Help moving to HD

[stevech]

Take pity and provide advise and comment, if you please. I searched here and did not find what I expected in terms of a cookbook on doing this.
I'm HD challenged when it comes to Sage. Been using std def for a long time.

Goal: Get HD equivalent to current Sage config:

PC server in garage. Sage (and other software) runs in server mode.
Two Standard def tuners.
Cable TV. Currently simple analog cable.
One std def MVP extender at the main TV. Another in BR.

Scenario:
Replace current main living room (LR) TV with an HD - Probably 46" Samsung.
Pay damned Time Warner cable for HD. Decline rental of their DVR.

Now what do I do?
Rent one Set Top Box from Time Warner. Put in LR (I guess).
Get one HD200?
How does Sage on garage PC record favorites in HD? Via HD200? And play HD recordings as I'm used to with the std def stuff listed above? Is an IR Blaster needed? If so, is it driven by the HD200?
Does this allow Play back and record HD simultaneously?

Later, get 2nd HD tuner for recording two shows at once.

What is the resolution of the recordings relative to the HD TV which can do up to 1080?

At the BR TV, currently an MVP and a std def LCD TV... Would the Sage Server transcode HD recordings to Std Def for the MVP extender? Should this TV be replaced with a (small) HD TV? If so, would this mean another HD200? Prefer to leave this BR TV as just std def for now.

The Garage PC is a dual core AMD3800 with several SATA disks. Currently has 1GB RAM. May need more? As is, its load is slight.

[GKusnick]

The HD200 is a playback device, similar in function to the MVP, except that it supports HD playback. It has nothing to do with recording.

To record HD from cable you will most likely need an STB in the garage connected via component video to a Hauppauge HD-PVR USB capture device. The HD-PVR includes an IR blaster. You do not need an STB in the living room unless you want to bypass Sage entirely and connect it directly to your TV.

You may be able to record some of your local HD channels directly from the cable using a digital QAM tuner (such as the HDHomeRun). But the number of channels your cable provider provides in unencrypted form is likely to be limited. To receive encrypted channels, you need an STB.

Depending on where you live, you might also look into using one or more digital ATSC tuners to record HD broadcasts off the air. Again, this will be just your local channels, no premium channels, but for regular network programming it's a good alternative to multiple STBs (provided of course that you're within broadcast range of a good-sized city).

[PiX64]

I currently run all TV's with HD200's and use an HDHOMERUN for all HD content. The QAM tuners are great at least for comcast cable because all of their channels now are sent over ClearQAM. I get roughly 12 channels in HD....all the ones i care aobut anyways, and all of the other channels in my package 2 - 150 over QAM. I was using an HDPVR for a while to get HD off of dish and found that at the time it was just simply not worth the trouble. Things have progressed quite a bit since then with the HDPVR, but i have not had the need nor the desire to get HD Premium channels in SAGE.

With amazing plugins like HULU/Netflix support it just isn't worth it.

Hope that helps..

[stevech]

HDHOMERUN...

Is applicable to recording non-encrypted HD channels off the cable? Still need other means to record via STB for channels like Discovery, FoodTV, etc ?
Is managed by, compatible with SageTV's recording system?
SageTV tunes to desired channel via LAN interface?

[davephan]

You've held off making the move to HD for quite awhile... HD isn't difficult with SageTV. As mentioned, you'll need to find out how much clearQAM you have on the cable system. Even if you have a lot of clearQAM now, it could go away in the future. If the clearQAM goes away, you'll have to adapt. My local cable system has almost no clearQAM channels.

It wasn't clear which analog tuners you have in your first post. You may still be able to use those analog tuners in the future. For example, your cable system may keep using analog channels for their non-HD channels. My local Comcast system is dropping most of the analog channels next week. They provided DTA boxes that are digital tuners that output only channel 3 or 4. If your cable system does that in the future, the analog tuners would come in handy to record the DTA channel 3 or 4 output.

You'll probably need a HD-PVR for the higher tier HD channels that probably won't be available in clearQAM. A dual tuner HDHomerun is an option for OTA digital channels or clearQAM, each tuner can be split (one OTA digital, the other clearQAM) since there are two RF connectors. A HVR-2250 is another option for OTA digital, clearQAM, or analog. The HVR-2250 only has one RF connector, so both tuners have to be configured the same. I've found the HVR-2250 is more reliable than the HDHomerun.

