just to launch Firefox fullscreen with Zinc. Zinc gives you access to in my opinion the most online content, and has the least issues since it still runs through the web browser, but includes remote functions that work well with Eventghost.

Remote features and Keyboard Shortcuts

The following is an incomplete list of keyboard shortcuts I map in Eventghost to control my HTPC. There is a Sage plugin for Eventghost that has some additional functions not accessible by keyboard shortcuts. The drawback with this si that Sage has to be running when Eventghost starts, otherwise this plugin gets disabled.

Event	Beyondtv	Media Portal	Sage
Play	P	P	Ctrl-D
Stop	S	B	Ctrl-G
Pause	space	space	Ctrl-Shft-S
Fast forward	Right	F6	(DVD) Ctrl-M
Rewind	Left	F5	(DVD) Ctrl-N
Forward Frame	Space-Right		Ctrl-S
Backward Frame	Space-Left
Skip Forward	. (period)	Up	Ctrl-F
Skip Backward	, (comma)	Down	Ctrl-A
Next Track		F8	Ctrl-Up or PageUp
Previous Track		F7	Ctrl-Down or PageDown
Next Chapter		F8	PageUp
Previous Chapter		F4	PageDown
Skip Forward adjustable		Right	Ctrl-F8
Skip Back Adjustable		Left	Ctrl-F7
Up	Up	Up	Up
Down	Down	Down	Down
Left	Left	Left	Left
Right	Right	Right	Right
Enter	Enter	Enter	Enter
First Item		Home
Last Item		End
Menu/Home	Home	H	Home
Back	Esc	Esc	Alt-Left
Toggle Playlist/Menu		F1
Add/Remove Playlist		Y
Options Menu	O	Mouse Right-Click	Esc or Ctrl-O
Record	R	R	Ctrl-Y
Show Info	I	F3	Ctrl-I
Wake/Standby			Ctrl-Z
Shut Down	Alt-F4	Alt-F4	Alt-F4
Page Up	] (end bracket)	PageUp	PageUp or F5
Page Down	[ (open bracket)	PageDown	PageDown or F6
Channel Up	] (end bracket)	PageUp	Ctrl-Up or PageUp
Channel Down	[ (open bracket)	PageDown	Ctrl-Down or PageDown
Previous Channel	L		Eventghost
Update Guide	U
Volume Up	+ (plus)	+ (plus)	Ctrl-Right
Volume Down	- (Minus)	- (Minus)	Ctrl-Left
Fullscreen/Windows	Alt-Enter	X	Ctrl-Shft-F
Fullscreen Visualizations		F
Video Aspect ratio	Under options O	S	Alt-S(4x3) Alt-W(16x9) &Eventghost
Rotate Picture		R
Zoom Picture		Z or 0-9
Guide	F7		Ctrl-X
TV (LiveTV)	F6		Ctrl-V
Recorded Shows	F5		Eventghost - library
Mark Watched			Ctrl-W
Mark Favorite			Ctrl-K
Mark Don't Like			Ctrl-J
Delete	Delete	0	Delete

This list is far from complete, I did not include any of the Media Portal TV shortcuts or some of the Sage and BTV shortcuts I really never used. Also Many of the non-pvr shortcuts are not available for BTV because it lacks those functions. The SageTV Eventghost plugin also has some actions that there are no shortcuts to, these are marked as Eventghost.

Based on this, the options to mark shows watched, favorites etc are available in SageTV but not BTV. Also, BTV's options let you control video and audio, Sage's options don't let you change audio (SPDIF vs 2CH) but has other options. Three shortcuts that I really miss are Media Portal's Add to playlist, toggle playlist, and fullscreen visualizations. All of these require multiple clicks in Sagetv.

Final Summary, Parts 1 and 2

Well, here is where my bias takes over and I list positives and negatives about each program. Again, take my listing with a grain of salt, I am not a new users evaluating the programs evenly, I am a very experienced BeyondTV and Media Portal user contrasting SageTV to them, and since I'm comfortable with what I know I expect I'll be more apt to find flaws with SageTV.

