Recording with a Nettop PC?

[Ralphjb]

For playback, I have gone completely to the HD200 and am very pleased. I am now thinking I would like to replace my hulking PC with a net little Nettop PC like the Aspire Revo. I would think these would be capable of handling the recording duties.

With the PC I would replace, I would have one R5000-HD modded tuner hooked up and one Hauppauge HD-PVR. Any thoughts from anyone on this?

Thanks.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by Ralphjb

For playback, I have gone completely to the HD200 and am very pleased. I am now thinking I would like to replace my hulking PC with a net little Nettop PC like the Aspire Revo. I would think these would be capable of handling the recording duties.

With the PC I would replace, I would have one R5000-HD modded tuner hooked up and one Hauppauge HD-PVR. Any thoughts from anyone on this?

Thanks.

Only thing I'd worry about is the speed of the hard drive!

[Ralphjb]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Only thing I'd worry about is the speed of the hard drive!

I actually record over a gigabit network to an NAS. That has never been an issue.

[paulbeers]

Placeshifter and Comskip wouldn't work as those need horsepower to pull it off. Personally I wouldn't recommend it. You would be much better off going with a lower power AMD Athlon X2 or a low end core2duo. And if size is really important you can get LGA775 socketed motherboards in ITX size. At least going this way you would never have to worry about not having the horsepower needed to do most things.

Besides, how much power difference are we really talking between an Intel Atom and an AMD 4XXXe and/or Intel Core2Duo 5XXX? At idle the AMD X2 4850e system only uses 4 watts more hour than the Atom 230 (which if you used an Atom 330 would be near equal). Under load the 4850e does use almost 50 watts per hour more, but you have to remember that the 4850e would finish anything it was doing in a fraction of the time the Atom 230 (or 330) would and thus would be in its idle state considerably longer. To me it just isn't worth it.

Here is Tom's Hardware review: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...nt,1997-5.html

Oh and I have an eeepc with an Intel Atom, while I love it for portability, it is a dog.

[Ralphjb]

Thanks for the info. I did not realize the reliance on horse power for Placeshifter (don 't use comskip). I don't use Placeshifter a lot, but I do use it.

[thomaszoo]

I had the same thought. I ended up buying this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856107043

Overall I am very happy with it. I am running XP-pro on it. It is a dual core that acts somewhat like a quad core (4 cores show up in task manager and each instance of comskip uses about 25%). It does a good job of commercial skip for HDHR files (up to 3 at a time for stability); HD-PVR files take a long time (5.5 hrs for a 1 hr show). It has gigabit ethernet and SATA 3.0 so absolutely no problems recording. It accepts up to regular 2 PCI cards (I have a fire wire card and a Hauppauge 250). It is very quiet which was one of my criteria.

On the down side, it only has space for 1 3.5" HDD and it doesn't have the best airflow for that. I have 2 HDDs that I put in a cage w/fan externally so that is not a problem for me. And it only has analog VGA output (I would have preferred DVI). If you do max out the CPU there is a good chance it will freeze up on you (so I limit comskip to no more than 3 at a time). And the power factor is not the greatest.

Overall it is doing a great job. Since I leave it on 24-7 I wanted really low power consumption. I have no regrets going down this path and would recommend it to others.

Wayne

[Ralphjb]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I had the same thought. I ended up buying this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856107043

Overall I am very happy with it. I am running XP-pro on it. It is a dual core that acts somewhat like a quad core (4 cores show up in task manager and each instance of comskip uses about 25%). It does a good job of commercial skip for HDHR files (up to 3 at a time for stability); HD-PVR files take a long time (5.5 hrs for a 1 hr show). It has gigabit ethernet and SATA 3.0 so absolutely no problems recording. It accepts up to regular 2 PCI cards (I have a fire wire card and a Hauppauge 250). It is very quiet which was one of my criteria.

On the down side, it only has space for 1 3.5" HDD and it doesn't have the best airflow for that. I have 2 HDDs that I put in a cage w/fan externally so that is not a problem for me. And it only has analog VGA output (I would have preferred DVI). If you do max out the CPU there is a good chance it will freeze up on you (so I limit comskip to no more than 3 at a time). And the power factor is not the greatest.

Overall it is doing a great job. Since I leave it on 24-7 I wanted really low power consumption. I have no regrets going down this path and would recommend it to others.

Wayne

Very interesting. How quite does it run?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I had the same thought. I ended up buying this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856107043

Overall I am very happy with it. I am running XP-pro on it. It is a dual core that acts somewhat like a quad core (4 cores show up in task manager and each instance of comskip uses about 25%).

But can you use it for placeshifter? No.

[thomaszoo]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

But can you use it for placeshifter? No.

It depends. If you have to transcode the video, then no. But over my LAN, yes. I mostly only use placeshifter to add things to my recording schedule. I really do not care to watch video over the internet on a PC. If I really wanted to I could always copy the files, either over the net or onto an SD card. I am not saying that this set up is for everyone. But for me it meets all of my needs (a little week on comskipping HD-PVR files) without waste.

Originally Posted by Ralphjb

Very interesting. How quite does it run?

It is very quiet. The power supply doesn't have a fan. There are (I think) a couple of small fans in the case plus I have a 120 mm fan on my HDDs. You really do need to evaluate your needs before diving in. As noted in my response to paulbeers it is not set up to transcode video (although I honestly have not tried it). It also would not be good to run SageTV on hooked up directly to your TV (no HD horsepower).

Wayne

[Ralphjb]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

It depends. If you have to transcode the video, then no. But over my LAN, yes. I mostly only use placeshifter to add things to my recording schedule. I really do not care to watch video over the internet on a PC. If I really wanted to I could always copy the files, either over the net or onto an SD card. I am not saying that this set up is for everyone. But for me it meets all of my needs (a little week on comskipping HD-PVR files) without waste.
Wayne

Thanks so much for your continued insight. Just to clarify, if utilizing this for Placeshifter over the Internet, you would not recommend this nettop?

Thanks,
Ralph

[MitchSchaft]

Doesn't sound like it. But if you're using it over your LAN, you'd just want a regular Client license anyway and skip the Placeshifter.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Ralphjb

Thanks so much for your continued insight. Just to clarify, if utilizing this for Placeshifter over the Internet, you would not recommend this nettop?

Thanks,
Ralph

No. If you are using placeshifter over the internet, then you need a decent proc to transcode the video to a bit rate that can be transferred over the net.

[thomaszoo]

Originally Posted by Ralphjb

Thanks so much for your continued insight. Just to clarify, if utilizing this for Placeshifter over the Internet, you would not recommend this nettop?

Thanks,
Ralph

Like they all said, not recommend for placeshifting over the internet. And I also agree that over your LAN you should be using either a client license (for a PC) or an HD extender (not an MVP unless you would only be watching SD programming).

Wayne

[Ralphjb]

Thanks one and all!