New to Sage & HD-PVR & Building an HTPC

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

It bothers big time, so I'll stay away from that. I'll just pop them in a stand-alone Blu-Ray player as that's a lot less work (and BluRay players don't cost much these days). And, I am only watching them in one location anyway and won't be distributing them through the extenders.

And so, if one only wants to watch BluRays in the home theatre, one never wants to watch them on the extenders, and one always rents not buys and only watches once, is there any advantage to ripping them (other than you get a copy of the media)? Am I right in saying that in this situation, the only advantage is that when you are in the middle of a movie and you want watch the rest of it in the bedroom, you can watch the rest of it there without moving a disc. With physical media you'd have to take it out of the player and insert it into another player in the bedroom (which means buying another player) and fast forward to find where you left off, unless you had the BluRay input into a matrix switch and distributed throughout the house.

What do most people with SageTV do that want to rip BluRays? Do they have a server and then a workstation to rip BluRays? Or do they run a different OS on the server so that it is easier to rip BluRays on it? It seems a lot of people are ripping BluRays on here but I do not know what their set ups are.

I have a blu-ray drive in my WHS machine. I use it to rip the CD's, DVD's and now Blu-ray's to add to my server.

I've taken both approaches. Sometimes, I pop it in the server and sit there and rip it. Other times I rip it on my laptop and transfer over the network.

Eventually the server will go in the closet and be headless. By then, I'll probably write a script to automate the ripping process.

[SWKerr]

I really do not watch movies more than once but the kids stuff gets watched over and over. All the kid moves end up in the permanent video library. The kids have coastered quite a few disks and now they just get ripped and put away. This goes double for the BluRays since they are kind of pricy. Even though I have the BluRay drive in one of the HTPCs and can watch them from TMC I generally just rip the rentals when I get them and watch them in Sage. I will then delete it when I’m done. I just like using the Sage interface and functionality and I also have the option to watch on either of the big screens I have. The process is pretty simple and although it takes time to complete my actual effort is minimal. I really hate DVDs and BluRays because of all the crap that you have to watch before you can eve get to the movie. I just want the F’ing movie. BluRays also take forever to load for some reason and the slowness seems to be the same in dedicated players as well.

I have never tried to rip or play a BluRay on the WHS but I would expect based on the underlying architecture that it would work fine.

I am using WHS for play back and have not had any issues with it to date. I have dedicated HTPCs on the big sets but I have some old analog TVs that I run Sage to via coax from the server in the closet. I have a converter box that takes the VGA outputs to the coax. I also have IR repeaters that let me control the interface from the different rooms. The WHS plays everything great. When I set it up I had it attached to the 27” LCD and everything look good there as well. I do not use it much but I can say that it appears to work fine if that is something you want to do. I did have to setup a special user to do the automatic login which was kind a pain (WHS security is pretty tight) but everything else worked just like on a normal PC.

[TorontoSage]

This is all great information. I do have some DVDs, but very few, that I would like to archive and ripping them on my laptop and transferring them to the SageTV WHS server or just ripping them on the server is something I'd like to do. With BluRays, many seem to complain that they are losing the extra crap (titles, etc) when they rip them and I thought this was a disadvantage but it seems like it's an advantaage. I just want to see the movie too most of the time (it's rare that I want to watch the credits).

I haven't even bought any of the hardware or software yet, but where would I find the information to modify the WHS server to allow me to play BluRays and what is the hardware required on the WHS server, other than a BluRay drive (any BluRay brand/model recommendations?). The home theatre display that I will be playing the BluRays on will be able to be direct connected to the WHS server, but will also have an HD200 attached to it.

[Peter_h]

I personally, ripped all of my dvds and movies without the menu's and extra features. Only a few needed the menu's for playback, ie TV boxed sets. If someone wants to watch the extra features, you can pull the actual DVD.

Nothing special has to be done with WHS if you are just going to rip the Blu-Ray's for archiving. You do not have to modify WHS in any way. You just need to install a Blue-Ray drive and buy a copy of AnyDVD-HD.

