running SageTV on Windows HomeServer

[crusader]

Hi,

Time has come to move SageTV off my PC to the server that is going to hum quietly 24/7 in the closet. But before that some darkness needs to be unveiled:
- I've looked around in i-net and came to conclusion that there is no need to build such server -- there are plenty of reasonable cheap ($200-$400) HomeServer boxes from HP/Acer/etc. Can anyone share his experience with any of these? What box is enough to run SageTV+SageMC+Comskip + usual network backups?
- has anyone configured WHS as Primary Domain Controller? Since I am getting a server in my network -- I readly would like to have a domain, profile roaming & etc
- while digging around I came across some horrible figures that home server throughtput might be as low as 5Mbyte/s even on gb network O_O -- it is not enough for simultaneous watching of HD movie and writing another one from HDHR! Are those rumors true?

Thanks!
Michael.

[DMZ]

I picked up one of the HP MediaSmart servers 6-8 months ago. Same spec CPU IIRC as the EX475 and EX480 with just ram and system HDD differences. I promptly upped the RAM and stuck 3 Hitachi 1TB in it that I scavenged from their external USB cases -- used in the WHS pool.

Filled it up with tons of .mpeg files my SageTV box has recorded over the years and was using Vista MediaCenter and WMC 2005 system to watch. Worked as best it could given they were not dvr-ms files.

I have no problem with NIC thoughput -- quite the contrary. I get better speeds copying from desktop to the EX470 than I do by adding a non pool drive or external eSATA. To/from the EX470 and a couple desktops I will peak for bursts up to around 140M a sec. Typically I can average from in the 65-75M/sec copying files between the WHS/EX470.

Playing back "Great" quality sage recorded stuff on networked computers was flawless even when the WHS backup was making its rounds.

I really don't like using the windows media player (at all) nor care much for the Windows/Vista/7 media center so I am in the process of trying to get SageTV WHS working on the EX470 - it really should work without much issue. My one and only SageTV recorder machine is a cheapo eMachines T5226 or somesuch with an HVR-1600 in it. Very basic and low spec machine except for the HDD addition. Pretty much works flawlessly.

At this point I have a single 2TB drive in the EX470 and reformatted the D: (DATA) partition for 64k clusters.

..Hooked up my old WinTV PVR-USB2 to the EX470.. Installed the SageTV Add-in from the WHS console.

I then connected to the server using PlaceShifter and ran through the setup process and added the tuner and such.

However it's been totally unreliable and at any given moment I may get the 'Circle of Death' only to find SageTVService.exe at 99-100% CPU on the EX470 via Remote Desktop (RDP) -> Task Manager.

I quickly learned to RDP and get task mananger going before testing Sage out again. At 100% CPU going to SageTVService.exe it's futile trying to get in using the WHS connector console or RDP after the service spins out of control.

I have been able to record some and access from a system using placeshifter but it's still totally unreliable still and might spike the sage service to 100% at any point. I've see it spike in various places -- giude, playback, setup, channel preview in setup. I tried loading the SageTV client on the EX470 to circumvent using a placeshifter connection FWIW and have had the CPU spikes that way too. But that has it's own problems since it's being done though a RDP connection.

At this point in time I am still unusable after uninstalling the older java and adding in the Java 1.6.0_17-b04, uninstalling/reinstalling the SageTV WHS add-in.

The last thing I have done was to run SageTVService.exe as the WHS admin user + pw. I don't think it really applied since I haven't seen any sort of permission related problems.

I may try a different external tuner but in the past this PVR-USB2 served reliably with SageTV on a XP MCE notebook.

In a nutshell I think the concerns you have should be no concern based on what I have use this EX470 for so far.

Now if I can just figure out why and fix the sage service spiking/looping the CPU to 100%..

[DMZ]

FYI: I do not know anything about comskip as I just pick though what I want and use VideoRedo to clean up things as I feel like it.

Once (..if) I get Sage working reliably on the EX470 I will try the SageTV built in transcoding just for kicks. I presume it's supposed to be gentle and not consume all the resources.

I'd say if comskip isn't doing any transcoding or you can run it with low impact the lil boxes should be okay.

