What/How for 4-tuner network server?

[kbro]

Hi. I would like to setup a system with 3 dual-tuner cards (e.g. Hauppage WinTV HVR-2250) and have it act as a server on my home network. I would like to hook up Dish, DirecTV, and Cable to the tuner cards, and use SageTV HD Theatre at all viewing points. All input video will be HD quality. Questions:

1. How many licenses of SageTV do I need?
2. How can I control Dish/DirecTV boxes with HD Theatre?
3. Can SageTV access Dish/DirecTV EPG?

Any other pointers? Thank.s

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by kbro

Hi. I would like to setup a system with 3 dual-tuner cards (e.g. Hauppage WinTV HVR-2250) and have it act as a server on my home network. I would like to hook up Dish, DirecTV, and Cable to the tuner cards, and use SageTV HD Theatre at all viewing points. All input video will be HD quality. Questions:

1. How many licenses of SageTV do I need?
2. How can I control Dish/DirecTV boxes with HD Theatre?
3. Can SageTV access Dish/DirecTV EPG?

Any other pointers? Thank.s

1. One SageTV Media Center server license as long as the server you have/build can hold the 3 tuner cards. The HD 200 you will use as clients will work without purchasing licenses for them.
2. You control the boxes with the SageTV server not the HD Theater. The server does the heavy lifting. So you can use IR with a USB-UIRT, serial control if your boxes support them or a USB to Serial adapter like a Paterson device. Be careful what model boxes you get. Search the forums.
3. SageTV will download the info for those guides through a relationship Sage has with Zap2It. Your guide info will show up in one complete EPG. Sage will know what tuner to use based on the channel you chose.

With your choice of tuners and boxes this will only get you SD. For HD you would need to go with the HD-PVR. It is your only choice for HD. (As pointed out by the post below.)

Gerry

[w84no1]

You will only be able to get SD video from Dish and Direct to the HVR-2250. The HVR-2250 doesn't decode satellite. Looks like you would want 3 HD-PVRs instead of the HVR-2250s to get HD.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by w84no1

You will only be able to get SD video from Dish and Direct to the HVR-2250. The HVR-2250 doesn't decode satellite. Looks like you would want 3 HD-PVRs instead of the HVR-2250s to get HD.

Actually, to replace three dual-tuner cards (with exactly the feeds that you describe), you would need six HD-PVRs, and six HD boxes (two Dish HD boxes, two DirecTV HD boxes, two HD cable boxes, and six HD-PVRs, one for each box). As mentioned above, you can not get HD content through cable/sat by using a card, only the HD-PVR.

Just curious - do you really have all of this now (cable, Dish, DirecTV)? All HD? Gracious, what is your monthly bill?

I have to assume that the only reason to have all three would be to get certain PPV or On-Demand content that each offers exclusively... if so, you may want to look into the compatibility of actually getting that content in Sage. I am no expert, but I do not believe there is an interface (at least, that I am aware of) for entering passwords to order PPV content (or at least not "pre-set" ahead of time where you wouldn't have to be there when it was about to start recording), and I don't think there is any interface for On-Demand content either.

[kbro]

Thanks for all the responses. I am looking to get international programming via Dish/DirecTV and neither carries all the channels I want No I don't have all this at the moment but am just wondering if what I want to do is possible via SageTV. If so, then the next question would be the bill

But in searching the forum further I hit upon the following

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36221

which sounds to be exactly what I want to setup, except in HD. I thought SageTV HD Theatre would allow me to get HD from the server to the TV (as long as server has HD recording/playback capability of course)? What is HD-PVR and why do I need it? The HVR-2250 seems to have both analog tuners and digital tuners. I apologize for being so clueless about this stuff.

[kbro]

Sorry. I just looked up HD-PVR on the Hauppauge site. So now I am more confused. I thought I was setting up my server to be essentially an HD-PVR? Am I mixing the two up?

[gplasky]

A SageTV server needs tuner capture devices to get the TV recorded and available to the HD200. HD-PVR, HDHR, HVR-2250 and others are these types of devices. They can be a card that goes in the PC, a USB device that connects to the PC or a network device plugged into the network. The HDHR, HVR-2250 and many other can handle ClearQAM and ATSC. These need to be connected to a cable system to do ClearQAM or an Over the Air antenna for ATSC. If it has an analog tuner (HVR-2250 among others) again it needs to be connected to a cable system or an OTA antenna. HD-PVR is the only device that can connect up to a component out of a box and record HD television. On any satellite system this is the only way to record HD. The HD-PVR can also connect up to a cable box to record any HD station from the box. But you need a satellite box for each HD-PVR because it is a single tuner that connects to component out only. You will need to read the forums more, download the Sage manual and read it and brush up in general how all this PVR stuff works.