AnyDVD-HD is a program that removes the copy protection and region protection for DVD's and Blu-Ray's. It is the only program right now that will do this for Blu-Ray's. It also has a very active community forum and some of the best support.

There are many other programs that will do this for DVD's as well as some free alternatives but for Blu Ray, AnyDVD-HD is it.

For the Blue Ray drive, I use this one. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827136133 It's been an awesome drive.

[TorontoSage]

Thanks. I investigate the AnyDVD-HD software last night and I will be getting that.

I should have clarified, though. I'd also like to play the BluRays, not only rip them, from the WHS server and am wondering what other hardware/software (and software modifications to the WHS server) other than the BluRay player itself, I would need to play them. I tried to find instructions on how to modify the WHS server software last night, to no avail (SME alluded to the fact that there are such instructions somewhere). I'd like to direct connect the WHS server to the home theatre display (which will already have an HD200 connected to it to watch recorded TV).

For hardware, am I right that I would need a graphics card with component video and/or HDMI output and something like a USB-UIRT to control the HTPC/WHS server? Any recommendations on the video card or any other hardware brand/models I'd need would be appreciated.

[chughes]

Just a word of caution. As a Rogers customer as well, I would make sure the they haven't disabled the Firewire ports on the STB's you are getting from them.

[wayner]

I am pretty sure that firewire ports have been active since Rogers did a software upgrade on their boxes in January of 2007. This is the case for SA3250HD, SA4250HD and SA8300HD.

That is not to say that Rogers will not disable them with a future upgrade and if that is the case then I will have to use the other two zones of my USB UIRT!

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

Thanks. I investigate the AnyDVD-HD software last night and I will be getting that.

I should have clarified, though. I'd also like to play the BluRays, not only rip them, from the WHS server and am wondering what other hardware/software (and software modifications to the WHS server) other than the BluRay player itself, I would need to play them. I tried to find instructions on how to modify the WHS server software last night, to no avail (SME alluded to the fact that there are such instructions somewhere). I'd like to direct connect the WHS server to the home theatre display (which will already have an HD200 connected to it to watch recorded TV).

For hardware, am I right that I would need a graphics card with component video and/or HDMI output and something like a USB-UIRT to control the HTPC/WHS server? Any recommendations on the video card or any other hardware brand/models I'd need would be appreciated.

Why would you want to connect a computer and the HD200 to the same display? That defeats the purpose of the extender. The extender was designed so that you would not have to put a pc next to a TV. It eliminates the noise associated with a PC and the largest headache with the PC's, codecs. The extenders just work out of the box.

I would also rethink putting the WHS machine in the home theatre. WHS is designed to be a headless server. Meaning, it is supposed to sit in a closet or corner somewhere. Now that doesn't mean that you can't use it as a regular PC but it was not designed for that. Typically, when you get a server up and running, you don't touch it.

I don't know about everyone else but my machine is pretty loud. There is a reason it is going into the closet. It would not fly with the wife if that was sitting in the living room near the TV. I have 5 1/2 TB of storage - 6 drives. It is just not possible to build a PC with that many drives spinning with proper airflow and be quiet.

Also, Sage does not natively play blue-ray's. Meaning, that you can not put a blu-ray into your drive and just hit play. Sage also does not support all of the current audio formats that blu-rays are distributed. This is part of why we rip the movies. Some of the movies need to have their audio tracks converted to a supported format.

Having said that, you can use dynamic menus and have it lauch an instance of powerdvd 8. PowerDVD8 should be able to play all blu-rays. You could then use a usb-uirt and girder to map the remote to control powerdvd. Some people have gotten this to work. However, this is not something that can be done through the extender. You would need a client PC.

Since you already have a blu ray player, I would just keep that and get an extender for the home theatre. Then, have the WHS tucked away somewhere where it will have good airflow and noise is not a concern. You can rip what you need to the server to distribute to the extender and when you need to quickly watch a rental or some bonus features, the blu-ray player is there.

[TorontoSage]

Originally Posted by Peter_h

Why would you want to connect a computer and the HD200 to the same display? That defeats the purpose of the extender. The extender was designed so that you would not have to put a pc next to a TV. It also eliminated the largest headache with the PC's, codecs. The extenders just work out of the box.