Setup
I find both BeyondTV and Media Portal easier to setup for basic features, and for features such as SPDIF out and commercial detection. SageTV has a much more difficult learning curve, and is limited in versatility. BTV has the Webadmin for tweaking most behind the scenes settings, MP has the configuration program. Sage relies on making changes in the program itself or by editing an xml file. BTV made channel setup much simpler using Snapstream.net, and offered more tuner control in my opinion.

PVR performance and features
BeyondTV has taken a step backward in its recent releases for OTA recording quality, however the negatives are limited to channels with on the fringe signal. While Sage handles these channels better it is not without errors. Sage provides more flashy information on shows and channels but lacks features like a signal monitor. Sage puts more energy into marking shows and making suggestions, BTV puts more emphasis in easily accessing video and audio aspects. BTV has DIVX showqueezing in addition to wmv and H.264 that Sage has (Sage also has mpg conversion). Sage also lets you convert part of a file, a feature only available in BTV enterprise. BTV also offers a DVD burning plugin. Commercial detection performance was similar. Sage began to suffer from long delays when starting HD playback, this could have just been an issue with my install however I did not make a lot of changes. Advanced recording options were similar on both programs, but I preferred BTV's recording job and upcoming recording interfaces as they offered listings reaching out up to two weeks. I did not find any issues with either program for guide data errors.

Placeshifting
I did not compare Link to Client, but isntead focused on Placeshifting. The BeyondTV placeshifter does not have a LAN feature, it measures connection speed and transcodes accordingly, causing higher server load. You have the option of using VLC with the placeshifter to play files, which lets BTV work with Mac and Linux clients. However, issues with OTA recording cause some HD channels not to have audio in VLC. Overall the playback quality in VLC is excellent but cpu load especially in Linux is high. Sage's placeshifter was very unstable and buggy in my testing, and worked better on Windows than Linux. Video quality for SD shows was very good, but HD video from OTA or H.264 files had wavy edges and stuttering. I could not find ways to improve this quality, as such it is a bust for me.
Other HTPC features
Media Portal has what I consider superior music, weather, and picture slideshow features, although Sage's PSE photo plugin gives you more versatility in choosing pictures for a slideshow, the lack of slideshow effects takes away from this. Their video library and details sections are similar, although I am unhappy with how Sage displays folders and files mixed together. Video playlists are available on both programs, Sage combines Audio and Video, MP separates them. MP offers one click access to add songs/videos to playlists and to toggle in and out, as well as full screen visualizations. Sage requires multiple clicks for this. Sage has an excellent online video addin, however it is not as versatile as the Zinc Firefox plugin.

Overall Impressions
While I am confident that if BeyondTV stopped working today I could live with a switch to SageTV, I don't see enough advantages and in fact have encountered enough negatives to keep my from buying the SageTV program. If I were approaching these products as a new user, I would probably buy SageTV rather than BeyondTV. At this time, I do not see any of the free HTPC programs meeting the performance, ease, and reliability of either of these programs. I think Media Portal is making great strides and if they can improve their TV Server and come up with a reliable US guide solution, I see them as a serious threat to both these products as well as Windows MCE programs. I think the Linux alternatives will eventually be what does in all these options.

On a negative, neither of these programs seems to provide a good Linux client option. I did not explore Sage's linux server version, but I am disappointed in the placeshifter performance in linux (and there is no Client or Link option).

About the author:  "ZetaVu is a frequent commenter and Guest-Poster at GeekTonic with a great deal of knowledge with HTPC's and other media gadgets.  I've gotten to know him from the many hours spent on the Snapstream, MediaPortal , AVS and other Forums where you'll often find him (under the same online name).  His past guest posts include Control Your HTPC With EventGhost, iPod Without iTunes, Video Editing Power Tools, and MediaGadget Showcase for his setup all of which are great reads.

