Setting a old PC for HTPC duties.

[Merc1032]

Hey everyone,

I have been reading up lately on various different media center solutions, and I have settled on using SageTV. I have a older desktop pc that I used to use to play lots of MMORPGs on, slightly upgraded, that does not get used to much anymore. My goal is to turn this into a cool media center for the living room of my new apartment.

I am a little confused still as the course of action I should take.

The system is a older Emachines T2642 with a 2.6 ghz processor, 2gigs of ram, and a BFGTech 6200 nvidia card.

The drawback to this old machine is it only has PCI slots. The video card did a good job of playing WoW in its latest expansions, if that helps. It has a 40 gig hard drive, but thats easily upgradeable.

I purchased a DVI to HDMI cable to connect my pc to my tv and downloaded the trial of sage. Previously I had a offbrand svideo wire hooked up and the picture always looked like crap. I installed sage quickly, just to get a idea of how it would look and I was impressed. I have no tv tuner card or anything like that just yet, so this install was only connected to the internet and to my tv. I used my keyboards arrows and mouse to navigate the menus.

The screens looked great, and I watched some of the videos and they all looked pretty good. That was until I tried to watch the HD videos off the net. These would be the ones you can find by browsing Sage's menus. The opening title would display, but once the video started to run, it would lock up and not move. The entire computer wouldnt, nor would the sagetv program since I could just hit escape to leave the video and head back to the menu.

I would assume this means the video card is no where near up to par with HD playback. My question is this: Is there a PCI video card out there, that can playback HD video? I would imagine i would have the same issues with live tv playback (cable coming in to the pc via tuner card, and out via video card) as watching a prerecorded or internet HD video?

Is there anyone out there using a PCI based video card and having good results in playing HD and getting the full sage experience?

What about PCI tuner cards? Those seem a little easier to come by.

Sorry for all the rambling, basically for those of you in the know, or those of you with a pc with similar specs, what would you do? Im really hoping to use this pc and not go get another.

Id also like to eventually set up another tv in the bedroom with access to all the sage tv goodies. This could be done with a media extender correct? My cable provider, cablevision here in NJ says a STB is required, as much as I dont want to use one. Would I only need 1 STB, in the living room, and could use it via the extender in the bedroom?

Just trying to get a handle on how my system would setup, soI could start setting it up. any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Joe

[Fuzzy]

The board doens't have any AGP or PCIe slots? If that's the case, you're options are pretty limited (none?). That CPU is also pretty limited for HD playback (regarless of what graphics card it had.

On the positive side, that system should have all the specs needed to work as a SageTV Server (doing the recording/serving up). It's a pretty energy efficient system, so makes sense to use it for the 24/7 server.

Your options are:
1. Upgrade the motherboard, CPU, RAM and Video in the system to get it up to HD capability.
2. Keep it as-is, and get an HD-200 for playback.

I'd say #2 is better, more reliable, cheaper, and will proably use a LOT less power.

The other advantage of #2 is, the server can be anywhere in the apartment. Just as long as the network can connect there and the HD-200 in the living room (and annother in the bedroom, if you expand to there).

[Merc1032]

So to confirm..

The PC still gets the sagetv software installed, and works basically as file storage/ place where all the addons/customizations are done?

What gets connected to the pc then? I still would need a tuner card correct?

I read the extender FAQ and im not 100% sure how it works yet.

I need a STB to get all the cablevision channels im sure, so how would it go?

Cable comes into the house, into STB, then into the tv tuner of the pc? From there the PC is also connected to the home network.

Then each room with a tv gets a sagetv extender which gets connected to the the tv and a connection to the network.

My question is, do I only need one STB from the cable company? Do I need it at all?

If I went this route, I dont need to try and find a video card to work on this older pc?

And all customizations are they able to be configured through the extenders or would I need to keep a monitor connected to the pc tower to do that stuff?

Thanks for any help guys. I really want to make this work how I want, so I wanna get it all researched out before I buy stuff I dont need or cant use.

[Fuzzy]

You've got most of it. For the cable, yes, you'd need a STB. And from there, it would go into a capture device. (this can be a few different options. You can go cheap, and use an SD capture card, like the Hauppague PVR-150 or 500, connected. For a bit more money, you could go with a Hauppague HD-PVR, which would connect to the component outputs on the STB, and be bale to record full HD.