I only wanted to do that for the home theatre display for the sole reason that I want to be to play BluRays (which I only rent and never buy and don't necessarily want to rip because I only would watch them in the home theatre) on the WHS server, which I hear is possible without too much trouble. I want to avoid having a stand-alone BluRay player in the living room if it's not too much work. (But see below, I have to rethink this based on your comments).

Originally Posted by Peter_h

I would also rethink putting the WHS machine in the home theatre. WHS is designed to be a headless server. Meaning, it is supposed to sit in a closet or corner somewhere.

I don't know about everyone else but my machine is pretty loud. There is a reason it is going into the closet. It would not fly with the wife if that was sitting in the living room near the TV. I have 5 1/2 TB of storage - 6 drives. It is just not possible to build a PC with that many drives spinning with proper airflow and be quiet.

The design of the living room (where it the display is) is sunken 30" and there is a set of 4 stairs. The cabinet neatly fits in between the stairs and knee wall with the top of the cabinet flush with the higher floor with the back of the cabinet open to the large crawl space. The server would go in the cabinet, that has a door on the front. Being open to the back there is good airflow. If it is too noisy I'll just move it into the edge of the crawlspace where it meets the full height basement (meaning it would be very accessible). But then that would mean I wouldn't be able to physically reach it from the living room to play Blu-Rays.

Originally Posted by Peter_h

Also, Sage does not natively play blue-ray's. Meaning, that you can not put a blu-ray into your drive and play it through sage. Sage does not support all of the current audio formats that blu-rays are distributed. This is part of why we rip the movies. Some of the movies need to have their audio tracks converted to a supported format.

Having said that, you can use dynamic menus and have it lauch an instance of powerdvd 8. You could then use a usb-uirt and girder to map the remote to control powerdvd. Some people have gotten this to work. However, this is not something that can be done through the extender. You would need a client PC.

Since you already have a blu ray player, I would keep that and get an extender for the home theatre. Then have the WHS tucked away somewhere. You can rip what you need to, to the server and when you need to quickly watch a rental or some bonus features, the blu-ray player is there.

Ok I'll have to rethink this. I was under the impression that I could just make some easy modifications to the SageTV WHS server and pop in a Blu-Ray disc and play it. But, regardless of whether this can be done or not, if noise is going to be an issue, even with the cabinet door closed, then that nixes the idea as we just can't have noise in the living room.

What I would do in that case is just rip the BluRay from my laptop and copy it to the server and play it through the extender connected to the home theatre display or play the disc through the standalone BluRay player.

But, would I notice any difference in quality playing a BluRay ripped to a file through an extender and disc on a standalone player?

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

I only wanted to do that for the home theatre display for the sole reason that I want to be to play BluRays (which I only rent and never buy and don't necessarily want to rip because I only would watch them in the home theatre) on the WHS server, which I hear is possible without too much trouble. I want to avoid having a stand-alone BluRay player in the living room if it's not too much work. (But see below, I have to rethink this based on your comments).

To play the blu-ray on WHS or any PC, you just need software that will play it. The LG drive I linked you earlier comes with PowerDVD8 that will play blu-rays. Past that, the standard blu-ray rules apply with HDMI and handshaking unless you add Anydvd-hd to the mix. There is nothing special to make it work otherwise.

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

The design of the living room (where it the display is) is sunken 30" and there is a set of 4 stairs. The cabinet neatly fits in between the stairs and knee wall with the top of the cabinet flush with the higher floor with the back of the cabinet open to the large crawl space. The server would go in the cabinet, that has a door on the front. Being open to the back there is good airflow. If it is too noisy I'll just move it into the edge of the crawlspace where it meets the full height basement (meaning it would be very accessible). But then that would mean I wouldn't be able to physically reach it from the living room to play Blu-Rays.

Read up on WAF. It's all about ease of use and user experience my friend. If I told the wife she had to walk around the corner and possibly into a crawl space to put a dvd in, I shutter to think the response I would get.

