SageTV HD Media Extender

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by matt91

Any comment about how the UI might look when the HD extender is connected to a HDTV?

I have a MVP connected to my HDTV now via S-video, and there is a huge difference in the quality of the UI compared with what I see when I run the placeshifter on my computer (on different monitor). (There is obvious "blocky-ness" on all the icons, lines, etc., via the MVP)

I assume that this is due to the MVP and/or the S-video connection. Might the HD extender connected via component/HDMI link produce a better UI-rendering?

Thanks
Matt

Based on this:

Originally Posted by Narflex

-HDMI output instead of DVI
-1080p upscaled output
-H.264 decoding (bitstream requirements will be announced later)
-Animations...just like the ones mentioned here: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27516

and this:

Originally Posted by Narflex

Here's a few more answers for you:
Q: Does it have Component outputs?[/b]

Yes

It is absolutely going to look better connected via either HDMI or component compared to what you have. Your problem is the s-video connection to your HDTV which limits the resolution.

[CollinR]

Originally Posted by matt91

I assume that this is due to the MVP and/or the S-video connection. Might the HD extender connected via component/HDMI link produce a better UI-rendering?

Thanks
Matt

Will be a day vs night thing. No comparison.

[autoboy]

I agree about supporting the MCE remote. I really like my MCE remote. It responds instantly, is backlit, and fits well in my hands. My harmony does not compare. Admittedly, i have not tweeked it much. It is just so slow, and the MCE remote works perfectly. I just use the harmony to switch modes and to turn the system on and off.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by autoboy

I agree about supporting the MCE remote. I really like my MCE remote. It responds instantly, is backlit, and fits well in my hands. My harmony does not compare. Admittedly, i have not tweeked it much. It is just so slow, and the MCE remote works perfectly. I just use the harmony to switch modes and to turn the system on and off.

It's a nice remote, but my main point is why use new codes when an old set of very well supported codes will do? Why force a bunch of folks to learn new codes? If you have to pick one, the MCE codes are very well supported, have all the right buttons, and many of us already use one.

Thanks,
Mike

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by autoboy

I agree about supporting the MCE remote. I really like my MCE remote. It responds instantly, is backlit, and fits well in my hands. My harmony does not compare. Admittedly, i have not tweeked it much. It is just so slow, and the MCE remote works perfectly. I just use the harmony to switch modes and to turn the system on and off.

That's actually the only problem I have with my Harmony remote. There are actually settings that you can change to minimize the lag between button presses. I don't really understand why they made it have such a huge lag between the time you press the button and the time the command gets sent out. It should be instantaneous like every other IR remote out there.

[autoboy]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

That's actually the only problem I have with my Harmony remote. There are actually settings that you can change to minimize the lag between button presses. I don't really understand why they made it have such a huge lag between the time you press the button and the time the command gets sent out. It should be instantaneous like every other IR remote out there.

I started playing with them the other day, but the MCE is just so good that it has not been a major problem so I haven't gotten to it. If I have to relearn the codes for my HD extender then I will have to figure that out.

[steingra]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Of course, windows will be slower, and this drobo/linksys/buffalo style NAS appliances will likely choke, but don't blame NAS's in general for that.
Thanks,
Mike

Speaking of those NAS devices...I have always wondered, but never tested how well an external USB drive might work as a recording medium for sagetv. Anyone done that before with success? With 1 TB external USB drives coming down in price, I could see hooking up like 4 of them to a Windows machine (or samba/linux). Seems like they should be more than fast enough. To record several SD shows, or even HD shows using an hdhomerun.

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by steingra

Speaking of those NAS devices...I have always wondered, but never tested how well an external USB drive might work as a recording medium for sagetv. Anyone done that before with success? With 1 TB external USB drives coming down in price, I could see hooking up like 4 of them to a Windows machine (or samba/linux). Seems like they should be more than fast enough. To record several SD shows, or even HD shows using an hdhomerun.

I haven't used a USB drive for SageTV, but a USB 2.0 drive and motherboard should be able to keep up pretty well, if you consider the theoretical 480Mbits/second, and a typical show in HD needs about 17Mbits/second, then you'd have to have a lot of recordings and playings, before you reach that limit.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by steingra

Speaking of those NAS devices...I have always wondered, but never tested how well an external USB drive might work as a recording medium for sagetv. Anyone done that before with success? With 1 TB external USB drives coming down in price, I could see hooking up like 4 of them to a Windows machine (or samba/linux). Seems like they should be more than fast enough. To record several SD shows, or even HD shows using an hdhomerun.

I've been using an external 750GB USB drive (Seagate Freeagent Pro) for a few months now without any problems whatsoever. It works perfectly.

