Why do you have your SageTV PC hooked to the TV?

[tipstir]

Originally Posted by wvpolekat

All this TCP optimization stuff is snake oil. They all work under the premise that MS intentionally crippled the network. The only thing they have done that comes anywhere near that is the limit on "half open" TCP connections. The classic example given is the QoS settings, which are there, but not active by default, so changing them does nothing.

I have had no less than 5 broadband ISPs from Cable to DSL to Sattelite, and I can max each of them out with the default settings. At the same time, I can max out my LAN bandwidth as well with the same settings. The only settings I have seen make a difference is to use traffic shaping to keep me from saturating the upload which causes the download to slow to a crawl because the delay it causes in SYN/ACK.

I've been at this dos days, dial-up 2400baud modem and up. I don't think it's snake oil. If done correctly you could have a fast in-home-network. COX and now Comcast offer higher download speeds. I am getting my rated download and bit more than most. Tweaking helps the PC it's aim at. Now all PCs or desktop and laptop need super duper speed for the internet.

LAN you should be able to to connect to any PC in your network and transfer files in seconds not minutes unless the file is 1GB in size. KB and MB files only take 2 to 60secs depending on the file. Some NIC cards have TX RX rated higher than 64K. 64K is all you really need.

I've posted some of my REG for TCP and etc.. Alot of research and testing had gone into those. MediaMVP isn't that perfect but just to be able to boot that up and connect in less than 2 secs is great. If you have a busy LAN then it might take a few more secs. Switches do tend to get clog or bog down a bit.

[wvpolekat]

Originally Posted by tipstir

I've been at this dos days, dial-up 2400baud modem and up. I don't think it's snake oil. If done correctly you could have a fast in-home-network. COX and now Comcast offer higher download speeds. I am getting my rated download and bit more than most. Tweaking helps the PC it's aim at. Now all PCs or desktop and laptop need super duper speed for the internet.

LAN you should be able to to connect to any PC in your network and transfer files in seconds not minutes unless the file is 1GB in size. KB and MB files only take 2 to 60secs depending on the file. Some NIC cards have TX RX rated higher than 64K. 64K is all you really need.

I've posted some of my REG for TCP and etc.. Alot of research and testing had gone into those. MediaMVP isn't that perfect but just to be able to boot that up and connect in less than 2 secs is great. If you have a busy LAN then it might take a few more secs. Switches do tend to get clog or bog down a bit.

I get the feeling you didn't read my post. I can't speak to all of this over modems, and honestly, I am not concerned with that.

But, as I said before, out of the box, I get my full download speeds without any of this messing around, I would suspect this is the case for 99% of others as well. I can verify this via SNMP RMON monitoring of my firewalls interfaces.

And, on my LAN, I can get 99+% utilization without any of this, again verified by SNMP RMON monitoring of my switch. I can move most reasonably sized files from PC to PC in seconds as you stated, not a problem as long as the file is not badly fragmented. I do see some slowdown if my 100mb uplink between my office and the basement is saturated, but that is to be expected, bandwidth is finite. It's also why my MVP is on it's own VLAN with only it and the Sage box on it, their own dedicated network. When I add a second MVP, it will get it's own VLAN as well.

As for the MVP, when mine boots it peaks at nearly 100% for 1-2 seconds and then it's ready to go. Again, no tweaking needed here.

As for switches getting "clogged" or backed up. That would be because you are running cheap, consumer switches that dont have enough buffering or backplane bandwidth to handle more than a couple ports with high utilization at any one time. If you move up past the $29 linksys/dlink switch, those problems go away. If you want to really go whole hog, get a full L3 switch and add some routing to the mix.

Either way, if you feel like these "tweaks" help you, great. To me, these are cut from the same cloth as the "memory doublers" from the days of old. All of my experience and testing shows that they don't help and aren't needed. I suspect this is one of those things that once you do it to one PC, it doesnt play well with the other PCs and you have to tweak them to get back to where you were before the changes, and you can never get it back to where it was and become dependent on it.

[tipstir]

Originally Posted by wvpolekat

I get the feeling you didn't read my post. I can't speak to all of this over modems, and honestly, I am not concerned with that.

But, as I said before, out of the box, I get my full download speeds without any of this messing around, I would suspect this is the case for 99% of others as well. I can verify this via SNMP RMON monitoring of my firewalls interfaces.

And, on my LAN, I can get 99+% utilization without any of this, again verified by SNMP RMON monitoring of my switch. I can move most reasonably sized files from PC to PC in seconds as you stated, not a problem as long as the file is not badly fragmented. I do see some slowdown if my 100mb uplink between my office and the basement is saturated, but that is to be expected, bandwidth is finite. It's also why my MVP is on it's own VLAN with only it and the Sage box on it, their own dedicated network. When I add a second MVP, it will get it's own VLAN as well.

As for the MVP, when mine boots it peaks at nearly 100% for 1-2 seconds and then it's ready to go. Again, no tweaking needed here.