The MVP can only playback mpeg2. If you have another format like TS or something else, then the computer will have to transcode the video into mpeg2 on the fly. If your computer is too slow, your video & audio will stutter. I had an Althlon XP 2100 before, which was barely fast enough. An Althon XP 1800 wasn't fast enough and stuttered. You can watch HD programs on the MVP hooked to an SD TV. The picture will be smaller than the TV screen with black bars on the top and bottom of the picture. The two MVP units could be used on secondary less-used SD TVs.

The HD-200 can be connected to either HD or SD TVs. The HD-200 audio quality is vastly superior to the MVP. The video is also better on the HD-200. The HD-200 is much more reliable than the MVP. The HD-200 will playback a number of formats without on the fly transcoding by your computer.

You might have a set top box by the SageTV computer and set top boxes by your main TVs. Then you can channel surf independently of SageTV. SageTV surfing is painfully slow. Decline the HD PVR cablebox, even if it free for six months. I found out that if I did not decline it, I would be charged $18 a month after the first six months, and I could not drop the HD PVR cable box after six months and keep my rates locked for two years. So I declined it in the 30 days time period where changes could be made without effecting my two year price lock. I did check out the Comcast PVR out a bit. The HD PVR cable box was very crude compared to SageTV and would be painful and annoying if I had to switch to it from SageTV.

You might need more disk too. HD consumes about 2 - 3 times the disk space, depending on your quality settings.

If you get a HD-PVR, you still might need a USB-UIRT. I found that the IR blaster on the HD-PVR was unusable and it caused the HD-PVR to be unstable. I used a USB-UIRT instead, which I already owned before I bought the HD-PVR. One USB-UIRT will control three set top boxes, and more if the set top boxes can be configured for different IR codes.

If you manually edit videos, you'll need an editing program like VideoReDo Suite that can edit TS files created by the HD-PVR.

Dave

[autoboy]

You need a way to tune channels:
That's a cable box from your cable company. Avoid the DVR versions. Try to get one with firewire
-Or-
a digital tuner pulling unencrypted digital channels which is hit or miss what channels you get. These work the similar to your old analog tuners, but in digital. The HDHR is popular. If you go this route, you are done. A lot of folks combine this with a cable box and HD-PVR to capture more channels at the same time

You will need a way to capture the video:
If you go with the cable box solution rather than the hit or miss digital tuner, then you willl need a HD-PVR to capture the component video from the cable box. The HD-PVR only captures video. It does not tune channels. It uses almost no CPU power since it does the encoding in it's own hardware.

You will need a way to change channels
Firewire channel changing is the most reliable. You need a box with firewire and a server with firewire. It's rather hard to install but works
or
The HD-PVR has an IR blaster on it that can change the cable box channel for you. It is limited to changing one box only. You cannot use two HD-PVRs and change two cable box channels. The software only supports a single box
or
USB-UIRT which is an IR blaster than will change more than one cable box's channels. THis is the preferred method if you don't use firewire.

Then you need to be able to play the content:
The HD200 plays 99% of all content natively and it really easy on your server. Get this for your primary viewing postion

The MVPs can also play HD, but the content needs to be trascoded by the server into SD which is then played by the MVP. You can use these on secondary TVs until you upgrade the entire system.

[stevech]

Thanks.
Dunce questions
I know fully well how SageTV works with standard def tuners - there is some Windows driver for that and SageTV sees a standard Windows API for managing that tuner: tune, start, stop, etc. But with a cable box...

"If you go with the cable box solution rather than the hit or miss digital tuner, then you willl need a HD-PVR to capture the component video from the cable box."

Isn't SageTV the HD-PVR? HD video/audio (component?) goes from Cable Box to some product X (Hauppauge nnn ?) that encodes this to MPEG4 or H.264 and somehow goes to a file that SageTV manages? I don't know what product X is.

Obviously, video via firewire can't happen due to copyrights. But some softare Y for Sage knows how to tune a cable box via firewire? Rather than IR.

Again, sorry- bit I didn't find a tutorial here "Dummies Guide To Moving SageTV to HD".

[davephan]

Originally Posted by stevech

"If you go with the cable box solution rather than the hit or miss digital tuner, then you willl need a HD-PVR to capture the component video from the cable box."