Aloha,
Mike

[chrisc16]

Originally Posted by steingra

Speaking of those NAS devices...I have always wondered, but never tested how well an external USB drive might work as a recording medium for sagetv. Anyone done that before with success? With 1 TB external USB drives coming down in price, I could see hooking up like 4 of them to a Windows machine (or samba/linux). Seems like they should be more than fast enough. To record several SD shows, or even HD shows using an hdhomerun.

I've had up to 3 external USB 2.0 drives hooked up to my Sage server at one time. I didn't have any problems, but I did notice that the CPU usage is much higher than, say, an internal IDE or SATA drive. All 3 drives were using between 30-40% CPU when recording to all 3 at once.

-Chris

[BarkOLounger]

Speaking of those NAS devices...I have always wondered, but never tested how well an external USB drive might work as a recording medium for sagetv. Anyone done that before with success? With 1 TB external USB drives coming down in price, I could see hooking up like 4 of them to a Windows machine (or samba/linux). Seems like they should be more than fast enough. To record several SD shows, or even HD shows using an hdhomerun

My storage used to be 8 external drives, 6 of them USB and 2 of them firewire and they could keep up fine, but I didn't do HD then. The USB drives were all connected to USB ports on the MB. The Firewire drives were daisy chained off of a single firewire port. I would sometimes have a problem watching a show on a drive if it was recording two streams to it, but that was the drive speed, not the USB bus speed.

As long as you use USB 2.0 drives. I would recommend not connecting them through hub though, only use the ports straight off your motherboard.

For what it's worth I recently upgraged by Sage server and have a Bufallo Terrastation Live now and it can handle all 5 encoders at once, which are 3 SD encoders and 2 HD encoders. I only mention this because an earlier comment questioned whether this device could keep up. This is a new model, so I don't know what the older ones could do. I was apprehensive about getting it but it has worked out great. When I upgraded my server I also attached 2 1 TB USB drives to hold all of my shows from the old server and they work great too. I also added a single 1 TB made of RAID0 500 GB drives which I had thought I would need to dedicate to the HD shows due to the drive requirements. Since the NAS device has kept up, i never set any recording preferences and just let this drive be available for recording as well. It has had as many as 2 HD shows and an SD show record to it at the same time, and the shows played back fine.

I do have a GB network, and GB network cards.

Chris

[Rogier21]

I couldnt really find this yet, and Im not sure if the already existing extender have this, but will it have an USB port? This would be great to plugin a cardreader of USB stick for some photo viewing on the extender

[geogecko]

Ah, miss the GB network I had in my old house... WiFi-g is killing me... Waiting for D-Link's DIR-855 to come out, and some matching WiFi-N adapters...

I agree with Rogier21, it would be cool to have a local USB port on the HD Extender.

[garyellis]

So, will the HD extender have GB networking or "100" speed...

I have a gigabyte port on my server which connects to a GB switch. But, then if the switch connects to each MVP or HD extender and they are 100 speed, then what benefit is the GB switch?

comments? I'm trying to figure out if I should re-wire before mid november...(just looking for a good excuse to do it )

Gary Ellis

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by garyellis

So, will the HD extender have GB networking or "100" speed...

I'd assume it's a 100Mbps, but it's hard telling these days. One thing's for sure, it doesn't need Gig-E, there's no content out there that's over 40Mbps or so.

I have a gigabyte port on my server which connects to a GB switch. But, then if the switch connects to each MVP or HD extender and they are 100 speed, then what benefit is the GB switch?

The benefit is that it will be essentially impossible to saturate the link between the PC and the clients. Consider this situation, say you've got 5 clients, each with a 100Mbps connection to the switch, and the server with a 100Mbps connection to the switch. What happens if all the clients decide to watch 20Mbps HD recordings at the same time.

Well there's plenty of bandwidth from switch to each client, but all 5 streams have to go over the same 100Mbps link from server to switch, and 20*5 == 100, and we all know you never get 100Mbps on a 100Mbps connection, more like 50-75Mbps or so. So your system will choke.

Now, take the same setup, 100Mbps clients but now a Gig-E server/switch connection. Now the situation is drastically different, now that 100Mbps of bandwidth out of the server has plenty of room, and the system works fine.

There's really no need for Gig-E to extenders or clients, as they're highly unlikely to ever pull even 40-50Mbps (Blu-ray is the only source for stuff that high). However for a server, which will be serving multiple clients, Gig-E will be very beneficial, especially as we move to more and more HD.

[CollinR]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'd assume it's a 100Mbps, but it's hard telling these days. One thing's for sure, it doesn't need Gig-E, there's no content out there that's over 40Mbps or so.

---Snip---

(Blu-ray is the only source for stuff that high)

I also build CCTV DVRs I can assure there are CCTV cameras that will push more then a Blueray. The nicest one I have in stock right now is over 1500p and consumes about 35Mbps, it's big brother is a 180* having twice the resolution. Above that another that 360* full on 4 times the resolution.