As for switches getting "clogged" or backed up. That would be because you are running cheap, consumer switches that dont have enough buffering or backplane bandwidth to handle more than a couple ports with high utilization at any one time. If you move up past the $29 linksys/dlink switch, those problems go away. If you want to really go whole hog, get a full L3 switch and add some routing to the mix.

Either way, if you feel like these "tweaks" help you, great. To me, these are cut from the same cloth as the "memory doublers" from the days of old. All of my experience and testing shows that they don't help and aren't needed. I suspect this is one of those things that once you do it to one PC, it doesnt play well with the other PCs and you have to tweak them to get back to where you were before the changes, and you can never get it back to where it was and become dependent on it.

I must have mess something, but clogs do happen in all networks even on domain with CISCO catalyst switches, IBM blade servers but I know you this but just reading what you're saying. Linksys and dlink products I've stayed away from those headaches.

The tweaks I've taken them to corp america and use them in real world, yeah I shouldn't be just to see how it would before on domain. They do work, otherwise why not help these end users out with bottlenecks in networks. Not everyone going to have that perfect network but with some tweaks that a easy to apply it can make life a bit easy. That MediaMVP isn't perfect when it comes to network.

Some memory doublers as you put does work like O&O Clevercache does a little more. To me Windows doesn't do a great job on memory. But this is me and you might have other thoughts.

Tweaks have been around since the day Prodigy or *P as it should be to called. Getting over 640KB was goal for a lot of *P users. Today faster download speeds more RAM, Overclocking the CPU, GPU an etc.

1 to 2 secs bootup to MMVP is also here on my network.. tweaks in-all!

[stevech]

$28 D-Link (not my choice in a router company) gigE switch has a chipset (like the others') that achieves 500Mbps between two mid-speed PCs. So maybe old switches were way below wire speed, but no so today. Of course, this may not apply to a consumer router or its built-in switch. Dedicated switches independent of the consumer router are of course prudent.

[Mahoney]

Originally Posted by jbarr

My understanding is that the MVP is pure SD meaning that on a 16x9 LCD HDTV, the image would either be stretched to fill the screen, or pillerboxed to retain the 4x3 format. In other words, the MVP will not produce "true" 16x9. Can someone please confirm this?

Sage now intelligently formats the stream to the MVP according to the content type and your display aspect ratio as you set it when you first plugged it in. If you set it to 16x9 and the show is a 16x9 show then Sage sends all the data to the MVP; the MVP outputs it as 4x3, but your display then stretches it to fill the whole screen. If it's a 4x3 show then Sage puts black bars down the side so that you still get the right proportioned image without changing your display's aspect ratio.

Equally if you set the display's aspect ration to 4:3 in Sage then it will output 4:3 shows with no black bars but will add top and bottom black bars to 16:9 shows so you don't lose anything.

It's pretty clever, really.

[FidgetyRat]

Originally Posted by tipstir

SAGETV can't do Web Radio? HAU software can for MediaMVP

I should rephrase. Instead of reading "SageTV STILL can't do web radio on MVP" read that as "Nobody has gotten around to making it work"

The current web radio plugin, while fantastic, is called the "simple web radio plugin".

With some time and effort, someone could probably re-write it to work with the MVP, it has just not been done yet.

[tipstir]

Originally Posted by FidgetyRat

I should rephrase. Instead of reading "SageTV STILL can't do web radio on MVP" read that as "Nobody has gotten around to making it work"

The current web radio plugin, while fantastic, is called the "simple web radio plugin".

With some time and effort, someone could probably re-write it to work with the MVP, it has just not been done yet.

I'll have to look into that.. Like to hear my JAZZ stream though..

[popechild]

Originally Posted by autoboy

You can run the analog outputs from you sound card directly into a 5 or 7 way amp like this one. http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/a.../emotiva-mps-1

This should be able to power any speakers you want.

True, but that gets away from the "1 box" idea that he was referring to, and which I've always liked in theory, but never seen a way to do in practice...

[Halstead]

As with everyone else, I'll go point by point:

Originally Posted by wvpolekat

I guess I somewhat work under the assumption that people want Sage on more than one TV. The MVP makes more and more sense as you add more TVs considering $100 vs $400+ per TV.

MVP clearly wins on price. A solid, quiet HTPC (Home Theater PC) is still about $1000 if you build it yourself.

HD is obviously an limitation to this setup at the moment. I assume that hi-res photos fall into this as well.

Yes, but what about SD? On a good HD monitor/tv (720p+) and when being driven by a modern video cards, SDTV will look much better from an HTPC than an MVP. Whenever a movie comes on, I can see it in 24p, and the deinterlacing is amazing on video-sourced material. Indeed SD playback is generally the Achilles heel of HDTVs (particularly sub $2k ones) and MVPs running on them.

