SageTV, HD PVR and media extenders

[d2tw4all]

Hey guys,
I have a sort of general question about SageTV. I've been a longtime MythTV user but was having nothing but trouble getting the HD PVR working (I've used the HDHomeRun for years but want more than 8 channels...). I've gotten everything working finally, but have a question about the HD PVR. I know the output of the HD PVR is H.264 and requires significant horsepower for playback. My first question is, what needs the horsepower, the frontend PC's I use at the PC's, or the SageTV "Server" that the HD PVR is actually connected to? I ask this because I don't know if SageTV is doing some kind of realtime transcoding, since if it wasn't I don't know how the dedicated media extender hardware devices work. I'm considering getting a media extender to save on electricity for my main frontend, but am not sure about how well it will play back video from the HD PVR. Also I want to make sure that if the SageTV server is doing all the work that I configure it with sufficient horsepower. Please let me know if anyone has any information that will help me...

Tom

[korben_dallas]

For your server, you need:

* overall stability - whatever OS you choose, make sure it is solid, configured properly, and uses newest/best device drivers (signed if possible); all hardware and connected devices work 100% before being used in SageTV; backup/conditioned AC power is a good idea; and people don't mess with the server machine
* storage - plenty of storage, spread out on more than one HDD, formatted w/ 64k blocks, and preferably SATA II / 3Gbps or better
* network connectivity - hard wired at least to router/switch, and preferably Gigabit (if router/switch supports it)

That will handle most setup's well. If you want to do more posh things like nightly transcoding or a comskip setup, then you'll need processor power and ram.

[thomaszoo]

It works just fine with either the HD100 or HD200 extenders. My Sage server is an Intel Atom 330 (1.6 ghz, dual core) and it has no problems sending the recordings to the extenders where all the heavy lifting is done. Unless you are using the extender as a placeshifter, there is no transcoding done by the server.

Wayne

[sleonard]

Recording with the HD-PVR requires very little horsepower on the server. The HD200 extenders playback the recorded video with ease and I highly recomend this route. Playback on a PC using a newer video card from ATI or nVidia is also trivial - my Sage client PC with an ATI 4650 uses about 3-4% cpu. Playback on a PC without such a vid card requires at least a core2 duo for decent results.

S

[d2tw4all]

Interesting. As I stated I'm far from a newbie at HTPC setups (MythTV makes sage look like notepad from a complexity standpoint) and my backend is based on an HP retail PC chassis that is designed for maximum uptime, hooked up in my network closet to a rack mounted UPS, and I wired my house with cat6 copper all going to managed gigabit gear. I have a plethora of options for my frontends, including the former myth frontends I already have or some other systems. It's just not clear to me how the video data is transported to the frontends. It sounds like it is just cached digitally on the server and then streamed raw out to the frontends if what I'm hearing is accurate. I'm completely befuddled as to why Sage doesn't support native ISO playback, I don't want to implement a hack solution for this but this is a must for me, anyone know if there is a way I can execute another software like XBMC from within sage and just use that for movie playback? Thanks for your replies!

Tom

[davephan]

I've never tried MythTV, so I don't know what I'm missing. However, MythTV must be missing something, otherwise you wouldn't bother using SageTV

You didn't mention what interfaces video/audio content to your TV. If you use a MVP media extender, which only accepts mpeg format, then your computer has a to transcode video from h.264 to mpeg on the fly. If the computer isn't fast enough, the video will stutter. An Athlon XP 1800 isn't fast enough. An Athlon XP 2100 is barely fast enough. A fast dual or quad core is a better choice.

A much better way to interface the TV with the SageTV computer is using a HD-200 at each TV. No transcoding is needed. A lower performance computer is then good enough for your SageTV computer, unless you choose to use a higher end computer for faster video compression and comskipping. The SageTV computer is then configured 'headless', and you will have much less trouble in the future.

Dave

[d2tw4all]

Myth is a pain to setup but does a lot, however the linux support of the HD PVR is poor so I'm trying other options. My frontends are currently PC's in home theater cases, 2GB RAM AMD athlon 64 X2 CPU's and nvidia 9400 512mb video. backend is intel core 2 duo with 3gb ram, os is on 160gb sata drive and a 1TB sata drive for recordings. My windows server hosts an smb share where my downloaded video content is stored, and i have a freenas server with 9TB of shared disk for my dvd iso movie collection and HD home videos. I'm still looking for info on how to mount all the different network shares so I can play back the media stored there...
Tom

[sleonard]

The Sage server records everything to hard drive and then streams the recorded video to clients on the network.
If having native ISO is more important to you than native HD-PVR support than you may not want to switch. OTOH, there is a recent import that will add ISO playback to Sage and it looks pretty easy to setup.

S