Getting Started on HD Server.

[HDMission]

OK everyone, the equipment is purchased and delivered and I am in the process of assembling the server.

Cooler Master RC-810 (Already had it)
Sony DRU-800A DVD/CD RW (Already had it)
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P ATX Intel
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.4GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core
Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
ASUS EAH3450/DI/256M Radeon HD 3450 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB 3.5” Sata 3.0Gb/s (x3)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.1 500GB 3.5” Sata 3.bGb/s
WinTV-HVR-2250
Corsair TX650W Power Supply
Windows Home Server OS
SageTV Media Center (Bundled with 1st Extender)

Hauppauge HD PVR (x2)
D-Link DGS-2208 10/100/1000Mbps 8-Port Desktop Green Ethernet Switch
SageTV HD Theatre (HD200) (x2)

Dish Network Vip211 (x2)

Issues I need help with:

USB-UIRT for the Dish Network 211s – I need some clarity on the workaround for the Hauppauge driver that can’t handle more than one IR Blaster. Paulbeers or anyone else, I am looking for a reco:
A USB-UIRT
A compatible driver.
A description of your physical setup
(from what I understand paulbeers has 1 USB-UIRT Blaster that controls his two 211s. I assume that means that the single USB cord with IR blaster that is placed in some proximity to the two 211s that it can control both boxes. Just want to understand what that range/distance is.)

HDDs – I scraped up the cash and got a 500GB for the OS and will use the three 1 TB drives to add to the pool. S M E (or anyone else) I read your tutorials on WHS & 64k clusters. I am going to go that route.
Should I stretch the C: since I have a dedicated OS drive?
If I stretch the C:, what should I stretch it too?
Just to help a simple guy understand, stretching the C: allocates the space you need for the OS and utilizes the remaining D: for the pool.

Thanks for the input all, it is very helpful. I am well on my way.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by HDMission

HDDs – I scraped up the cash and got a 500GB for the OS and will use the three 1 TB drives to add to the pool. S M E (or anyone else) I read your tutorials on WHS & 64k clusters. I am going to go that route.
Should I stretch the C: since I have a dedicated OS drive?
If I stretch the C:, what should I stretch it too?
Just to help a simple guy understand, stretching the C: allocates the space you need for the OS and utilizes the remaining D: for the pool.

Thanks for the input all, it is very helpful. I am well on my way.

You will NOT have a dedicated OS drive, it's not possible. During install the system drive WILL be partitioned, no way around it.

I would stretch a 500G "system drive" to make the C partition 100G, personally.

[briands]

Originally Posted by HDMission

USB-UIRT for the Dish Network 211s – I need some clarity on the workaround for the Hauppauge driver that can’t handle more than one IR Blaster. Paulbeers or anyone else, I am looking for a reco:
A USB-UIRT
A compatible driver.
A description of your physical setup
(from what I understand paulbeers has 1 USB-UIRT Blaster that controls his two 211s. I assume that means that the single USB cord with IR blaster that is placed in some proximity to the two 211s that it can control both boxes. Just want to understand what that range/distance is.)

I'm not Paul, but I'll answer this one since I have a USB-UIRT controlling three 211 boxes stacked on top of one another. The first step is to open the 211 manual and find the remote setup procedure. You'll need to set them to different IR channels.

Once you've done that, just aim the usb-uirt toward the front of them and start the sage source setup. When prompted for "how do you control" select USB-Uirt. When you are prompted to learn the IR commands, don't waste too much time with it, I never had luck with that and instead learned them the hard way (don't really remember that process). After yo ufinish the setup, close sage (including service if running) and you'll want to modify the files in Sage\common\remotecodes\usb-uirt\ with the info from here
Note - you'll need to know the name and IR channel for each of your tuners to get this part right.
As far as proximity, it is amaizing how well this combination works considering how picky some IR controls are. I have my USBUITR attached Parallel to the side of the 211 boxes on the right side not more than 6" in front of the face and have no problems - see photo (ignore the mess). YMMV.

Hope this helps.

[HDMission]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

You will NOT have a dedicated OS drive, it's not possible. During install the system drive WILL be partitioned, no way around it.

I would stretch a 500G "system drive" to make the C partition 100G, personally.

