Setup Suggestions

[HuMan321]

Hi,

I saw another similar thread, but did not want to hijack it.

My setup will need to include 4 TV's (3 SD and 1 HD, but want to setup for HD in the long run with full PVR functionality) I have wired network at all locations.

Can someone recommend the purchasing options for HD Tuners (RF)? I am thinking I will want 3, (or 2 two tuners??? What is recommender for OTA these days?) but don't know if one PC could handle that many efficiently. Can you use a HD Homerun and tuners in your Server all in one seamless guide with the extenders? The PC would be running windows XP and is a P4 3GHz with 1.5G of RAM Hard Drive can only be IDE so please let me know if that is trouble. I see some tuner cards for sale that do alot of the processing on the cards themselves so was looking for input on models. These cost more so i am looking to see if they are necessary. If not, can some HD tuner cards be recommended?

I have an existing series 2 DTivo DVR that I will probably downgrade service to basic for ESPN and a few other must have channels. This DVR has a USB to RJ45 dongle active now for MRV, but I am thinking I need a card for the PC (Server) to bring in DirecTV through S Video (I don't think it has component out only SD)

It sounds like since i am wanting the DirecTV basic I will need to put the server at this location instead of upstairs where I really would like it, but that is why I am asking.
I believe I also need a USB UIRT to be able to change the DVR from any location.

I would also need an extender at each TV location along with the Sage software for the server.

My wiring is Cat 5 cables with 2 10/100 switches. Can I just replace the 10/100 switches with Gigabit, or does the wiring need upgraded to support full speed?

I would also want to watch TV on a networked PC. I believe I need to buy a software client to do this? Last, but not least possibly want to view TV wirelessly on a laptop. It looked like there might be two ways to do this and was looking for feedback on both.

I will probably buy this type of setup in stages because I am not related to anyone rich. Assuming that it was all in place would the Server PC record and hold all 4 input signals (3 HD Tuners and 1 DTV S-Video?) I noticed a post that had HD-PVR's recommended and I do not understand why unless the server can only take so much in and out. (I know it has limits, but what are they?)

Thanks for any help on designing a system for me.

[sic0048]

For OTA recordings (ATSC format to be technical) I personally would recommend the HDHomeRun (HDHR). It is a network recorder which means all the "hard work" is done by the device and then sent over the network to be recorded by the computer running Sage. This is beneficial for two reasons. First, there is no incompatability issues that sometimes arise with PCI based tuner cards. Secondly, there is little strain on the recording computer because all the work is being done by the HDHR. So even with a P4 based machine, you can have many recordings going on a one time without taxing the computer.

However, this only gets some of the channels it sounds like that you want to watch. You will need a HD-PVR to record any of your DirectTV stations. You'll need 1 Direct TV STB and 1 HD-PVR for each concurrent recording you expect to make. So if you are use to a dual tuner DVR where you can record 2 shows at one, you'll actually need 2 STBs and 2 HD-PVR to accomplish the same thing.

Regardless of the number of tuners you end up with (perhaps 1 HDHR which can record two shows at once, and 2 HD-PVRs - giving a total of 4 different tuners), you set it up to view 1 guide.

So each HD extender would have the ability to bring up the guide and the guide would show all the channels that are available to your system. That would include all the OTA channels and DirectTV channels (using the above example). They are simply listed in order by channel number. So a person isn't even going to know which tuner they would actually be using.

For example - here is a completely made up guide and how it would appear.

Channel 4 - NBC (local OTA channel)
Channel 5 - PBS (local OTA channel)
Channel 6 - Discovery Channel (DirectTV)
Channel 7 - ABC (local OTA channel)
Channel 8 - SpikeTV (Direct TV channel)
Channel 10 - SpeedTV (Direct TV channel)
etc
etc
etc

If your wiring is actually Cat5e (not just cat5) then odds are you can simply change out the switch and get gigabite speeds on the network. If it is actually the older cat5, then I'm not sure what type of speeds you could achieve.

