Windows XP Media Center Edition vs SageTV, part 2

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Home Theater PC, part 1 |  2 |  3 |  4 |  5 |  6 |  Win MCE |  2 |  VideoReDo

The advantages of a SageTV Home Theater PC like mine, over a Windows Media Center Edition system

1. Record using standard MPEG-2 format. Play using any DVD player software. MCE uses an unusual, proprietary format called DIV-MS. If you want to burn a DVD, then you've got to convert the file -- assuming you can! DVD-MS plays using MS MCE or Win Media Player 10.
2. Assign multiple drives and/or multiple partitions to the active video library, where the system stores it recordings as it records. These can even be across the network. MCE handles only one destination directory. RAID striping with large drives looks like the way to go on MCE, but, if you need MORE space, what do you do? You'll have to wipe everything and reinstall to use RAID.
3. Alteratively, and increasing the impact of a drive failure, you can use WinXP's partition-spanning function to turn multiple partitions on multiple physical drives into one huge logical drive and one single point of failure. (ouch!)
4. Ability to add storage without destroying my existing video library
5. Ability to have "import" libraries for video, music and pictures elsewhere on the hard drive or elsewhere on the network (as I do).
6. SageTV is a semi-open system; that is, a number of individuals have beta versions of the user-interface editor and have put out some really nice improvements (for free) to the basic SageTV package. If I hadn't tried some of them, I'd be very happy with the base SageTV product. MCE appears to be a classic, closed program designed for people who get confused by alternatives.
7. SageTV has an active forum for users helping users at the SageTV web site(www.sage.tv).
8. SageTV allows a choice of hardware -- all usual PC hardware choices and a number of hardware-encoding TV cards.
9. SageTV runs on Win98SE, 2000 SP3 or higher, ME, or XP "(Windows Media Center PCs are also supported and meet the system requirements for SageTV)". SageTV requires at least a P3-600MHz, Athlon-600MHz, or Via-800MHz
10. SageTV supports running a remote TV recorder on another PC, controlled by the main SageTV machine

Advantages of the Windows Media Center Edition PC over a SageTV-based HTPC

1. Slick preconfigured system, ready for the average Windows consumer. SageTV requires installing a PCI TV encoder card, installing SageTV, and perhaps changing a video card -- the "fear factor" comes into play.
2. MCE can handles HDTV, but only 1 card and only signals that are broadcast over the air.
3. MCE provides the ability to assign relative priorities to "favorites" in an obvious, all-inclusive manner. These allow MCE to automatically decide, based on your input, how to handle scheduling conflicts. SageTV allows you to handle conflicts on a case-by-case basis, and allows you to say "this show always wins over that show."
4. MCE has the ability to burn a music cdrom without leaving the program. SageTV doesn't.
5. MCE has the ability to do minor edits to pictures (e.g., red-eye reduction, rotation) and to print from within the program. SageTV doesn't.
6. The Media Center Edition's Media Center Extender is a quick, turnkey solution for a remote TV. SageTV, on the other hand, let's you have remote clients on other PCs.

Bottom line: I'm happy with my system. If you're an advanced user, add SageTV into your current Windows computer and throw away your VCR(s). If you bought a MCE system, download the trial version of SageTV and give it a try. Think about being able to add multiple hard drives for storage -- and storing in standard mpeg formats, not proprietary Microsoft formats, too!

Look at SageTV -- you'll enjoy it for what it can do and what you can make it do. For your aunts and brothers, point them to a MCE system. Once they are comfortable, show them yours -- and tell them that they can run SageTV on their system!

Home Theater PC, part 1 |  2 |  3 |  4 |  5 |  6 |  Win MCE |  2 |  VideoReDo

Copyright © 2004-2008 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.