7. In Use - TV

At first glance, SageTV is not as visually interesting as some of the other media center programs that I have used. The menus are very basic, with white text against a dark blue background. Fortunately, for those looking for something a little flashier, there are several attractive user-created skins that can be applied to give SageTV a custom appearance.

I found it strange that many of the main functionalities usually associated with a media center application - such as DVD playback, Video, Music, and Photo libraries - are not found on the main menu; it contains mostly TV related selections. Other, non-TV-related media center functions are accessed under a sub-menu called "Media Center".

The SageTV main menu

Scheduling recordings in SageTV was easy and intuitive. Once configured with the proper channel lineup, SageTV automatically downloads up to two weeks of US, Canadian, or European program information that includes a brief synopsis of each show. The schedule service is free for US customers, but the setup warned that some non-US programming requires a monthly fee

The program guide was straightforward, and I had no trouble setting SageTV to record some of my favorite TV shows. The recording options allowed me to easily record an entire series, and to choose if I wanted re-runs to be recorded or skipped. SageTV also performs well, without taxing the CPU; I scheduled simultaneous recordings with all three of the tuners and CPU usage was around 5%. (The tuners are hardware-based and don't affect the CPU much, so the 5% should reflect the CPU usage of both Windows and SageTV.)

The program guide made scheduling recordings easy.

After a few of days of scheduling recordings, the intelligent recording function really began to kick in. Before long, I looked at my scheduled recordings and found that 147 programs had been automatically cued up to record within the next 3 days. I grabbed a nearby napkin and pen and calculated a quick average, and discovered that SageTV was going to fill up my whole hard drive in roughly 30 hours! SageTV is set up to rotate TV recordings much like TiVo, by deleting the oldest files to make room for new content. This meant that I had a 30-hour window to watch a recorded show before it was automatically deleted to make room for something else.

Intelligent recording was a fun feature that introduced me to a couple of shows that I wouldn't normally have watched. However, after trying to train it further by painstakingly flagging the unwanted shows so that they wouldn't be automatically recorded again, I eventually gave up and shut the feature off.

SageTV has some great program guide search features, including a category search that allows the user to browse types of programs, search for a specific person or description, or search all of the program guide fields. It also lets you bypass the program guide and set a timed recording; this could be helpful when a game goes into overtime and alters the regular schedule. (I've been burned by that one before...)

The browse by category feature was useful for finding new shows to watch