S.M.E (or anyone else with enlightenment)
I am going to be bringing my server online this weekend and had to ask a quick question. You recommend 100G on the C partition to house WHS, SageTV, etc.... I was looking at the minimun requirements for WHS and it says 80G. I couldn't find the requirements for SageTV (I have to admit I struggle with the Sage home site when in need of information). I don't mean to offend by questioning your experience, just want to confirm 100G is ample for the task?

Thanks again for helping a novice.

[TwistedTweaker]

Comcast offers a cable card option instead of a box. Does anyone know if there is a PC I card that accepts these cards?

Is all the work of using a HDHR worth the savings? I am mainly looking to add my DVR into my HTPC. I also like the option of commercial skipping. I am worried about my electric bill and HTPC lasting if I have to leave it on all day to record TV.

Any suggestions? I am ordering my parts next week and want to build it right.

Thanks,

Sean

[gplasky]

For cablecard solutions you need to purchase a whole new PC that is certified to support cablecard. Windows Media Center is the only app that currently works with that solution.

HDHR will get the ClearQAM stations from cable which is usually the HD locals and maybe a few more. Or it can get Over the Air ATSC or both. It is worth it if most of the stuff you want to record is on those channels. ANother solution is the HD-PVR connected to your cable set top box. It can record any of the HD channels thru the component out of the cable box.

Last PC I had was recording for two years before I ugraded to a new box. Now that box is used as a client. It ran 24x7 when it was recording. Now as a client is runs maybe 4-5 hours a day.

Gerry

[TorontoSage]

Originally Posted by davephan

The Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P mainboard looks like a great choice. It has built-in RAID, can accept 8 SATA drives, has 8 USB ports, has dual 10/100/1000 built-in NICS, and can accept faster DDR2 memory. The price is pretty cheap with the $20 rebate on the mainboard. The only downside with the mainboard is it has only two PCI slots.

The fast dual-core is a good choice too. You might consider the Q9650 3.0 gig quad-core if you can spend more ($325) on the CPU. It looks like the 3.0 gig quad-core really came down in price recently. The fast multi-core CPUs really helps for compressing video files and processing files with Comskip.

I also think you could run at 2 gigs memory, but your getting the 4 gigs memory pretty cheap with a $20 rebate.

I would recommend setting up a separate, smaller hard drive the OS, maybe about a 120 - 160 gigs, and dedicate the 1 TB drives for file storage formatted at 64k blocks.

Make sure to check for any firmware updates with the Seagate 1 TB drives. I have Segate 1.0 and 1.5 TB drives, they work great, and mine did not need the firmware updates.

Dave

Some say, as SME did, that he would 'take a slower quad core over a faster dual core any day' , others say to buy a quad core in order to 'future proof' your server and still others say 'the faster and more cores the better'. I am all for future proofing and faster perfomance, but I think you need to at least know what you are getting something for spending the extra money, whether it is justified or not.

Other than transcoding, comskipping and possibly placeshifting, quad core and higher L2 cache has negligible to no effect over a dual core on SageTV recording and playing back of multiple video streams. This is borne out by user experience on here and benchmark tests done by tomshardware.com, anandtech.com, etc. (although they did not test SageTV specifically they did test encoding and other simliar application tasks). So unless you are doing placeshifting extensively and want to improve its performance or want to improve on the fly comskipping performance there is no need to spend more money for a quad core cpu (or a cpu with a faster clock speed, whether dual or quad core) unless you want to improve comskip or transcoding file processing time offline. You can also spend more money for a cpu with a higher clock speed and that would also help with processing files, everything else with the cpu specs being the same. So, for most people, a quad core cpu is not going to make a difference. And for comskipping and transcoding it might not matter to you if the process takes a 2 hours or 8 hours, especially if you are running it at night. (Actually, does anyone have any benchmark tests on the time to run comskip or a transcode but using a dual vs quad core cpu on the same file?)

If you want to future proof, you could buy a dual core cpu and save a few hundred dollars in the process and then just upgrade to a quad core later. Before I did my research I was going to buy the Q9550 (which at $275 and 2.8GHz, which seems like a way better deal than the Q9650 as it has the same other specs). After I did my research I bought a Core 2 Duo E5200 (2.5GHz, 2MB L2 cache) cpu for $57 from Dell a couple weeks ago. So I saved $218 over buying the quad core. If the E5200's performance is not to my liking, I just replace it. And, if and when I am ready to do that, the Q9550 and the Q9650 will likely cost much less than they do today, as they are always coming down in price as new cpu's are introduced (and maybe even the 65 watt versions of these 95 watt chips will be way less expensive too). In fact, the dual core and quad core would likely cost me much less combined than buying the one quad core now. By the way, I am getting the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R, as it's a bit cheaper than the UD3P. I found that the only reason to get the UD3P is if you want SLI/Crossfire support. Both boards accept the Intel dual or quad core cpu's or any Intel socket 775 cpu for that matter.