Isn't SageTV the HD-PVR? HD video/audio (component?) goes from Cable Box to some product X (Hauppauge nnn ?) that encodes this to MPEG4 or H.264 and somehow goes to a file that SageTV manages? I don't know what product X is.

If you want to record HD from a cablebox, then you need a HD cablebox and a Hauppauge HD-PVR as your tuner. The three wire component video and audio from your HD cablebox connects to the HD-PVR. The HD-PVR connects to your computer via a USB cable. The HD-PVR has it's own IR blaster that is needed to change the channels on the HD cablebox. However, many people find using built-in Hauppauge HD-PVR simply does not work, or causes the HD-PVR to be unstable and use the USB-UIRT to change the channels.

Here is a link to the HD-PVR:
http://www.geektonic.com/2009/02/hau...ia-center.html

Another approach to recording HD is to use a modified set top box using the R5000 modification.

http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/cableinfo.htm

The SageTV software is the PVR. You need a way to get the HD content into the computer so it can be recorded, and the HD-PVR / HD cablebox or HD cablebox with the R5000 modification is the method to do it.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by stevech

Thanks.
Dunce questions
I know fully well how SageTV works with standard def tuners - there is some Windows driver for that and SageTV sees a standard Windows API for managing that tuner: tune, start, stop, etc. But with a cable box...

"If you go with the cable box solution rather than the hit or miss digital tuner, then you willl need a HD-PVR to capture the component video from the cable box."

Isn't SageTV the HD-PVR? HD video/audio (component?) goes from Cable Box to some product X (Hauppauge nnn ?) that encodes this to MPEG4 or H.264 and somehow goes to a file that SageTV manages? I don't know what product X is.

Obviously, video via firewire can't happen due to copyrights. But some softare Y for Sage knows how to tune a cable box via firewire? Rather than IR.

Again, sorry- bit I didn't find a tutorial here "Dummies Guide To Moving SageTV to HD".

@stevech: I'm confused because autoboy answered your question quite thoroughly. davephan pretty much restated the same information, too.

However, you asked:

Isn't SageTV the HD-PVR? HD video/audio (component?)
No, SageTV is just software. You're probably getting confused with their HD Theater (HD200) which is a hardware client for their SageTV software, but only does playback of your SageTV recorded or imported media.

goes from Cable Box to some product X (Hauppauge nnn ?)
Product x = HD-PVR (manufactured by Hauppauge, linked by davephan)

that encodes this to MPEG4 or H.264 and somehow goes to a file that SageTV manages?
Yes. "Somehow" = HD-PVR

I don't know what product X is.
Now you do.

Obviously, video via firewire can't happen due to copyrights.
Correct. As autoboy said, firewire is for changing channels.

But some softare Y for Sage knows how to tune a cable box via firewire? Rather than IR.
Can't help you here, since I'm not clear how firewire channel changing works. For all I know, it's built into SageTV. As autoboy said, you could also use the USB-UIRT for IR channel changing.

Hope that clears up any lingering confusion. If not, feel free to ask again.

[stevech]

OK. So dense-boy here gets it. I've used Sage for years with Std Def tuners that output MPEG2 on USB. I think of them as tuners, not PVRs, since they have no disk and don't "Record" (the R in PVR). So for my migration to HD, the "HD-PVR" is not a "Recorder", it's an H.264 encoder, whose input is analog component HD video, rather than RF to a tuner. Again, PV"R" confused me.

The "R", in my mind, is SageTV on my PC with disk drives.

So
Above, the Hauppauge HD-PVR and a Motorola R5000 cable box are shown as two ways to get decrypted cable HD into SageTV. I note that the Hauppauge HD-PVR is 2+ years old. Is there anything newer/better? I read that Windows Media Center 7, should I ever want to go to that, will not accept H.264. Maybe that's obsolete info? I tried Win 7 MCE and though its UI is pretty, it otherwise is not desired at all, by me.

I doubt my cable company is using that R5000, but will check.

I appreciate your patience.

[Skirge01]

I was trying really hard not to be condescending, but you weren't making it easy. We've all been there and we just need to remember that sometimes what seems really obvious and clear to one person isn't quite so to another. That said, I think you've got it now and I understand your confusion.

