New User - Need Advice on Setup

[jredwine2857]

I just purchased an Intel D 820 2.8Ghz with 1GB RAM and 320GB SATA drive. It has a PNY Verto GeForce 7600 256MB with DVI, VGA, and Svid output. It has the Intel board with the 7.1 SS and digital optical output. Here's my current thought, any help/suggestions are appreciated:

Current TV Layout:
1 - EDTV 42 inch plasma Gateway (Main TV Living room)
1 - small 19 inch for the kids in the sunroom
1 - 30 or so inch tv (not HD) in master
1 - 25 inch tv in daughters bedroom (not HD)

I am a directtv customer and have the Philips DSX-5500 (3) receivers and 1 directtv TIVO unit. (1 Philips receiver is not in use.)

I am planning on getting two PVR-500's and connecting all 4 receivers (I will buy another STB reciever) to these inputs.

I am going to put a WIFI media extender in all four areas. I only have a surround sound setup in my living room. I plan to use the digital optical output to go into my receiver for DTS/DD. (Will this work??DTS too???)

I will use a USB-UIRT to change channels on the receivers. (Anyone know how many USB-UIRTS I'll need. Someone stated you can run 3 STB's from 1 USB-UIRT with external LED's. What to do for the fourth reciever??) Also is the menu that pops up from the directtv receivers cannot be suppressed. Is it very annoying anyway, or not something to worry about?

I plan on putting the receivers and the sagetv pc/server in the basement, so everything is out of site. (Is this a good idea. No TV will be hooked in directly to the pc.) The reason i want this, is so I don't have 4 STB's stacked up in my AV rack. It might look shotty. Plus running all of the satellite feeds to the living room would be a pain. It only has 2 going to it now for the TIVO.

I am running a MIMO 802.11N WIFI Access Point.

I wanted to integrate in the HD tuner, but with my setup (and lack of HDTV) I am not sure I will get any benefit from it. Does HDTV stream over the WIFI media extenders?

Thanks for the help in advance. I have been tearing these message boards up to answer most of my questions, but wanted to get some overall layout input. I think these forums are what makes SageTV such a useable product!

[FidgetyRat]

Originally Posted by jredwine2857

I wanted to integrate in the HD tuner, but with my setup (and lack of HDTV) I am not sure I will get any benefit from it. Does HDTV stream over the WIFI media extenders?

Probably the only thing I can answer. No. As far as I know MVPs only do SDTV

[jbarr]

If I recall, the MVP only does SDTV, but if it is fed HDTV, it will be transcoded into SDTV for the MVP to display. You would be able to watch HDTV content, but at SD quality.

[kdobson99]

This is almost identical to the setup I wish to adopt... except I might have a few more TV's in the basement in addition to the 4 on the main level.

If anyone could answer the question about how easy/difficult it will be to control 4 directv units through a remote at each TV, it would be helpful.

Since we have 4 people in our family, and probably 6 tv's, but only 4 tuners, my thought is to assign each tuner to an individual... i.e. "dad's tv" "mom's tv" etc... My assumption is that each tuner would be accessible from any of the TV's. Thus, if I'm in the basement, I use my tuner, my boy can use his tuner whether he's in his bedroom or in the living room etc. This is the only way I can figure that everyone won't be changing channels others are watching. Would this be simple to configure in the onscreen menu's?

Any other problems or "catches" that I'm not thinking of?

Thanks

[blade]

Originally Posted by kdobson99

Since we have 4 people in our family, and probably 6 tv's, but only 4 tuners, my thought is to assign each tuner to an individual... i.e. "dad's tv" "mom's tv" etc... My assumption is that each tuner would be accessible from any of the TV's. Thus, if I'm in the basement, I use my tuner, my boy can use his tuner whether he's in his bedroom or in the living room etc. This is the only way I can figure that everyone won't be changing channels others are watching. Would this be simple to configure in the onscreen menu's?

Any other problems or "catches" that I'm not thinking of?

Thanks

You do not assign tuners to people or clients nor do you choose which tuner you wish to use. Sage handles all of that automatically. If you have 4 tuners and only 1 in use Sage is not going to change the channel on that tuner when there are 3 others available.

[jredwine2857]

Finally have it done!!

Well I finally have my Sage Setup.

Here's what it looks like:

Server:
SageTV 6.0.15 Beta running on Intel 820 2.8Ghz 512MB 320GB SATA WinXPPro
Dual PVR 500's (ie 4 tuners) AverHDTV Tuner with Terk HD Antenna
Client:
CoolerMaster Cavalier HTPC case Intel MMedia Board 7.1 Surround SPDIF 820 2.8Ghz 1GB Nvidia 7600gs Composite to 42Inch Gateway plasma Snapstream remote Wireless Key/Mouse
Extenders:
Wired MVP's to Linksys WGA54G Wireless Bridges (Wireless MVP card was crap) all connecting to SD tv sets.
Receivers/Control:
4 D11-500 with serial control from patersontech.com via USB

Everything went fairly as planned. I ended up creating a dedicated server in the basement and housing all of my D11-500's in the same area. I had to purchase all new directtv recievers (d11's) as my receivers would not work properly even with the USB-UIRT.

I also had to upgrade my wireless AP to the wrt300n.

I had to hardwire my main client as wireless was just too flaky. It's fine for the other sets, but the main tv area had to be SOLID.

I had a lot of issues getting the MVP's to work. They are very particular! Other than that things went pretty well.

Just an update to give this thread some finality.