BeyondTV Plus MediaPortal vs SageTV – Redux Part 1

As many GeekTonic readers know, I was a long-time user of BeyondTV.  I still have BeyondTV installed on a test PC but have since switched to SageTV for my whole-home HTPC needs.  So after posting a how-to on switching from BeyondTV to SageTV I thought I’d share with you a counter-point guest-post by a long-time BeyondTV user who tried to switch to SageTV, but couldn’t make the move in the long run.  ZetaVu is a pretty hard-core user with some pretty specific needs, but you can’t argue that he put some serious time into trying things out.  I’ve noted a few corrections or “clarifying notes” where I thought they would be helpful to other readers, but otherwise I’m posting this review verbatim as provided to me by ZetaVu.  It’s a long one so I’m breaking it out into two parts – one for Thursday and the second one you can read here.

NOTE:  This is a guest post by ZetaVu, a GeekTonic reader and frequent guest-blogger on GeekTonic.  Basic guidelines for writing and submitting a guest post at GeekTonic can be found here.

This is my third attempt at SageTV, even though it is my first review on the matter. I have been using Snapstream's BeyondTV since 2005, started with version 3.4 and have invested time and energy in the beta programs for every build since. As a result, I am heavily biased towards BeyondTV both from familiarity and preferences. About a year ago I tried Sage out when I became annoyed that Snapstream was reneging on their promise to integrate Beyond Media into BeyondTV. Unlike SageTV, which offers music, pictures, and other applications integrated in their product, BeyondTV had a separate program called Beyond Media that handled media other than TV and video. At the time I did not feel comfortable with Sage and did not see any advantage to switching.

In addition to BeyondTV I was also using Snapstream's Beyond Media as well as Media Portal for my other HTPC components. Media Portal is an open source HTPC program, and although it has its own PVR, I disable that and use it as a companion to BeyondTV. The main issue with free HTPC programs in my opinion is the ability to set up the TV channels and obtain reliable guide data. I find the other components of Media Portal meet all my needs, music, pictures, video library, weather etc. Recently Snapstream discontinued Beyond Media so my current system uses BeyondTV and Media Portal exclusively. Feature wise, I preferred the combination of those two programs over SageTV and its interface the last time I tested it. For that test I only tested the default skin, never installing the SageMC STV.

Now I felt the time was right for a head to head comparison. I have BeyondTV 4.9.2 working as good as it is capable and Media Portal 1.0 tweaked out to my liking. I was however seeing some signal quality issues with over the air recordings so I wanted a second opinion. For this comparison I did some research first, and followed the Geek Tonic guide for SageMC installation. This article covers my notes and impressions of SageTV vs BeyondTV/Media Portal. It encompasses about 40 hours of direct SageTV tweaking and research. Unfortunately that compares to over a thousand hours of BTV and MP experience, so take this as a familiarity biased comparison, honest as I will try to be.

My Setup: I built my HTPC server on a Foxconn NF4UK8AA-8EKRS motherboard with AMD 4200-x2 processor, 2gb Corsair memory, Asus Earthmate 430 power supply, and PNY 8500 GT video card. I have just over 2TB of hard drive space and an NEC DVD burner. My capture cards are a Hauppauge HVR1600 with remote, HVR950 USB, HVR2250 dual tuner, and HD PVR. The HD PVR is connected to a Directv H21 HD receiver via spdif (dolby 5.1) and component, the receiver is locked at 1080i. The 1600 uses one tuner for OTA HD and the other for s-video from a Directv H20 locked at SD. I have four OTA HD inputs all together, each fed from a roof mounted antenna feeding an electroline 8 port amplifier. Both Directv receivers are controlled with serial tuning cables, null modem cables with Iogear Guc232A usb to serial adaptors. I also have ATI Remote Wonder and both this and the Hauppauge remote control the HTPC using Eventghost. I monitor the HTPC with an LCDSmartie. My system is Windows XP Sp2 with all security updates, no antivirus or firewall on the computer (Use firewalled router). Main TV is Samsung LNT-466F connected with component and analog audio, and SPDIF audio going to a Yamaha RX-V663 SS receiver.

