Recommendations for Setup

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by toricred

You are right that there is only one DVR fee.

So it's more or less a wash on the hw fees since you don't need the dvr.

Seems like Direct would be the preferred option for satellite unless you have an R5000 then. Flaky IR = missed recordings = negative WAF.

[Ian]

Excellent responses and suggestions, thanks folks!

I would say 8 or maybe 9 extenders is my worst-case scenario. I can start out with just a few and grow as needed.
I think I will go all HD extenders and just trade money for ease of use and keep everything h.264!

So davephan, can you elaborate a bit on why I might want to use 2 network ports on the server? I am planning on a gigabit LAN but I also have switches that can switch+route in HW @ gig linerate. Do you think there would be bus contention or a bottleneck on a gig port on the server if maybe all of the extenders were active at the same time? Should be easy enough to add gig ports.
Thanks for the mobo recommendation! I will probably end up going with more than 2GB RAM since RAM is not that expensive.

Great suggestions on backing up too.
My plan is to do most recordings on the server (RAID, but mode undecided) and then a gigabit switched NAS with lots of space for backups, DVDs, music, etc.

Not having used Sage before I am wondering this as a follow-up question: how easy is it to direct Sage to use one set of drives for say TV recording and another set for playing ripped DVDs or music? Is it just a matter of letting Sage know where the folders are?
Can you direct Sage to record some TV to the onboard drives on the server and some to the NAS?

Looks like DTV is the way to go as well for me.

Thanks again for all of the help!
Ian

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by Ian

Not having used Sage before I am wondering this as a follow-up question: how easy is it to direct Sage to use one set of drives for say TV recording and another set for playing ripped DVDs or music? Is it just a matter of letting Sage know where the folders are?
Can you direct Sage to record some TV to the onboard drives on the server and some to the NAS?

For media files (dvd, music, photos, video, etc...) you add specific paths to the config, so it's trivial to keep them on seperate disks. I have my music and photos on a NAS being referenced by UNC paths, and my recorded shows dir and video (just dvds really) on a drive in the server.

If you record to the NAS, you'll want to make sure the write-speed is good. I don't think my readyNAS could handle writing HD streams while playing them back.

[Wakecrash]

Originally Posted by electronics4lif

I am having trouble finding a good board with lots of pci slots. My current outdated server has 5 pci slots with 4 of them being used. Any good current motherboards with at least 4 pci slots?

Check out this board, P35 chipset with 5 PCI slots. GIGABYTE GA-P35-S3G. Found using the power search option on newegg.