Some basic questions

[jaye]

I found the SageTV website out of frustration over the lack of flexibility in the "pre-packaged" products such as TiVo and DISH PVR. I have some very basic questions, so please bear with me!

1. I currently have DISH Network service with two 301 receivers. I assume that if I want to use 2 tuner cards, I'll need to use both of my 301 receivers. If I want to use this configuration with a single TV, are there any "complications" that I'm not considering? Will I need some type of splitter or a special type of dish? I should note that I receive my local channels through DISH network, and that I want the ability to record one show while watching another live or to record two shows at once.

2. The main reason I would consider something like SageTV is the ability to upgrade my system as technology improves. Is this an appropriate reason to go with SageTV? e.g., when it becomes possible to record in HD, will it simply be a matter of changing a card and possibly adding more disk space?

3. I've read that signal degradation occurs unless the PVR is built in to the satellite receiver, such as Direct TV with Tivo or DISH PVRs. Right now I don't really care about this because I've yet to purchase the additional equipment needed to view HDTV on my HDTV-ready set. However, when that day comes, will this signal degradation prevent me from viewing programming recorded in HD as a true HD picture (assuming the answer to my 2nd question above is "yes").

4. Any general hardware recommendations? I would be buying a PC specifically for this purpose, so I'm starting from scratch.

Can't think of any other pressing needs at the moment. If anyone can help me with these issues, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks! Sounds like a great product.

[mikbro]

1. You will need two pvr-250's each connected to one your dishnetwork receivers. You will also need two IR blasters. These are devices that Sage will use to tell your dish receivers what channel to tune to. They mimic the functionality of you entering channels directly on your remote. Each of these IR Blasters (the Actisys 200L is one that Sage works with) will require a free comm port on the Sage machine (there are other types that work with usb ports). In addition they will have to positioned in a way that stray IR signals from one, do not interfere with the other. The common approach here is to build a 'fort' around the each, where the IR blaster is placed near the IR sensor on the receiver and masked off (with tape, aluminum foil, makeshift box etc.).
This typically is where people have the most trouble, either getting the IR blaster to work, or getting it to work reliably. If you are able to truly isolate the ir blaster of the Actisys and IR sensor of each of your recievers, you should be fine.

2. Yes, adding more storage is as simple as adding a new hard drive, and indicating to Sage via setup to use that new drive.

3. It is not possible to take the HD recording provided by Dishnework or Directv and record it natively in Sage without signal degradation (or by virtually any other means for that matter). What you would do is take s-video output of your dish HD receiver and record that. No, it is not high definition, but your picture quality on the 'downconverted' HD channels will still be much better than the standard dish channels. That being said, there are some people here using an experimental version of Sage with support for HD cards that fit in the pc that decode your local network broadcasts that are in HD. Not exacly what you are asking, but I think it is clear to everyone that Sage is commited to supporting technologies that are emerging.

One other note to anyone taking the output of Dishnetwork or Directv and sending it to Sage (or any other PVR for that matter). Dishnetwork and Directv already compress the heck out of the audio and video in order to cram as many channels as possible over their satellite bandwidth, and when you record those signals in a PVR, you inevitably compress them further. Take that resultant signal and blow it upt to a large screen TV and some people freak seeing all the MPEG compression artifacts.

Whether this additional loss in picture quality bothers you depends on your eyesight, and the size and sensitivity of your TV, as well as your ability to 'tune' your TV to minimize these effects.

As a user of both Dish and Directv I can say I honestly get much better quality out of my local analog cable than the feed provided by the small dish companies.

[jptaz]

Just another thought I believe I heard some where that SageTV currently does
not directly support using multiple ir blasters, mikbro, do you have two?

The solution to this problem from a post I recall is that you need to install
SageRecorder on the same box as SageTV and configure it with an IR Blaster
and then add it to SageTV as a network encoder.

John

[mikbro]

Two of my cards are configured to use Directv serial protocol (one attached to comm 1 and one attached to comm 2). I then use a custom app to send IR signals to the appropriate device. I am not using Sage's built-in IR blasting capability because I could not get my Actisys to learn my remote commands.