Part 1 – SageTV compared to BeyondTV

Setup issues
Clearly since I have been using BeyondTV for four years I can't provide any detail about issues with its setup, I am a master after 100+ reinstalls. What I can do is point out what I found different or particularly with the SageTV install and contrast it with BTV

1. Serial Tuner for Directv. I currently use null modem to usb to change channels on my Directv H20 and H21 receivers. I could not get this to work for a while, initially I thought I had the wrong com port, but after checking with Brent found I had to change a setting in detailed setup to Fast to get this to work (not very insightful). This experience also brings me to #2
2. Could not change serial tuner com port after setting up source. Really this means that I miss the Webadmin of BeyondTV, where I can use Firefox to change all my settings in BTV behind the scenes. Navigating through Sage's htpc setup menus got cumbersome really fast. Worse, I could not find a way to edit the com port so I had to remove the tuner and add it again with the correct port.
3. Cannot disable tuners, can only add or remove, and basic editing. To disable a port you remove it, and while you can add it again, if you use multiple guides you can lose all your changes.
4. Channel setup – BTV lets you setup a snapstream.net account, where you can go online and setup your channel info. This lets you import the edited guide quickly. In Sage, I have to manually hide channels, and with Directv that's a lot of scrolling and clicking. This was even more frustrating when I removed the tuner to fix the com port and then had to hide all 200 channels I did not want again.
5. No signal meter on OTA setup – I like to see what my signal strength is per channel.
6. Advanced setup options: things like enabling spdif, commercial remover, etc, are not part of the base program. Setting these up requires some good advice like the GeekTonic guides, searches through the forum or a lot of reading in the almost 300 page manual (use the one in Help, an online search found older versions). [NOTE FROM EDITOR – The latest documentation is always installed on your computer with the install of SageTV. So just do Start>Programs>SageTV and you’ll see the full help document that corresponds with the version of SageTV you have installed.]
   
   Overall, setup was far more complicated to get the equivalent features I am used to in BeyondTV. BTV uses a windows installer to setup remote, tuners, channel lists, etc. You can then go into settings within the viewscape to set some of the simple parameters, like whether commercials are automatically detected by Smartchapter or if you want to Showsqueeze files into compressed formats. It also provides access to the DVD plugin for archiving. More complex settings can be made by accessing the Webadmin, the web interface which lets you customize recording and showsqueeze settings, and then anything from network to updating to tuner settings. Finally some advanced features can be set by editing the settings.xml file. Sagetv requires most changes to be made in one of the setting pages, usually detailed settings. Some adjustments require opening external applications and manually running setups, such as SPDIF and Comskip. Sagetv does have a web interface plugin which I did not test at this time. Again, this is a separate install.
   
   For remote control I use Eventghost rather than the internal remote applications in Sage or BTV. This lets me customize my universal remote or the buttons on my Remote Wonder any way I want. I was able to get most but not all of the PVR remote function is Sage that I used in BTV. BTV has an options shortcut (keyboard O) that lets me change video and audio instantly during playback. Sage does not have this feature and it is missed. A more detailed comparison will be in Part 2 of this article.  [NOTE FROM THE EDITOR – You can customize any keyboard shortcut or IR remote control button from within SageTV without needing EventGhost or Girder – you can use those programs but they definitely are not necessary]
   
   Recording Quality
   Here I got a little bold and tricky. I just recently got a Hauppauge 2250 dual HD tuner, so I assigned tuner 1 to BeyondTV (actually had both assigned but disabled tuner 2, which is nice to be able to do as an option) and assigned tuner 2 to SageTV. I was capturing over the air (OTA) high def recordings from my roof mounted antenna, fed through an 8-port Electroline amplifier. This let me record the same show (picked my weakest OTA channel) at the exact same time using the same tuner. To my utter amazement, it worked! Both programs recorded the show and I was able to do a complete and concise quality assessment. Mother nature was cooperating as well, I had some nice icy rain to torment my signal as much as possible.
   