This will get the video into the sage server. The other key component is controlling the cable box. There are basically two routes to go with this. If your cable box has a firewire port, you can probably tune it via that (search the forum for EXETunerPlugin). If not, I'd recommend using a USB-UIRT. It is supported directly in sage, and has worked reliably for many people for MANY years.

As for number of STBs needed, this is really dependent on your watching habits. With one STB, and one capture card, you will be able to record one thing at a time (whether you are watching that live or not is irrelevant).

Also, if you are in a decent area, you can probably get most your local channels over antenna (it will actually be better quality than what you get from cablevision). For this, I'd recommend a SiliconDust HDHomeRun. It can record 2 digital broadcasts at once, and is connected over the network. (The key advantage of this, is it can be located near the antenna, to improve reception). If a lot of what you watch is network tv, you can probably get everything you need from an HDHomeRun and a single STB (most cable channels rebroadcast their shows multiple times, so conflicts aren't as likely as with local networks). Check www.antennaweb.org to get an idea of your reception capabilities.

[Merc1032]

So a traditional capture card that installs in a pc cant record in full HD?

The HD PVR unit seems nice but It also seems like all these add ons are basically making the pc itself pointless? What is the benefit of using the pvr over a hd capture card? I still need a STB either way, correct?

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by Merc1032

So a traditional capture card that installs in a pc cant record in full HD?

The HD PVR unit seems nice but It also seems like all these add ons are basically making the pc itself pointless? What is the benefit of using the pvr over a hd capture card? I still need a STB either way, correct?

Unless you have clear qam, most likely, the only digital HD channels you have are local channels.

The HD PVR was the first solution for recording HD channels that are encrypted.

The second solution, which is still in development is cable card. You will need Windows 7 to use that, and a hack to make it work with SageTV.

I am not sure what your question is about what the need for a PC is. All this only comes together with PC.

[Merc1032]

The "requirement" to use a pc was mainly because I got into the htPC idea after thinking of what to use my older pc for, and how to put it in my new appt. The idea of having a one stop media center seemed like the way to go. Even the ability to close down sage, grab a wireless kb/mouse and hit the net on the big screen if I wanted to, or play pc games seemed like a fun idea.

The primary purpose was to integrate a older peice of hardware I own into something new, while saving me from trying to fit a comp desk and all the associated into a appt, when I primary use my laptop anyway.

And I tried it out, loved how it all looked till I got to the HD problem, not playing back through my old, and only option pci video card. I now understand the the purpose of the extenders and I was planning on getting at least one anyway.

So really my "need" for a pc is strictly stemming from trying to give new life to a old piece of hardware.

My new question with the PVR tho. You say its the first, and thus far only way to record encrypted hd chans. Doesnt the STB do that? Since I am pretty sure cablevision requires one, I imagined It would go cable line>stb>tv capture card> then whichever path I take. If the PVr can read encryption do I not need the STB?

[TallMomof2]

You still need the STB, the HD-PVR is connected to the STB with component cables (the analog hole) that allows you to capture encrypted digital channels. On my 36" Sony Vega HDTV the component output from the HD-PVR is only slightly softer than HDMI straight from the STB.

If you don't have an antenna or a poor OA signal for your locals then you should be able to hook up a Homerun HDHR directly to the coax for your locals. I don't have a decent signal from an antenna since I have a major airport between me and the broadcast antennas so I use 2 HDHRs to capture my locals through the FIOS coax. The HDHR is a network device so it can be anywhere you have a cable feed and an ethernet connection. With FIOS I can capture the HD locals without a STB but only a few other digital channels.

[Fuzzy]

I think this might be where you are getting confused:

HD-PVR == TV Capture Card. It's really the only one available that can handle HD.

So, as you discussed earlier, it DOES go:

Cablevision >COAX> STB >COMPONENT> HD-PVR >USB> SageTV Server

[sainswor99]

It's the HD aspect of your question which is clouding the issues, so let's take that out of the equation for just a minute.

Assume that you're recording SD, and you have a digital package from Comcast. This means that you need an STB to receive all of the channels from your cable provider, but you can receive some channels by running a coax cable directly from your TV to the wall.

