BTV's Godzilla machine gets ripped to shreds on /.

[nielm]

BTV blogged their 11 tuner 'godzilla' machine...
Gets posted to /.
Gets ripped to shreds on the blog itself and on /. for being noisy, hot, unreliable (4 drives using RAID 0!) and just a plain stupid HW design
...
Profit?

[Narflex]

Serves them right. What's funny is that their 10 tuner PVR didn't even work. They had it at CES last year and were only able to record 4-6 channels at once. Anymore than that and it just fell over. Of course they never mentioned that anywhere themselves.

I wonder how many shows this one will actually record at once. Now if you used SageTV for this and split it across multiple systems using network encoders and each wrote to their own drives then you would have no problem whatsoever.....but oh yeah....BTV can't do that.

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Serves them right. What's funny is that their 10 tuner PVR didn't even work. They had it at CES last year and were only able to record 4-6 channels at once. Anymore than that and it just fell over. Of course they never mentioned that anywhere themselves.

Originally Posted by Narflex

I wonder how many shows this one will actually record at once. Now if you used SageTV for this and split it across multiple systems using network encoders and each wrote to their own drives then you would have no problem whatsoever.....but oh yeah....BTV can't do that.

How do you tell a Sage server set up as a network encoder to only record to it's local drives? I was under the impression that all the recording drives were shared and Sage would write to the one with the most space regardless of where it was?

If this is indeed possible, would it also be possible to get the network encoder instance of Sage to also do the streaming of it's local content to the client?

For example, Server A is the master Sage server. It has 3 PVR-250's and records only to a local drive. Server B is a Sage network encoder and slave to A. It has 3 HDTV cards and records only to a local drive. Client computers connect to Server A where necessary data from both servers is merged (i.e. - program guide info from both servers). If the client requests a show that was recorded on Server A then Server A does the streaming BUT if the client requests a show that was recorded on Server B then Server B streams directly to the client instead of sending it to Server A over the network first.

[JUC]

Originally Posted by sleonard

How do you tell a Sage server set up as a network encoder to only record to it's local drives? I was under the impression that all the recording drives were shared and Sage would write to the one with the most space regardless of where it was?

Great Question!

[Narflex]

There's been a property added to the next build which allows you to force a capture device to use a specific video path.

So you can use UNC paths for this and it will allow multiple drives on an encoding server.

The client will currently stream directly from the encoding server if it's file path is accessible from the client itself (by using UNC paths or mapped drives) and what's being watched is not currently being recorded.

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by Narflex

There's been a property added to the next build which allows you to force a capture device to use a specific video path.

So you can use UNC paths for this and it will allow multiple drives on an encoding server.

The client will currently stream directly from the encoding server if it's file path is accessible from the client itself (by using UNC paths or mapped drives) and what's being watched is not currently being recorded.

So, the next build will work exactly as I described above for shows that have finished recording? What happens with Live TV or any other shows that are still recording when you decide to watch them?

BTW,
AWESOME new features. A new server for HDTV cards set up as a network encoder slave to my existing server has now moved way up on the to do list. I can feel my wallet losing weight already.

[stanger89]

Jeff,

The Systems Engineer in me wonders what happens if the specified path is filled, but the others are empty/not filled (if you've got an encoder merit or something set up).

Does it use the current logic and delete from that drive to make space? Or is it more like a priority thing, where it will record there if possible but fall back to other drives on fill up? Or do encoders get rotated to keep all drives full?

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Narflex

There's been a property added to the next build which allows you to force a capture device to use a specific video path.

Network encoders can work without dragging down your network! ( I know it takes a lot to slow down a network, but...)

And as mentioned later, how is it going to work if the set path is full? Idealy you could configure it to either delete on that path to make room, OR use one of the other paths defined as recording dirs. Or even some kind of merit setting where you can set a priority list of paths to use. That way you could give it a priority list something like:

1: record locally
2: delete local IR content to make room
3: record to the server with the gigabit NIC and speedy drives
4: record to the machine with 100 Nic and slower drives
5: delete locally to make space available.
6: delete on other machines to make room

[Narflex]

It'll use its 'Intelligence' to figure out what should be deleted from the appropriate drives in order to make room for the recordings. (just like it does all the time)

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Narflex

It'll use its 'Intelligence' to figure out what should be deleted from the appropriate drives in order to make room for the recordings. (just like it does all the time)

I know that when you set up multiple recording directories it will put recordings in the directory that has the most free space and then use it's rules to delete files to make room. What I'm wondering is if you set the property to "force" a particular encoder to use a specific path will it ONLY write to that path?

Scenario: Server (4 tuners, 1/2tb storage) - 2nd machine (Linux) with 1 network encoder (with priority set to record to its own drive - 40gb)

local drive on network encoders machine runs out of space, while recording dirs on server have lots of space left.

Will it start recording future airings on the server until the servers drives become full, or will it start deleting on that local drive to make room?