Does anyone have three or four Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2250's working in their system?

[perfessor101]

Hello

I was curious if anyone had more than two Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2250's working in one SageTV server under Windows 7 (64bit preferred)

I have two Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2250's and two WinTV PVR-500MCE's installed under Windows XP 2005 MCE currently working okay.

I'm migrating to a new system that will be running Windows 7 (it can be 32 or 64bit) and I'm looking to retire my WinTV Pvr-500MCE's and replace them with WinTV HVR-2250's if possible so I don't have to limit the usable memory to 3GB.

Thanks for your time and help,
Bobby

[TABLESAWTIM]

Hello,

I also have been looking for info for SageTV large quantity, multi-tuner support and have not been successful.

I have five internal tuners and have used BeyondTV since it was called "Personal Video Station".

Now, Snapstream is forcing me to make a change.

As I learn more about SageTV, I am obviously going to make the move, and I am still apprehensive, because there seems to be no concise documentation on the quantity of tuners I will need to use in SageTV v7. I may have just passed over it.

I will be swapping out the old analog tuners, for more Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2250's, or the new Hauppauge tuners coming along in the near future, and when I have run out of slots, I’m going to use USB tuners, if I ‘just need more’. I like having options.

It’s good to be apart of a group that have similar interests.


Thank you, Tim

P.S: Bobby, I just re-read your post, and am I reading it correctly, you have eight tuners working with SageTV… Are they working with it because of MCE, or do they work without MCE?

P.S.S: I recall reading; SageTV does not support Windows 7 yet. I don’t know if SageTV supports Vista. If it does, it will probably work under Windows 7 relatively well.

[Fuzzy]

There's no documentation stating the number of tuner you are limited to, because.. well.. there is no limit. As for windows 7, it isn't listed as officially supported, but it works just fine. I'm sure when they 'release' the next version, it will have win7 compatibility listed.

[Bill1426]

I'm still waiting for them to fix the Hauppauge 2250 issue with Win 7 (64-bit) using SageTV v7..

I only have 1 card installed, and it can't display the right channel (no-remapping).. I put on channel 2 and it displays (on tv) channel 6..

And forget about Clear QAM... Can't get that to even see the Clear QAM channels...

So I went back to BeyondTV, until they fix this issue..

ps: I submitted a bug report, but they tell me it's I'm the only one having this issue.. I told them to search the forum, and they will see it's not just me..

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Bill1426

I'm still waiting for them to fix the Hauppauge 2250 issue with Win 7 (64-bit) using SageTV v7..

I only have 1 card installed, and it can't display the right channel (no-remapping).. I put on channel 2 and it displays (on tv) channel 6..

And forget about Clear QAM... Can't get that to even see the Clear QAM channels...

So I went back to BeyondTV, until they fix this issue..

ps: I submitted a bug report, but they tell me it's I'm the only one having this issue.. I told them to search the forum, and they will see it's not just me..

That's probably part of the problem.. the forums are not bug reports, and sage doesn't 'monitor' them for such info. You very likely ARE the only one who has submitted a report stating you had that problem.

[loomdog32]

I would also like to get a decisive answer on this.. I have been thinking of going to 3 or 4 Hauppauge 2250 in my (now planning) next sage rig.

I have used 8 tuners in the past concurrently. So I know Sage and my current rig is capable. I just want to know about using multiple of that specific tuner..

[Bill1426]

Originally Posted by loomdog32

I would also like to get a decisive answer on this.. I have been thinking of going to 3 or 4 Hauppauge 2250 in my (now planning) next sage rig.

I have used 8 tuners in the past concurrently. So I know Sage and my current rig is capable. I just want to know about using multiple of that specific tuner..

Let me say that the 2250 is a e-PCI card.. Most Motherboards only have 1 or 2 of those slots.. And a video card (if not intergraded into the motherboard), is using 1 of them (e-pci 16x)

[perfessor101]

Good Morning,

TableSawTim,
You will need 1 tuner for each channel you want to record simultaneously.
In my channel lineups there are a lot of TV Stations that start shows two or three minutes late (one station regularly broadcasts shows up to 15 minutes late) consequently I have lots of padding on most of my shows ... (0, 1, 3, 5, 15 minutes depending) ... with each show recording that has padding thats one tuner still recording and unavailable when the next show starts recording.

It is TV's 'summer' season currently and over the next week I will only be needing six tuners (partly due to padding) to cover this week's recordings.

I have had up to nine tuners installed and running on my current system but I found the WinTV PVR-150 I was using as my ninth tuner kept on causing tuner capture errors. It could have been a bad card ... or too much for the drivers ... or too much for the OS.

SageTV will support as many TV tuners as you can fit 'into' a computer ... that can handle that many simultaneous recordings.
On my abit AN7 motherboard I had to load balance my recordings (Bandwidth Setting - SageTV 7) I set it so no more than two tuners were recording to a drive at a time. This was more a limitation of the motherboard and saturating the bus.

