Wanna save some money?

[pgitta]

Man. What a trip it's been getting SageTV and HDTV working.

I am now going to answer every post in this forum about problems and solve every one of them in three words.

Ready?

DON'T. BE. CHEAP.

Do not even try to scrimp on your hardware. I learned the hard way after about a million hours of labor.

Stuttering? Format in 64K clusters? Bull. Change renderers? Crap. Try a different encoder? Don't waste your time.

Do NOT try to solve your problems with tinkering. You will only get frustrated and possibly a divorce.

This is what you do:

Spend the cash and get a fast processor. AMD or Pentium it doesn't matter, just get something around 3GhZ. Sure, it may work with less, but it's your headache. I warned you.

Spend the cash and get a premium video card. I cannot stress enough that this is by far the most important item that will result in either sucess or failure.

Rule of thumb: It it ain't got a cooling fan of it's own, don't bother.
256MB minimum. Ignore this tip at your own risk.

I started with a 64MB card. two or three channels worked, the rest useless.
So I messed with settings until my carpal flared up so bad I could hardly hold a fork.

Then I bought a 128MB card and had some good, some marginal, and others crap. More "tweaking". More wasted time at getting it "slightly" better.

Then I sprung for a 256MB 6800 Extreme like I should have done in the first place.

Flawless. Pick any renderer and/or encoder combination I want and it's still flawless. Change other settings...it doesn't matter. It just wont quit.

An extra $75 it cost me. $75 divided by a 100 hours of misery.

You wanna work for 75 cents/hour?

Then by all means...try to save some money.

[gtd885a]

Originally Posted by pgitta

So I messed with settings until my carpal flared up so bad I could hardly hold a fork.

Guess you don't program for a living, eh? Welcome to my wonderful world of chronic pain.

As far as the hardware is concerned, I agree better hardware will give better results, but I have had the same hardware for a while now, and I see improvements with new versions of Sage, and especially with the nvidia purevideo. However, my Sage box will probably be getting a HW upgrade soon anyway since I'm getting that itch to upgrade my primary machine again.

[mayamaniac]

lol... when I read the thread title, I thought someone is trying to spam this forum with useless money making schemes.

I said this many time, SageTV and other software HTPC/PVR apps are still for computer PVR hobbyist. And the 100 hours of tinkering you speak of is part of the whole process. From the beginning, you spent countless hours trying to get it to work like it should. In the process, you will likely upgrade your hardware, reformat your OS, tweak the registry, etc. Then after that, you want it to do even more than what it came with, so you install plugins, addons, and spend 100 hours more tweaking that, it is part of the HTPC/PVR hobby.

I've gone from a P3 700ghz, to an AthlonXP 1.4ghz, then an AMD64 3000+, and now I'm using an intel P4 3.2ghz. There's a thread somewhere with a poll of how much people spend on their HTPC hobby.

So yes, if you use old or cheap hardware, chances are that there will be problems. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford expensive hardware or have the technical know how to get old hardware to work, so they end up frustrated.

and by the way, about the carpel flared up, its more like reprtitive stress injury as I get more pain from mouse clickings. But the good thing is now I'm training to use the mouse with my other hand.

[teknubic]

My family has a saying when it comes to technical purchases:
Cry Once.
Cry once when you pay for the item and never cry about it again because it does the job well.
Your time and trouble is not wasted, pgitta. You have experience and wisdom now.

[ybrew]

I'm getting ready to go live with my SageTV in about a week and a half (at that time I'm moving and disconnecting my DirecTV and TiVos.)

My SageTV server -

Clean install of Windows. Clean install of latest version of Sage.
currently only have a cheap software tuner card. But that's changing.

Also currently have a NVidia Ti4400 graphics card.
Computer is
AMD XP2600
512MB Ram

I've got two 250Gig hard drives striped, but I'm thinking of unstriping them. I thought initially I had to have one large volume for sage, but looks like that's not the case so until I go raid 5, I'll just have 2 250 gig drives available for recordings.

-----------------------------
so obviously I need to buy a few pieces of hardware.
First - I plan to get 2 Hauppauge 500s for 4 tuner goodness.
That's probably all I need to get for the next 5 or 6 months. I won't be touching HDTV until December or January at the earliest.

I'll have this setup connected to 3 TVs and my laptop (Centrino Dual Core - running SageTV client).

TV #1 will either have a direct connection or connected to a wired MVP.

TV#2 & 3 will be connected to a wireless MVP (no way to do wired until December).

Actually, we'll be staying with inlaws for several months, and they've got older TVs. most of the TVs will only have RF(Coax) in. Can MVPs even be connected to these TVs?

Is the hauppauge 500 the best dual tuner card out there? or is there something else I should consider?

In December I'll be moving into a new house and at that time, I'll add a couple of HD Tuners, upgrade my video card, and quite possibly upgrade my whole system (Dual core amd 3800+ should be cheaper by then).

But for the next 5/6 months, my current XP2600, with a couple of hauppage cards connected to some older TVs - I should be OK, right?

[blade]

Originally Posted by ybrew

First - I plan to get 2 Hauppauge 500s for 4 tuner goodness.


