Figuring out my first media center home server combo

[vosovich]

Hi everyone.

I'm planning on moving out of the house in the not too distant future, to live together with my brother in an apartment. We decided that we'd like to have an up-to-date entertainment system and a decent home server.

We are now in the progress of figuring out how to achieve this. After doing some research I came up with an initial plan. I'd love to have someone with more experience take a look at the plan, as I am unsure on quite a few matters.

I'll start with the requirements for the functionality. The home server should at the very least be capable of backing up our computers, serve as "media tank" and give internet access to our computers and the media and other files on our network.

For entertainment, we would like to be able to view the media (including HD content) on the server on our living room tv-set and on our computers (they'll be in our bedrooms). Furthermore, we would like to be able to both watch live tv (again including HD content) at the same time(pc+tv-set or pc+pc), along with recording features and whatnot. Finally, we would like to be able view all this in an integrated, polished environment, as apposed to just browsing the hd's for media.

The initial plan is as follows.

• The pc's and the HP MediaSmart EX490 server will be hooked up to a Gigabit wireless router by wire, while our laptops can be hooked up wirelessly.
• The necessary tuners will be attached to the server.
• SageTV software will be installed on the server.
• A SageTV Extender will be connected to the receiver in the living room and SageTV clients will be installed on the pc's

There is the drawback that this doesn't allow BluRays to be played in the living room, but this is not really a pressing matter as a BR-player could be bought later on.

Anyway, this is what I cam up with after researching the options. The three main questions I can think of now are:

1. Will this setup even work and will it meet the requirements?
2. How many tuners do I need?
3. Will the server suffice to broadcast multiple HD streams? I believe that in a setup such as this one the server doesn't actually transcode the content, such that the burden will be on the pc's and the extender. But I am not sure about this.

[GKusnick]

Your proposed system is workable and should meet your needs. How many tuners, and what kind of tuners, will depend on your viewing habits and TV source. If you and your brother mostly watch recorded episodes of your favorite shows, then you need enough tuners to record everything you watch without conflicts. (So for instance if you have three favorites on opposite each other, with no later rebroadcasts of any of them, then you'd need three tuners to record them all.)

If you live in an area with over-the-air digital broadcast TV, then two to four OTA tuners would be a good idea. If you also want to have cable or satellite, then you'll need at least one cable/sat set-top box plus a Hauppauge HD-PVR per STB to capture those channels. You can probably get away with just one or two of these since cable/sat content is rebroadcast frequently, so conflicts can usually be resolved automatically by rescheduling.

Minor quibble: you said you want the server to give you Internet access. While it's technically possible to set up the server as a router so that all Internet access goes through it, in practice you're better off with a standalone router appliance connected directly to your LAN.

[vosovich]

Thank you for your reply.

Well, tuner-wise I believe I am fairly restricted, since I live in the Netherlands. I don't actually have digital tv at the moment, but I know one would have needed something like a floppydtv arrangement. Since that company died, I believe my only option is the Anysee E30TCPlus. At least one provider can supply a HD-PVR, but apparently it kind of sucks.

Also, I'm kind of in the dark how the tuners, HD-PVRs, the server HDs and SageTV software on the server would interact. Is there some documentation on this?

About the internet access: My bad. I should have said remote access.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by vosovich

Well, tuner-wise I believe I am fairly restricted, since I live in the Netherlands.

European TV is a whole different landscape that I don't know much about, but there may be some sort of satellite tuner card that can receive TV directly without a STB or HD-PVR.

Originally Posted by vosovich

Also, I'm kind of in the dark how the tuners, HD-PVRs, the server HDs and SageTV software on the server would interact. Is there some documentation on this?

The SageTV manual covers setup and configuration of your tuners and recording drives. The software manages tuners and drive space automatically so you don't have to; you just select TV programs for recording.

Originally Posted by vosovich

About the internet access: My bad. I should have said remote access.

Sorry; I get what you're driving at now. Yes, your server can be set up for remote access, and that's a reasonable way to go. But another alternative you might look at is to get a VPN router that lets you connect to your LAN remotely without running remote access software on your server or requiring the server to buffer remote file transfers.

[vosovich]

The Netherlands is not the best place to be as far as digital tv goes. Since the providers use a custom encoding, an AlphaCrypt Cam is necessary. That or a soft-Cam, which is what the Anysee uses. Anyway, that's my understanding of it at the moment. I'm not sure if SageTV works with the Anysee, but I did send an email to the company and am awaiting a reply.

I guess I underestimated SageTV's capabilities It's really nice that it figures out all this by itself.

Thanks for the hint. I'll certainly look into it.