Hardware recommendations for 60 tuners

[shahfar]

I want to build multiple HTPC's. I want to record a total of 60 channels simultaneously 24x7. The video input would be through satellite top boxes and all 60 set top boxes will be locked on their respective channels (so no need for IR blasters). I want to record 10 channels on one HTPC. Ideally, I would have wanted to record 12 channels at one time. All recordings will be standard definition.

Each PC's configuration would contain a P35DP M/B, E6550 C2D, 4GB RAM and 500GB x 4 SATA2 drives with RAID 0+1.

The mother board has 3 x PCI, 3 x PCIe x1 and PCIe x16 slots. I would want 3 PCI and 3 PCIe x1 cards that would have multiple tuners.

My question is does a multiple tuner card record 2 composite inputs simultaneously? I have seen that Hauppauge PVR500MCE has an optional A/V header. That means I can attach 2 set top boxes to it. Has anyone tried to record 2 streams from 2 seperate set top boxes simultaneously?

Can anyone please recommend any other tuners that will do this job? Should I use separate USB tuners for each channel? Or go for PCI options only?

[mrwolf]

Originally Posted by shahfar

My question is does a multiple tuner card record 2 composite inputs simultaneously? I have seen that Hauppauge PVR500MCE has an optional A/V header. That means I can attach 2 set top boxes to it. Has anyone tried to record 2 streams from 2 seperate set top boxes simultaneously?

Not sure about the other questions, but I use a PVR-150 and a PVR500 as well as two HVR-950's. The PVR-150 has one DirecTV box attached via composite and the PVR500 has two of the same STB's attached and works fine.

[shahfar]

Thanks for the reply. I heard that the 500MCE is being phased out. Plus, in my region I have only PAL support. I cannot find the PAL version of 500MCE.

[GKusnick]

If the goal is to maximize the number of tuners per PC, you might be better off with a bunch of identical USB tuners than a mix of PCI and PCIe tuners. If USB bandwith becomes an issue, use your PCI/PCIe slots to add more USB controllers. But I'm guessing disk bandwidth will be the limiting factor.

[shahfar]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

If the goal is to maximize the number of tuners per PC, you might be better off with a bunch of identical USB tuners than a mix of PCI and PCIe tuners. If USB bandwith becomes an issue, use your PCI/PCIe slots to add more USB controllers. But I'm guessing disk bandwidth will be the limiting factor.

Can you recommend any USB tuners please?

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by shahfar

Can you recommend any USB tuners please?

I'm in the US, so I don't have any specific advice on USB PAL tuners. But you might take a look at the Hardware Requirements page and the Supported tuners sticky thread.

[dvd_maniac]

You do realize that what you are trying to do will require ("60") tuners?
You would be looking at something like 6 PC's running 10 tuners or some combination. The horsepower and bandwitdh needed to run 60 tuners on a single PC (if even possible), would require something like a fiber-obtic SAN box and a VERY, VERY, VERY exspensive PC....

As for archiving, that would depend on the quality used to record, what you plan to do with the recordings and what kind of budget you have in mind.
But I think Hard Drive Space is going to be the cheapest part of your problem

[gplasky]

I think if you check one of the other threads in the forum the max amount of tuners someone is running off of one box is 10. I would recommend one type of tuner to reduce any issues and would probably recommend USB tuners. Set up one Sage server with 10 tuners and five client PCs set up as network encoders with 10 tuners each. You would control all the recordings from the one Sage server. Massive storage on each client PC with another PC containing even more storage as the Archive server running Videoredo to edit your recordings. Maybe use Dirmon to automatically move recordings to the Archive server and batch edit them with Videoredo. I just guessing out loud here because you're treading into unknown territory.

Gerry

[hemicuda]

it sounds like the OP is trying to set up a video distribution system similar to a couple of older threads from last year. I say this because each tuner will be "locked" to one channel via STB; and 60 of them would make a fairly decent hotel channel lineup.

shahfar:

have you thought about what you would use on the TV end of the circuit? the network side of things sounds more complicated than the server/client hardware if my assumption above is correct. I could be wrong, but a 10/100 system would get saturated rather quickly. I can't speak as to drive throughput.

[dvd_maniac]

If each recording is set at 6mbit/s the 60 simultanious recordings would equal 360mbit/s. or 3.6x the limit of 10/100. He would probably need a dual gigabit on a fast raid system if sending from the same PC. Also, if going with Network tuners recording to network drives then the bandwidth would be shared. But in his original post he mentioned ideally only 12 recording at one time.

My question is why you want a tuner for every channel? How many max clients do you plan to have at any given time?