In this scenario, your hardware sounds fine for both capture and playback; the way you configure your tuner card depends on whether or not you want to record all of the channels you are paying for (you'll need an STB) or just the channels currently piped over analog (there's also clear QAM, but we're ignoring that for now). If you want all of your channels, you'll connect the STB to the tuner card using video and audio cables, and you'll need a blaster of some sort (usually included with the tuner card or using the USB-UIRT) to allow the PC to change channels on the STB; if you want just the analog channels, a coax cable to the wall is all you need.

Now, introduce HD. Right away, your hardware starts running into playback issues; it'll probably record OK, but not record and playback at the same time. If you want to record HD, you only have a few options:

1. Get a digital PCI tuner and record what's available over clear QAM. This will most likely only be the local broadcast stations and not much else.

2. The cablecard solution mentioned below, which is still in development. This puts you into experimental territory, and will probably not work well on your current hardware.

3. Use the HD-PVR to record the HD output from your STB. The HD-PVR works like the SD tuner above; you connect it to your PC and your STB (using component video cables and audio cables and a blaster) and it records HD.

To playback HD, your best option is to buy the extender and use it as a playback interface; this of course, means that you won't have the ability to use a PC hooked up to your big screen. Basically, recording HD is relatively easy, but rendering HD is CPU intensive.


I hope that clarifies; if you're just experimenting for now, you could also try recording HD video using an analog card via the STB's S-video output; basically, you would be recording high-quality SD video AND still have your PC on the big screen. I'm not sure if this will work (I don't have HD), but again, your options are limited because of your hardware.


Stu

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by Merc1032

My new question with the PVR tho. You say its the first, and thus far only way to record encrypted hd chans. Doesnt the STB do that? Since I am pretty sure cablevision requires one, I imagined It would go cable line>stb>tv capture card> then whichever path I take. If the PVr can read encryption do I not need the STB?

The cable box is required to descramble ALL the channels you get with cablevision. You need a capture device to record those channels. However there are only two ways to get an HD signal from the cable box: component and HDMI. HDMI is encrypted so it can't be recorded which leaves component connections. They're analog, so no copy protection, but the only device that currently can take that analog HD signal and convert it back to digital for your computer is the HD-PVR.

The biggest difference between the TV cards you've been looking at and the HD-PVR is there is no tuner in the HD-PVR. It's basically just an analog to digital converter. But it's the only one that can convert analog HD to digital.

The "requirement" to use a pc was mainly because I got into the htPC idea after thinking of what to use my older pc for, and how to put it in my new appt. The idea of having a one stop media center seemed like the way to go. Even the ability to close down sage, grab a wireless kb/mouse and hit the net on the big screen if I wanted to, or play pc games seemed like a fun idea.

Then you probably will want to leave the PC in the living room. An extender won't support internet browsing or any of the other items. If you don't have a AGP port in the computer there are a few PCI graphics cards that can still be had.

The best option I saw was this HIS 4350 card, or this Sparkle 9500 series. Both provide hardware H.264 acceleration. If you upgrade to the Flash 10.1 beta you may be able to do full screen HD playback via U-tube. The right hardware enabled decoders might also let you do BD or HD-PVR type TS files.

[Merc1032]

Thanks guys, I think I got the idea of all of this now.
Here is a thought tho, please tell me If im wrong.
PC in living room, like previously planned.
Cable>STB>HDPVR>PC.

If I use a extender to run the tv, it pulls the programming info off of the LAN correct? So If i really wanted to, I could connect the extender to the tv with component cables, and the video card to the tv with a dvi to hdmi cable? Or vise-versa So if i really wanted to use the pc, or play pc games/emulators I could just change the input select.

Also using things like irblaster or the exetuner plugin to change the stb chan...this would all be done in the live tv tab of sage tv correct? I would still get the surfing functionality and chan guide in sage right?

Thanks for clearing it all up for me guys, I know what I have to buy now.

[Fuzzy]

It really depends on your goals. If big-screen gaming is in your mind, you may want to hold off on the HD200, and look at upgrading the PC instead. This will allow your sage use AND improve your gaming experience, for about the same cost.

As for configuring your laster and such, that's done in the Setup menu.

Also, realize that there is no 'LiveTV' per se in Sage. All LiveTV is is watching a recording while it is recorded. 'Surfing' is not quite as smooth as directly with the box, as, for instance, changing from channel to channel takes a bit longer. When you are watching 'live', and click channel up, sage then has to stop it's current recording, send the IR numbers for the next channel, start up a new recording (can take some time for the HD-PVR to detect and start encoding the signal), and THEN start playback on the PC (after some finite buffering time). In the end, if you get SageTV up and running, you'll start to realize, like others, that there is not need to Channel surf anymore.

