About to Build My PVR PC Need Help Please

[Cyberrico]

SageTV is the most attractive option out there and I plan to go with it but I need to overcome some obstacles. I am no stranger to forums and I respect that all of my answers could probably be found by searching these forums but please understand that not a single one answers all of my questions at once and getting answers to my specific questions from searches can take many hours. There also seems to be no phone support for any of the PC-based solutions so I want to go into this well educated. So I apologize in advance for making these busy forums a little busier and I thank you in advance for any guidance that any of you can provide.

Here is my current setup:

DirectTV with an integrated Tivo box (not hacked)
P4 3.0 1GB RAM 160GB HDD
Big projection Sony TV

With this setup I am able to record two shows at once or I can record one show and watch anything else that I want. I can also record two shows and watch something that was previously recorded.

What I would like to be able to do is record 2 shows at the same time while being able to watch a third live show or be able to record 3 shows at the same time and watch any one of them while it records. I want more but I can already see multiple tuner cards being an issue.

On to my questions:

1) WinTV-PVR-500MCE PCI card - In the description it says that this card will allow me to record two shows at once while watching a 3rd (score). Does this also mean that I can record 3 shows at once and watch one of them while it records?

2) MULTIPLE TUNER CARDS - I see that SageTV has some card bundles that have two tuners on one card. Can I run two of these two-tuner cards at once and record 4-5-6 shows at the same time if I want?

3) INSTALLING TUNER CARDS - Pop it in my PC and connect it to my TV/Satellite in some manner. I'll figure that out. But if I decide to go with two WinTV-PVR-500MCE PCI cards (if that's possible) how do I install them? The feeds go into one and the software recognizes both?

4) MEDIA EXTENDERS - I've read the description of the STVCWMVP wireless extender. Two questions here; can I control what gets recorded from the remote TV and how do I connect it to my non-Tivo satellite box? Right now the ancient TV in that room only has a coax connection that plugs into my DTV box.

5) DIRECTTV BOX- How do these boxes play into my new SageTV system? Do I eliminate them altogether or do I need to run SageTV through these boxes? If I do need to keep the satellite boxes, do I need to get a normal box for my main TV that has Tivo in it now or can I use that one to connect to SageTV assuming DTV doesn't want their Tivo satellite box back when I cancel Tivo?

6) STREAMING ACROSS MY WIRELESS NETWORK - My soon to be DVR computer only has 160GB of drive space. That's plenty for saving my shows in the short term but my plan is to copy them over to my new gaming system over the network onto my new 1TB storage drive. I assume I can stream shows from my main computer with the SageTV software.

7) COMPATIBILITY - If I buy these tuner cards and media extenders and SageTV goes out of business (zomg no) will this hardware be compatible with other software? Are other tuner cards compatible with SageTV?

Thanks again in advance for answering my questions.

[vividweb]

I'll try and answer what I can.

1)I believe the 500MCE is a dual tuner card, only has the capability of recording two feeds at a time, the 3rd show would have to be something previously recorded.

2)With two dual tuner cards you can record 4 shows at a time.

3)If you are using Satellite and a 500MCE card, you will need a STB for each tuner on the card (ie two dual tuner cards requires four STB's) If you are using analog cable then you do not need a STB, but if you are using digital cable then you will need STB to access the digital channels.

4)The media extenders work off of a network, Cat5e or wireless G, they have complete control over the sage system, you add favorites, watch recorded or live shows, everything. All your STB need to be connected to a tuner card to be used in the sage system

5)I'm not sure how TIVO plays into this and what people have been able to do with it, so I can't really answer that part of the question. However like I stated before, if you are using a PVR card and DirecTV you will need a STB for each tuner.

6)You can use a UNC path to make a folder on your second computer that Sage will save its recordings to. Wireless may be a problem though, I haven't had good experiences with writing video files across Wireless Networks, but you may be able to get it to work.

7)The hardware is pretty much compatible with most of the other software out there. But even if you buy SageTV and they go out of business, you will still have the software you bought to use.