I have eight tuners working in Spite of Windows 2005 MCE OEM, windows XP Professional would have been a much smoother choice at the time, but I didn't know MS was going to mangle SP3 on MCE 2005 so badly.

Currently I have my SageTV Client (7.0.*.10) running very smoothly on Windows 7 64bit ...

Loomdog32 ... we're both looking for the same thing ... knowing whether or not the motherboard / bios / drivers / OS can handle certain combinations of cards. In this case the HVR-2250 ...
My new system will be arriving in a few days from www.ncix.com it has onboard video with 2 x PCI-e16, PCI-E4, PCI-E1 and 2 x PCI slots.
The plan is to plug one 'extra' WinTV HVR-2250 into each of the PCI-E16 slots and try it. (the bioses on motherboards sometimes only support video cards in the "video card" PCI-e16 slot) It should already work in the PCI-E4 and PCI-E slots ... and as I get that system up and running and tested I will start migrating the other tuners over.

New:
Windows 7 (32/64Bit) Professional.
Norco RPC-470 Rackmount Server case
Silverstone Strider Essential ST50F-ES 500W Power Supply
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 DDR3 AMD 890GX ATX 2PCI-E16 PCI-E1 PCI-E4 2PCI VGA DVI Motherboard 
AMD Phenom II X4 905E 65W
OCZ OCZ3G1333LV4GK 4GB 2 X 2GB DDR3-1333 memory
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2250

ReUsing:
30GB Kingston SSD Now "hard disk"
2 x PVR-500 MCE tuners
2 x HVR-2250 tuners
1 x 250GB Seagate Hard disk
2 x 250GB Western Digital Hard Disks

I guess I will be reporting on the success of this hardware / OS experiment.

SageTV is not the experiment ... It Works ... the question is whether or not the motherboard / bios / drivers / and OS can work properly together.

Bill1426,
There are many motherboards as you have described because most people don't need much more. I like the product listings at NCIX because they include many of the features in the product's name which helps in doing the research of finding the right motherboard. (Which will only be the 'right' one until I find out how it really works ;-))
I don't always buy from them ... but not having to look at the specifications page of every motherboard shortens the time spent looking at each motherboard and helps me find my next 'mistake' that much faster.

example:
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 DDR3 AMD 890GX ATX 2PCI-E16 PCI-E1 PCI-E4 2PCI VGA DVI Motherboard 
USB3, AM3 Processor, AMD 890GX Chipset, ATX Form Factor, 2 PCI-e16, PCI-e4, PCI-e1, 2PCI, VGA, DVI, although they missed the HDMI connector in the list

Bobby

[craigap]

Originally Posted by Bill1426

I'm still waiting for them to fix the Hauppauge 2250 issue with Win 7 (64-bit) using SageTV v7..

I only have 1 card installed, and it can't display the right channel (no-remapping).. I put on channel 2 and it displays (on tv) channel 6..
.

I've had 3 HVR-2250's working in Sagetv for quite some time now (Windows Vista 32bit, SageTV v6 and v7 beta currently). I have had the occasional hiccup that is similar to the one you are describing. My issue, for example, is that if I have a recording scheduled to record on channel A the tuner will try to tune channel A, but it actually tunes channel B and records something entirely different even though Sagetv thinks and says it's the right recording. This happens with my QAM stations. I've sent in a lot of bug reports with v6 and now for v7. This issue only comes up once in a while.

[Bill1426]

Based on a few threads.. It seems that the issue is 64-bit OS..

[KeithAbbott]

I've got four 2250's running in a MSI H57M-ED65 motherboard (micro-ATX with four PCIe slots), it's running flawlessly. I use it only as the back-end server, so the onboard video is fine for my situation. As much as I would have preferred 64-bit Windows 7, I stuck with 32-bit based on the 2250 driver situation and the posts that I had read on this forum.

I spent a fair amount of time (couple of days) up-front getting the channels set up perfectly, I have cable and get both analog and clear QAM channels. Once I got the first analog and digital tuner set up properly, the other seven tuners just point to the same EPG. Each subsequent tuner took maybe five minutes to set up, if that.

WAF (and kids) is extremely high. I'm also using Sony RM-VLZ620 universal remotes for each of my TVs, which gives me a uniform remote to control all of my various equipment.

[loomdog32]

Just to clarify, I should be able to get 3-4 Hauppauge 2250 tuner cards (6-8 total hybrid tuners) working fine with Sage (6 and 7) as long as I use a 32-bit OS??

I am currently lucky enough to get my entire basic cable via clear QAM. I know this will change in the future and then I will change to a split setup (some for locals via clear QAM (OTA not an option) and some for STB)..

Both above scenarios should work???

[TABLESAWTIM]

Hi perfessor101,

I appreciate the reply.