   Initial results had Sage leading on the signal quality front. Head to head, the .mpg (process stream) files Sage created had less pauses or pixilation than the BeyondTV .tp transport stream files. This led me to a long term comparison, recording exclusively with Sage for a week. For this I added my HVR1600 and 950 cards, as well as my HD PVR component/spdif Directv recording, and s-video Directv recording on my HVR1600 card. The more I recorded, the more pauses, stutters, etc in OTA HD I started to catch with Sage. While not without errors, Sage was still catching less errors than BTV 4.9. However, much of this may be related to changes in the way Beyondtv handles OTA transport streams in 4.9. Previous versions of BTV (4.8 and earlier) seemed to perform more similar to Sage. This is an issue Snapstream will need to address since the PVR is what they survive on.
   
   For the HD PVR I found no difference between Sage and BTV. Both had the same quality and neither locked my system. My Directv receiver output is locked at 1080i, and I capture spdif Dolby 5.1 audio. I did see some wavy texture on a few channels, particularly on black or dark backgrounds, but this was the same for both programs. Likewise I saw no differences on s-video captured from Directv.
   
   Another feature I like about BTV is the log, which lets me check and diagnose recording or program issues. I've been using this steadily to track which tuners are used for recordings, specifically when I get stuttering or other artifacts. Sage has a log but it tracks everything, and is not enabled by default. Sage however lists the tuner number on recordings, however I did not find a way to set tuner priority, other than to tell Sage to use only that tuner or only a channel assigned to that tuner. [NOTE FROM THE EDITOR – Since ZetaVu tested SageTV logging is now enabled by default and easily turned on/off with a toggle switch in settings.  And tuner priority is configurable within SageTV]
   
   Stability and Placeshifter
   I put these two together because I really didn't start seeing program lock ups until I started trying out placeshifter. However, Sage lockups are not only caused by placeshifter, I've had the main program lock up on me several times, usually during file playback. The non-placeshifter lockups might be caused by playing back .tp files, I had to add this extension to the Sage.properties file: seeker/video_library_import_filename_extensions list. Maybe the .tp files are causing this, maybe Sage just isn't as stable as btv, or maybe these are learning pains. I used to get a lot of BTV lockups, but then again most of those were in the betas or with older video drivers.
   
   A recent development that finally turned me off of the SageTV trial (spoiler alert) was the freezes when entering settings and when starting file playback. This started after I enabled Comskip sometime, may or may not have been related to it. Sage would take between 10 and 60 seconds to enter a screen or start video playback in TV. Did not have this issue in Videos, seems to related to Sage TV recordings. Reboot did not fix it, and it was what finally did it in for the wife factor.
   
   The placeshifter lockups were one of the two issues that killed placeshifter for me. They seemed to be the worst when I tried to use placeshifter from one of my linux boxes. The reason I tested placeshifter rather than client was I wanted to make all my other computers run Ubuntu, and Sage does not have a client for linux. It took me many attempts to get placeshifter to work on windows, I had to open the server port on my router even though I was going to access it on my LAN, had to setup a username and password, and for good measure turned off 3d accelerated. (suggestion from forums)
   
   I finally got Placeshifter to work from a windows machine, but still could not get it to work from any of my Ubuntu machines. I used the debian installer on 8.1. The ubuntu attempts were getting through to server, I knew this because that was what locked up my server several times. Then, for no reason, it started working, which annoys me more than anything else.
   
   Both placeshifter weren't very promising, video quality was very poor, even when I turned off all conversion and set it up for LAN usage. With conversion the files are very pixelated. Biggest issues were transport streams and H.264 though. Both had stuttering, freezes, and very wavy edges on video regardless of the settings or platform I ran on. In Windows, CPU was about 30% and in Linux about 80%. By comparison, BeyondTV's placeshifter to vlc (rather than silverlight which is not yet available on Linux, hoping for progress on the Moonlight project) shows much cleaner video, but is a big drain on server and client cpu. The problem with Snapsteam's placeshifter goes back to recording, some channels lose audio in VLC, but not in BeyondTV or Silverlight. This occurred in 4.9, 4.8 recordings did not have this issue, but so far no acknowledgement from Snapstream on the problem despite many bug reports and forum posts. All things considered, Snapstreams Placeshifter beats out Sage for video quality alone, at least to Silverlight, VLC needs work.
   
