Frey Technologies' SageTV 2.0 - A SnapStream Alternative

SageTV Client 2.0

The SageTV 2.0 client is almost exactly the same as the interface for the server, minus a few details. First, loading the SageTV 2.0 client prompts you for the IP address of the server, which almost always needs to be entered. In the detailed setup section on the client side, you can store the IP address that the client should always be pointed towards. Keep in mind that if the server crashes the client will simply seek out the server until told otherwise, with the prompt mentioning something like "connection with server lost, trying to reestablish connection." If the server is not running when the client starts, the client will wait and continue to seek the connection to the server until told otherwise.

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Other than entering the IP address, you can hardly tell the difference in the actual UI, except the server option in the detailed setup. There are several setup options that are sharing, meaning that by changing the variable on the client, it will also change automatically on the server and vice versa (i.e. recording quality).

Note that your client still needs an MPEG decoder for it to view the TV stream from the server. Management of which tuner that clients feed from is automatic, and we found no conflicts in our use of several clients in turn with the server. Each feed takes about 6 Mbits of bandwidth, so a typical 10/100 should easily handle a multi-tuner server and several multi-tuner clients.

For the sake of things, we ran the client on our newest Dell Inspiron 8600 (1.7GHz) with ATI MR9600, and we found things to be a bit slow. It seems that the program is heavily software decoder dependent, since we were able to get smooth playback once we installed and selected Cyberlink's MPEG2 decoder in the detailed setup.

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It is interesting to note that a client can actually setup a TV tuner and media to share with the rest of the network. Setting up a TV tuner is basically the same as doing it on the server, and the server automatically manages the tuners on the various clients. If a client requests a signal, the server arbitrarily distributes TV feeds from different TV tuners. If the client-to-client scenario is used, the client with the tuner first feeds the signal to the server and then the server to the client without the tuner. Because of the multilinking, there is an additional 1-second delay in the client-to-client scenario versus server-to-client.

Adding a folder in the library on a client will do so for the whole SageTV 2.0 network, which is a big plus if you have plenty of media to share on multiple systems.

Note that each client needs its own license key because once the client links to the server, it occupies that key, and any other computer on the network attempting to use that key will be locked out. If a key needs to be transferred, Frey's SageTV does provide a way in their tips and tricks support page.