Building New Server

[viperdiablo]

Hey guys I am looking to rebuilt my server. My main thing is the processor. Not sure what kind of power is needed to stream 1080p blurays and stream and record from 2 hauppauge hd pvrs. Should i go with a dual core, triple core, quad core? AMD or Intel. This will be used just as a server and streaming to a hd 200. Thanks.

[wrems]

Depends if you plan or are currently doing a lot of transcoding and or com skipping. Since the HD200 does all the processing inside the unit the CPU draw at your server is pretty much insignificant. Other things to consider is utilization of placeshifter and Playon... Both require a more powerful CPU. You ideally want to try to find a nice balance between CPU power and overall watt usage. Leaving your server on 24/7 can have a significant impact on your power bill.

What is your current server specs and does it currently do everything you want/need it to?

[viperdiablo]

My current setup is actually a 4 year old imac running windows 7. I am only backing up dvds and music. I am wanting to get into backing up my blurays and getting two hd pvrs with firewire channel changing. Well this imac is core 2 dual 2.0ghz with 3gb of ram and firewire port, more hard drive space is required. I can only fit one hard drive inside the imac.

[Fuzzy]

If you are only going to be using it for recording and streaming vids to extenders/clients, then that 2.0 GHz iMac is MORE than powerful enough. There is really very little the processor has to do other than read the fles from disc, and transmit them out on the LAN, untouched. This is the case with HD100 and HD200 extenders, and SageTVClient. MVP extenders and Placeshifter, on the other hand, will require more CPU power, as they ahve to be transcoded on the fly.

[viperdiablo]

My only problem with the imac is obviously its expandability. To add more hard drives or bluray drive i will need all external drives. Plus add to that the hauppauge hd pvr (2) then I got a real wire mess on my hands.