   Speaking of the forums, I posted many questions as a newbie to see how the Sage forums respond. I'm used to the Snapstream forums, hell, I'm one of the people that does a lot of the responding there. On Sage my specific questions did a lot better than my general thread talking about my experiments and asking for a lot of suggestions. All in all, I'd say the forums were on par with Snapstream. Sage had a lot more posts but Snapstream seemed to address questions as effectively as Sage forums did. I did not try to use Sage's technical support, so I cannot comment on that. I have all but given up on Snapstream's technical support, their response time to issues has become unacceptable compared to the past, possibly because of less developers and the change in focus to their Enterprise product. The lack of commitment from Snapstream to their consumer customers is probably the biggest reason for defections. Sage also has a 200-300 page manual that was a little over the top, but I found a lot of clues, otherwise GeekTonic and Google were really my best friends when it came to sorting things out.
   
   PVR extras
   I decided to focus on 4 extras for the PVR portion of Sage to compare it to what was stock in BeyondTV. I did not look into a DVD burning plugin for Sage, I don't use this much in BTV and was starting to run out of trial.
   
   First was commercial detection. BTV uses either the internal Smartchapter detector or you can add Comskip or another program using customer post processing steps. I tried the Comskip program once in BTV, and didn't see any better results than Smartchapters. Smartchapters works very well in SD and OTA HD recordigns, but it is fairly useless on HD PVR recordings.
   
   For Sage, you have to install a Comskip Scheduler plugin (comes with Comskip) and configure this using its one program to get it to work. If you use the default skin you also have to add the utility to Sage to use it, but SageMC skins already have this. I could never find the utility, and after installing it didn't work for a while and then suddenly started working. Sadly a lot of things in Sage act that way, see Placeshifter for another example. Once working, Comskip seemed to work perfectly with my recordings, although I didn't get anything for HD PVR recordings (I did update Comskip for this extension). Apart from difficulty in setup, this seems to be an adequate alternative to Smartchapters, in fact I'm considering a second try at Comskip in BTV to see if I can get it to work with my HD PVR recordings.
   
   Next tweak was audio. In BTV, I click options, keyboard shortcut O to access video aspect ratio and audio for playback. The video aspect comes in useful when recording SD from directv, it lets me switch to Letterbox, fullscreen, 16x9, 4x3 or other aspects to eliminate black bars in the picture. The audio lets me stick with 2-channel audio that feeds my tv or audio receiver, or switch to SPDIF passthrough for shows with Dolby 5.1 to my Receiver. Sage does not have anything this convenient. I can adjust video aspect in playback, but only have 4 options. The audio is far more complicated. TO enable SPDIF, I need to go to settings and switch to AC3Filter, and use the AC3config file outside of Sage to enable and configure SPDIF. Once this is done, I can switch back to analog audio but I need to go through setup again. This is a big drawback for Sage. The bigger drawback is that I was not able to setup SPDIF, all I got was static. Based on the forums this might have been caused by interference from the Arcsoft audio decoders, but by this time I was pretty much through so I did not explore further. Again, ease of setup is important here and in this case it was more that I was willing to deal with this time around.
   
   Video Conversion, both Sage and BTV have video conversion with a variety of defaults. BTV calls theirs showsqueeze, and I can set recordings to automatically showsqueeze to WMV, DIVX, or H.264 formats, and can create custom parameters in the web interface (Webadmin). Sage has similar functions but it seems to focus on mpg and H.264, not DIVX. Both programs have user generated plugins that can use third party applications like AutoGK or Handbrake, but given the default programming I think I like the showsqueeze funstion better than Sage's video converter. Going through exercizes of trying to simulate most events in Sage and BTV, I find that what BTV does is much easier and more convenient than Sage.
   
   LCDsmartie, I've used BTVsmartie with a homemade LCD for years to list when a recording was occuring, which tuner, next show and recording times. I recently expanded this to also control some LED's using LEDsDriver, so I could tell from other tvs when a tuner was in use, and in fact to send a disable tuner command via my serial port cable so no one would change Directv channels during recordings. For BTV, the smartie plugin just needs to be placed in LCDSmartie and set accordingly. For Sage, you need to install the getstatusplugin first and then the LCDplugin. Also, the Sage plugin on LCDSmartie's site was more complicated to setup than the BTVSmartie, but I felt that I could get all my screens and actions to work equivalently given time. There is an alternative plugin, MizookLCD, which seems to have more flexibility.
   
