Recommend HTPC For Dedicated Media Server

[Greg]

I don't currently have a dedicated computer or SageTV. I'm in the research phase and thanks to this site and the helpful responses that I've been getting I pretty much have decided to go with SageTV.

I would like some advice for building a dedicated media server and can you also recommend a pre-built unit. I never built a computer before, so I'm not sure what I'm in for........could be fun!

- CPU speed (I undestand that auto commercial skip is a hog)
- RAM
- Hard drive size (multiple vs a single drive)
- Video card
- Vista vs Windows 7
- 32 bit vs 64 bit
- etc.

Are there any popular recipes?

Thanks,
Greg

[davephan]

It depends on how much money you have to spend, although there are some general guidelines. I prefer the custom built machine. Comskip, ShowAnalyzer, and compressing videos are very CPU intensive. You first have to decide if you want to go Intel or AMD. I started with AMD and now use Intel. The CPU could be dual or quad core. I have a dual core, but the next CPU will be a quad. Over 2 gig CPU speed and closer to 3 gig if the budget allows.

At least one gig ram, preferably two gigs. Some tuner older cards have trouble if you have more than 4 gigs RAM.

Drives. One boot drive which also containing your programs. Several video drives all formatted with 64k blocks. RAID is an option to protect video files or copying the files to another drive. WHS is another option for protecting the video files.

Some people have trouble with 64 bits, some do not have trouble. Firewire tuning won't work with 64 bits.

What is your video content source? HD or SD? Cable (analog, clear QAM, digital), satellite, over the air, etc? That will help determine which tuners to get.

If you use a set top box, a USB-UIRT is a good method for the SageTV system to change channels, and works on both cable and satellite boxes if you periodically switch services.

You can always start small and build up. It helps if you have a larger case and power supply, then you won't have to upgrade either as you expand.

You didn't mention media extenders. You should get a HD-200 for each TV.


Dave

[Greg]

Originally Posted by davephan

What is your video content source? HD or SD? Cable (analog, clear QAM, digital), satellite, over the air, etc? That will help determine which tuners to get.

Both, HD and SD. OTA ATSC, cable: analog and digital. Probably an HDHomerun for OTA. HD-PVR for HD from Comcast STB. Not sure for analog from Comcast DTA box.........right now I'm getting extended basic service without the box...........cable straight into TV. But that's going to change very soon.

I still need to figure out how many of each tuner type I will need.........that almost seems like the hardest part.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Originally Posted by davephan

You didn't mention media extenders. You should get a HD-200 for each TV.
Dave

HD-200 for sure..........possibly 5 of them if this works out well. I'll start with 2 and see how things go.

I'm also interested in streaming DVD and Blue Ray.

Thanks,
Greg

[davephan]

You might try starting out smaller and build up. Maybe one HDHomerun and a HD-200, or, maybe a HD-PVR and a HD-200, just to make sure that SageTV is the right solution for you. I don't recommend trying to use the built-in IR blaster with the HD-PVR. A lot of people have trouble with the built-in IR blaster with the HD-PVR, but there are a few people who are using the built-in IR blaster. You could also start using older, cheaper cards like the 150, but I think you'd be better off using the newer technology.

Five years ago, I started with one Hauppauge 350. The video from the card went to the TV's input and the 350 also recorded programming through S-video with a USB-UIRT to change the channels on the set top box.

Using HD-200s is much better than trying to use one card. Don't bother with the cheaper MVP extenders, since the HD-200s audio and video are far superior and more reliable.

I have a HDHomerun for OTA HD channels. The OTA channels are only setup on my HDHomerun. If there is a cable outage or rain fade when I had Dish an DirecTV, the locals still are recorded. A 2250 for analog cable without a set top box. A HD-PVR with a USB-UIRT, for HD and digital cable using a HD set top cable box.

You can also put your DVD collection on SageTV. I use AnyDVD and sometimes DVDFab6. The DVDs are ripped to the hard drive. I rename the ripped directory for each DVD. The DVD collection is much easier to use, the DVDs don't have to be found around the house. Skipping chapter marks is much quicker than using a DVD player. I don't have a blueray yet for the computer, so I haven't tried using bluerays yet.

