Potential User Questions - Look at my current setup

[ohpleaseno]

Hi everyone,

I've heard a lot about SageTV on the EngadgetHD podcast on by reading Geektonic. I'm pretty impressed with what it can do and I'd love some advice on how I can best utilize my current setup to migrate toward SageTV.

Okay, so my current setup is...

Windows Home Server box - stores all of my audio and video content - TVersity setup to broadcast upnp for all audio, video and pictures

HTPC - Hooked up to TV in living room, uses XBMC to watch video via upnp, Foobar to play music directly from shared folders on WHS box.

The network connection between the two is wireless-N.

The only sources currently hooked up to my HDTV are the HTPC, OTA antennae, DVD player and VCR.

So, I'm getting tired of the HTPC being hooked up directly to the TV and it seems like the SageTV HD Theater is the way to go. No more mouse and keyboard, I can sit on the couch and integrate all my sources into one box if I install a tuner card onto one of the two boxes. Here is where my main question is.

Should I...

1) Install the tuner card into the WHS box and run the PVR off of it?
or
2) Turn the HTPC into a PVR box that is controlled by the Sage and stick it headless into the closet next to the WHS server?

I'm really happy with my WHS box and I'm a bit reluctant to throw a new task onto it, especially one that will be used constantly (I would like to do Live TV off of the Sage). Hard drive space isn't an issue and the HTPC runs a Dual Core AMD64 chip (vague I know, but reading what most of you are using, it seems powerful enough without recalling the exact specs).

I'm also able to run the Cat-5 cable to the TV pretty easily, so that won't be an issue.

If you made it this far, thanks. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Jason

[ohpleaseno]

I figured it was in the wrong forum after I posted it. Thanks for moving it to the right spot.

[paulbeers]

Without knowing the specific hardware in both, it's hard to give you a definitive answer, but most likely either would probably be fine. The main cpu intensive tasks are:

1. On the Fly Transcoding - Necessary for offsite Placeshifting and HD playback on MediaMVP's (the latter will not be an issue for you)
2. Commerical Detection (the nice thing about this is that if you have slower hardware, it just works slower).

The one advantage on using the WHS box is less energy usage as you will only have one box running everything rather than two, but there does seem to be more steps getting WHS setup to work as a Sage server (others will need to comment as I don't run a WHS server).

[ohpleaseno]

Yeah, I'm definitely a fan of less power consumption and I'm sure that my current HTPC setup would get annoying being on in the closet 24/7.

I'm not interested in Placeshifting for now, so that's not a huge consideration for me.

I did some digging on my Newegg order history and came up with the specs.

My WHS box runs a 2800+ Sempron on a Foxconn's A74MX-K, 1 gig of RAM with 2.5 TB of storage.

My HTPC box runs with a Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane on an ASUS M2N68-VM and 2 gig of RAM.

If I kill the HTPC, I'll put the board and chip from it in the WHS box.