The R5000 is actually a 3rd party modification to your provider's STB. The R5000 mod is pretty old at this point, as well (still works, though), but does not work with all MPEG4 streams, which I believe all of DirecTV has converted to by now. So, the R5000 mod doesn't work with any H20 series STB from DirecTV. Your one and only solution for DirecTV is the HD-PVR. There's no competition for the HD-PVR yet, but I believe Avermedia is close to releasing something. There's no word (yet?) on SageTV support for it and it also doesn't do Dolby Digital 5.1.

[Fuzzy]

The R-5000 handles MPEG4 just fine. The conflict with DirecTV is that all their MPEG4 capable boxes have fully protected paths inside, preventing the R-5000 from working on them. The Dish Network ViP-211 works just fine with R-5000, and handles the H.264 channels just the same as the MPEG2 ones. A note, however, is that the newer Dish boxes are also fully protected (the ViP-211k), and the R-5000 will not work on them either.

[stevech]

I'm a cable (Time Warner) subscriber; no plan to use Direct TV/satellite.
Having never used digital TV or HD (I'm in analog land), I assume that most everything we watch will be encrypted. Hence, I have to use a STB (or two).
I'm assuming that TimeWarner encrypts Discovery's channels, et al, and may not encrypt the one local non-network station we watch. No NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX in this house- just nothing worth watching. So the STBs are my challenge, moving from analog to HD. And a couple of non-encrypted standard def digital.

[mistergq]

My setup is 2 HD Homeruns using OTA Baltimore stations and two HD-PVRs using firewire. This gives me 6 HD turners (4 network tuners and 2 HD Cable tuners).

I am thinking about adding a 3rd HD Homerun and using that for FIOS Clear QAM for Washington DC stations. The reason I do not use Clear QAM for both Baltimore and Washington is because the quality and sound is not as good as the OTA...in fact the OTA is unbelievably better. The problem is the network stations for DC are 4, 7, 9. I may need to map them to the cable box channels so that the Baltimore stations are the first stations and DC stations are the second stations.

I am also thinking about adding another HD PVR so I can have a 3 hd cable station. But I am not sure we need a 3rd HD cable station.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by mistergq

My setup is 2 HD Homeruns using OTA Baltimore stations and two HD-PVRs using firewire. This gives me 6 HD turners (4 network tuners and 2 HD Cable tuners).

So each HD-PVR mates with a rented Set Top Box? Channel-tuning via IR? The fireware feed comes from the STB? Noobie, me, I'd assume the cable company would never put out firewire video, decrypted. What am I missing?

[Fuzzy]

Some companies DO have some stuff over firewire, but it's limited to free stuff. That said, firewire is still a decent method of controlling the boxes, as an alternative to IR.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by stevech

Take pity and provide advise and comment, if you please. I searched here and did not find what I expected in terms of a cookbook on doing this.
I'm HD challenged when it comes to Sage. Been using std def for a long time.

Goal: Get HD equivalent to current Sage config:

PC server in garage. Sage (and other software) runs in server mode.
Two Standard def tuners.
Cable TV. Currently simple analog cable.
One std def MVP extender at the main TV. Another in BR.

Scenario:
Replace current main living room (LR) TV with an HD - Probably 46" Samsung.
Pay damned Time Warner cable for HD. Decline rental of their DVR.

Now what do I do?
Rent one Set Top Box from Time Warner. Put in LR (I guess).
Get one HD200?
How does Sage on garage PC record favorites in HD? Via HD200? And play HD recordings as I'm used to with the std def stuff listed above? Is an IR Blaster needed? If so, is it driven by the HD200?
Does this allow Play back and record HD simultaneously?

Later, get 2nd HD tuner for recording two shows at once.

What is the resolution of the recordings relative to the HD TV which can do up to 1080?

At the BR TV, currently an MVP and a std def LCD TV... Would the Sage Server transcode HD recordings to Std Def for the MVP extender? Should this TV be replaced with a (small) HD TV? If so, would this mean another HD200? Prefer to leave this BR TV as just std def for now.

The Garage PC is a dual core AMD3800 with several SATA disks. Currently has 1GB RAM. May need more? As is, its load is slight.

Without reading anyone else's posts, here are my thoughts:

1. If I could tune over the air ATSC I would. It's better than cable and you don't need an HD-PVR or the server-video card processing power to encode/decode it if you want to watch it at the server or at a client.

2. Absolutely get the HD200's. If you factor a client license and a decent $75 video card that can handle HD-PVR material, you are literally paying less than $100 for something that is almost bulletproof and can handle virtually anything you throw at it.

