It look slike sage TV have jumped ahead of v2 extenders and MS is playing catchup. Read more here:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/27/sagetv-reveals-stx-hd100-hd-media-extender/

I don't know about that, Microsoft and their partners showed pictures of the Extenders (and live action demos) months ago.  Box shots don't mean much in the grand scheme of things.

That said, I'm excited to see what Sage is going to offer with the shipping product.

true, but at this point I've more faith in Sage in this area than Microsoft. Hopefully my faith will be proved to be misplaced.

I agree.  Sage gets what their users want, and have no reason to deliver a product unless the majority of those features are present or at least in the pipeline (and I figure they will address issues, unlike Microsoft).

Sage has already beat Microsoft at delivering their platform on Windows Home Server.  When you consider SageTV allows all your network PCs to access LiveTV and SageTV Media Center via Sage PlaceShifter and now this HD Media Extender product...you have to consider them a serious alternative to Media Center.  I use to think SnapStream would be the ones to give Media Center a run for its money but that platform has slowly died.  I think largely because they have no hardware extender option.  Don't get me wrong, I still prefer Media Center's interface and application support to any of its competitors.  But Microsoft needs to get on the ball and show something.  They spend too much time touting it as a entertainment platform and build storefronts in Media Center when the extender options are too expensive and too few to choose from.  Maybe thats not entirely Microsoft's fault but they haven't been very successful gaining partner support.  If I were Microsoft, I would add Media Center Extender capabilities to Zune.  That way when Zune is docked, it can act as a Media Center Extender (sharing the same UI we are accustomed to in Media Center).  That and a Media Center Extender client for Windows is what I want and expect to see a CES 2008.

The extender will be $199.95

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28669

If Sage can handle QAM and the extenders play DIVX, this could be a real threat to MCE.
Also, add in the fact that you can make any PC an extender.. ie: SoftSled

Wow,  this extender is nice  and cheap. I wonder if it could ever get cable card support.  This what the media center extender should be. Plays vob files. does it do vob with AC3 sound?

No CableCARD in Sage's future....

If it does QAM, and VOB is still better than the media center extender. I do not understand why microsoft did not include these feautures. Think of the amount of people who can utilize cable card versus VOB. I think an extender that plays VOB and QAM have better value than cablecard extenders. In addition, these are much cheaper than a v2 extender.

Chris - Moderator:

No CableCARD in Sage's future....

True, but at the price of the CableCARD support in VMC, is it really much use to many people? I just bought an HP Media Center PC m8200n because I gave up trying to get a reasonably priced CableCARD solution. How many people will pay for that?

What I was really hoping for was a simple $200 wired HD extender. Now there is one. It just doesn't work with Vista Media Center.

It's now shipping...  Early reviews here: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/223704.aspx and here: http://www.shspvr.com/reviews/sagetv_hd_extender/sagetv_hd_extender_index.html

 

Looks like a winner... 

Mike

 

So since this Sage HD extender doesn't require sage, could I use it to play back my VMC TV recordings?  I guess not unless I transcode them into a format it groks.