DVD player is one I didn't think of, but I already had a set top DVD at each TV anyhow. One of the goals of Sage for me was to eliminate the DVDs anyway by ripping them anyhow. Problem with this is rentals and if a friend brings a movie by (movies you don't own) Blu-Ray falls somewhat under HD, but ripping them is only a matter of time as well.

As with SDTV, DVDs can look just amazing off on an HTPC. Additionally, in conjunction with software like AnyDVD, I can do cool things like jump directly to the movie (no more trailers or FBI warning for rented and owned DVDs) or watch one of my English PAL (or Japanese NTSC, or SECAM, etc) DVDs.

Delay on the MVP? Maybe I am not as sensitive, but my MVP is just as responsive as my cable box. Since a couple of you have mentioned this, I assume I am just more tolerant of this, or they have improved this on newer versions?

It really depends on the speed of your SageTV server.

Audio without TV. You mean there are people who use their TV speakers? My MVP feeds my stereo just like a PC would.

Wha? I can't remember the last time I used my TV's speakers. Like many others here, all the audio goes through a modern 7.1 A/V receiver.

Game console? Meaning playing PC games on the TV?

I don't play games on my HTPCs, but many do. Forget about modern games like Half Life 2 or Oblivion- with MAME your HTPC can be EVERY ARCADE GAME EVER MADE, all accessed though SageTV.

One other point- my SageTV system with the tuner cards and big hard drives sits in the basement- my HTPCs (one in the living room and one in the playroom) are clients only. Also, I occasionally watch TV in my office (I have a client license on the office PC). Beyond that, my two roommates each have Placeshifter clients on their Macs.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by wvpolekat

I guess I somewhat work under the assumption that people want Sage on more than one TV. The MVP makes more and more sense as you add more TVs considering $100 vs $400+ per TV.

I've got my sage server in my closet and 4 MVPs throughout the house. Got a lot invested in the MVPs but I'm very happy with my setup.

[ChePazzo]

Figured I'd chime in here, being a lover of the MVP.

I saw a few people post that they use the PC Client so they can watch DVDs.
Do these same people still use CDs? DVDs can be stored on the server in the basement (you don't even have to walk down there) and if you archive your DVDs like your MP3s, you get to enjoy the VOD features of Sage but with DVDs.

And, yes, DVD folders do play well on the MVP.

I also saw one report of slow response? When I first got my MVP running the Hauppauge software, it was really slow, so I returned it. I rebought one when I saw that Sage was integrating. I have yet to see that slowness return.

I wonder if (like the original post said), if MVPs did HD, how many would stick with the PC (assuming you had to put out another $100 or more in upgrade or replacement parts for the existing PC)?

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

I saw a few people post that they use the PC Client so they can watch DVDs.
Do these same people still use CDs?

I'm not quite buying that argument. CDs I buy to listen to many times, so ripping those makes sense. DVDs I rent to watch once, so ripping those isn't nearly as practical as having a DVD drive in the client.

Don't get me wrong, I think the MVP is a great value for what it does. But there are some things a PC client just does better, so for that reason I'm not in any rush to replace all my clients with MVPs.

[Halstead]

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

Figured I'd chime in here, being a lover of the MVP.

I saw a few people post that they use the PC Client so they can watch DVDs.
Do these same people still use CDs? DVDs can be stored on the server in the basement (you don't even have to walk down there) and if you archive your DVDs like your MP3s, you get to enjoy the VOD features of Sage but with DVDs.

And, yes, DVD folders do play well on the MVP.

I also saw one report of slow response? When I first got my MVP running the Hauppauge software, it was really slow, so I returned it. I rebought one when I saw that Sage was integrating. I have yet to see that slowness return.

I wonder if (like the original post said), if MVPs did HD, how many would stick with the PC (assuming you had to put out another $100 or more in upgrade or replacement parts for the existing PC)?

I'm a big fan of the MVP, but it's really apples and oranges. If you have an SDTV and will just be playing back recorded shows, it's an unbeatable deal. However, it doesn't meet many of our playback quality and extended use needs (even for standard definition content).

The DVD comment is just goofy, though. I know several folks that have all of their DVDs on a server, and more power too them. It's definitely an edge case in terms of SageTV users though. It also doesn't cover my primary use case, which is Netflix DVDs.

This thread should stay focused on the title question, which is an interesting one.

[Mahoney]

I ripped one DVD to play via Sage. It took 15 minutes or so, and the first time that I ran out of space it was the obvious thing to delete as it was already archived so well on its original disk. After that I rather lost interest in devoting a weekend to ripping DVDs.

I also saw one report of slow response? When I first got my MVP running the Hauppauge software, it was really slow, so I returned it. I rebought one when I saw that Sage was integrating. I have yet to see that slowness return.

Sage certainly sped it up remarkably, it's much better than at first. I think they are rendering more on the MVP now than they used to; the animated UI doesn't even have to be turned off (it definitely did in early MVP implementations).

But it's still noticeably less responsive than a PC.