network recorders, cable firewire and bears oh my

[Homebuilder]

Hi,

I have had Sage up and running for years. Havent changed anything in a while... but moving and considering changing my set up.
I know, I could read through years of posts in other threads and after hours come up with the answers.. .but hoping someone might help me out with quick answers.

Before, you had to hack a full version of sage to use a tvcard on another machine or buy recorder as well as a client.


whats needed now to get sage working with:

1. tvcard on another pc.
2. a R5000
3. HD Homerun
4. firewire cable box hookup.

what works out of the box? What needs propertie edits... other installations to work...

How well do all four actually work?

Thanks,
Neal

[GKusnick]

1. This is called a network encoder and there's an appendix about it in the SageTV manual so no need to read through years of posts. You do need a second full license to do this, but there's no "hacking" involved; just follow the instructions in the manual.

2. R5000 is currently the only way to record all the HD channels you subscribe to, but only with Dish and some cable boxes. DirecTV HD is not supported. The R5000 device appears as a network encoder to Sage. Configuration is not too difficult; specific property settings are detailed at the R5000 site (nextcomwireless.com), and there are threads here covering it as well.

3. I don't own an HDHomeRun but from what I understand it's similar to setting up an R5000 in that there's a piece of HDHR software you run that makes it appear as a network encoder to Sage. Be warned that the only HD channels you'll get are your broadcast locals from off the air, or whatever your cable company sends in the clear (usually locals only).

4. I don't do Firewire but again there are existing threads detailing the setup. As with the HDHR, you're at the mercy of your cable provider in terms of which HD channels they choose to make available via Firewire. Don't count on getting much more than broadcast locals.

None of the last three methods just works out of the box; they all require device-specific drivers, interface software, and/or configuration settings. But all are reasonably well documented if you look for it.

In terms of quality, all digital capture methods are pretty much equivalent, since they all just record the digital stream as it comes from the transmitter.

[Homebuilder]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

1. This is called a network encoder and there's an appendix about it in the SageTV manual so no need to read through years of posts. You do need a second full license to do this, but there's no "hacking" involved; just follow the instructions in the manual.

2. R5000 is currently the only way to record all the HD channels you subscribe to, but only with Dish and some cable boxes. DirecTV HD is not supported. The R5000 device appears as a network encoder to Sage. Configuration is not too difficult; specific property settings are detailed at the R5000 site (nextcomwireless.com), and there are threads here covering it as well.

3. I don't own an HDHomeRun but from what I understand it's similar to setting up an R5000 in that there's a piece of HDHR software you run that makes it appear as a network encoder to Sage. Be warned that the only HD channels you'll get are your broadcast locals from off the air, or whatever your cable company sends in the clear (usually locals only).

4. I don't do Firewire but again there are existing threads detailing the setup. As with the HDHR, you're at the mercy of your cable provider in terms of which HD channels they choose to make available via Firewire. Don't count on getting much more than broadcast locals.

None of the last three methods just works out of the box; they all require device-specific drivers, interface software, and/or configuration settings. But all are reasonably well documented if you look for it.

In terms of quality, all digital capture methods are pretty much equivalent, since they all just record the digital stream as it comes from the transmitter.

Thanks Greg,

As for:

1. I have had sage since version 2, at that time I found how to do that in the forums, and the poster acted like he wasnt sure if sage wanted people to do that... glad its in the open. Thanks.

2. Do you use this? Does Dish have alot of HD content now? Know if directtv will be added anytime soon? I know.. check their site...

3. HD Homerun works with cable signals as well as ota? I didnt know that... That may be very helpful.

Thanks again..

[GKusnick]

2. I have an older DirecTV R5000 box that does not receive HD. The new DirecTV HD STBs have a different internal architecture that's not R5000-compatible, so as long as DirecTV continues to use those boxes, there will be no R5000 solution for DirecTV HD.

3. HDHR can tune QAM (cable) as well as ATSC (OTA). (Some ATSC PCI cards can do this as well.) But again, all you'll get that way is the unencrypted channels, which are pretty much the same as the OTA channels.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

3. I don't own an HDHomeRun but from what I understand it's similar to setting up an R5000 in that there's a piece of HDHR software you run that makes it appear as a network encoder to Sage. Be warned that the only HD channels you'll get are your broadcast locals from off the air, or whatever your cable company sends in the clear (usually locals only).

Actually, you no longer need a network encoder to run HDHomeRun in Sage -- it appears as a normal encoder when you install the HDHomeRun software on your Sage machine. FYI, I can get all but one of my locals, some extra PBS stations from a nearby state that aren't available from my cable box, as well as A&E HD, TNT HD and Bloomberg (!?).

4. I don't do Firewire but again there are existing threads detailing the setup. As with the HDHR, you're at the mercy of your cable provider in terms of which HD channels they choose to make available via Firewire. Don't count on getting much more than broadcast locals.

Most of my cable box channels are available to me over firewire -- though I know I'm one of the lucky ones.

In terms of quality, all digital capture methods are pretty much equivalent, since they all just record the digital stream as it comes from the transmitter.

From a PQ perspective, this is true -- from a quality of the digital stream perspective, there is variability. For instance, the streams I get from firewire give SageTV pause (almost literally -- I get a black screen when I start playback -- workaround is to press FFD and then REW, and it magically works). On the other hand, the HDHomeRun recordings I get can give ShowAnalyzer (3rd party commercial detection) the fits.