[TwistedTweaker]

Originally Posted by gplasky

For cablecard solutions you need to purchase a whole new PC that is certified to support cablecard. Windows Media Center is the only app that currently works with that solution.

HDHR will get the ClearQAM stations from cable which is usually the HD locals and maybe a few more. Or it can get Over the Air ATSC or both. It is worth it if most of the stuff you want to record is on those channels. ANother solution is the HD-PVR connected to your cable set top box. It can record any of the HD channels thru the component out of the cable box.

Last PC I had was recording for two years before I ugraded to a new box. Now that box is used as a client. It ran 24x7 when it was recording. Now as a client is runs maybe 4-5 hours a day.

Gerry

I have reviewed both of these options and am still not clear on the best choice. I am building my HTPC and was hoping to loose my Comcast box in the process. It looks like I can use HomeRun to down grade from a HD DVR to a standard HD box? Is that worth the 9 bucks a month I will save? Having to run my HTPC all day?

How is your set-up configured?

Thanks,

Sean

[HDMission]

I’m back, having a baby really delayed this thing.

Anyway, the server is together, WHS installed (stretched C and 64K clusters thanks to SME). I installed the HVR-2250 (I am using the most current (non-beta) driver from Hauppauge site, installed using the .exe file in the download). with the HD PVR, prior to Sage load, checked them and they were working. Then I installed Sage, loaded 1 (of 2) HD PVRs as a source and everything is just fine. Tried to add the 2250 can’t get it to work.

I have read a lot of the posts on the 2250 but haven’t found anything that has helped. Here are a couple details of what I have tried.

I select ADD NEW SOURCE and get the following choices for the 2250

Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture
Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture #2

I have only selected the first one
Any reason why it is WinTV-7164 and not WinTV-2250?

Next I have to select COMPOSITE, COMPOSITE_2, DIGITAL TV TUNER, S-Video, S-Video_2 or TV TUNER. I have tried the two below.

Digital TV Tuner – Loding Preview, Please Wait…. Is all I get for the preview
TV Tuner – Blue Screen with a lot of static.

I proceeded to have Sage scan for the channels for each

Digital TV Tuner – No Signal
TV Tuner – Blue Screen with a lot of static.

Any thoughts?

[HDMission]

One more thing, as I hit the Post button my HD TheaterExtender is now acting up. Basically it is powering down for no appearant reason. I can turn it back on, go to watch live tv and it will shut off after about a minute.

Some help here would be much appreciated as well.

[dgeezer]

One more thing, as I hit the Post button my HD TheaterExtender is now acting up. Basically it is powering down for no appearant reason. I can turn it back on, go to watch live tv and it will shut off after about a minute.

I recently had this same thing occur with my HD200. It turned out to be a problem with my HDHomeRun tuner. After the firmware update I lost all my channels. When I tried to view live TV the HD200 would go black and power down. Once I got my channels scanned it was fine again. So I think that this will go away once you get the 2250 card sorted out.

Sorry that I'm no help with the 2250.

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

You will NOT have a dedicated OS drive, it's not possible. During install the system drive WILL be partitioned, no way around it.

I would stretch a 500G "system drive" to make the C partition 100G, personally.

I don't understand completely what you are saying here. When the Sage software is loaded are you saying "Sage" will guide you to partition the existing OS drive and ask how much space you want to allocate to the OS? Then allow you to format the rest of the space in 64 clusters?
I have an existing 350GB drive with Windows XP on it that probably is not formatted in the 64 clusters. I was planning to add Sage software to this drive, but if I could capture some of the extra space for video by formatting a seperate partition, I would love to do it, but don't know the best way.
Thanks

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by HuMan321

I don't understand completely what you are saying here. When the Sage software is loaded are you saying "Sage" will guide you to partition the existing OS drive and ask how much space you want to allocate to the OS? Then allow you to format the rest of the space in 64 clusters?
I have an existing 350GB drive with Windows XP on it that probably is not formatted in the 64 clusters. I was planning to add Sage software to this drive, but if I could capture some of the extra space for video by formatting a seperate partition, I would love to do it, but don't know the best way.
Thanks

That quote from SME is regarding a Windows Home Server install and has nothing to do with the SageTV install on Windows XP. Windows Home Server automatically partitions the first drive into 2 partitions, a 20GB OS drive and the balance left being the second partition "DATA".