Dave

[Greg]

Originally Posted by davephan

You might try starting out smaller and build up. Maybe one HDHomerun and a HD-200, or, maybe a HD-PVR and a HD-200, just to make sure that SageTV is the right solution for you.

I will definetely start out small, as you suggest.

Originally Posted by davephan

A 2250 for analog cable without a set top box.
Dave

Currently, I have analog cable without a set top box on 2 TV's. This won't last long, as Comcast will be going all digital, except for the locals, which will require their DTA set top box to convert the digital signal to analog.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 2250 should still work with this box, as the signal will be analog coming out of it...........should be the same signal going into my TV as it was without the box.

Thanks,
Greg

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Greg

I will definetely start out small, as you suggest.

Currently, I have analog cable without a set top box on 2 TV's. This won't last long, as Comcast will be going all digital, except for the locals, which will require their DTA set top box to convert the digital signal to analog.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 2250 should still work with this box, as the signal will be analog coming out of it...........should be the same signal going into my TV as it was without the box.

Thanks,
Greg

The 2250 will work with clear QAM, analog cable, and OTA HD. I also have Comcast, and the last time I checked for clear QAM there were only a couple channels that I don't normally watch, but I haven't heard of Comcast analog cable going away in my area yet. I've never tried using it for OTA HD since I have the HDHomerun for OTA HD. The 2250 has an S-video input, one wire component video input, and L/R audio inputs. So you could hook up the 2250 to the cable box, or maybe use it for OTA HD when the clear QAM and analog cable are gone.

If you are stuck using Comcast set top boxes in the future, then you might be better off with a HD-PVR, a USB-UIRT, and a HD set top box.

You might also need to have set top boxes by your main TVs too if you have any channel surfing people in your household. SageTV is pretty slow for channel surfing. Although you can make it less painful by surfing the menus for programs. It takes a few seconds to switch from one channel to another channel.

So maybe your decision which tuner to select could be based on if you want to start off with HD or not. Do you have any HD TVs? The HD content will playback on SD TVs, although the top and bottom of the screen have black bars, so the picture is a bit smaller, but works. The Comcast HD set top box also works directly with a SD TV. I have three Comcast HD set top boxes. One is connected to the HD-PVR, one is connected directly to a 73" HD TV, and the other is connected to a 27" SD TV. We will be replacing the 27" SD TV with a HD TV pretty soon. The old 27" SD TV will then move to a seldom used room and have only a DVD player and older SageTV MVP as video input sources.

Dave

[Greg]

Originally Posted by davephan

You might also need to have set top boxes by your main TVs too if you have any channel surfing people in your household. SageTV is pretty slow for channel surfing. Although you can make it less painful by surfing the menus for programs. It takes a few seconds to switch from one channel to another channel.

I'm still trying to figure out my configuation: what rooms will need STB's, what rooms definetely need HD, etc.. Even though I'm going to start out small, I'm also planning for the best case scenario........every room connected. I'm not going to supply every room with Comcast HD boxes.......in most cases the HD content that I watch is on the locals, so OTA will be the best case anyway.
I wired my house with 2 cable drops and 1 CAT 5e line per room. I'll be connected directly for those channel surfers, as well as an HD-200 hook-up. All I should have to do is select the TV's input to change from direct feed or SageTV.

Originally Posted by davephan

So maybe your decision which tuner to select could be based on if you want to start off with HD or not. Do you have any HD TVs? The HD content will playback on SD TVs, although the top and bottom of the screen have black bars, so the picture is a bit smaller, but works.

Dave.

I do have one TV with Comcast HD set top box............got to watch your Vikings beat up on my Bears in glorious HD. At the most, I would get one more HD box.

Tell me if this is how it works. Let's say all of my TV's (w/ HD-200's) are running live TV. Sage actually selects the tuner based on the channel that I want to watch, based on priority, what's being recorded or scheduled to be recorded, etc.. As a user, when you are watching TV you really don't know what tuner is being used at any given time and you really have no choice (other than how you initially set it up).........you don't tell Sage I want FOX on OTA HDHomerun #1, for example. Sage does all of the management and selection for you...........you really shouldn't care.