3. Get gigabit ethernet with a GOOD switch, not a $50 one from Staples. Use 5E or 6 hard-wired LAN cabling. I've also had great luck with a little 8-port office-grade switch from Linksys. It was about twice the price of a cheapo one, but it's been faultless as well. I've NEVER had LAN issues with my HD200 and it's about 50 feet from my server, but I use a Netgear managed smart switch (right in between layer 1 and layer 2 switches). "prosumer" switches like these have a far better grade of switching fabric in them than the el-cheapo ones.

4. If you are ONLY going to record network HD, and you live in an area where you can get a good signal, and you don't care if Discovery or TNT is in HD, keep them in the analog, standard-def tier, and put up an antenna to pull the HD networks off the air. My OTA ATSC tuners give me 1/20th. the trouble my HD-PVR and are far easier for an older system to playback if that is your client. If you have an HD200 it does not matter, as the 200 does the "heavy lifting" of decoding.

5. As long as your hard drive subsytem can keep up, the age of your CPU should not matter much, especially with over the air HD, as all the tuner cards do is "strip" the carrier wave off the data stream and then send that data stream to your hard drive. Playback of OTA HD stuff is easier also because a lot of the "heavy lifting" has been done at the encoding end (the local station).

6. Get a USB-UIRT for the server and set top box whenever Hauppauge tuner control is concerned. There are white box, retail, and MCE editions of many of their tuner cards. I promise you, they will "slug it out" for control of the IR channels. The only loser will be you and your sanity. I can't speak for Dvico or any other types, as I have one of their tuners but no need for its IR capabilities.

7. This is a personal thing - try to minimize your use of HD and/or analog USB tuner sticks. I started with 4 and as I replaced them with PCI and PCI-express ones my problem count went to almost nil. The HD-PVR has to be USB, and has to be dealt with as far as its quirks are concerned. I finally stopped chasing driver issues and such with it. It has it's own USB-UIRT to control the cable box, and about every 3 days I do a cold power-down of the server and the HD-PVR, turn the PVR back on, wait about 15 seconds, and re-boot the Sage server. 5 minutes every 3 days has saved me hours of frustrations.

8. Don't be surprised if your USB MB ports have issues with multiple tuner sticks. I have one of the P5Q-E Premium boards that have an insane amount of back USB ports and internal headers. Many of them just won't work with tuner sticks. I put a $30 NEC-based PCI-Express x1 USB card in, with 4 ports, and it helped quite a bit.

9. Be careful with USB hard drives. Even if set to "performance" rather than "Easy Removal" they can stutter.

10. Consider laptop drives - I have had great luck with WD Scorpio Blue drives in 500GB and 640GB sizes. They suck much less power, are built to last and take abuse from a laptop, and they finally have a respectable sustained write speed of 60-70+ MB/s which is plenty for this sort of thing.

11. Consider a good (3Ware, LSI, Areca) RAID controller if you need many hard drives or want to write a lot of AV streams at once. I use 3Ware with my disks set as single disk or RAID 5, and I can easily record/watch 6 HD shows at once, at my HD200 and CPU clients, which I did as a "proof of concept". In other words, let the RAID controller do the work and you can keep an older CPU just fine.

12. Get another 1GB of RAM. Your 3800 dual-core should handle XP just fine at 2GB. Heck, RAM is so cheap, get 4GB. Move your pagefile to a different drive other than your boot drive.

13. Look at SuperSpeed's SuperCache. If you have your server on a small UPS that can institute a graceful shutdown it can speed up your system by allocating a user-controlled amount of RAM for read-ahead and write-back caches.

14. Look at SuperSpeed's RAM Disk Plus. It can handle some pagefile space. It can also safely access hidden memory above the 4GB boundary, or 3.25GB as usually seen, on 32-bit OS's

15. Look at Eboostr. It can cache some RAM for a read-ahead cache, and has EXTREMELY granular control of what to cache so you can optimize it. It can also safely access hidden memory above the 4GB boundary, or 3.25GB as usually seen, on 32-bit OS's. It's not as susceptible to power outages either as it is just a read-ahead cache. It's the write-backs that leave RAM pages dirty that you have to have a bit of concern about.

16. I've heard great things about Samsung and personally had awesome luck with Toshiba Regza LCD TV's in that size range.