Gerry

[GKusnick]

The 2250's digital tuner can record digital broadcast (ATSC) or unencrypted digital cable (QAM) channels. It cannot record encrypted digital cable or satellite channels. You need the provider's set-top box to do the decryption on those channels. So how do you get the decrypted HD signal out of the STB and into your PC? The 2250's analog tuner cannot do that; it does SD only. So you need something that can encode analog HD component video to a digital stream. That's what the HD-PVR does.

The HD Theater (aka HD200) has nothing to do with any of that. It's strictly a playback device for displaying recorded HD (or SD) content from the server on your TV.

[kbro]

Thanks for all the info. I have a better understanding of the technology now. If the HD-PVR connects to the STBs, would it be possible to route the same directly into a tuner card via its s-video, and have SageTV control it that way?

[kevine]

Yes, but S-Video is not capable of carrying an HD source. You would need to use component wires from the carrier's decoding box to the HD-PVR to the PC via USB connection.

[kbro]

Originally Posted by kevine

Yes, but S-Video is not capable of carrying an HD source. You would need to use component wires from the carrier's decoding box to the HD-PVR to the PC via USB connection.

Right. So if the satellite programming is not HD, can I simply connect their STBs to the tuner card via s-video, and would SageTV recognize them?

[GKusnick]

Even if the content is HD, the STB will downconvert it and pipe it out the S-Video as SD. So you could in principle capture all of your subscribed channels in SD this way.

However this is only half of the equation. S-Video by itself does not provide any way to change channels on the STB. You'd need a separate IR blaster for that. (The HD-PVR comes with an IR blaster.)

[SHS]

Just beware that Cable box has one major down side is they will not turn them self on like Dish, DirecTV box do 2nd problem with Cable you must have HD-PVR in order to see the any HD Channel from a cable box there not like Dish, DirecTV box which can output both SD/HD over S/Video output

[Greg]

2. You control the boxes with the SageTV server not the HD Theater. The server does the heavy lifting. So you can use IR with a USB-UIRT, serial control if your boxes support them or a USB to Serial adapter like a Paterson device. Be careful what model boxes you get. Search the forums.

Help me understand how to change channels remotely (in this case a cable STB - Comcast if it makes a difference). Please be patient.....I'm completely new at this.

I assume you use the media extender remote? I assume that the media extender accepts the remotes IR signal and then sends a command to the server over the network. Then some type of IR device connects between the PC and the STB to change the channel. Is this how it works. Can 2 STB's be controlled this way?

Thanks,
Greg

[GKusnick]

You don't change channels on the STB, remotely or otherwise. The Sage server does that automatically as needed to accommodate recording tasks, using whatever STB control system you have configured. Usually that's an IR blaster attached to the server, but some STBs allow serial, USB, or firewire control.

From a user perspective, you navigate the SageTV UI, using your extender's remote or your PC client's keyboard and mouse, to find a program you want to watch. You can do that through the Program Guide or the Search menu or by entering channel numbers on the Live TV playback screen. All of these methods are equivalent in the sense that they identify the program you want. Once you've done that, the Sage server sets up a recording task for that program, assigns a tuner, and tunes the appropriate channel. But just because you may have punched in channel numbers on your remote does not mean you're remotely controlling the STB. You're just instructing the Sage server to record a particular program, and it figures out how to accomplish that.

If your tuner config involves channel remapping, the channel numbers you see in the Guide may not be the same as the ones used by your STB. So it's not as simple as punching in a number here and it comes out over there. The extender is not just an IR-over-Ethernet relay. It's a computer that executes the SageTV UI and submits recording and playback requests to the server, which figures out how to implement them using the available tuners.

[Greg]

Greg,

Thanks for the clarification.

Now to figure out what type of physical or optical connection to make between the PC and the STB's.

I don't think my Comcast boxes accept Firewire.......I'll check when I get home. Can SageTV using Firewire control 2 STB's?

Thanks,
Greg