Can you give an extender in one room priority. Let's say I want to watch my beloved Bears over the best HD feed possible.........that would probably be the OTA via HDHomerun (better than Comcast cable feed). Well, because either everyone is watching TV or something is being recorded, etc. resulting in OTA via HDHomerun not being available (already in use) can my extender, basically by brute force, take control.........let Sage figure out an alternate path for someone else and if none exist.......too bad!

Thanks,
Greg

[Clift]

Greg,

A few suggestions:

If you're going to have multiple HD200's I would say go for maximum RAM, like 3 GB if you can. Running Windows 7 will helpw ith resources, since it seems to do better than Vista. Although Vista is a perfectly capable OS. My SageTV server runs on Vista. Get yourself a triple or quad core. But realize your server will be on all the time, so you may want to get a 65W CPU. The new Athlon II's run at 45W for dual core. Although Comskip requires CPU, in reality, if your server will nto be used for anything other than being a SageTv server (ie, no websurfing, chatting, watching videos, etc) then your will have plenty of CPU cycles to spare. It all depends on how you watch TV. Are you wanting to watch your shows immediately after they end and expect the commercials to automagically be marked? Or are you happy with them being available a few hours later or the next day? Do you want to mark the shows or re-encode them? What i'm getting at is that a fast dual core can do the job, but a triple or quad core would be better. but you need to balance, and see if you actually need all that power. A good place to spend your money is on fast low latency memory and more hard drive space. Oh, and more hard drive space. I say that twice because you mentioned 5 HD200's. I assume that you will have a lot of recordings going on at the same time and you will run out of space quickly on a TB drive once you start loading up Blu-ray and DVD rips. The other thing I would also say is make sur you get a motherboard that is built with good parts. The disk subsystem as well as the USB bus will be stressed (HD PVR, lots of read/writes) so you want something that's going to be robust. That does nto mean Intel vs AMD, it just means get a good motherboard from a solid manufacturer. Good luck.

[Clift]

Originally Posted by Greg

Can you give an extender in one room priority. Let's say I want to watch my beloved Bears over the best HD feed possible.........that would probably be the OTA via HDHomerun (better than Comcast cable feed). Well, because either everyone is watching TV or something is being recorded, etc. resulting in OTA via HDHomerun not being available (already in use) can my extender, basically by brute force, take control.........let Sage figure out an alternate path for someone else and if none exist.......too bad!

You could manually cancel the recording and start your Bears game, but you'd probably get some moaning and groaning from your family because you chose to watch the Bears and not the Dolphins. Oh and they might be upset at having their show stopped too

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Greg

.got to watch your Vikings beat up on my Bears in glorious HD.

They might turn in to the LA Vikings since the billionaire owner wants a new stadium given to him by the state, even in this economy, and is threatening to move, probably to LA.

I don't think there is a way to have a higher priority for one HD-200 box verses another box. I don't watch much Live TV though SageTV, since I have the extra HD cable boxes at the two main TVs. I don't know if two live TV streams use two tuners, even if both TVs are on the same channel, or if they use only one SageTV tuner.

You would need extra HD cable boxes hooked up to your SageTV system to avoid live TV conflicts if you have several people trying to watch live TV at the same time.

It sounds like you did some planning with two cable lines and one Eithernet per room. It's a good idea to have OTA in each room. Another method that might work is to centralize a cable box without SageTV for channel surfers. Before we had SageTV we had a satellite box which could be watched from two different TVs. The TVs were not on at the same time, so they could share the set top box without conflicts. The IR signals were sent from the remote TV location to the set top box with an IR repeater device.

As Clift said, extra processing power doen't hurt if you can afford it, and it takes a lot of diskspace. However, if you get many TBs of disk, you will never have enough time to watch much of what you record! I've seen that happen before I got to 6 TB. But I will probably still add even more disk!

