A hello, and request for advice!

[jonsmith]

Hi everyone!
I've been looking around for a while now for a whole home audio/video solution and have finally decided that SageTV is probably the way to go.

I have no experience with Sage whatsoever and hence was hoping for a little advice or links to where I can read up on some of this stuff.

At home I am in the process of wiring up the home network, from here I would like to have a server hosting all the Sage content.

What I was hoping for is some info on what tuner cards I should be looking for over here for my server, or perhaps what (or how many) tuner cards should I use to complement the following:

sky hd (hdmi distribution), terrestrial aerial, blu-ray dvd player.

while I would love to grab shows from the skyHD feed, I have no idea if this is possible, but I do have 2 extra slots on the old satellite dish (LMB???).

Also anyone have any experience of WHS, any suggestions on what I should be running hardware wise? It's gonna be a new build so anything is possible software wise, but financially I want a solid server, plenty of storage and livetv/recording tv if possible.

Finally, having not had any experience with SageTV whatsoever, does anyone know if the webgui displays info for "now playing" or even album art for music?

Thanks for any info you can give me, even if its just pointing me in the right direction.

Jon

[jaminben]

You really need to read the forums first as the answers you need are all here. I didn't see anything from above that Sage cannot do.

I use WHS with 3 HD extenders and a pc client without any issues. So thats not a problem, tuner wise, well you can see what I use from my sig below. I don't have $ky so you will need to read what other people have gotten to work, but again its not impossible to get working.

I do believe the webui does display cover art for media files but I'm not sure if it shows whats playing music wise, it does however show what films or tv shows are playing and can be stopped/played etc so I would guess music is the same.

Oh, Hello and welcome to you as well

[John@TunerUK]

Hi there, and welcome
I use the Hauppauge Nova T 500 for my freeview, and whilst it works very well, it does have issues with waking from standby. For that reason alone I'd look elsewhere for a freeview tuner. The Sage main website has a full list of supported tuners with plenty to choose from. I'd go for a dual tuner though.

Sky isn't quite as easy as Freeview. You have to put your viewing card back into the sky box overnight every 4 weeks or so, because the PC won't update the card. There are ways to avoid that, but you're looking at an extra couple of hundred quid for the convenience. There's also the issue of dual sky tuners. I should imagine you have only one sky viewing card, which can only be used in one sky tuner, so any others can only really be used for freesat. Again, there's ways around this, but as before, you're looking at more expense. The system is excellent for HD though, because if nothing else, you can store so much more than the standard box providing you have the HDD space.

A little note about TV Guide info. Freeview is easy, you just tell sage you don't have an epg source, and it uses the standard broadcast data.
Sky again makes life a bit more complex. You'll get now and next info through the dish, but if you want any more than that (Which you will), you need to get that info off the net. It can all be done automatically, and once it's setup. you can just forget about it. But if you want reliable info you're going to have to pay. On the plus side, it's so cheap it's not really an issue (See www.digiguide.com)

Blu Ray discs can't currently be played through Sage. So you'll have to have other software on the machine you're using to view them, and if you want to play the latest audio types (Dolby True HD, DTS Master Audio etc) then you'll have to be really picky about your hardware, because the last time I checked there was only one sound card that was able to play them. Although there may be more options now. And don't forget that your graphics card needs to be hdcp enabled.

I think that lot should have covered a few bases. But have a good read through the forums. Especially the UK section for Sky info.

[jonsmith]

cheers guys,

I have looked around the forum quite extensively for the past couple of days, I guess I feel that I am missing some of the basics. For example what does pooled share's mean, and what are the pro's/con's. I assume that it means that all the sagetv clients have the same video access, but that sort of seems like something you should do anyway.

Also with regards to the two spare feeds coming off my sat dish, should i run them straight into a sat tuner? I don't have a second sky card so I assume i need some sort of card reader connected to the wms?

also thanks for the info on the webgui, as i am planning on creating a girder+sagetv custom page to control all of my stuff via IR etc over the web (allowing iTouchs control of the whole house)

One last point, does anyone have any advice on what RAID array I should be using, I know there are pro's and cons to 5 vs 1 etc, but I thought that there might be one which works particularly well with sage and a wms.

Anyways, will continue reading, will hopefully get there in the end.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by jonsmith

I have looked around the forum quite extensively for the past couple of days, I guess I feel that I am missing some of the basics. For example what does pooled share's mean, and what are the pro's/con's. I assume that it means that all the sagetv clients have the same video access, but that sort of seems like something you should do anyway.