Hope that helps.

[Opus4]

A few comments:

Originally Posted by Cyberrico

1) WinTV-PVR-500MCE PCI card - In the description it says that this card will allow me to record two shows at once while watching a 3rd (score). Does this also mean that I can record 3 shows at once and watch one of them while it records?

The PVR-500 is a dual tuner card -- it can record 2 shows at once. If you watch something else, it would be an already recorded show.

2) MULTIPLE TUNER CARDS - I see that SageTV has some card bundles that have two tuners on one card. Can I run two of these two-tuner cards at once and record 4-5-6 shows at the same time if I want?

Yes, SageTV can use multiple tuners & I believe multiple PVR-500s should work also.

3) INSTALLING TUNER CARDS - Pop it in my PC and connect it to my TV/Satellite in some manner. I'll figure that out. But if I decide to go with two WinTV-PVR-500MCE PCI cards (if that's possible) how do I install them? The feeds go into one and the software recognizes both?

Each tuner has to have its own connection... the PVR-500 has a single coax connector & an internal splitter, so each card would have a single connection to use the built in tuner. To use svideo inputs fro STBs instead, you would need 2 svideo connections for each card. (I don't remember how the 500 currnetly handles 2 svideo connections.)

4) MEDIA EXTENDERS - I've read the description of the STVCWMVP wireless extender. Two questions here; can I control what gets recorded from the remote TV and how do I connect it to my non-Tivo satellite box? Right now the ancient TV in that room only has a coax connection that plugs into my DTV box.

The media extender runs the SageTV UI, just like any other client, and it connects to your SageTV server via your network. The extender does not have its own tuners; it uses the tuners & recordings on the server.

- Andy

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by Cyberrico

5) DIRECTTV BOX- How do these boxes play into my new SageTV system? Do I eliminate them altogether or do I need to run SageTV through these boxes? If I do need to keep the satellite boxes, do I need to get a normal box for my main TV that has Tivo in it now or can I use that one to connect to SageTV assuming DTV doesn't want their Tivo satellite box back when I cancel Tivo?

Your standard directv boxes should work for Sage just fine. the DirecTivo boxes may give you some issues, depending if the Tivo UI decides to become "active" and appear on the screen. Once that happens, would a standard channel change that Sage would send to the box work properly? As for if you could cancel the Tivo service and keep the box, you should be able to, Directivo's were customer-bought. Now, would the DirecTivo still work as a regular DirecTv box?

Now, if you meant the new DirecTV PVR service, not the Tivo service that Directv sold as DirecTivo, the newer boxes are leased, so you may have Directv wanting it back, you'd have to ask them.

Originally Posted by Opus4

Yes, SageTV can use multiple tuners & I believe multiple PVR-500s should work also.

Yes, multiple PVR-500s work just fine.

Each tuner has to have its own connection... the PVR-500 has a single coax connector & an internal splitter, so each card would have a single connection to use the built in tuner. To use svideo inputs fro STBs instead, you would need 2 svideo connections for each card. (I don't remember how the 500 currnetly handles 2 svideo connections.)

The 500 has a composite and s-video connection on the back of the card that can be used for 1 tuner, and a daughter-card/break-out board can be plugged into the 500 to add an additional set of composite/s-video connectors for the second tuner.

[Cyberrico]

Thank you all very much for your answers. I get it all now.

One last thing. I see in the software description that I can instantly skip commercials. Can I eliminate them altogether automatically?

[ke6guj]

Sage says that you can skip commercials as in "hit FF on the remote and you instantly jump forward 2 minutes" skipping any commercials that are there.

YOu can run a third-party program, comskip (free) or showanalyzer ($20/year) to scan your recordings and mark the commercial locations into a text file. then with a plugin to Sage, Sage will read the text file and automatically skip the commercials. YOu can also have comskip/showanalyzer output a videoredo project file so that you can run the recording through videoredo and physically remove the commercails, if you want to.