WHS + HDPVR + Firewire = Bliss

[ghostlobster]

Wow! After a recent stroll down Media Portal Way, which runs parallel to Rte. 66 but keeps going past L. A. straight into the depths of the pacific where it becomes absolutely decimated with whale turds, I moved everything back to SageTV and was relatively happy. I could not leave well enough alone, though, as I totally dispise IR blasters and was having some HD-PVR lockup issues. So, I decided to take a radical step and completely redo my SageTV architecture. I had an extra WHS license kicking around, an old 2.4 Ghz single core Sony Vaio desktop with a firewire interface, and a large enough hard drive to support the OS install. So, I ventured forth and installed SageTV for WHS. Once installed, I kept plowing ahead, installed the HD-PVR, setup firewire channel chaning, slapped my Hauppauge 150 tuners in, and just for kicks, installed the HD Homerun on it. When I was done, my old Vista SageTV rig was gutted and in pieces on the floor under the desk, and my Vaio was purring contetedly. I was not expetcing the results that I got though. My clients are more responsive than ever, the channel changing via firewire is rock solid, and the WHS server is not missing a beat. I was so impressed that I snagged my recording drives out of the Vista rig and put them in place, imported the recordings replaced the wiz.bin and am now going to see how things go using that rig exclusively for my SageTV clients.

The short version of this would be if you have the capability to use WHS as your SageTV server, do it!

[S_M_E]

I can't imagine using another OS for Sage after running WHS so long.

[wayner]

I am in the middle of doing the same thing. I was running Sage on a Vista HP machine in my office. Over Christmas I built a new WHS box (I got a E8400 since I want to transcode my HD-PVR files), and copied over my existing WHS files, etc. A few days ago I installed Sage and then copied my 700 GB or recordings. Two nights ago I replaced the wiz.bin file. The last step is to install my new HD-PVR on this PC (this unit just arrived on Monday night) and also move my other HD-PVR from the Vista box and move the 1GB recordings drive out of the Vista HP box into the WHS box as my 6th hard drive that gives me a total of about 5 TB.

The only issues that I ran into is that I was having trouble getting the firewire drivers to work (for channel changing) with SA4250HD boxes, but I had a couple of SA3250HD boxes that I will use instead. I also had to pull out a 2 Gig stick or RAM as the PVR-150 has a bug where it won't work if you have 4 Gig of memory. I have a USB-UIRT that is working fine with an SD box for channel changing.

Lobster - for clients are you using Sage Client or Placeshifter?

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by wayner

Lobster - for clients are you using Sage Client or Placeshifter?

The answer is "yes." I've got 3 clients connected in the family room, master bedroom and spare bedroom. I use Placeshifter on my desktop in my office, the laptop when I'm out on the porch having a cigar, or when Mrs. Lobster takes over the family room PC for Divine Design or House Hunters International (shudder.)

Incidently, my STB is a 3250HD and it worked out of the gate with FW channel changing. The docs kicking around here are awesome for getting this set up. I was messing with it throughout the day while getting some work done, and it was completed before the wife got home from work.

[psklenar]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

... Once installed, I kept plowing ahead, installed the HD-PVR, setup firewire channel changing, ... I was not expecting the results that I got though. My clients are more responsive than ever, the channel changing via firewire is rock solid ...

Quick question regarding Firewire channel changing ... are you using the Device Panel number or the Device Unique ID? If the latter, which value did you edit into the sage.properties file and which did you use to name the .ir file?

Thanks,
pat----

[wayner]

Originally Posted by psklenar

Quick question regarding Firewire channel changing ... are you using the Device Panel number or the Device Unique ID? If the latter, which value did you edit into the sage.properties file and which did you use to name the .ir file?

Good question - I am worried that my STBs may potentially flip-flop and after a reboot panel number 2 should really be 4 or vice-versa. I imagine using the unique ID would be safer from this perspective.

[psklenar]

Originally Posted by wayner

Good question - I am worried that my STBs may potentially flip-flop and after a reboot panel number 2 should really be 4 or vice-versa. I imagine using the unique ID would be safer from this perspective.

That's what I gathered from the mega Firewire thread. And while I have the command-line "channel/channelw" working with UID's just fine ... I can't find the answer to my question ... what do I name the .ir file and what do I put in as device _name in the sage.properties file?

pat----

[wayner]

Originally Posted by psklenar

That's what I gathered from the mega Firewire thread. And while I have the command-line "channel/channelw" working with UID's just fine ... I can't find the answer to my question ... what do I name the .ir file and what do I put in as device _name in the sage.properties file?

pat----

I figured it out - four steps.

