Suggested test bed

[restorick]

Hello all,

I'm trying to determine if a home-grown HTPC can be as reliable as a commercial DVR from Dish or DirecTV.

Like in most households, the final decision will be based on the wife-factor... incredibly easy to use, and easy to fix should the thing go belly up while she wants to record Orca (and I'm not in earshot...).

I currently have TW cable, but am going back to a dish provider soon. I rarely record HD programming, but I would like to at some point. As I understand it, recording HD programs from a dish is not possible yet, so I have one less thing to worry about in a HTPC.

At the end of the day, I would love to be able to record 2 programs while viewing another one, and be able to distribute the recorded programs to up to 4 televisions. I would also like to be able to record OTA HD.

That said, I have a spare PC with these specs:

P4 2.8ghz processor
1gb RAM
10/100/1000 mbit ethernet (house is hard-wired with CAT5e)
Windows XP Pro

I don't yet have any tuner cards, and will most likely use media extenders in 2 of the rooms.

Will this machine fit the bill as my HTPC? If not, what *real-world* spec should I consider?

Thanks in advance for your feedback, and your patience!
Rick

[BFisher]

If you are going for reliability, the least amount of tweaking and tuning, and high WAF - consider a headless server and extenders.

Headless Server = no TVs connected to it. It's only used for collecting video and distributing videos

Extenders = HD Extender and MVPs (only does SD).

With a headless server, your PC becomes like a Tivo box - it just sits in the server room collecting videos. It's very reliable because it's doing nothing else. You can put multiple tuners in it (I have 6 - 3 OTA HD, 3 SD from DirecTV STBs) so you can record just about anything you want at the same time. It can process commercial skipping, etc.

The extenders then connect to the network (cat 5) and communicate to the server. MVPs are small (size of a thin paperback book), HD extender is like a small DVD player size. IR support built in, etc. These little devices then connect to the TV (MVPs use composite or svideo; HD Ext uses component, svideo or HDMI)

Very reliable, and very high WAF. A few weeks ago, wife and I were both sick. We had every tuner recording something (so we had stuff to watch since that's all we could do), and 4 TVs on (2 kids) all watching different things (live TV, recorded TV, stored DVDs). It worked flawlessly.

Hope it helps

[restorick]

Originally Posted by BFisher

If you are going for reliability, the least amount of tweaking and tuning, and high WAF - consider a headless server and extenders.

Very reliable, and very high WAF. A few weeks ago, wife and I were both sick. We had every tuner recording something (so we had stuff to watch since that's all we could do), and 4 TVs on (2 kids) all watching different things (live TV, recorded TV, stored DVDs). It worked flawlessly.

Hope it helps

B,

Thanks, yes it does help a lot. Can I assume that the box spec will work in this scenario, or would I need more horsepower?

Thanks again,
Rick

[matt91]

Originally Posted by restorick

B,

Thanks, yes it does help a lot. Can I assume that the box spec will work in this scenario, or would I need more horsepower?

Thanks again,
Rick

Should be fine. I run with less than that.
Matt

[davephan]

You did not mention how much disk you have. If you record SD programs with MPEG2, it consumes about 3 gigs per hour. I compress many of my video programs, transcoding from MPEG2 into Xvid AVI, which consumes about 500 - 600 megs per hour. Video transcoding takes a lot of CPU to compress the files, and decompress the AVI files to play them back on the MVP. My Althlon XP 2800+ was barely enough CPU to playback AVI files into an MVP. A fast dual-core makes a huge difference in performance if you use video compression or process the files with commercial skipping like ShowAnalyzer.

When my Althlon XP 2800+ system board died. I built a new SageTV computer using an E6850 3.0 gig dual core, which made a huge difference in performance.

If you don't use video compression and can off shift commercial skipping utilities, then a slower computer should work fine.

Dave

[BFisher]

Sorry, I'm not sure about the specs. My box is quad-core CPU, 2GB RAM, 1.5TB of hard drives (no RAID) (and everything as quiet as possible). My plan (and what I sold my wife on) is that we had our DirecTiVo for about 8 years... I'm going to build a box that can handle everything we should want for 7-8 years (dunno if it'll really work out that way but it sounds good ). I think I spent about $1200 and I've had no real PC issues at all. With the HD Extender, it uses even less CPU power (no transcoding) so I think I'll be good for quite some time

Bruce

[davephan]

Originally Posted by BFisher

1.5TB of hard drives (no RAID). My plan (and what I sold my wife on) is that we had our DirecTiVo for about 8 years... I'm going to build a box that can handle everything we should want for 7-8 years (dunno if it'll really work out that way but it sounds good ). I think I spent about $1200 and I've had no real PC issues at all. With the HD Extender, it uses even less CPU power (no transcoding) so I think I'll be good for quite some time

Bruce

I have 1.5 TB of disk, and I only have about 200 Gigs left. Maybe I keep too many old shows. I am thinking about adding more disk, and going to RAID.

Dave

[restorick]

Originally Posted by davephan

You did not mention how much disk you have. If you record SD programs with MPEG2, it consumes about 3 gigs per hour. I compress many of my video programs, transcoding from MPEG2 into Xvid AVI, which consumes about 500 - 600 megs per hour. Video transcoding takes a lot of CPU to compress the files, and decompress the AVI files to play them back on the MVP. My Althlon XP 2800+ was barely enough CPU to playback AVI files into an MVP. A fast dual-core makes a huge difference in performance if you use video compression or process the files with commercial skipping like ShowAnalyzer.

Dave

Dave,

Thanks for the reply. I currently have 500GB on board and another 300GB external. I'm hoping I can get by with this system for a bit, and when I need to upgrade, I'll build a monster.

Thanks again,
Rick

[restorick]

Originally Posted by BFisher

Sorry, I'm not sure about the specs. My box is quad-core CPU, 2GB RAM, 1.5TB of hard drives (no RAID) (and everything as quiet as possible). My plan (and what I sold my wife on) is that we had our DirecTiVo for about 8 years... I'm going to build a box that can handle everything we should want for 7-8 years (dunno if it'll really work out that way but it sounds good ). I think I spent about $1200 and I've had no real PC issues at all. With the HD Extender, it uses even less CPU power (no transcoding) so I think I'll be good for quite some time

Bruce

Bruce,

Very good points. Adding disk is much less expensive than building a monster machine. I come from the old days of PC networking (Novell), and I appreciate having a reliable server machine. The box I'm looking to use is a Dell SC400 (built to be a file server), and it's been good to me so far (and pleasantly quiet too).

I'm sure the finance committee won't mind me spending a few bucks later on if we need to, but only if this pilot project works...

Thanks to all for the feedback!
Rick