17. I don't know what slots or ports are on your MB, but I had a 4400 Athlon Dual Core and it rocked XP. If you can upgrade that, you might be happy for a long time. Also, if you can get an SSD that is drive-geometry-aligned correctly, it will make XP seem like it flies, because it will. The trick is getting good alignment with XP (Vista and Win 7 align correctly by default). If you are using XP, go to the OCZ forums and read how to align to an offset of 64 using diskpar, NOT diskpart, and try a clean install. You won't believe what you will get with a good SSD. And you don't need a big SSD. I have had an OCZ 30GB Vertex on my Sage server, and I have my Sage install at about 10-12GB with all the bells and whistles I need.

Just some thoughts for extending the life and performance of your system.

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by stevech

So each HD-PVR mates with a rented Set Top Box?

Yes, each STB hooks up to the HD PVR with component cables.

Channel-tuning via IR?

No, I am changing channels with the firewire. The computer sends a signal through the firewire telling the box which channel to change too.

The fireware feed comes from the STB?

the firewire goes from the stb directly to the computer. Actually, I have it daisy chained, meaning with one cable from box 2 to box 1, then a second cable from box 1 to the computer

Noobie, me, I'd assume the cable company would never put out firewire video, decrypted. What am I missing?

I never looked to see what video is coming from the firewire. Based on what I have heard, I would assume its just the network clear qam stations. could be wrong though because I never checked.

[stevech]

@mistergg
Thanks very much.

On STB tuning via firewire - how do I know if Sage or Sage + xxx software add-on will do Firewire-based tuning for the STB I am given by my beloved TimeWarner? Maybe I have a few different STBs to choose from and if so, I want to choose the one that can be Firewire rather than IR.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Savage1701

Without reading anyone else's posts, here are my thoughts:

1. If I could tune over the air ATSC I would. It's better than cable and you don't need an HD-PVR or the server-video card processing power to encode/decode it if you want to watch it at the server or at a client.

Thanks- there's very little off the air we want to see/record, so it seems the focus will be on STBs to decrypt the good stuff

2. Absolutely get the HD200's. If you factor a client license and a decent $75 video card that can handle HD-PVR material, you are literally paying less than $100 for something that is almost bulletproof and can handle virtually anything you throw at it.

Yes, I know, as I began with Sage on a laptop at the TV set. Too many dropped frames

3. Get gigabit ethernet with a GOOD switch, not a $50 one from Staples. Use 5E or 6 hard-wired LAN cabling. I've also had great luck with a little 8-port office-grade switch from Linksys. It was about twice the price of a cheapo one, but it's been faultless as well. I've NEVER had LAN issues with my HD200 and it's about 50 feet from my server, but I use a Netgear managed smart switch (right in between layer 1 and layer 2 switches). "prosumer" switches like these have a far better grade of switching fabric in them than the el-cheapo ones.

To the TV, I can't run cat5 due to construction here; I just changed from WiFi to MoCA - it's great

4. If you are ONLY going to record network HD, and you live in an area where you can get a good signal, and you don't care if Discovery or TNT is in HD, keep them in the analog, standard-def tier, and put up an antenna to pull the HD networks off the air. My OTA ATSC tuners give me 1/20th. the trouble my HD-PVR and are far easier for an older system to playback if that is your client. If you have an HD200 it does not matter, as the 200 does the "heavy lifting" of decoding.

Currently, Sage w/Std Def records mostly HGTV, FOODTV, DISCOVERY, etc. Since we don't watch much network TV at all, I assume (?) that OTA is not important. Again, I'm an HD neophite

5. As long as your hard drive subsytem can keep up, the age of your CPU should not matter much, especially with over the air HD, as all the tuner cards do is "strip" the carrier wave off the data stream and then send that data stream to your hard drive. Playback of OTA HD stuff is easier also because a lot of the "heavy lifting" has been done at the encoding end (the local station).

