nComputing

[fcajr]

Has anyone looked into the nComputing product line? I've seen it in the airline rags and tomshardware just ran an article comparing it to Google 8 years ago! I was thinking of going the nComputing route until a friend turned me on to SageTV. I haven't pulled the trigger yet so I was looking for any feedback you wise and trusted souls might provide !

[gblinckmann]

Okay. I have a couple of nComputing terminals. I'm not sure what that has to do with Sage, but I can talk about it. The nComputing terminals don't even do streaming video. I've used Sage on them, but just for scheduling and streaming audio. I've even run Sage on a computer that hosted the nComputing terminals.

What are you looking to do?

[fcajr]

My thought was that I could place the nComputing box near my TV, hook it up to the VGA input and with a wireless keyboard/mouse at my chair watch videos using Sage. In essence I would be replacing the extender boxes (so I would still use Sage-sorry for the confusion).

P.S. How do you like the nComputing boxes?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by fcajr

My thought was that I could place the nComputing box near my TV, hook it up to the VGA input and with a wireless keyboard/mouse at my chair watch videos using Sage. In essence I would be replacing the extender boxes (so I would still use Sage-sorry for the confusion).

P.S. How do you like the nComputing boxes?

I don't see how that could possibly be better than just using the extenders.

[gblinckmann]

Originally Posted by fcajr

My thought was that I could place the nComputing box near my TV, hook it up to the VGA input and with a wireless keyboard/mouse at my chair watch videos using Sage. In essence I would be replacing the extender boxes (so I would still use Sage-sorry for the confusion).

P.S. How do you like the nComputing boxes?

First, that won't work. The nComputing boxes can't do video.

What I did have going for a while was a Windows XP computer with a couple of tuners, two regular extenders and two nComputing terminals. The terminals were for the kids to do email, web browsing, and homework. Sage ran on the main system, a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz HT with 2 GB RAM. The extenders were hooked to the TV's. This worked remarkably well with the limitation that the terminals couldn't be used for games or video. (Remember the "this is for homework part, kids?") Sage could be used for scheduling recordings through the terminals, streaming music, etc. Anything that was reasonably low bandwidth.

The problem that I started having was the software fell farther and farther behind as the company switched its focus from retail/small business to 3rd world education markets. The forums stopped being monitored by nComputing for a while and promised release dates of software upgrades came and went. Vista support was a sore subject.

nComputing promised Vista support (even going to so far as to have "Vista Compatible" stickers on some of the newer boxes. When Vista shipped to developers, nComputing didn't even start developing the needed software, they then wanted it to ship retail first. The delays just kept coming. It's always a quarter away. It still is a quarter away, even 21 months later! The worst part of this wasn't the delay in getting an update, it was just being strung along and not getting the truth.

Current Vista Status:
(http://www.ncomputing.com/Support/Su...c/Default.aspx) I'd link to the other posts about the Vista release, but they're no longer available. They did a forum upgrade that, I think, lost most of the old posts.

Getting terminal software updates for XP service packs and hotfixes got slow. (The terminal software needed to be updated most times there was a security hotfix out for the core part of Windows XP.) Vista wasn't the only thing being delayed.

I have two L100 terminals sitting in a box. I technically could sell them to you, but you don't want them. I've thought about selling them, but I just can't bring myself to put them up for sale knowing the user experience they will have.

What you really want is an HD100 hooked to your TV. It will just work. No transcoding, not dropouts, it plays whatever you throw at it and is easy to hook to any TV.

[fcajr]

Thanks! I really appreciate your post and sharing your experience. Looks like I will be going SageTV + extenders for media streaming and then wait a while for nComputing to mature(?) for web/e-mail/homework for the kids.

[CollinR]

Also you can get many other better terminals for $40-50 that just use regular old RDP. nComputing is kinda the AOL of terminal services I guess lol, it's cool but not all that. Some of the newer terminals have USB and so support touchscreen useage too.

RDP also doesn't do video very well so as mentioned it won't work as you desire. Definately cool technology to play with though.

[Fuzzy]

I believe the advantage of nComputing over conventional RDP is that it doens't require a server to run. XP/Vista can only have one active session connected at a time (local, or RDP). Servers can have multiple active sessions, so multiple RDP clients can be logged on at the same time as the local desktop.

[gblinckmann]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I believe the advantage of nComputing over conventional RDP is that it doens't require a server to run. XP/Vista can only have one active session connected at a time (local, or RDP). Servers can have multiple active sessions, so multiple RDP clients can be logged on at the same time as the local desktop.

Yeah, that's the nComputing advantage. I don't know of another way to do this (economically). What I wound up doing was just upgrading the computers in the house and giving the kids the old systems. The new computers were the dual core systems and the kids got the P4's. I have plenty of Placeshifter licenses to go around, so everyone gets Sage!

If someone knows of an economical way to do terminals into Vista, I'd love to hear it. I'm keeping my terminals in the box just in case I can ever use them again.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by gblinckmann

First, that won't work. The nComputing boxes can't do video.

Sorry to bring up a rather old post, but with the recent advent of the L300 series from nComputing, I was trying to guage everyones reaction now to this.

Aside from the licensing issue, if their claims are true in regards to DVD quality video up to 1920x1080, this might be a nice little unit! Their promo video shows quite a few end units running full motion video from one $800 server PC.

At <$200/unit this might be the answer to all the extender type limitations that the 200/300 inherantly have.

-Jason

[btrcp2000]

Digging this thread up form the grave again to see if anyone is using thin clients like NComputing?

Extenders are awesome, I have 5, but there are a couple places I would like to have a computer as well (kitchen and office) where space is limited, thus no room for a separate TV. Plus, I like the ability of only maintaining one computer for general use as opposed to multiple.

Specs on their N Series 500 would seem to be extender-like (1080p, H264, MPEG4, hardware acceleration)


http://http://www.ncomputing.com/products/nseries

[Fuzzy]

A few potential problems that might arise from it are how the client is run. I have not tried running SageTVClient in multiple sessions at the same time, but I have a feeling it might have some trouble with it (locked .properties files, and such). I'm also not sure how the licensing works with running multiple client processes at a time under the same license key. If those two things work, the next hurdle is whether the ncomputnig host process can successfully intercept the encoded video from sage. It SHOULD be able to, as sage is running directshow, but sage does seem to hold on to the graph generation in some ways that might prevent this. If both of those are handled, then yes, the L300 should perform well in this job. If I had $175 laying around, I might try it out.

[btrcp2000]

hmmmmm... readin more on their products, it doesnt look like they would do me much good due to the distance limitation. looks like they are designed to all multiple pcs at workstation, but not scattered all over a house.

what about thin rdp clients mentioned earlier? What hardware specs would it take to to use sage client without stuttering? local acceleration as opposed to streamed (barely know what im talking about here)? any brands or types?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

hmmmmm... readin more on their products, it doesnt look like they would do me much good due to the distance limitation. looks like they are designed to all multiple pcs at workstation, but not scattered all over a house.

what about thin rdp clients mentioned earlier? What hardware specs would it take to to use sage client without stuttering? local acceleration as opposed to streamed (barely know what im talking about here)? any brands or types?

What distance limitation are you talking about specifically? the ncomputing thin clients connect to the host via ethernet - should be fine anywhere on your home network. I'm not sure RDP redirection would work with SageTVClient - just depends on how friendly the sagetv graph building is with the RDP source and sink filters.