Avast Matie!! Help me get my Server on the sea!

[kaudley]

Arrrrr!! (It's international talk like a pirate day!) http://www.talklikeapirate.com/

But back to why I'm posting.... I think I need some help understanding the SageTV Server..... Here is my understanding of it, correct me if I'm wrong please:

• Sage Server with 2 PVR-150 Cards in it and a Full License.
• USB-UIRT to control 2 Sat Recievers connected to the Server.
• Client machine in another room with a client license

Now I get confused because I haerd something about a "Network Encoder" Does this mean I could have the following setup:

• Sage Server with one PVR-150 and included IR Blaster with Full License
• Client Machine in another room with a seperate PVR-150 and included IR Blaster with Client License

The Server 'collects' all the shows that the client records and I could now:

• Watch 1 live Show while Recording 1 Show
• Watch 2 previously Recorded shows while Recording 2 shows
• Watch 2 live shows.

Avast!! It's a list pirate!

Anywho..... is that right? That would eliminate the need to have my recievers in the same room, and would also solve my Dual PVR-150 IR Blaster issues... Please say yes!

[blade]

Not exactly, you would need another full license on the client instead of a client license.

Unless you just really need to keep the STBs in different rooms, I'd keep all the tuners in the server and save some money by getting the PVR150s that don't come with the Hauppauge IR Blaster garbage or better yet get a PVR500 or Nvidia Dual Tuner card.

[kaudley]

2 full licenses? And then when I look in the "Recorded Shows" menu shows recorded on either machine would show up correct? Or does it record the show and then transfer it to the "servers" hard drive??

[GKusnick]

Depends what you mean by "recording". Encoding and storage are two separate things.

On the one hand you have encoders, which include capture cards installed in the server itself as well as any network encoders you've set up. From the server's point of view a network encoder is kind of like a capture card with an Ethernet interface. It's just another way of capturing a program as a bit stream.

Where that bit stream gets stored is a separate question. You can set up as many video recording directories as you like on your SageTV server. Some of those directories can be local to the server, and some can be network shares on other machines. But they're all controlled from the central server, and it's the server (not the network encoder) that decides which programs get stored where.

You can influence that decision by designating specific recording directories for specific encoders. So for instance you could set up a network share on a machine that's running as a network encoder, and then configure the server to use that directory for that encoder. But it's still the server directing traffic from that encoder to that directory.

All this can be done if that's what you really want. But as blade said, unless you have some overriding need to put the STBs in different rooms, it's really simpler to just connect them all directly to the server, and use clients or extenders to play back the content elsewhere.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by kaudley

2 full licenses?

If you want tuners in a separate PC, yes, SageClient can't control tuners directly, only SageTV (or the depricated SageRecorder) can control tuners. So if you want to have what's called and "encoding server", you need a full license of SageTV to be the master, and then you need a copy of SageTV to act as an "encoding server"/network encoder, on each remote PC with tuners you wish controlled.

And then when I look in the "Recorded Shows" menu shows recorded on either machine would show up correct?

Sage abstracts the location of recordings from the user, it takes care of that on it's own. So yes, you see all recordings in one list.

Try to think of the network encoder as something analogous to a USB tuner.

Or does it record the show and then transfer it to the "servers" hard drive??

It records to wherever the server tells it, and that depends on what directories/drives you have configured as your recording directories.