[brainbone]

I suppose you could try something like the PCI 9400GT. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the 9400 GT supports h264 decoding.

If you are planning on plugging the PC into your TV anyway, it may be worth a try to get it to work without an extender -- though the Celeron 2.6ghz is a very low spec, the 9400GT requires a "Minimum of a 300 Watt power supply (18a on the 12v rail)", and the slow PCI bus may just be too limiting for the tasks at hand.

[Fuzzy]

In the end, you might want to look at some of the DiY Combo Bundles at NewEgg as an upgrade path for the PC.

[Merc1032]

Thanks guys,

At least now I know where I stand.

If I decided to upgrade the PC..meaning, a different PC, would you recommend building one from scratch, or would finding a used/refurbed unit on ebay that could be upgraded to the task (ie already has a mobo that accepts pci-e etc.)

Can building one be budget friendly? I know you can build some budget friendly gaming rigs, but Im not sure if they would be spec'd in the same way.

Thanks guys. Cant wait to get this thing rollin.

O and Fuzzy, how much time are we talking in terms of switching chans? My existing SA 4250HD on cablevision digitial takes a decent amount of time to change as it is, and its not a dvr!

EDIT: Just saw your reply, will def check out the bundles and such. Thanks!

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Merc1032

Can building one be budget friendly? I know you can build some budget friendly gaming rigs, but Im not sure if they would be spec'd in the same way.

Something like this, (I would run windows 7 on it) could probably be crammed into the same case.

[Merc1032]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Something like this, (I would run windows 7 on it) could probably be crammed into the same case.

Any particular reason you would run 7? I figured something like XP, since its stable and uses few resources. Is 7 similar? I wouldnt even attempt vista.

In the above setup I see the MOBO has some sort of hdmi setup. That wouldnt be used for playback tho, a upgraded video card would still be added to that mix correct? Along with like a ethernet card, and like a dvd drive?

The building a new one is looking better and better. Another bottleneck with my old system, which I need to check into tonight is I think it only supports IDE hard drives. I havnt seen any 1tb IDe drives, and I know they access data at a slower speed. And like all this old shit, seems to cost more.

Anyone use IDE drives with their setups? Is access speed a issue or just max storage space?

[brainbone]

I've had better results on SageTV clients running 7 with microsoft's codecs. My SageTV server runs XP (I'm planing on updating it to 7), so I'm not sure if you'd have issues there in a mixed Server/Client environment. I would think you'd be able to get it running well. In short, EVR rendering in Vista/7 will give better results than is available in XP.

7 will also give you the option to use 64bit, allowing full use of the 4GB ram and the ability to add more in the future if needed.

You shouldn't need to add any graphics card, unless you do heavy gaming. The on-board graphics on that MB is good enough for light gaming -- and you could add another ATI 4xxx later in crossfire if you need more. The built in gigabit Ethernet is also perfectly acceptable. If you don't have an existing DVD drive in the current emachine, you'll probably want to add one.

That said, I do feel awkward recommending an ATI/AMD GPU, since I have not had much luck getting ATI graphics cards working well with SageTV (works perfectly in Windows Media Center) -- where others here have. The problem is more with how SageTV selects the deinterlacing mode than it is with ATI -- but the Nvidia drivers seem better able to cope with SageTV's abnormal request.

[Merc1032]

Dont mind my smooth move of missing the on board ethernet. Thats good news about the graphics being up to par too! ?I plan on going the route of the HDPVR, especially since if I did try to use the current pc (which is just about out of the question now, lol) and I used the PVR (which is basically a external tuner) it was the one peice not wasted.

Ive not used to many ATI graphics products ever, usually nvidia. I have used AMD processors in the past however. I did read your post, and with that being said, you dont think I would be able to play back the videos in full 1080 using those on board graphics? I guess worse cast scenario I could just upgrade to a nvidia card in the future. Is there a diff mobo you would suggest otherwise, something with nvidia onboard? Just a thought.

Man o man, just like my project cars, this small mod seems to have been blown up. Im really liking some of these HTPC specific cases i see on newegg. haha.