The real reason I wanted to add this though, from what I have read about WHS is that media playback is given priority over all. I am guessing that is specific to using the MS media center connectors, and other 'connector' kind of stuff from MS.

This became evident by people complaining that media playback was consuming their network bandwidth making file server ops (copying files to/from the WHS box and client) slower and other general purpose LAN stuff.

This recollection came to mind since ATM my desktop is doing a backup to WHS and I can't even see the SageTV server in my placeshifter servers manager list. However no problem connecting via WHS console or RDP. Odd.


--------- Ahhh, much better. Updated info ----------

It seems my difficulties with the SageTVService.exe going into a CPU tailspin is related to the WinTV PVR-USB2 drivers. After trying various revisions I could scrounge up with no relief my guess is that they are no-go for Windows Home Server / 2003. I'd love to be able to get the WinTV working since it seems to do a fairly good job and would be good use of it on the MSS.

I have a couple VisionTek TV Wonder HD 650 USB that I snagged from the Circuit City collapse. While they don't specify support for the WHS / 2003 OS the drivers found on the ATI site installed and have been working well with the SageTV WHS version with a mere avg 0-5% cpu load on the EX470. I did discover though out of the box the built in Sage transcoding will use all it can get of the CPU. No biggie for me though as I have never worked recoding into my HTPC game plan. Probably can be tweaked if it ever became important.

[crusader]

wow, thanks for info!

[DMZ]

Sure thing. Hope there is something useful there related to your plan among my run-on style writing.

I am thinking that I may even be able to pop a second HD 650 tuner on the little EX470 since the load is so low on the CPU.

So far though I have not been able to witness how a recorded video turns out while the WHS client backup / data reorganization stuff if going on. That will be interesting.

I scheduled a bunch of recordings and will see how they turn out soon enough.

For the most part this is kind of a interrim recording solution so the wife can grab her shows while I am away. Eventually I figure a beefyer recorder machine with 4 or so tuners in it will be added to the LAN.

Some time back I read about how the WHS machine could serve as storage for a tuner machine. Each with SageTV installed. A SageTV smart NAS essentially I guess.

This kind of sounds like a decent way to use the MSS/WHS without having to worry about its ability to record well along with other LAN responsibilities.

[crusader]

Would be really wonderful if you try comskip in your setup. Today I had a bit startling discovery :-) I found why my evenings were often spoiled by jerking video (esp when it is HD).
Initially I blamed it on tuner (HDHR) and antenna (which is quite crappy in my case) or even problems with network (either on reproducing or recording stages). Currently I run SageTV on my PC (very powerful it was when I built it myself ~4 years ago and still is -- who can demonstrate ~80Mbyte/sec writing speed? :-) )
Turned out that because my setup looks like:
- powerful PC
- 1 Gb network
- SageTV + SageMC + Comskip
- HDHR recording two streams at the same time
- reproducing HD stream on extender
- video is stored on additional typical 7200rpm harddrive (which peaks at ~30Mbyte/sec)

I ended up saturating my hard drive! Because processor is so powerful -- even with low priority comskip is capable of processing a lot of megabytes of MPEG2 video per second -- in conjunction with everything else, reproducing (which relies on continuous and stable read speed) suffered. I switched comskip off -- and all my problems magically went away. I wish comskip had a setting like 'do not use more than 5Mbyte/sec'...

Well, another reason to switch to slower hardware

[DMZ]

Hi,

I won't have time to test with comskip before I have to go on the road again.. Kind of late going as it is.

I've noticed on my SATA drives vs 1Gb LAN are neck and neck. Systems are powerful desktops but have average HDDs, 7500 rpm. Been looking into a little about 10k rpm SATA vs SAS vs SSD to see if it's worth the premium.

I don't know that much about the HDD subsystem technology but maybe a 2nd phyical drive to spool the HDHR to? I know the little MSS worked less when I had 4 drives in the pool. Got two 2G for it but had only one at the moment, other was DOA. I figure it'll loosen up a little once it can migrate data off the system drive.

Even so, it appeared to work well with the one drive during the WHS client backups. I'm only recording SD at 'Great' quality though.

[crusader]

found various options in comskip that help reduce speed of processing (and as result -- Disk I/O and CPU usage). I.e. problem solved...