[shahfar]

@dvd_maniac

Yes, I agree with you on this part. It wont be done on one single PC, but distributed to 5 PC's. Each would have a RAID 0+1 (500GB SATA2 x 4). So 1 TB of storage on each PC. My requirement is maintaining an archive of 60 channels. At any given moment, anybody can ask me for a one hour clip from any random day. I do not need any high quality recordings. The most important thing for this setup would be to extract clippings of commercials from in between programs. I have to maintain a database of when and where a commercial was played. So, a time stamp will also be needed on the recordings.

I will install Gigabit switches with Cat6 cabling. For archiving, I was thinking of using a tape auto loader.

@gplasky

Does this kind of setup exist?? It will be like a server client setup. How will the recordings shift from the encoding server to the archiving server automatically?

@hemicuda

Yes, each STB would be locked to a single channel. At the TV end, there would be 20 PC's. 20 people would be sifting through the recordings and entering the data in an application which will log when and where a commercial was played.

@dvd_maniac

Max clients at any given time would be 20. Each tuner would be dedicated to a single channel because I want 24x7 recording.

[gplasky]

It does. Other people have there client configured as such. And at one time the HDHR was seen as an network encoding server. The plus to this is you only have one guide to manage and Sage will figure out which PC/tuner to use for the recording. You should also be able to set a priority for the tuners but by default Sage will record to the drive that has the most space.

Search for a program called Dirmon. It can monitor directories for files and you can have it execute a program on them. I use Showanalyzer with it to mark the commercials. You could run it so that when the mpg and edl (commercial mark file) exists it moves the files from the encoding server to your archiving server.

Gerry

[shahfar]

Originally Posted by gplasky

It does. Other people have there client configured as such. And at one time the HDHR was seen as an network encoding server. The plus to this is you only have one guide to manage and Sage will figure out which PC/tuner to use for the recording. You should also be able to set a priority for the tuners but by default Sage will record to the drive that has the most space.

Search for a program called Dirmon. It can monitor directories for files and you can have it execute a program on them. I use Showanalyzer with it to mark the commercials. You could run it so that when the mpg and edl (commercial mark file) exists it moves the files from the encoding server to your archiving server.

Gerry

Thanks for the reply. But could you please elaborate on the HDHR part. Also, the network encoding functionality, is it part of SageTV or a separate plugin?

Additionally, please tell me if SageTV makes video files according to schedule? Or simply makes smaller clips of maybe 15 minutes and then merge them together while viewing?

[gplasky]

HDHR
Silicondust HDHomerun
A network box containing two digital TV tuners allowing you to record either Clear QAM from cable or OTA ATSC. Works with SageTV and other media programs. SageTV nows sees it as 2 tuners. You can have multiple HDHR's on the network but soon the network will become your bottleneck. For 60 tuners you would need to pursue the additional PCs utilizing 10 tuners each for a practical shot at what you're trying.

Appendix G of the SageTV PDF manual has info about setting up a network encoder

Timed manual recordings can be done based on channel, date and time. I usually just click on a program in the guide for a manual recording because I want the entire program.

I would have to take a look at the settings. I'm not sure you could tell it to a record a channel everyday and only record 15 minutes of the program.


Gerry

[dvd_maniac]

I'm not sure that the HDHR is what he's looking for since space and archiving will become a problem and Video quality is not his top concern.

You should also consider encoding all the video to a smaller filesize. You're going to have a bunch of PC's. You might as well put them to work.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

I'm not sure that the HDHR is what he's looking for since space and archiving will become a problem and Video quality is not his top concern.

I agree. I had just mentioned it as an example of how it use to work as a network encoder. And absolutely impractical for his use.

Gerry

[shahfar]

@dvd_maniac

I believe that MPEG2 will take up a lot of space even if I go for lower quality. Is there any way all recordings could be encoded into maybe MPEG4 and then get saved to the library? Or maybe, I could separate the recordings PC's and do the encoding on another PC. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[sleonard]

The upcoming but delayed component capture device from hauppage will capture to h.264 saving a lot of space but it is not available yet and will be expensive compared to what's currently available.

There is one capture device that capture to DivX and works with Sage. Offhand I don't remember the name but there's a thread that lists all the supported devices.

The only other option is to re-encode everything which will use a lot of extra horsepower.

I would contact SageTV about a commercial license and see if maybe they could do some customizations to tailor the product for your special requirements.

S

[shahfar]

@sleonard

Thanks for your reply. I believe you are talking about the Plextor 402U. I just googled it up.

A tailored product from SageTV? Sounds good. I will try that.

@all

What do you all think about the Plextor 402U. Hardware encoding in Divx sounds great. Will save up a LOT of space too. The question is, I haven't come across any thread in which a person is using these. Infact, using more than one of these tuners in their setup.

[troycheek]

I own and use a Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U. While it does indeed support hardware encoding to DivX (one of the reasons I bought it), it's a single pass, real time, very loose encoding to DivX. At a given bitrate, the DivX output doesn't look any better than an MPEG-2 captured from the same source. I only have one, but I think I've read that the driver problem preventing two from working on the same computer has been fixed.