SageTV with no sound card?

[valnar]

I plan on building a SageTV Server for the basement and using Sage clients or extenders for viewing elsewhere in my house.

Stupid question - but I have to be sure...

Is there anything in the SageTV software that requires it to be installed on a PC with a sound card? If I feed my media extenders from this computer (which has no onboard sound whatsoever), will it still work?

I realize onboard sound or sound cards are meant for local audio, but I didn't know if SageTV needed one on the PC to even function. I guess what I'm asking is, nothing hooks through the internal sound card to feed the clients, right? Yes, no? Because I assume I won't be able to install AC3filter or any other audio codecs and have it find anything to bind to.

Robert

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by valnar

I plan on building a SageTV Server for the basement and using Sage clients or extenders for viewing elsewhere in my house.

Stupid question - but I have to be sure...

Is there anything in the SageTV software that requires it to be installed on a PC with a sound card? If I feed my media extenders from this computer (which has no onboard sound whatsoever), will it still work?

I realize onboard sound or sound cards are meant for local audio, but I didn't know if SageTV needed one on the PC to even function. I guess what I'm asking is, nothing hooks through the internal sound card to feed the clients, right? Yes, no? Because I assume I won't be able to install AC3filter or any other audio codecs and have it find anything to bind to.

Robert

My Sage server (I don't use it for playback) doesn't have a sound card on it and my MVP's and other client PC's work just fine.

[valnar]

Excellent. Thanks.

I don't own any MVP's yet, so I assume they do all local processing of video and sound? 'Cuz the server board I may buy will have no sound and crappy video.

BTW, what motherboard do you use?

Thanks,
Robert

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by valnar

Excellent. Thanks.

I don't own any MVP's yet, so I assume they do all local processing of video and sound? 'Cuz the server board I may buy will have no sound and crappy video.

BTW, what motherboard do you use?

Thanks,
Robert

Tyan S5112 for my server. No sound and ATI Rage128 class built in video. 3.4Ghz Pentium4 cpu with 2Gb mem. And yes the MVP's have hardware playback built in for MPEG2 and MP3. Other formats SageTV has to transcode. Although I think Sage has added a few features to the MVP capability but native playback of divx/xvid is not one of them - they still have to be transcoded. The HD extender is reportedly able to handle them without transcoding which is why I'm waiting rather than buying more MVP's.

[valnar]

Sorry, building a SageTV server and I also don't own any MVP's yet, so forgive the dumb questions. I'm now moving off-topic myself....

If the MVP has support for MP3 and I watch HDTV or a DVD with AC3 or DTS, then SageTV Server transcodes it to MP3 before shipping it out to the MVP?

Thanks,
Robert

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by valnar

Sorry, building a SageTV server and I also don't own any MVP's yet, so forgive the dumb questions. I'm now moving off-topic myself....

If the MVP has support for MP3 and I watch HDTV or a DVD with AC3 or DTS, then SageTV Server transcodes it to MP3 before shipping it out to the MVP?

Thanks,
Robert

The MVP supports 480i mpeg2 feeds. If the HDTV feed is 480i then it wouldn't need to be transcoded. DVD's are 480i/p so they can be done without transcoding. The AC3 is the capability that Sage added to the MVP I think. The MP3 I was talking about was music.