   Sage Extras - PVR
   
   Last, Sage offers many other extras not found in BTV. Many of these are available in Media Portal, but I rarely use that for video playback So I'll mention them here. Sage offers recording suggestions based on favorites and cued shows, BTV offers community recordings based on most popular shows from Snapstream Buzz. Sage also has views like current movies, genres, and downloads pictures and data for shows. BTV shows less show data but does let you search by genre and actors, keywords etc. There are many other features, most of which I did not explore fully enough to comment on. Media Portal has many of the same show data features in their movie library. As we are pretty much at the point of switching from BeyondTV to Media Portal,
7. I'll leave the rest of the comparison to part 2 which you can read here.
   

About the author:  "ZetaVu is a frequent commenter and Guest-Poster at GeekTonic with a great deal of knowledge with HTPC's and other media gadgets.  I've gotten to know him from the many hours spent on the Snapstream, MediaPortal , AVS and other Forums where you'll often find him (under the same online name).  His past guest posts include Control Your HTPC With EventGhost, iPod Without iTunes, Video Editing Power Tools, and MediaGadget Showcase for his setup all of which are great reads.

Read Part 2 of this article Here

Control Your HTPC With EventGhost

Controlling your HTPC with the 10-foot interface (aka remote control) is one of the first things you need to figure out when setting up the HTPC.  Some HTPC programs have built-in ways to deal with this, but even then you might need a little more power or control.  EventGhost is a very nice freeware that helps you do this and ZetaVu has written the following guest-post explaining how he set up EventGhost to control his HTPC.  Read on for a great how-to article:

NOTE:  This is a guest post by ZetaVu, a GeekTonic reader and frequent guest-blogger on GeekTonic.  Basic guidelines for writing and submitting a guest post at GeekTonic can be found here.

I had been an avid user of Girder with my remotes on my HTPC. My main programs are Snapstream Beyondtv and Media Portal, but have also used Beyond Media when it was actively supported. My goal was to program the same remote buttons to have similar functions in either program (as well as Firefox Keyconfig shortcuts). The remotes I use are an ATI All in Wonder RF remote, and the Hauppauge IR remote that came with my HVR 1600 capture card. The reason I used Girder was that it let me assign custom actions to any button on my remotes. The reasons I stopped using Girder were 1. it was proprietary, not open source, and 2. I could not get a decent plugin for my Hauppauge remote, not all the functions worked.

Then along comes Evenghost.  Eventghost is an open source application, free to use and supported by a decent group of developers. Since it is open source there are no limitations to creating plugins for it. Looking through the EventThost plugin directory, I was able to find input plugins for both my remotes, as well as output plugins for Media Portal, Sagetv, PowerDVD etc. I had thought about writing a plugin for Beyondtv, however since I did everything in Girder using keyboard shortcuts, I decided to stick with that. This is my step by step instructions on getting Eventghost to work with my HTPC. Other remotes could be substituted as well as other programs.

First off, you will need to download one of the nightly builds to get full Hauppauge support. I started with build 3.6.1487, there is a more recent one I haven't tested yet. Get the EventGhost builds here . You will also need the drivers for your remotes. I installed the ATI remote-wonder-2-5-0-0-english.exe program normally (having it launch on startup) and the Hauppauge ir32_257_26021.exe program, but disabled the automatic launch in the startup folder. (don't need it) Then I installed Eventghost. Now, Girder had a feature to have it launch minimized, I did not see this in the Eventghost options, so instead I made a shortcut to launch it in my Startup folder, and told the shortcut to launch the program minimized.

Now comes to the fun part, customizing Eventghost. First thing is to add the plugins for the remotes.

In the right pane, under Configuration Tree, right click Autostart, and select add plugin. Here choose the remote plugins you will use (I added The Hauppauge, generic X10 for the ATI is there by default). Next step is to add all the commands you are going to use. There are sample commands further down in the right pane under Content Folder. Since I am doing keyboard emulation I selected that folder. Under there are various Macros such as Up Down, Play etc.