You have 2 choices for getting your existing drive into 2 partitions. Reinstall Windows XP and create an OS partition from within the install or get a 3rd party product like Acronis Disk Director to repartition it non-destructively and then format your new partition with 64K blocks.

Gerry

Gerry

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by HDMission

I’m back, having a baby really delayed this thing.

Congratulations!

Next I have to select COMPOSITE, COMPOSITE_2, DIGITAL TV TUNER, S-Video, S-Video_2 or TV TUNER. I have tried the two below.

Digital TV Tuner – Loding Preview, Please Wait…. Is all I get for the preview
TV Tuner – Blue Screen with a lot of static.

I know Sage has never been good about the previews for the digital tuners. My 1600 has similar issues during setup, but it has never affected its ability to pick up stations.

I proceeded to have Sage scan for the channels for each

Digital TV Tuner – No Signal
TV Tuner – Blue Screen with a lot of static.

Any thoughts?

Naturally the obvious question would be if the cable feed is good. Have you tested it somehow? Maybe swap the cable and see if that helps, or swap lines with the HD-PVR cable box? What are you using to change channels on the HD-PVR cable box? Could be it's trying to utilize the IR blaster too?

[HDMission]

Originally Posted by Djc208

Naturally the obvious question would be if the cable feed is good. Have you tested it somehow? Maybe swap the cable and see if that helps, or swap lines with the HD-PVR cable box? What are you using to change channels on the HD-PVR cable box? Could be it's trying to utilize the IR blaster too?

Djc208,
Prior to installing Sage, I loaded the WinTV software and viewed my OTA channels through the 2250. I might have removed the software (leaving the driver of course). So the feed is good, I will recheck it though just to be positively sure. Any other thoughts or others out there that had issues with the Haupaugge 2250 that can shed some light on this.

On another note I found out what shut down my ht200 the other night. The server was shut down by an error "GSvr.exe encountered a problem and needed to close." From what I have been able to find out it is a power saving program for my DLink. Looks like it doesn't pay to be green. I will be finding that and deleting it soon.

Any insigth to my 2250 problem would be much appreciated.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by HDMission

Djc208,
Prior to installing Sage, I loaded the WinTV software and viewed my OTA channels through the 2250. I might have removed the software (leaving the driver of course). So the feed is good, I will recheck it though just to be positively sure. Any other thoughts or others out there that had issues with the Haupaugge 2250 that can shed some light on this.

You might try re-installing the drivers just in case the removal of the WinTV software somehow affected them.

Do both tuners provide the same results? Have you tried setting up the second tuner yet?

Oh, and as for the Sage listing of the tuners. That's normal, I think it has something to do with the hardware of the tuner itself, my 1600 shows up similarly.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

I think you meant "Component", not "Composite". Composite is the single RCA cable, generally with yellow colored plug.

To OP:
I started with 2 R5000 modded VIP-211 boxes on Dish Network. After I added the HDHR, I found that I almost never have a conflict on Dish, and I watch a whole lot of TV. I'm grandfathered in on their old "HD Absolute" package, which is a steal at $29/month.

I'd personally go for the HDHR over a PCI tuner. Easier to integrate, and you have a whole lot more flexibility in where you can place it (you can have it close to the antenna to minimize cable loss). Sometimes you can find them on sale for around $130 too.

The R5000 is a bit expensive and ties you to one specific satellite box, so I'd suggest going with the Hauppage HD-PVR unless you really want to spend the money for the best possible video quality at the smallest possible file sizes. Also, the latest Dish HD single-tuner box (the VIP-211k) doesn't work with the R5000. You have to use a plain VIP-211 (no "k").

If I were starting from scratch in your situation I'd probably get:

An HP mediasmart server w/ WHS (if you can be patient with comskip processing time and don't want to run anything else serious on the server)
* EX470 refurbs available from the HP store for $379, but you'd need to install more RAM (only has 512MB) and possibly a better CPU.
* EX485 (new) is $550, and has enough RAM (2GB) and CPU (2GHz Celeron) already, and comes with a 750GB drive instead of a 500GB one.