1. Find the Unique ID by running channel -v from a command prompt in the folder that this file is installed (my unique ID is 74bf21471900)
2. Run regedit and change "channelw.exe %DEVICE%" to "channelw.exe -n %DEVICE%"
3. Add a new .ir file with your unique ID - copy the exist file (i.e. 2.ir) to a new file and change the 2 to your unique ID - in my case 74bf21471900.ir
4. Fully shutdown Sage and change the device_name property to your unique ID - in my case 74bf21471900 so - mmc/encoders/1642691032/3/0/device_name= 74bf21471900

I did this on my old PC (I guess now my test environment) and it seems to work. Hopefully it is using the unique ID rather than the old device number - I think it must be.

[psklenar]

Originally Posted by wayner

I figured it out - four steps. ...

Fan-freaking-tastic!!!!! Thanks Wayner!! I can't wait until lunch time so I can get this set up (today's a work at home day).

I really appreciate your testing and guidance ... I only have my brand new, very first server available and was hesitant to break anything before I really get things going.

pat----

[psklenar]

WooHoo!!! Thank you wayner! Firewire channel changing is MUCH faster than via the USB-UIRT (which was no slouch)!!

pat---

[rlvogel322]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I can't imagine using another OS for Sage after running WHS so long.

I couldn't agree more. It's been working great the last year (knock on wood!).

[lotusvball]

I'll add another vote for WHS. It is absolutely awesome for Sage.

[wayner]

I guess one downside to running Sage on your server rather than a WHS client is that the SageTV folder does not get automatically backed up every day. How do you folks deal with that? Do you run some other program to copy the SageTV folder to the Shared volume?

[SageDonkey]

Originally Posted by psklenar

That's what I gathered from the mega Firewire thread. And while I have the command-line "channel/channelw" working with UID's just fine ... I can't find the answer to my question ... what do I name the .ir file and what do I put in as device _name in the sage.properties file?

pat----

Not related to WHS - but to the channel changing - I finally gave up on changing via firewire from the EXETunerPlugin or related plugins. I use SGraphRecorder - copied a graph from the AVS guys and plugged into SGraphRecorder - works well!

[wayner]

Originally Posted by SageDonkey

Not related to WHS - but to the channel changing - I finally gave up on changing via firewire from the EXETunerPlugin or related plugins. I use SGraphRecorder - copied a graph from the AVS guys and plugged into SGraphRecorder - works well!

What was wrong with EXETuner? I have used it for 5 months with no problems.

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by wayner

I guess one downside to running Sage on your server rather than a WHS client is that the SageTV folder does not get automatically backed up every day. How do you folks deal with that? Do you run some other program to copy the SageTV folder to the Shared volume?

I don't backup my SageTV recordings. if I lose them, I lose them. Not exactly a life threatening prospect. If I were going to back it up, I'd just use the integrated ntbackup, though.
I have not pooled my recording drives yet, nor do I think I'm going to. I just have 2 additional drives there and do all my recording to those. I have them set to drive letters X and Y, and on my remote clients, I map them to the same drive letters so that commercial skip works on the clients without having to use UNC names.
On a side not, I'm not at all impressed with Placeshifter as a client. The quality is pretty bad compared to the full client. I wish that the WHS version of Sage came with a full client license instead of a Placeshifter license.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

I don't backup my SageTV recordings. if I lose them, I lose them. Not exactly a life threatening prospect. If I were going to back it up, I'd just use the integrated ntbackup, though.

I mean backing up the c:\Program Files\SageTV folder so that wiz.bin, sage.properties and everything else is backed up in case your system drive dies. This would all be done automatically if Sage was running from a WHS client rather than on the WHS sever and you can back it up to a non-pooled drive but I don't think this is done automatically - it is more of a manual process.

[SageDonkey]

Originally Posted by wayner

What was wrong with EXETuner? I have used it for 5 months with no problems.

I wanted to use it (actually the MultiEXETunerPlugin) but just couldn't get it to work. Finally gave up after 2 days of trying (and the wife in the background asking why she can't watch TV).

A nice side effect is that my channel changes with the HD-PVR have been much better. Previously, when sage did them, I would get a short audio loop for 5-10 seconds until the channel changed. Now - its pretty seamless (just a small, silent pause).