There's a lot more available on Digital OTA now (getting around encrypted digital cable), and now the current software that runs on modern hardware is able to do Live TV and DVR again. I stuck the Chromecast on the other TV that we just use for the treadmill and can live with that. I eventually settled on using an Nvidia Shield (running AndroidTV), and it's better in basically every way except for OTA/cable/DVR stuff - and so we entirely dropped that.
We moved again, and had a child (and our TV viewing went down considerably), so really just use a single TV now. SageTV couldn't handle NetFlix, and even the SageTV YouTube app broke because YouTube's old API was finally discontinued.
The Chromecast came close, but it was annoying to have to use a phone/laptop to view anything.Įverything just felt like it was getting worse and worse from my old SageTV setup.
I even resorted to low-power mini-ITX PC running Windows - but the only way to get NetFlix was to use a keyboard and mouse. I went through a bunch of sub-par solutions: BluRay player, Roku box, some other (pre-Android) streaming box and a Chromecast. It was around the same time my cable company was encrypting the last of all their digital channels (so my tuner cards were not usable anymore) and I was considering Netflix, so I started looking for a device to replace the HD300 that could still get SageTV content, but also Netflix, YouTube and whatever else. Then, Google bought SageTV and basically killed the core product. At some point in there I had also switched to a SiliconDust tuner to get digital channels. SageTV still supported my tuner cards, and though not built-in, there were plugins to do commercial skipping. I even moved the SageTV server PC to a utility room, disconnecting it from the TV and replaced it with an HD300. This feature has never been matched, and since moving away from SageTV I've always had either two remotes or had to program a Logitech Harmony remote. The HD300 remote even had programmable "TV power" and volume buttons, so since that was the only device connected it was also the only remote I needed. As a SageTV client they were better in every way: cheaper, less power, zero maintenance. After seeing the nice setup at a friend's, I jumped to SageTV and started using their media extender boxes (HD300). I didn't have a space PC, nor did I want to have an entire PC dedicated to being a client - and at least at the time, using multiple MythTV clients with a single server was a bit clunky. MythTV had commercial skipping built in, and as I watched basically 100% recorded content, this was the beginning of me never seeing commercials.Įventually I moved into a bigger house and got married, and we had two TVs. Over time I added another dual tuner card, and had both cable and OTA channels. I started a dozen or so years ago with MythTV and a Hauppauge tuner card, in an old PC directly connected to the (one) TV, and using an IR remote to control it. A Moxi + Boxee combo seems like it would do what I need it to.As first a MythTV, then SageTV and now NetFlix+Plex user, I have found the evolution of this tech both fascinating and frustrating. Roku would be cheaper, but then I'd have a Moxi Mate, a Sage extender and Roku at each box. The Boxee Box seems like one of the ways to go for that. Plus, I'd like a better way to access online content. (and yes, yes, I know the external power supply on the HD200 and HD300 should help quite a bit). I don't have a lot of faith in their reliability. Honestly, I'm still steaming a little bit over the HD100 fiasco from years ago. But I find standalone mode pretty painful, and I'm not going to stay locked into a Sage system if I can't buy replacement extenders if one goes bad. You could also just use the Sage extenders is standalone mode.
What would be the advantage of replacing all my HDx00 extenders with Boxee for saved content? Wouldn't we achieve the same result for free by keeping Sage running on the server just to feed us our media through existing extenders?