Is the hauppauge 500 the best dual tuner card out there? or is there something else I should consider?

For starters what chipset is your motherboard? Via, Sis, etc... (basically any AMD chipset other than Nvidia) give a lot of problems.

Most people agree the Nvidia dual tuner cards have better PQ than the hauppauge 500s; however, the last I checked you could only run 1 Nvidia dual tuner in a system. Until Nvidia releases updated drivers there isn't a way to run 2 of them in 1 computer. I guess you could go with one Nvidia and one 500.

[hemicuda]

I dont think they put F-Pins on the extenders. You'll probably have to find an RCA to coax RF adapter.

[roxy99]

Having good quality hardware is by all means a necessary prereqquisite but not the only important criteria. A clean dedicated Win XP PC with upto date drivers is equally important. The PC should only be running Sage and nothing else. Do not think of installing Sage on an old PC without 1st reformating and starting from scratch.

DON'T USE YOUR SAGE PC FOR GAMING!!

If you have a dedciated PC then you can take off your Antivirus and never user internet unless absolutely necessary. If you do use internet, use Firefox (Not Internet Explorer) and make sure you have a hardware router acting as a firewall.
Don't worry, viruses can't just junp onto your PC by themselves.

Also, CPU speed is not that important. I even down-clocked by Athlon XP 3200 to 2500 speeds simply so that the system will run cooler. With that I am still able to achieve smoOTH 720p resolution. I even have dual monitor running on the PC.

Another important piece of advice: Once you get everything working right, LEAVE IT ALONE. Don't keep tinkering thinking this or that encoder might get a sharper picture, forget he said /she said use this mpeg encoder. Your system works now so leave it alone. You never never know with hardware what can happen when you start mixing things up.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by blade

For starters what chipset is your motherboard? Via, Sis, etc... (basically any AMD chipset other than Nvidia) give a lot of problems.

Most people agree the Nvidia dual tuner cards have better PQ than the hauppauge 500s; however, the last I checked you could only run 1 Nvidia dual tuner in a system. Until Nvidia releases updated drivers there isn't a way to run 2 of them in 1 computer. I guess you could go with one Nvidia and one 500.

I've currently got an MSI NForce Motherboard (nvidia).
Didn't realize there was a limitation to only 1 NVidia dual tuner card. I might do one of each. I gotta see if I can get the NVidia locally and also see how much they cost.

thanks!

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by roxy99

Having good quality hardware is by all means a necessary prereqquisite but not the only important criteria. A clean dedicated Win XP PC with upto date drivers is equally important. The PC should only be running Sage and nothing else. Do not think of installing Sage on an old PC without 1st reformating and starting from scratch.

DON'T USE YOUR SAGE PC FOR GAMING!!

If you have a dedciated PC then you can take off your Antivirus and never user internet unless absolutely necessary. If you do use internet, use Firefox (Not Internet Explorer) and make sure you have a hardware router acting as a firewall.
Don't worry, viruses can't just junp onto your PC by themselves.

Also, CPU speed is not that important. I even down-clocked by Athlon XP 3200 to 2500 speeds simply so that the system will run cooler. With that I am still able to achieve smoOTH 720p resolution. I even have dual monitor running on the PC.

Another important piece of advice: Once you get everything working right, LEAVE IT ALONE. Don't keep tinkering thinking this or that encoder might get a sharper picture, forget he said /she said use this mpeg encoder. Your system works now so leave it alone. You never never know with hardware what can happen when you start mixing things up.

Assuming this was addressed to me...
This is dedicated hardware. Since I got my new laptop, this PC has been powered down.
I use my xbox for gaming.
I've got a wife. If I kept tinkering with the SageTV after I got it setup, I might be able to get a sharper picture, but I probably would have to give up my wife. Once I've got it working, I don't plan to tinker to much.

And yeah - got a hardware router as well. As long as I don't open any ports to this PC, I'm not expecting any problems.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by hemicuda

I dont think they put F-Pins on the extenders. You'll probably have to find an RCA to coax RF adapter.

do these work (adequately)?
Is this something I could pick up at radioshack?

I'll have to do some searching for them.

[mayamaniac]

This thread is filled with good advices from people who have gone through pain and frustrations of building a stable and reliable SageTV system. And I agree with all that was said.

ybrew, your AMD cpu should be fine, but as blade mentioned, check the motherboard, anything other than nvidia3/4 chipset will likely be problematic. If you plan to upgrade your computer CPU later, keep that in mind or go with intel CPU and motherboard combo for best stability.

For SDTV, your best bet is to go with the MVP, they give the best picture quality and is quite an affordable quiet client. The MVP doesn't have a coaxial out, so you might want to get a composite to coaxial/RF adapter from Radioshack. Either that, or feed the MVP through a VCR that has composite in, and from VCR coax out to the TV.

For 4 tuners, two PVR-500MCEs are your best option right now.

[Thomas Wischgol]

Originally Posted by ybrew

do these work (adequately)?
Is this something I could pick up at radioshack?

I'll have to do some searching for them.

You can pick up these things almost at any electronics store (BestBuy, Circuit City, ...). Even Walmart sells them.