R5000 (Dish ViP211) in SageTV Questions...

[Slipshod]

I've been looking at HTPC solutions, and am on the verge of deciding that a SageTV HTPC + 2 R5000 ViP211 receivers is the way to go... But, I have a few questions before plunking down that much money:

1. How long does it take to change channels with the R5000 when watching live TV? I know, I won't be watching live much, just want to know.

2. Are there any issues receiving channels? I know the Dish audio channels don't work, but I thought I saw something about the HD mapping interfering with tuning the SD version of a channel. Is this still an issue?

3. What happens to the recording if there's a stream "glitch" from the sat feed. Is it the same as what happens now on my 622? (i.e. Blocky/corrupted video for a few seconds), or does it break something?

4. Are there any problems playing all the different types of content (MPEG2/4, SD/HD) with Placeshifter?

5. How much CPU time does it take to capture for each R5000? I'd like to start with a single PC (server + client), 2x R5000, HD Extender, and Placeshifter. Is this practical for a quad-core PC (either Q6600 or Q9450) with a decent HD offloading video card (ATI 3450?)

6. Does Vista vs. XP matter for the R5000?



Thanks in advance for anybody who can help me out. I'm pretty excited about getting all my media rolled up into one package with a kickass user interface, just kind of nervous about throwing down that much cash.

[dadavo]

Are you only trying to record HD from the VIP211? If so why not wait for this solution from Hauppauge.
http://www.hauppauge.com/PDFs/Hauppauge_HD_recorder.pdf

Or if you are dying to have it now and don't mind working on a project you can also try to capture using the BlackMagic Intensity Pro outlined here
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30607

[Slipshod]

Looking at Dish because comcast doesn't have nearly as good an HD lineup in my area, and I'm already a happy dish subscriber with some pretty good deals (like Cinemax for $0.01 per year).

I'm looking at the R5000 because I'd like to get the native bitstream instead of something that's been re-encoded. It also would be more efficient for recording SD content since it wouldn't be encoding it as a 1080i upscaled stream. Otherwise, to record SD content as SD I'd have to lease at least one more receiver and buy another SD capture card, plus add a multi-switch and run more coax from the 2nd story mounted dish.

It boils down to 2 hauppage component capture devices + at least 3 leased receivers (read monthly fees) + a DP44 multiswitch + at least one SD capture card + more disk space and more install work vs. 2 R5000 modded ViP211 receivers. More upfront cost, less monthly fees, better video quality, and less work.

[DualQuad]

1. Channel changes 7-10 seconds. Seems like an eternity

2. All channels (video) seem to work. There is a setting on the VIP 211 to not remap HD locals to SD equivalents, this keeps you from having two channel 4 for instance. I dont remeber the setting but it is on forum somewhere, some nice Sage folk answered it for me.

3. You get drop outs and holes in the video. The worst I have had was I guess as loss of timing, where the recording played back at the wrong speed.

4. Placeshifter as I recall had problems transcoding the h.264 channels to whatever its standardized stream is and HD Mpeg was painful over an internet connection. Dont use this except on vacation and then its just used for the kids to watch favorite cartoons.

5. Capture of the streams is virtually nothing. I believe the R5000 folks when they said that they could capture from 4 devices at once. Playback on the otherhand is where all the fun/pain starts.

6. I am running on XP.

As far as the kickass part goes, you are well on your way. I have a central server and each TV connected to an HD extender. The family loves it.

DQ

[HawgGuy]

My experience is identical to DualQuad's. I've successfully run it on Vista but prefer XP. The HD channels that use h.264 streams (which is most of them nowadays) won't play over placeshifter but play well over the HD extender. Recording a stream takes 1-2% cpu at most. Playback, with HD accel and the proper codec/video card takes 7-10%.

[Slipshod]

Awesome, thanks for the detailed answers. Looks like it's about what I expected. I'm used to ~5sec channel changes on the ViP622 I have, so it may be somewhat annoying, but I've convinced myself I don't care. I already found the channel mapping setting on my ViP622, so I think I'm good there.

Now I'm deciding on the PC hardware. I'm contemplating waiting for the Geforce 8200 Intel boards to come out in April. The onboard video does good HD offload (full h.264!) and will output 8 channel audio over HDMI (LPCM only). Sounds like that plus a mid-range dual-core intel might work just fine, and be cheap, quiet, and low-power.

Few more questions...

Does commercial-skipping (Comskip or ShowAnalyzer) work with the MPEG-2 streams without issue? That's one of the selling points to the wife. No more commercials on the kid-channels! (well, more or less)

Do I need to dedicate a hard disk to each R5000, or can I run them both to a single one? It would probably be a WD GP (5400-ish RPM low-power and quiet) drive in either case. I'd rather run it all to a single 1GB disk for space/noise/heat reasons. I'd be viewing locally, plus an HD Extender (and it's likely both would be running at once), plus two R5000s recording.

Cheers,
Slipshod

[chrisc16]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

Does commercial-skipping (Comskip or ShowAnalyzer) work with the MPEG-2 streams without issue? That's one of the selling points to the wife. No more commercials on the kid-channels! (well, more or less)

I have never had any problems running comskip or showanalyzer on the MPEG2 shows recorded by my R5000/ViP211. The nice thing is that an SD show from the R5000 is way smaller than the same show recorded by my PVR-250, plus the quality is slightly better since it's not uncompressed then re-compressed.

