Moving From Calgary to Houston - Is it worth keeping Sage?

[Yannai]

I currently live in Calgary, Canada where there is no free over-air or QAM cable HD.

Shaw is my cable provider, and my server currently holds 3 PVR-150 cards, one connected to a non-hd cable box and two directly to analog cable. My house is wired with Cat5 and I have a wired MVP hooked up to a non-hd tv in the family room (the server is headless Sempron 3200 in the basement)

I am being relocated to Houston for 1 year and have a rental there. The house is not wired for networking. We will probably be buying an hdtv while we are down there.

Given that my server probably isn't capable of handling HD, that wiring an extender will be very difficult, and that any QAM/Antenna based HD capture cards will be useless in Calgary when I return, I am thinking of maybe ditching my Sage system (I can leave it behind with a friend that is renting my house) and just renting a dvr through my cable or satellite provider. The downside of that is that I do use Sage as primary access to my music collection and I was planning on archiving all my DVDs.

Any opinions?

[bcjenkins]

wireless n media extenders or moto nim-100 would be good options for extending network. Since you didn't say budget, get an hd extender from sagetv and the hd-pvr from hauppauge. Should work for you when you get back north.

B

[reggie14]

On this subject, does anyone have a suggestion for an 802.11n bridge? I know the Apple Airport Expresses can do it, but is there anything better/cheaper?

[CollinR]

One MVP should be no problems for a linksys wrt54g running ddwrt firmware. These can be had on the cheap as they are super common, the ddwrt firmware makes them very cool dirt cheap wifi gear. One feature is the router can look at the radio for it's WAN port.

follow the directions
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials...le.php/3639271

Be careful the make model AND version are compatible before buying anything.

IIRC the version 8 at walmart is $40 but only runs a limited version (still smokes any normal consumer router though) and the Asus with the HDD inside seems to be top dog but closer to $70.

[reggie14]

Yeah, I have a couple older WRT54G's that I used before I got my HD extender. Since then I've have cat5 running around my apartment on the floor. I'm moving into a new apartment soon where that won't be possible, so that's why I'm looking for a wireless-n bridge.

[Khristopher]

Originally Posted by reggie14

On this subject, does anyone have a suggestion for an 802.11n bridge? I know the Apple Airport Expresses can do it, but is there anything better/cheaper?

I ended up going with an Airport Express for my bedroom MVP as it was the easiest, and quickest solution since I already had an Airport Extreme router.

I also love the fact I can pump my iTunes music to the Airport Express.

[Tej]

I'll agree that an HD-100 on a bridge and a OTA HDTV capture card with a cheap antenna will give you a great solution. I can transmit HDTV to a HD-100 on a 11g bridge without any problems.

Almost all of the TV antenna farm for Houston is located in a clump south-southwest of the city. Even a cheap antenna in the attic or outside on a chimney should give excellent reception from just about anywhere in the city. Check out www.antennaweb.org to help figure out what size antenna you might need.

But more importantly, you'll need to learn where the nearest Fry's is so you can buy more hard drives to store all that new HDTV content.

[Yannai]

So it seems that people recommend to keep my existing server and add an free-to-air HD card and antenna to pull in HD signals and wirless-N bridge to an HD-100.

Would Comcast (cable) then be my best bet to make use of my tuners, or do I not even need any cable/satellite provider if I will not be requiring specialty channels?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by reggie14

On this subject, does anyone have a suggestion for an 802.11n bridge? I know the Apple Airport Expresses can do it, but is there anything better/cheaper?

I've got a Airport Express and it works pretty good as long your distances are reasonable. I saw another wireless N bridge the other day, can't think of the name, but it was also $100.

Edit: Found it...

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/11/b...-5ghz-802-11n/

Its a bit of a trade off on the deal front as the Apple one is a full fledged router also, but lacks the web interface and built in switch.

[CollinR]

The HD PVR won't be worthless when you get back like the ATSC/QAM cards. You can get an ATSC decoder box for $40 and free with the FCC coupon once you have a US address.

and the HD 100

[Tej]

Originally Posted by Yannai

Would Comcast (cable) then be my best bet to make use of my tuners, or do I not even need any cable/satellite provider if I will not be requiring specialty channels?

Comcast lineup

If what you want to watch is being broadcast by the local stations over the air, then you would not need Comcast. If you want some of the specialty channels, then the above list is a good overview of what is available, and still mostly up to date. You would just have some overlap between the local channels. (not necessarily a bad thing)