Dave

[DOS64K]

You mentioned in your OP that you were looking for a media "server". While a dedicated HTPC can fulfill this role, I would highly recommend you go the WHS route.
1. HTPCs are the biggest source of conflicts with customized PVRs (drivers, chipsets, etc.). These forums are full of posts of folks you wonder why "their" rig can't perform like everyone elses.
2. Sage has a version that works with WHS, and it works VERY well. HD Homeruns and HD-PVRs run side-by-side and behave nicely. You can still build your own custom WHS rig as the conflicts mentioned in item 1 above generally don't apply since extenders will serve as the front end (see 3).
3. HD200s do all of the heavy lifting, so you don't need a lot of CPU to run a 24/7 server. If you absolutely need to run a commercial skipper during recording you'll need a little more ooomph. Check with others here to see what they're running.
4. Need more space? WHS has you covered - just add more disks. It also manages your media with organized folders and optional backup of files. Of course it also does its primary role of keeping your other PCs backed up pretty well too.
5. Bottom line: If you're going to run a 24/7 server, why not make it do more and do it better than a traditional HTPC.

Good luck with whichever route you choose!

[davephan]

Windows Home Server is an option for a SageTV server. It's ease of disk expansion is a very strong selling point. WHS also backs up other computers, another plus. However WHS has one very serious flaw, WHS cannot backup itself. As far as I have been able to determine, it is not possible to take an image of the WHS operating system and recover the WHS operating system with the image. Therefore, SageTV, all the related programs, all the drivers, and all the hundreds of configuration parameters would have to be done to recover the system.

If the WHS SageTV system quits working properly, it could be time consuming and painful to resolve the problem, instead of just recovering to a recent image when the system was functioning without problems.

Perhaps WHS could be used just as a file server for the video storage, but the downside is then setting up two computer systems for SageTV. The SageTV system not using WHS could then be recovered with an image and the WHS server could be recovered by scratch with far less recovery effort.

RAID is another method to protect the video files. It would be cheaper than setting up a WHS file server for the video storage. So, I think it would make more sense to use RAID even though it is less flexible than WHS.

I would seriously consider WHS if there was quick and easy way to recover the system drive, all drivers, programs, and all configuration and customizations.

Dave

[Greg]

Thanks for all of the advice and comments.........definetely no shoratge here! My head is spinning...........this is good. As I narrow down what I think our actual useage will be like then I will be better able to filter through all of the various options and configurations. You guys have given me a great start.........thank you!

Originally Posted by Clift

It all depends on how you watch TV. Are you wanting to watch your shows immediately after they end and expect the commercials to automagically be marked? Or are you happy with them being available a few hours later or the next day?

At the present state I'm just learning about all the powers of SageTV......heck, I never even used a DVR..........still using a VCR.
So, I know even less than the average guy. I probably wouldn't even use Comm Skip.........those are good times for bath room breaks, drinks, whatever.

Originally Posted by Clift

You could manually cancel the recording and start your Bears game, but you'd probably get some moaning and groaning from your family because you chose to watch the Bears and not the Dolphins. Oh and they might be upset at having their show stopped too

What am I thinking! After last nights game why would I even think of stealing the remote.

Originally Posted by davephan

They might turn in to the LA Vikings since the billionaire owner wants a new stadium given to him by the state, even in this economy, and is threatening to move, probably to LA.

I hate that..........you have to think about the loyal fans, Fran Tarkenton, next week's game.......

Originally Posted by Clift

As Clift said, extra processing power doen't hurt if you can afford it, and it takes a lot of diskspace. However, if you get many TBs of disk, you will never have enough time to watch much of what you record! I've seen that happen before I got to 6 TB. But I will probably still add even more disk!

Dave

This is another area that I need to check into........disk space. I'm probably the only one that will record something on a regular basis. For the most part my wife and I watch TV together. I want to future proof my self, but I probably don't need to go over-board..........1 or 2 TB is probably enough to start out with, with the ability to expand.

Originally Posted by DOS64K

You mentioned in your OP that you were looking for a media "server". While a dedicated HTPC can fulfill this role, I would highly recommend you go the WHS route.

5. Bottom line: If you're going to run a 24/7 server, why not make it do more and do it better than a traditional HTPC.

Good luck with whichever route you choose!

Looks like I have a lot more research to do.

Originally Posted by davephan

Perhaps WHS could be used just as a file server for the video storage, but the downside is then setting up two computer systems for SageTV. The SageTV system not using WHS could then be recovered with an image and the WHS server could be recovered by scratch with far less recovery effort.

Dave

I don't want to set-up two systems for Sage.


Thanks again everyone for your help.

Greg