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

Ok I'll have to rethink this. I was under the impression that I could just make some easy modifications to the SageTV WHS server and pop in a Blu-Ray disc and play it. But, regardless of whether this can be done or not, if noise is going to be an issue, even with the cabinet door closed, then that nixes the idea as we just can't have noise in the living room.

As I said, this can't be done with an extender. Calling an instance of PowerDVD would be the only way to pop in the Blu-ray and play it. You can not do this natively in sage. You would have to use a client PC and call up an instance of the program ie, through dynamic menus, and then have it close and bring back sage when you are done. Not saying it can't be done or it's that dificult but if you already have a blu ray player, and can avoid a client PC, that's what I would do.

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

But, would I notice any difference in quality playing a BluRay ripped to a file through an extender and disc on a standalone player?

I don't own a blu-ray player. I only have blu-ray rips that I play through the extender. I have nothing to compare to.

[S_M_E]

Again, ripping BR to use with Sage (other htreads will tell you want you need to do that) or using a stand-alone player is your best bet.

[TorontoSage]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

A lot (if not all) of my WHS tutorials are unsupported but I'm comfortable with my setups and changes.

Can you let me know where your tutorial is on how to set up a WHS SageTV server with a BluRay drive, or is there not one? I've searched and searched but cannot find any information on this.

[SWKerr]

You should be able to playback the BluRays on the WHS you plan to build without any problems with whatever software will come with the drive you buy. I do not have a BlyRay on my WHS but I just played one of the rips with TME on the server via VGA on my server to the 27" LCD and it looks great. (Assumes you bought a decent video card.)

If you are willing to invest in AnyDVD HD you can rip the disk very easily and play them on the extender. (Recommended in you case)
This is how easy it is:
Disk comes in the mail. I immediately put it in the machine and launch AnyDVD. (You can set it to always be running and skip this step.) Open TsMuxerGui (Free software). In the tool navigate to the drive letter that is the BuyRay disk and then to the directory where the video files are stored. (Always in the same place.) Sort by by file size and select the biggest file. (This is the main movie) There will be a list of video and audio options all selected after it reads the file. You really just want two, the main movie and audio. You will probably want to downgrade the audio to DTS depending on your setup. (one additional click) You will want to tell it where and what you want the output file to be stored. When you are done you will have a moviex.m2ts file that can be played by the extender or on an HTPC thru Sage.

This will take you about 30 seconds after you have done it a few times. It will run for longer than that but you can do anything else while it runs. (30 minutes) There may be a few disks that will be more complicated than this but that is rare.

If you are running WHS as a headless server. (No monitor attached) then once you put the disk in the server you can go to any machine on you network and connect to the server with Remote Desktop, which if you have never used, creates a window on the remote machine that is just like being logged in from the machine itself. Everything you need to maintenance the machine can be accessed this way.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

Can you let me know where your tutorial is on how to set up a WHS SageTV server with a BluRay drive, or is there not one? I've searched and searched but cannot find any information on this.

I don't have one for that. My other WHS tutorials are on the WHS forums.
My "other" WHS tutorials...

The reason you can't find one is most people use WHS headless so most people don't put BR drives on WHS.

EDIT:
While I have my WHS hooked up to a KVM, I rarely use it. To use WHS as a desktop, you'll have to install other desktop SW, like DX9, codecs, decoders, players (like pdvd8), etc...

[TorontoSage]

I have finally started acquiring parts for my SageTV system, but so far only the ones external to the WHS Server I plan to assemble. I have two Hauppauge HD PVR's connected to a single laptop (Dell Latitude D620, which has an Intel T7200 Core 2 (2.0 GHz) CPU laptop running Windows XP Pro 2000 with SageTV installed. I have successfully recorded programs from a Rogers SA 8300HD PVR on it and have now ordered an HD200 to test an external HDTV screen before I acquire and put together the WHS server parts.

