Newbie with several questions

[Phurious]

I decided to start looking at a non-cable company supplied DVR solution today for the first time, so please bear with me. I have been digging around the forums today looking for answers and to further clarify some points, but I am not finding what I am looking for, perhaps due to the fact I may not be searching for the correct terminology.
I want to build my own PVR for use to record, playback, and stream media. PC hardware is not my going to be my problem (I think). The hardware I plan to use:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo Quad 3.02GHz
Mainboard: EVGA 780i FTW
Memory: 8GB RAM
Video: nVidia 8800GTS

Here is where the questions begin. I have several 1TB drives lying around, and I am considering putting them into the above machine for storage, but my question is does SageTV have a problem writing to a network drive? I already have a sizeable server with plenty of storage available (12TB in RAID6), so it would be great if I could do all my recording to the RAID on the server versus storing it locally on the box. I have gigabit wired in all the rooms; I trust this should be adequate bandwidth?
I must also confess I am confused when it comes to tuners. I was considering two WinTV-HVR-2250s as my tuners, but again I have questions.

• Does using these tuners negate the need for my local provider’s cable box?
• If so, how can I be sure they will work on my provider’s service?
• Can I use splitters to multiply my connections, or will I have to have additional drops installed?
• Can I use these in a combination of HD/Analog recording at the same time?
• Is there a recommended splitter so I do not lose A/V quality?

Sorry for the long post, and any help is appreciated!

[davephan]

Welcome to the SageTV forum Phurious!

I do not use a network drive for recording, however, I think SageTV can use a network drive.

If you use 8 GB RAM, you will need to use the newer capture devices. The older capture devices such as the Hauppage PVR-250 and PVR-350 need to operate with less than 3 GB RAM.

You need to decide what you will use for content. There are a number of options, over the air, cable, and satellite. You can use a mixture of the different types. For example, I have a dual tuner HDHomerun for local over the air HD channels. I have a HVR-2250 for analog cable TV and a HD-PVR for cable HD and cable SD digital channels. The analog cable is received without a cable set top box. The HD and SD cable is received with a HD cable box. A USB-UIRT can control three devices. More than three devices can be controlled with one USB-UIRT if the set top boxes can use different IR channels. The HVR-2250 can also receive clear QAM if your cable system offer it. The premium movie channels won't be in clear QAM, so you'll at least need a set top box for those channels.

I recommend getting one HD-200 media extender for each TV. The HD-200 will playback HD or SD content, but is limited to 100 meg Eithernet.

The quad core 3.0 gig processor sounds good.

I also recommend that you use disk imaging software to backup your system. If you take images during the build process, you can always recover back in case you have problems. When you become more dependent on SageTV, you will really want the ability to recover to an image in case there are any problems in the future. A SageTV system can run trouble free for years, but any computer can become a big pain if it has to be rebuilt from scratch, consuming hours of time and hassle.

I use a splitter on my over the air antenna and my cable channels, and I don't have any problems.

There are many other programs that improve SageTV too, like automatic commercial skipping, a webserver and many others.

The really nice thing about SageTV is that you can start small, stay small, or grow. When you add more tuners, you'll need more disk too. I've found when you build out to several TB of disk, you end up recording a lot of things that you will never have time to watch. I'm up to 6 TB now, and I don't have time to watch most things that get recorded. It's tough to delete program that I might want to watch someday...


Dave

[Savage1701]

Here's my 2-cents worth:

1. I think SageTV needs logon/password to use network drives if run in service mode. I don't run in service mode so I don't need that.

2. Your setup seems fine with CPU horsepower and such.

3. I use RAID 6 on a 3Ware controller. I think you are smart to want to record to that array if you can, unless you just want to record a couple of shows and throw them away.

4. I use 2250's for over-the-air. They can also handle QAM and analog cable, but only in certain combinations. Check the Hauppauge website. If your system is digital, and you need a cable box, then you need a solution that can take S-video or component HD. For me, that's a Hauppauge HD-PVR and USB-UIRT remote blaster.