Should be OK;dedicated 24/7 AMD 3800 Dual CPU, RAID1 SATA pair

6. Get a USB-UIRT for the server and set top box whenever Hauppauge tuner control is concerned. There are white box, retail, and MCE editions of many of their tuner cards. I promise you, they will "slug it out" for control of the IR channels. The only loser will be you and your sanity. I can't speak for Dvico or any other types, as I have one of their tuners but no need for its IR capabilities.
7. This is a personal thing - try to minimize your use of HD and/or analog USB tuner sticks. I started with 4 and as I replaced them with PCI and PCI-express ones my problem count went to almost nil. The HD-PVR has to be USB, and has to be dealt with as far as its quirks are concerned. I finally stopped chasing driver issues and such with it. It has it's own USB-UIRT to control the cable box, and about every 3 days I do a cold power-down of the server and the HD-PVR, turn the PVR back on, wait about 15 seconds, and re-boot the Sage server. 5 minutes every 3 days has saved me hours of frustrations.

"stick"? You mean the USB tuner dongles? I assumed they were just n/a. Not so?

8. Don't be surprised if your USB MB ports have issues with multiple tuner sticks. I have one of the P5Q-E Premium boards that have an insane amount of back USB ports and internal headers. Many of them just won't work with tuner sticks. I put a $30 NEC-based PCI-Express x1 USB card in, with 4 ports, and it helped quite a bit.
9. Be careful with USB hard drives. Even if set to "performance" rather than "Easy Removal" they can stutter.

I don't use USB drives for recording

10. Consider laptop drives - I have had great luck with WD Scorpio Blue drives in 500GB and 640GB sizes. They suck much less power, are built to last and take abuse from a laptop, and they finally have a respectable sustained write speed of 60-70+ MB/s which is plenty for this sort of thing.

I currently have common 3.5 in. WD SATA in RAID1 for hardware failure protection and I copy out keeper videos to another drive. 2.5 in drives do get a price premium.

11. Consider a good (3Ware, LSI, Areca) RAID controller if you need many hard drives or want to write a lot of AV streams at once. I use 3Ware with my disks set as single disk or RAID 5, and I can easily record/watch 6 HD shows at once, at my HD200 and CPU clients, which I did as a "proof of concept". In other words, let the RAID controller do the work and you can keep an older CPU just fine.
12. Get another 1GB of RAM. Your 3800 dual-core should handle XP just fine at 2GB. Heck, RAM is so cheap, get 4GB. Move your pagefile to a different drive other than your boot drive.
13. Look at SuperSpeed's SuperCache. If you have your server on a small UPS that can institute a graceful shutdown it can speed up your system by allocating a user-controlled amount of RAM for read-ahead and write-back caches.

I do have a UPS but I have yet to find a good/reliable one

14. Look at SuperSpeed's RAM Disk Plus. It can handle some pagefile space. It can also safely access hidden memory above the 4GB boundary, or 3.25GB as usually seen, on 32-bit OS's
15. Look at Eboostr. It can cache some RAM for a read-ahead cache, and has EXTREMELY granular control of what to cache so you can optimize it. It can also safely access hidden memory above the 4GB boundary, or 3.25GB as usually seen, on 32-bit OS's. It's not as susceptible to power outages either as it is just a read-ahead cache. It's the write-backs that leave RAM pages dirty that you have to have a bit of concern about.

new one on me; will read. Applicable to Win 7 if I go that way?

16. I've heard great things about Samsung and personally had awesome luck with Toshiba Regza LCD TV's in that size range.

Right. I prefer Samsung or Sony. But I'm waiting on one that can stream Netflix direct to the TV rather than via a Blueray player. Netflix via Sage seems to be way too complicated.

17. I don't know what slots or ports are on your MB, but I had a 4400 Athlon Dual Core and it rocked XP. If you can upgrade that, you might be happy for a long time. Also, if you can get an SSD that is drive-geometry-aligned correctly, it will make XP seem like it flies, because it will. The trick is getting good alignment with XP (Vista and Win 7 align correctly by default). If you are using XP, go to the OCZ forums and read how to align to an offset of 64 using diskpar, NOT diskpart, and try a clean install. You won't believe what you will get with a good SSD. And you don't need a big SSD. I have had an OCZ 30GB Vertex on my Sage server, and I have my Sage install at about 10-12GB with all the bells and whistles I need.

Why would an SSD improve Sage where the videos are stored in a different drive or partition (64K blocks)? I'd think there's very little disk I/O for program fetching. - - I'm watching SSDs closely. Hold out for one at 80GB for $175, on newegg. Prefer Intel as they have TRIM for XP

Just some thoughts for extending the life and performance of your system.

Thanks a ba-zillion. I hope this dialog helps others, too.