HD Homerun ($130-150)
HD-PVR ($200)
Leased Dish network VIP-211k (should be free setup)
WD 1TB Caviar Green (~$90-110 depending on sales)
SageTV bundled w/ HD-200 ($250?)
A second HD-200 ($200)

Not exactly cheap when you add it all up, but it'll be the best damn media server you can put together for that price. And it'll backup you home PC automatically overnight too!

I tried SageTV on a WHS setup and kept getting audio decoder errors. Do you use your WHS as a playback machine or just a server? Have you tried or have you successfully ran the tv tuner on the WHS server? Mine is right behind my plasma (other side of the wall) and I would love to use WHS as the playback machine. Let me know your experience.

Thanks

[heatvent]

Wow what a thorough set of responses!

Here's my two sense (btw I think you and I are on similar paths - my considerations have been a mirror image of yours).

WHS - love the idea but make sure you are just planning to use as a server! It will not successfully play tv (in my experience). Also, prepare yourself for some manual workarounds on drivers. Most XP drivers will work but may load with limited functionality (my Intel graphics drive don't have a system tray and don't take advantage of the DXVA capabilities). Also some drivers may say you have the wrong OS so you may need to extract and manually install. In other words, the more you load onto the WHS, the more tweaking you will probably need to do to get limited functionality.

Alas, I will probably end up using Vista instead of WHS. Reason being is my server is just behind a wall from my main TV. It seems like a wast to spend $200 on an extender when I can hookup directly although I love the idea. I also have some concerns over choking my network if I am streaming HDTV to 2 different TVs.

If money is not an object or your server can't be near the TV in an inconspicuous way, the WHS would be the way to go.

Drives - I would follow the recommendation for a smaller separate drive for TV recordings. If you are using this to house all of your media/photos, I wouldn't want to overwork the hard drives in fear of losing one of them.

Also, I would look at the WD green drives. I picked up a couple from Newegg on sale for $89 each. They are really quiet and super super energy efficient compared to the other offerings out there.

RAID - WHS hates RAID. For me, the WHS install would fail if I had RAID selected on the motherboard. The workaround for me was to set to IDE then start the install. Once the setup files were copied to the HD and the system rebooted to continue the install, I changed the setting back to RAID and loaded the drivers via the F6 option when the setup restarted. Then you need to download the RAID software (I am using Intel Matrix Manager) and add the other hard drive after the fact. Not sure if there is better experience with non-Intel RAID systems.

Codecs - I have tried the PowerDVD codecs vs the SageTV ones. On a Pentium D 2.8 ghz playing HDTV, I am 80-90% w/ the SageTV codecs and 30-40% with the PowerDVD ones - this should be a consideration - more money but less power and system resources on the other end.

HVR-2250 - Love it! Only 1 cable input for 2 hybrid tuners = better signal. Be sure to use the beta drivers 27091.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by HDMission

I’m back, having a baby really delayed this thing.

Anyway, the server is together, WHS installed (stretched C and 64K clusters thanks to SME). I installed the HVR-2250 (I am using the most current (non-beta) driver from Hauppauge site, installed using the .exe file in the download). with the HD PVR, prior to Sage load, checked them and they were working. Then I installed Sage, loaded 1 (of 2) HD PVRs as a source and everything is just fine. Tried to add the 2250 can’t get it to work.

I have read a lot of the posts on the 2250 but haven’t found anything that has helped. Here are a couple details of what I have tried.

I select ADD NEW SOURCE and get the following choices for the 2250

Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture
Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture #2

I have only selected the first one
Any reason why it is WinTV-7164 and not WinTV-2250?

Next I have to select COMPOSITE, COMPOSITE_2, DIGITAL TV TUNER, S-Video, S-Video_2 or TV TUNER. I have tried the two below.

Digital TV Tuner – Loding Preview, Please Wait…. Is all I get for the preview
TV Tuner – Blue Screen with a lot of static.

I proceeded to have Sage scan for the channels for each

Digital TV Tuner – No Signal
TV Tuner – Blue Screen with a lot of static.

Any thoughts?

What is your OS? This won't work locally on WHS in my experience. Try installing the client software and tune from there.

[heatvent]

Quick question for those you talked about using a HomeRun HD and have dish network. Will the HomeRun decode the satellite signal?