5. I think you are fine with GbE as long as you have a reasonably good switch. Better than layer 1 but not layer 2 needed. I use Netgear Smart Switches. I use HD200 Extenders. Use them and your life will be easier in your other rooms.

6. I would try to get whatever channels I could that were networks with an antenna rather than cable. QAM can be difficult, but not necessarily. HD-PVR's are expensive. I use mine for HBO HD, Discovery HD, etc.

7. There are no hard guarantees. Your system may need a modest splitter/amp but good ones can be had for $35 or so.

8. Try to use cards and minimize USB tuners if you can. USB can be problematic if your tuner count rises.

Probably not much help, but maybe a start.

[Phurious]

Gentlemen, thank you for your responses! The information provided definitely helps clear some of my questions up, but it also helped create a few more.

Being in the Dallas market, I have Time Warner Digital Cable. Applying what I gleaned from your replies:

1. Since I do not have an OTA, the HVR-2250 will be little use to me.
2. In order to record my digital cable I will require at least 1 HD-PVR

Is the HD-PVR a single tuner device? Will I require a set-top box for each HD-PVR? Considering I was trying to This appears rather costly, especially consider most of the shows I am going to record are not local channels but Digital Cable HD channels. I say "most" because there are some locals I would like to record that are in HD. Which brings me to my next question; Are local channels that are broadcast over Digital Cable encrypted? Reading the forums I have seen some posts saying yes, and others saying no.

Thanks again for your replies.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Phurious

Is the HD-PVR a single tuner device? Will I require a set-top box for each HD-PVR?

Strictly speaking, the HD-PVR is not a tuner at all. It's an encoding device that takes an analog video signal (component, composite, or S-Video) and digitizes it. It can do this for only one stream at a time. So yes, you'll need an HD-PVR for each simultaneous recording you want to make, and an STB for each HD-PVR to tune the channel and provide the analog video for the HD-PVR to capture.

That said, you should look into OTA if you're in range. You can probably get an antenna and a dual OTA digital tuner for less than the price of a single HD-PVR (and no monthly STB fee). The most cost-effective solution for many people is a combination of one HD-PVR with two or three OTA or QAM tuners.

[davephan]

I don't understand why you cannot receive over the air TV in the Dallas area. You might consider the HDHomerun unit. It was two tuners and is much cheaper than the HD-PVR. You can install the HDHomerun unit near the antenna, and run Eithernet from the HDHomerun to your computer. You could then add a HD-PVR later with a HD cable box.

If you had an HDHomerun, then you could try receiving clear QAM signals on your cable TV to determine how many channels are clear QAM. Others on the forum, correct me if I am wrong: If clear QAM means you can pick up the cable signals directly on your HD TV, then you could determine if the cable system has clear QAM before buy a HDHomerun.

Some cable systems have a lot of clear QAM signals, some have either none or nearly none. If you cable system has a lot of clear QAM now, it might not in the future. You may have to adapt you SageTV system to your cable system if the cable system changes. The trend for many cable systems seems to be eliminating clear QAM. Perhaps not all cable systems will follow the trend.

The reason to have multiple tuners is to avoid recording conflicts. If you partition your channels, such as OTA, analog cable, and digital cable between different tuners, your recording conflicts will decrease.

You can start off with one tuner and one HD-200, building up over time to spread out the cost of the system.

If you are not sure if SageTV is right for you, maybe there is someone in the Dallas are on the forum that could show you their SageTV setup.

Keep reading the forum and asking questions. There are a lot of people that are just waiting for people to ask questions.


Dave

[pjpjpjpj]

One thing no one has mentioned here is the HD200 extender. If you are planning on watching on a TV, get one (or many) of these and you take all the work load off your PC. If you want to watch (specifically HD) on your PC, then your rig should be fine - but if you intend on watching on a TV set, just buy an HD200 and you can have an old dinosaur like mine (see specs).

That being said, here's an "intro" guide I whipped up a long time ago. It gets buried here, but if I see a post with common questions, I'll pull it out... check the attached document in the first post:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41428