TV streaming question

[edgley]

Hi Guys,

I have been recommended your software.

I need to braodcast to a number of clients on my network.

Is there a max. that you support please?
Does it place a lot of burden on the network?

Thank you

Simon.

[stanger89]

I have not heard of any limits on the number of clients.

As for burden on the network, depends on the network:
A typical recording is about 6-8Mbps (can go as high as 12Mbps).
With a simple client server setup (all tuners and storage in the server) that would require about 8Mbps/client so you could get about 5-10 clients on a 100Mbps wired connection, probably 2-3 on a 802.11a/g (provided good link), and about none on 802.11b. It's just not practical on 11b since you have to drop your recording quality and PQ suffers. The demand on the network gets higher if you start adding network encoders/networked storage.

You could always run Gigbit to a switch and 100Mbps to the clients, that would get you up to about 80 clients probably (better be a big switch for that and better have fast storage ).

[mlbdude]

The max will be determined by your network speed, the recording quality you use, and at some point the speed of your hard drives. On my 100MB network I often stream 3 shows (some or all are LiveTV) at the same time that are recorded at 3GB per hour with no issues.

The only issue I have is on clients when I stream live TV it does not seem to buffer correctly initially. I have to pause for a second ant let it catch up. Then it is fine.

[edgley]

Thanks Guys.

It will only be used for live TV.
So will each user be able to pause the feed independantly of each other?
And will each feed benfit from the hardware capabilites of the P250?
Is the viewing down via a browser or a by software?


If there is some where that answers my questions please tell me where to look!

s.

[ErsatzTom]

Yes, yes, and the Sage Client. SageTV writes the mpeg stream, generated by the hardware encoding on the 250, to a file. Then for each client reads back from the file, each client having an independent stream/place in the file. The Sage Client give an almost identical interface as SageTV. The only differences are that some of the setup details that are only relevant to the server are left out.

t

[edgley]

Many thanks for your help.

[JJarmoc]

It'd be really awesome if sage supported multicast streaming. I'm not sure how many people would take advantage of it, but it'd rank pretty high on the cool factor.

[ErsatzTom]

Along those lines, it would be very cool (read bottom of my priority list) if the client could access the server through a transcoder capable of reducing the bit-rate/converting the format. That way I could, for example, watch stuff at my soon-to-be-in-laws place over our common cable network. I could probably get a pretty decent bit rate but nowhere near anything that makes sense for home use. If it were modular, the transcoder could sit on another, dedicated box if you wanted to be able to support multiple simultaneous feeds (heck probably would need that for one). Also, people with, say, a laptop on 802.11b who want to occasionally watch a show could do so at a lower bit-rate without affecting the PQ on your higher bandwidth systems. Anyway, like I said, mostly just for the wow factor of it.

t

[stanger89]

Originally posted by JJarmoc
It'd be really awesome if sage supported multicast streaming. I'm not sure how many people would take advantage of it, but it'd rank pretty high on the cool factor.

Might be cool but not very useful. For multicast to be useful every client would have to watch the same stream, at the same position, at the same time, no FFW/RWD/skip/etc.