-Chris

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

Do I need to dedicate a hard disk to each R5000, or can I run them both to a single one? It would probably be a WD GP (5400-ish RPM low-power and quiet) drive in either case. I'd rather run it all to a single 1GB disk for space/noise/heat reasons. I'd be viewing locally, plus an HD Extender (and it's likely both would be running at once), plus two R5000s recording.

Cheers,
Slipshod

I don't have the R5000, but I have tested the following. 2 HDhomeruns recording 2 shows each, and playing back at the same time on a second PC and a HD extender. The AMD 3600+ based machine had no problems with this, thought the OS/programs were on a second drive. (not partition)

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

I don't have the R5000, but I have tested the following. 2 HDhomeruns recording 2 shows each, and playing back at the same time on a second PC and a HD extender. The AMD 3600+ based machine had no problems with this, thought the OS/programs were on a second drive. (not partition)

What model HD were you using as the video disk?

I was figuring on having the video drive seperate from the OS drive already, so that's no issue. Probably going to use a 2.5" drive for the OS (quiet, low heat) and a Western Digital GP drive for the videos.

[gveres]

I am just stumbling across this thread now. Since it is a month old you probably already purchased your R5000s.

I got mine last week.

For me with StarChoice, the channel change is 17 seconds.

The video it produces is very nice quality - but you pay for it in disk space. When I recorded an HD movie, it was 17GB. All the recordings are about 3x the size I was recording with a really good VBR profile on my PVR250.

I have experienced the drop outs already that were mentioned above, but it didn't seem that bad.

You need a beefy machine to play back the HD mpegs. StarChoice doesn't use H.264 encoding yet, but that requires even more horsepower to playback.

I would definitely go with the HD extender for playback. Put your server in the basement and get an HD extender for every TV. Don't bother using the server as a player.

Ah as I am writing this, I am assuming that you guys in the states with a supplier that is using H.264 will be having a completely different experience to mine. The HD mpg is huge, so I would focus on lots of fast disk and lots of cpu on the server to do compression to h.264. However, if I was getting it direct from the satellite as h.264, then both of these would probaby not be true.

Originally Posted by chrisc16

I have never had any problems running comskip or showanalyzer on the MPEG2 shows recorded by my R5000/ViP211. The nice thing is that an SD show from the R5000 is way smaller than the same show recorded by my PVR-250, plus the quality is slightly better since it's not uncompressed then re-compressed.

-Chris

I used to get 1.6 GB per hour for a good quality encode with a VBR profile on BTV and my PVR250. What were you getting and what are you getting now? Because I only get mpg out of StarChoice, I am getting a 3x bigger file than my VBR profile. I am now getting 4 GB / hour on SG channels and about 10 GB per hour for HD.

I can't argue with the quality of the video though.

Greg

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by gveres

I am just stumbling across this thread now. Since it is a month old you probably already purchased your R5000s.

Yup. Got them a week ago, but only have one hooked up at the moment. Using a temp server in the garage and waiting for my parts and software to come in for a WHS setup.

For me with StarChoice, the channel change is 17 seconds.

Mine seems to be less than 10 seconds, possibly as low as 5 seconds sometimes. Not bad, and it doesn't bother me.

The video it produces is very nice quality - but you pay for it in disk space. When I recorded an HD movie, it was 17GB. All the recordings are about 3x the size I was recording with a really good VBR profile on my PVR250.

Not too bad on the disk space... HD movies run anywhere from 6-9GB with H.264.

You need a beefy machine to play back the HD mpegs. StarChoice doesn't use H.264 encoding yet, but that requires even more horsepower to playback.

I would definitely go with the HD extender for playback. Put your server in the basement and get an HD extender for every TV. Don't bother using the server as a player.

Yeah, I ended up buying 2 HD extenders out of the last batch and decided to go with a dedicated server. Working pretty well with a crappy little P4 right now. Got a Xeon 3350 on order along with an Asus server board to install WHS on. That ought to handle ANYTHING I throw at it, now and significantly in the future.

Ah as I am writing this, I am assuming that you guys in the states with a supplier that is using H.264 will be having a completely different experience to mine. The HD mpg is huge, so I would focus on lots of fast disk and lots of cpu on the server to do compression to h.264. However, if I was getting it direct from the satellite as h.264, then both of these would probaby not be true.

Yeah, with H.264 I've been able to record and playback HD simultaneously on a P4 3.2GHz w/ 1GB RAM and a dedicated old 7200RPM 320GB drive. HD Extender of course, so no transcoding.

I used to get 1.6 GB per hour for a good quality encode with a VBR profile on BTV and my PVR250. What were you getting and what are you getting now? Because I only get mpg out of StarChoice, I am getting a 3x bigger file than my VBR profile. I am now getting 4 GB / hour on SG channels and about 10 GB per hour for HD.

I get about 1GB/hour for MPEG2 SD at 544x480 res. The deinterlacing in the HD extender's scaler is pretty wonky with SD from the R5000, but the HD material is super and DVDs are fine. I'm pretty happy with it, and will probably be much more so when I get the new server up and running.