HDHOMERUN + HPmediaSmartWHS + HD200's

[bigbill]

Will this be problematic... I have an HP mediasmart WHS server running Sage with a single nic. Also a remote Sage server with HDPVR connected. I also use two HD200 extenders to watch HD TV. I am considering replacing a local USB HVR-950 with a dual OTA Hdhomerun device.
Does the HP Mediasmart have the horsepower to have all that streaming accross the 100mbit network at the same time?

2 HD Shows being watched
1 Remote HDPVR Recording and Writing it to the HP MS.
HDhomerun recording two OTA HD Shows.

-Bill

[paulbeers]

Reading and writing files uses very little CPU horsepower. Where you might run into trouble is hard drive throughput. If you aren't using more than 1 recording drive, I recommend you add a second. Sage can then (some what limited) load balancing which should help with any issues with throughput. Really Sage isn't all that CPU intensive, just I/O. It is the plug ins and the transcoding that take CPU power.

Your real issue is that 100mb network. A 1080i MPEG2 recording has a bandwidth requirement of about 20mb/s, so you should really consider upgrading to gigabit as you are talking about reading/writing 5 different HD streams which would max out your network (especially if you figure a bit extra for the network overhead)....

[bigbill]

Yeah, that is what I was wondering about. The media smart only has one network interface and seems to only have one USB controller also. I probably need to check out the throughput on my router too.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by bigbill

Yeah, that is what I was wondering about. The media smart only has one network interface and seems to only have one USB controller also. I probably need to check out the throughput on my router too.

Per HP, the ex470 has gigabit so the issue isn't that the network card is the limitation, it would be your router's ethernet ports. However, do not buy another router, just buy a cheap gigabit switch. You can hook the switch to the router so that DHCP is still configured by the router, but hook all your other components to the switch (so they are on a gigabit network). This is how most of us here do it (in fact the switches in routers are usually pretty terrible and even cheap separate switches are better than what is in your consumer grade router).