But, something came up in my testing. I have an external 500GB Western Digital My Book hard drive connected via USB to the laptop. I designated this external drive as the place that SageTV should record programs onto. When I played any SD or HD programs that were recorded via SageTV back on the laptop via SageTV they kept sputtering, so I figured that the 2 GHz cpu in the laptop simply couldn't handle playing back video in SageTV. I also tried the Arcsoft TotalMedia Extreme Theatre software that came with the HD PVR to play the same files and they still sputtered. So then I figured it must be the way SageTV recorded the files. But then I thought why not copy the video to the laptop hard disk to see if it was the My Book that was the problem. Well, the WD My Book was indeed the problem. I have since recorded and played back other videos and every time the laptop will play the files back properly but the My Book won't. In fact I've recorded live TV and played back a recorded program in SageTV, while also playing back a program in VideoLAN and Quicktime, all 4 video simultaneously and had n problem.

So, given that I need to buy at least one 1TB hard drive for the server, I investigated what drive to buy and came across some a number of complaints about Western Digital hard drives (both external My Book and internal Caviar Black) having some type of DRM firmware on them that limits the sharing of media files whether DRM protected or not. I just can't believe this! Just what does WD expect people to do with these large drives if not to record and play media files? Sounds like big brother rearing its ugly head.

So, I am wondering if anyone else has come across this with respect to Western Digital and also just what internal drives people have had good success with in a WHS server running SageTV.

[wayner]

I would never recommend using an external hard drive for applications like a PVR. I have six hard drives in my Sage WHS PC and I have 3x 1TB Seagate, 1x750GB Seagate, 1x1.5TB Seagate and 1x500GB WD (system). I don't think the drives matter as long as they are internal.

[TorontoSage]

Well I am only using the external My Book pending having the server assembled. I did try copying the files to a different external USB drive (a 60GB 3.5" drive I had left over from my previous laptop) and did not have the sputtering issue. So, I am wondering if the Western Digital drive limiting media file sharing is the issue. There were quite a few articles about it on the net, even with internal drives.

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

Well I am only using the external My Book pending having the server assembled. I did try copying the files to a different external USB drive (a 60GB 3.5" drive I had left over from my previous laptop) and did not have the sputtering issue. So, I am wondering if the Western Digital drive limiting media file sharing is the issue. There were quite a few articles about it on the net, even with internal drives.

The DRM only comes into play if you are using the WD software and sharing the files.

If you are using it to record to, you shouldn't be using the connector software. You should instead be mapping the drive.

I think the problem is more with using an external drive. That has bad idea written all over it.

[TorontoSage]

Originally Posted by Peter_h

The DRM only comes into play if you are using the WD software and sharing the files.

If you are using it to record to, you shouldn't be using the connector software. You should instead be mapping the drive.

I think the problem is more with using an external drive. That has bad idea written all over it.

I am not using the connector software and it still happens every time. No one that posted messages regarding the WD mentioned the connector software, so I guess that is the issue. But I had thought I also read that it was in the drive firmware (but maybe that is only enabled when one uses the connector software). But, now I tried mapping to my local laptop drive and, at least with live TV, I now get the sputtering too. I am going to now check whether that live TV that was recorded also sputters when being played back through SageTV.

Once I get my server configured I will definitely not be using any external drives. Does anyone know the maximum number of internal drives that can be installed (number of drive bay issues aside)? Is it based more on the number of power supply connectors (assuming the output wattage of the power supply is not an issue)?

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

I am not using the connector software and it still happens every time. No one that posted messages regarding the WD mentioned the connector software, so I guess that is the issue. But I had thought I also read that it was in the drive firmware (but maybe that is only enabled when one uses the connector software). But, now I tried mapping to my local laptop drive and, at least with live TV, I now get the sputtering too. I am going to now check whether that live TV that was recorded also sputters when being played back through SageTV.

Once I get my server configured I will definitely not be using any external drives. Does anyone know the maximum number of internal drives that can be installed (number of drive bay issues aside)? Is it based more on the number of power supply connectors (assuming the output wattage of the power supply is not an issue)?

If you are asking if sage or WHS has a drive max then no. WHS has a max but it's unkknow what that is.

I believe that beefcake is working with a guy that is testing his WHS drive balancing tool that has 23 drives.

I have 5 tb drives. I'm hoping that I woun't need 23 TB anytime soon.

As long as you are powering them properly, you will be fine.