I think your refering to WHS pooled shares which basically means whenever you add a new HDD to your system it just gets added to the storage space of your D drive. You end up with one big HDD made up of smaller drives. If that makes sense SME has done a very nice tutorial about using the pooled drive as your recording drive which you may want to look at.

Originally Posted by jonsmith

Also with regards to the two spare feeds coming off my sat dish, should i run them straight into a sat tuner? I don't have a second sky card so I assume i need some sort of card reader connected to the wms?

You can just plug (screw) them straight into the Sat card in your pc, this is what I've done and it allows me to veiw FreeSat.

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by jaminben

You can just plug (screw) them straight into the Sat card in your pc, this is what I've done and it allows me to veiw FreeSat.

Although keep in mind that generally, Freeview channels have a higher bitrate than the Freesat versions. Might as well make use of the spare feeds for BBCHD/ITVHD though.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Although keep in mind that generally, Freeview channels have a higher bitrate than the Freesat versions. Might as well make use of the spare feeds for BBCHD/ITVHD though.

Nice, didn't know that Glad I've set mine up so that the two Freesat tuners only carry what the six Freeview tuners don't, completly by chance.

[jonsmith]

Originally Posted by jaminben

You end up with one big HDD made up of smaller drives. If that makes sense

Perfect sense now that I think about it! So does this mean you dont set up raid arrays?

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Although keep in mind that generally, Freeview channels have a higher bitrate than the Freesat versions. Might as well make use of the spare feeds for BBCHD/ITVHD though.

See! That's a little gem of info also! So when I set up sage (might set up a temp server just to play around) is choosing which tuners record preferentially fairly self evident?

Originally Posted by jaminben

Nice, didn't know that Glad I've set mine up so that the two Freesat tuners only carry what the six Freeview tuners don't, completly by chance.

So prob another super basic question, does number of tuner cards just = number of possible recordings at once? or does it dictate how many live video streams I can have?

Seeing as how the server's doing very little transcoding, should I go duo or quad core?

Jon

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by jonsmith

Perfect sense now that I think about it! So does this mean you dont set up raid arrays?

Nope, no raid arrays for me

Originally Posted by jonsmith

See! That's a little gem of info also! So when I set up sage (might set up a temp server just to play around) is choosing which tuners record preferentially fairly self evident?

I dont worry about that as mine are specific to the service, six tuners have access to Freeview and two have Freesat so it doen't matter which tuner has priority over the other as they can only tune to their own service.

Originally Posted by jonsmith

So prob another super basic question, does number of tuner cards just = number of possible recordings at once? or does it dictate how many live video streams I can have?

Yes, One tuner per recording channel.

Originally Posted by jonsmith

Seeing as how the server's doing very little transcoding, should I go duo or quad core?

I went duo and can record 6 channels at once whilst playing back 3 channels and watching a HD movie on another client. I wish I had gotten a quad just because I could have, although I don't need it.

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Although keep in mind that generally, Freeview channels have a higher bitrate than the Freesat versions.

Generally I think that is incorrect as there is far more bandwidth available on satellite. The one exception is possibly BBC One as that is a constant 4.5Mbps on DVB-T (Freeview) while most regional variations of that channel on DVB-S are transmitted at a lower rate. BBC One London at an appaling average of just 3.4Mbps although if you choose your region wisely some are better e.g. Scotland & NI are about 5Mbps. As far as I know apart from DVB-T BBC One all other channels are statistically multiplexed with the other channels on the same transponder/MUX & average bit rates are higher on satellite than on terrestrial.

[Mark SS]

Originally Posted by MCE-Refugee

Generally I think that is incorrect as there is far more bandwidth available on satellite.

That would be true if the bandwidth didn't cost pound notes. Certainly worth checking each channel to compare but as a generalisation, Freeview is better for the most part.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/frees...esolution.html

http://www.avforums.com/forums/frees...bandwidth.html

http://www.avforums.com/forums/frees...-freeview.html

[MCE-Refugee]

Originally Posted by Mark SS

Certainly worth checking each channel to compare but as a generalisation, Freeview is better for the most part.

The tables of average bit rates that you linked to do not support your argument.

http://dtt.me.uk/
http://linowsat.de/0282/all/0282.shtml

Incidentally I noticed that the transmission rate of Film4 on either platform is appalling.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by jonsmith

One last point, does anyone have any advice on what RAID array I should be using, I know there are pro's and cons to 5 vs 1

Sage will split records between multiple disks simultaneously, giving good throughput, so long as free space is equal on all recording disks. Often it's not. I prefer to use RAID, currently a big RAID10 array, but I would think RAID5 is a no-no, the write speed is just rotten and with HD you'll need decent write speeds... RAID0 or RAID10 only I would think.