 

You can add additional Macros by right clicking the Keyboard Emulation folder and selecting Add Macro. You can also copy and paste macros, which will give you all events and actions under the macro. Likewise, you can add events (commands from remotes, etc) or actions by right clicking the macro

To make things simplest, I copied one macro over and over and then renamed the macros to get my full list of commands. The following table lists all the commands I send to both Media Portal and Beyond TV. These are default settings for Beyondtv, however in Media Portal I changed several of the shortcuts to be consistent with Beyondtv. To do this, you need to edit the Keymap.xml file in the TeamMediaPortal folder. Alternatively, you can assign specific commands for each program (to do this you will need to read the short manual – http://www.eventghost.org/wiki/Short_Manual) but I like to keep things simple.

Keyboard Shortcut	Beyondtv	Media Portal
P	Play	Play
S	Stop	Stop
space	Pause	Pause
' (apostrophe)		Fast forward
; (semicolon)		Rewind
. (period)	Skip Forward	Next
, (comma)	Skip Backward	Previous
Up	Up	Up/Big Jump Forward
Down	Down	Down/Big Jump Backward
Left	Left	Skip Backward
Right	Right	Skip Forward
Enter	Enter	Enter
Home	Menu	Parent Directory
Esc	Back, Exit	Back
O	Options Menu	Toggle Playlist/Menu
R	Record	Add/Remove Playlist
Alt-F4	Shut Down BTV	Shut Down MP
] (end bracket)	Channel Up	Page Up
[ (open bracket)	Channel Down	Page Down
#NAME?	Volume Up	Volume Up
#NAME?	Volume Down	Volume Down
Alt-Tab	Switch Between Programs
F	Fullscreen Visualizations
Start Program	Btvd3dshell.exe	Mediaportal.exe

More keyboard shortcuts can be found here:

• Windows Vista Media Center and XP MCE Cheat Sheet
• Media Portal Cheat Sheet
• BeyondTV & BeyondMedia Cheat Sheet
• GBPVR Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheet
• SageTV Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheet

 

I name the macros with both the general function and the keyboard function, So Play->P is Play, shortcut P. Under the macro I create either an Emulate Keyboard or Start Application action

Then I edit the action as needed, either entering the shortcut or the path the the program to launch.

Last step is to add the events to each macro. The easiest way to do this is to just press a botton on the remote you want to assign to the macro. The event appears in the left pane when you press it. You can then drag this event to the macro you want to assign it to. For most commands, I have two events, one for each remote (some of the ATI commands don't need eventghost, such as the button keys, etc).

Now, I don't use my Hauppauge remote itself, instead I use a universal learning remote that's programmed for my entire home theater. The Hauppauge remote keys are available as one of the Toshiba VCRs (trial and error to find one that works the best). I use a Universal RF10, so I just learned the keys so I could put them wherever I wanted. With the Hauppauge, since the remote program is not running in the background (just the dll) you will need to assign all the keys, including the numbers.

And that's about it. Once you've assigned all the macros, events and actions just save the config file and you should be ready to go. Mind you, this is just scratching the surface of what you can do with Eventghost. You can link it with a UsbUIRT to control all your devices, set it up with an X10 or Smarthouse control, have it launch events and respond to events, etc. You can also program different commands based on running applications. Like I said, I like things simple so the keyboard shortcuts works for me. Now I have the option of controlling my HTPC with my home theater universal remote, or using my Remote Wonder as a remote and wireless mouse. I also have some interactive remote control programs that I run through my PDA, but we'll save that for another article.

 

About the author:  "ZetaVu is a frequent commenter and Guest-Poster at GeekTonic with a great deal of knowledge with HTPC's and other media gadgets.  I've gotten to know him from the many hours spent on the Snapstream, MediaPortal , AVS and other Forums where you'll often find him (under the same online name).  His past guest posts include iPod Without iTunes, Video Editing Power Tools, and MediaGadget Showcase for his setup all of which are great reads.