Agreed though they need not be gigabit, you won't exceed 100.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'd assume it's a 100Mbps, but it's hard telling these days. One thing's for sure, it doesn't need Gig-E, there's no content out there that's over 40Mbps or so.



The benefit is that it will be essentially impossible to saturate the link between the PC and the clients. Consider this situation, say you've got 5 clients, each with a 100Mbps connection to the switch, and the server with a 100Mbps connection to the switch. What happens if all the clients decide to watch 20Mbps HD recordings at the same time.

Well there's plenty of bandwidth from switch to each client, but all 5 streams have to go over the same 100Mbps link from server to switch, and 20*5 == 100, and we all know you never get 100Mbps on a 100Mbps connection, more like 50-75Mbps or so. So your system will choke.

Now, take the same setup, 100Mbps clients but now a Gig-E server/switch connection. Now the situation is drastically different, now that 100Mbps of bandwidth out of the server has plenty of room, and the system works fine.

There's really no need for Gig-E to extenders or clients, as they're highly unlikely to ever pull even 40-50Mbps (Blu-ray is the only source for stuff that high). However for a server, which will be serving multiple clients, Gig-E will be very beneficial, especially as we move to more and more HD.

Perfectly said Stanger, that is why my main switch to my house has 2 GB ports (for servers) and 24 100mb ports for clients. My clients will never (other than maybe file transfers) need more than 100mb, but my server could easily.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Perfectly said Stanger, that is why my main switch to my house has 2 GB ports (for servers) and 24 100mb ports for clients. My clients will never (other than maybe file transfers) need more than 100mb, but my server could easily.

Agreed on the logic, but remember a lot of these CE devices have a hard time running the network stack at anywhere near full speed. Some of the TCP code in the embedded world never got polished. It takes less cycles to read data from a HD disk at 50 mbps than to transfer it over an ethernet at 50 mbps.

I sure hope the hardware platform is strong enough handle the data transfer properly for HD media.

thanks,
mike

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Perfectly said Stanger, that is why my main switch to my house has 2 GB ports (for servers) and 24 100mb ports for clients. My clients will never (other than maybe file transfers) need more than 100mb, but my server could easily.

But it's definitely nice between my workstation and my server and NAS.

Originally Posted by mikesm

Agreed on the logic, but remember a lot of these CE devices have a hard time running the network stack at anywhere near full speed. Some of the TCP code in the embedded world never got polished. It takes less cycles to read data from a HD disk at 50 mbps than to transfer it over an ethernet at 50 mbps.

I sure hope the hardware platform is strong enough handle the data transfer properly for HD media.

True, but I'd be very surprised if it has any trouble with "standard" HD stuff, the 12-20Mbps ATSC/QAM sourced stuff. The question would be stuff that's BD or HD DVD compliant, ie, up to 30-40Mbps.

The other question is what chipset is this based on, for example the 8630 series from Sigma Designs is quite impressive:

Video Decoding
• MPEG-4.10 (H.264) BP@L3,
MP@L4.0* and HP@L4.0*
• SMPTE 421M (VC-1)
MP@HL and AP@L3
• WMV9 MP@HL
• MPEG-2 MP@HL
• MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5
(720p, 1-point GMC)
* L4.1 for Blu-ray and HD DVD applications
Adva nced Video Procesing
• 32-bit OSD
• 2D graphics accelerator with scaling
• JPEG and OpenType acceleration
• Motion adaptive deinterlacing
• Adaptive flicker filtering
• Programmable up/downscaling
• Simultaneous HD and SD outputs
• Individual brightness, contrast,
saturation, hue and colorimetry
correction controls for each video
source and output port
• Color temperature and gamma
controls
• xvYCC processing
• Supports HDMI v1.3 with advanced
audio and xvYCC

Dual HD Decoder, Dual Audio DSP •
Video Input Port with VBI Capture 2
Graphics Input Port, 10/100 Ethernet, USB 2.0 Embedded Host •
HDMI v1.2
ISO 7816 dedicated
Secure CPU for DRM and CA Software •
Secure Architecture •
OpenType Font Rendering Acceleration •
JPEG Decoding Acceleration •
DDR-1 DRAM Support 64-bit 512 MB
External NO R Flash Support 16-bit 256 MB
Audio Inputs (2) I2S + SPDIF
Audio Outputs (2) 9.1 I2S + SPDIF
PCI Peripherals 4

There's a "Media Center Extender" version of the 8634, though even the 8622L/8624L, look very promising.

And of course there's some interesting SoCs from Broadcom as well.

[LehighBri]

This is awesome... very much looking forward to purchasing one. If these are targeted to be available mid-November, I would think more details and pictures would come out prior to then. When can we expect this additional detail? The sooner more detail and pictures arrive, the more hype and demand it creates for the product (ala iPhone).