2012-04-06, 19:20
As the title states, I have some decisions to make. A little background information...
I've been a SageTV customer for about 6 years. Obviously it is not news that Sage is a product with little to no future. However, my system keeps plugging along. Currently, I utulize two HDHomeruns for OTA and a Colossus to capture signal from my Dish ViP box. My Sage server is headless (for the most part) and I utilize an HD300 at my main viewing location. I also have an unRaid server that stores all of my music, movies/videos, pictures, etc. Around the time of building my unRaid server, I also got a buddy interested in unRaid, and at that time I made the decision to get him setup using an openelec distro of xbmc. He was hesitant at first, but now over a year later he's glad I pushed him in that direction.
This brings me to my main point of this post. I'm fully aware of the backend/frontend nature of xbmc and I'm also fairly comfortable in my abilities to make a backend and xbmc play nicely together. What I'm ultimately after is some advice or just general recomendations on what route to take. I've studied up quite a bit on the Mediaportal backend/xbmc frontend approach. In all actuality, I plan on purchasing either an Acer or Zotac nettop in the very near future and getting my own xbmc appliance in the mix (I use xbmc on my laptop currently, but want to finally make the push to get it permanently fixed into my system). Frankly, I think the options for music and other media in Sage is pretty lackluster. It works, but compared to my buddy's system with xbmc it is no contest. What Sage does really well though (in my honest opinion) is being a PVR. So with that said, some info that would be helpful to me would be experiences pertaining to:
1.How does Mediaportal play with the Colossus? I've done some research on the Mediaportal site, and while it seems to me that it works, it looks like it takes some convincing. Any users here have experience with it and how it translates to the xbmc frontend?
2. I've seen plenty of material on the HDHomerun, so I'm not too terribly worried about it playing nicely, but again, any feedback on user experience would be appreciated.
3. How is Live TV? Rarely do the wife and myself watch Live TV these days, but on occasion (usually a sporting event or some needed background fodder) we fire up Live TV. How is this experience?
4. I'm still a bit unclear on scheduling recordings. Is this still a backend exclusive thing, or do the plugins for the various backends have some functionality for managing this through xbmc. Not trying to make this one sound like a request, just curious what others with more experience have to say.
I'm sure there are more things I can think of, but those are the main points. What I'm banking on is that someone will have gear similar to what I currently have and will be able to toss some pointers my way before I go all in to xbmc integration. Also, I should note that I'm aware of the SageTV plugin/script that is floating around these forums. While I think it is a very awesome tool, it's not quite what I'm after (I'm looking to cut all ties with my SageTV server). Also, my server is Windows based, and while I'm not entirely opposed to ditching Windows, it is my preferred OS for my backend. Thanks for any info and advice you might have to serve up for me.
I've been a SageTV customer for about 6 years. Obviously it is not news that Sage is a product with little to no future. However, my system keeps plugging along. Currently, I utulize two HDHomeruns for OTA and a Colossus to capture signal from my Dish ViP box. My Sage server is headless (for the most part) and I utilize an HD300 at my main viewing location. I also have an unRaid server that stores all of my music, movies/videos, pictures, etc. Around the time of building my unRaid server, I also got a buddy interested in unRaid, and at that time I made the decision to get him setup using an openelec distro of xbmc. He was hesitant at first, but now over a year later he's glad I pushed him in that direction.
This brings me to my main point of this post. I'm fully aware of the backend/frontend nature of xbmc and I'm also fairly comfortable in my abilities to make a backend and xbmc play nicely together. What I'm ultimately after is some advice or just general recomendations on what route to take. I've studied up quite a bit on the Mediaportal backend/xbmc frontend approach. In all actuality, I plan on purchasing either an Acer or Zotac nettop in the very near future and getting my own xbmc appliance in the mix (I use xbmc on my laptop currently, but want to finally make the push to get it permanently fixed into my system). Frankly, I think the options for music and other media in Sage is pretty lackluster. It works, but compared to my buddy's system with xbmc it is no contest. What Sage does really well though (in my honest opinion) is being a PVR. So with that said, some info that would be helpful to me would be experiences pertaining to:
1.How does Mediaportal play with the Colossus? I've done some research on the Mediaportal site, and while it seems to me that it works, it looks like it takes some convincing. Any users here have experience with it and how it translates to the xbmc frontend?
2. I've seen plenty of material on the HDHomerun, so I'm not too terribly worried about it playing nicely, but again, any feedback on user experience would be appreciated.
3. How is Live TV? Rarely do the wife and myself watch Live TV these days, but on occasion (usually a sporting event or some needed background fodder) we fire up Live TV. How is this experience?
4. I'm still a bit unclear on scheduling recordings. Is this still a backend exclusive thing, or do the plugins for the various backends have some functionality for managing this through xbmc. Not trying to make this one sound like a request, just curious what others with more experience have to say.
I'm sure there are more things I can think of, but those are the main points. What I'm banking on is that someone will have gear similar to what I currently have and will be able to toss some pointers my way before I go all in to xbmc integration. Also, I should note that I'm aware of the SageTV plugin/script that is floating around these forums. While I think it is a very awesome tool, it's not quite what I'm after (I'm looking to cut all ties with my SageTV server). Also, my server is Windows based, and while I'm not entirely opposed to ditching Windows, it is my preferred OS for my backend. Thanks for any info and advice you might have to serve up for me.
