SageTV

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SageTV provides a clean program guide for easy navigation and scheduling. Of the media center apps I've tested, it performs better at avoiding duplicate recordings than almost any competitor, which is important if you record series. A recommend feature (not unlike the one found on Tivo consoles) supports intelligent recording and scheduling to find shows you might like based on your existing recording preferences. MPEG-2 is the default recording format, but more space efficient MPEG-4 and DivX options are also supported if you use a compatible tuner card. I personally prefer the SageTV search experience to anything currently on the market (although I'm still a Windows Media Center Edition user on a fulltime basis). Scheduling locates recordable programming based on favorite shows, actors and categories through an intuitive process. Over-the-air HD support is standard, with theoretically unlimited tuner support (you'll run out of open ports before SageTV hits a limit. For video playback, both TV output and playback on PCs in your home network are supported using SageTV. Hardware SageTV extenders provide support similar to Windows MCE Extender support. A 15-day free trial is available. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $19.95/$79.95]