Hopefully that answers some of your questions.

[Clift]

I will attempt to answer all your questions if I can

Originally Posted by HuMan321

Hi,
Can someone recommend the purchasing options for HD Tuners (RF)? I am thinking I will want 3, (or 2 two tuners??? What is recommender for OTA these days?) but don't know if one PC could handle that many efficiently. Can you use a HD Homerun and tuners in your Server all in one seamless guide with the extenders?

All these cards can be installed on the machine you have. It doesn't take much to write to the hard drive and incorporating them into one guide is what mostly everyone does. That's not a problem at all.

The PC would be running windows XP and is a P4 3GHz with 1.5G of RAM Hard Drive can only be IDE so please let me know if that is trouble. I see some tuner cards for sale that do alot of the processing on the cards themselves so was looking for input on models. These cost more so i am looking to see if they are necessary. If not, can some HD tuner cards be recommended?

2 parts:
1) HD Tuner cards for OTA and Clear QAM (Cable TV) do not need to encode anything because the HD/Digital signal is already in digtal MPEG2 format.
2) You definitely want to get a tuner card with hardware encoding. But remember, these are analog cards and will not function after the digital transition for OTA. They wwill still work fine if connected to a set top box (Cable box or directv/dish box) via coax, composite or s-video. I agree with the above comment that the HD Homerun is the way to go. Dual tuner, and no compatibility issues.

I have an existing series 2 DTivo DVR that I will probably downgrade service to basic for ESPN and a few other must have channels. This DVR has a USB to RJ45 dongle active now for MRV, but I am thinking I need a card for the PC (Server) to bring in DirecTV through S Video (I don't think it has component out only SD)

You can control the directv box with the serial plugin

It sounds like since i am wanting the DirecTV basic I will need to put the server at this location instead of upstairs where I really would like it, but that is why I am asking.
I believe I also need a USB UIRT to be able to change the DVR from any location.

You can move the box to upstairs as long as the satellite feed cable can be fed to there. Using the SageTV extender and the serial channel change, you can control the box from the downstairs.

I would also need an extender at each TV location along with the Sage software for the server.

My wiring is Cat 5 cables with 2 10/100 switches. Can I just replace the 10/100 switches with Gigabit, or does the wiring need upgraded to support full speed?

As mentioned earlier, CAT5e (and CAT6) can do gigabit, CAT 5 only 10/100. You may want to consider getting a switch to handle all that traffic: 3 tv's plus the hd homerun and your networked pc and laptop

I would also want to watch TV on a networked PC. I believe I need to buy a software client to do this? Last, but not least possibly want to view TV wirelessly on a laptop. It looked like there might be two ways to do this and was looking for feedback on both.

You would need the sagetv client to watch on your networked PC. I think what you are thinking of for the laptop is the placeshifter client. That one transcodes the video on the fly based on network capability. i personally wouldn't recommend it. And I know that your P4 system could not handle the encoding in a way that would be acceptable plus the fact that it would probably bog down the system, making the clients suffer.

I will probably buy this type of setup in stages because I am not related to anyone rich. Assuming that it was all in place would the Server PC record and hold all 4 input signals (3 HD Tuners and 1 DTV S-Video?) I noticed a post that had HD-PVR's recommended and I do not understand why unless the server can only take so much in and out. (I know it has limits, but what are they?)

Most people recommend the HD PVR for a number of reasons. Mostly it is because it is the only way to get HD from a satellite or cable box for ALL the channels. In your case you are still using SD. You have to ask yourself: do you want to pay more now for future proofing when and if you go HD? Or do you want to spend less now and eventually spend more IF you decide to get HD PVRs? Remember, the HD PVR can not tune by itself. Is HAS to use a source such as a cable box or a satellite box. If you are just looking for tuners that can connect to the box via s-video or tune cable tv in standard definition, then get a hardware encoder card. There's a list on the sagetv website of supported tuners
http://www.sagetv.com/requirements.html?sageSub=tv