I'm very stressed about the move from BeyondTV to SageTV, because I know BTV so well, and there's very little set-up, compared to what I've been reading about SageTV.

I love all of the features that Sage offers, and I am really looking forward to moving forward with the transition.

I have two questions, with sub questions, and I have tried to locate the info, with little success:

1. Does SageTV have a setting, to simply convert the recorded MPEG2 file, to an H.264 file, with multiple quality settings to choose from, and does Sage delete the MPEG2 file after converting to H.264, or save it? How long after the show is recorded, does it take to convert the file?

2. How do you back-up SageTV’s settings, and future shows to be recorded? Does Sage compile everything into a single file, or folder? Where’s the button to accomplish this?

When backing-up BTV, you simply click the 'back-up BTV', button, and it asks you where you want the zip file to be placed. BTV shuts down all of its services, and compiles all of your settings, including every show you have set for future recording, then, starts the services again. To place the settings and shows to be recorded in another computer, or re-install of the OS, you simply click the 'Restore' button, and all channels, settings, and set shows are ready to go.

I will appreciate any assistance that you’re willing to give.

Anyone willing, is great.


Thank you again Bobby, Tim

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by TABLESAWTIM

1. Does SageTV have a setting, to simply convert the recorded MPEG2 file, to an H.264 file, with multiple quality settings to choose from, and does Sage delete the MPEG2 file after converting to H.264, or save it? How long after the show is recorded, does it take to convert the file?

Yes, it can, and depends on CPU. At one time, it was an add on, but now I think it's built in.

Originally Posted by TABLESAWTIM

2. How do you back-up SageTV’s settings, and future shows to be recorded? Does Sage compile everything into a single file, or folder? Where’s the button to accomplish this?

Nothing built in, but you just save the WIN.BIZ file, and I do the properties too. I've only had to restore once in about 6 years.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by loomdog32

Just to clarify, I should be able to get 3-4 Hauppauge 2250 tuner cards (6-8 total hybrid tuners) working fine with Sage (6 and 7) as long as I use a 32-bit OS??

I am currently lucky enough to get my entire basic cable via clear QAM. I know this will change in the future and then I will change to a split setup (some for locals via clear QAM (OTA not an option) and some for STB)..

Both above scenarios should work???

I don't think there is a difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when you are talking about the HVR2250 and Windows 7. Both should work.

My setup currently has 6 tuners with Windows7 64-bit and the latest released version of Sage (v6.6.2) and I have no problems with recording quality or tuning the correct stations. (I have 2 single-tuner PVR-150s connected to cable boxes, 1 dual-tuner HVR-2250 connected directly to cable for Clear QAM, and 1 dual-tuner HDHR connected directly to cable for Clear QAM).

I did notice that there are a couple of stations that my HDHR will tune that the HVR2250 will not tune (but they are stations that I don't watch such as QVC and a bible channel, so it never bothered me) The HVR2250 finds the channels during the scan, but Sage behaves as if they are encrypted and not clear QAM.

[Bill1426]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I don't think there is a difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when you are talking about the HVR2250 and Windows 7. Both should work.

My setup currently has 6 tuners with Windows7 64-bit and the latest released version of Sage (v6.6.2) and I have no problems with recording quality or tuning the correct stations. (I have 2 single-tuner PVR-150s connected to cable boxes, 1 dual-tuner HVR-2250 connected directly to cable for Clear QAM, and 1 dual-tuner HDHR connected directly to cable for Clear QAM).

I did notice that there are a couple of stations that my HDHR will tune that the HVR2250 will not tune (but they are stations that I don't watch such as QVC and a bible channel, so it never bothered me) The HVR2250 finds the channels during the scan, but Sage behaves as if they are encrypted and not clear QAM.

@Tiki
Tell us what happens when you install SageTV v7, on your Windows 7 64-bit system..

[perfessor101]

I'll be getting the parts above and two more tuners so I can experiment ...

I'll install Windows 7 Professional 64 bit first and start testing stability with the two tuners, motherboard and memory.
I'll start off with SageTV 6 first and test for a week ... and then I'll try slapping in SageTV 7 beta (if all goes smoothly I may move quicker)

SageTV has built in compression and EvilPenguin has another compression option called MediaShrink.
I am using a Phenom 9850 Quad Core x 2.5Ghz processor over Gigabit ethernet for conversions and it is taking about 30 minutes to convert 30 minutes of video to h.264 with aac audio in a mkv container using MediaShrink.
I think that may have more to do with the G.Skill memory in my main system that won't run above DDR2-800 speeds than with MediaShrink.

To backup SageTV's settings you just need to backup the wiz.bin file (contains favorites, epg and show data, etc) and the sage.properties files (tuner, and UI settings, etc).

When SageTV is running you can only backup their backup files (win.bak and Sage.properties.autobackup, which are as current as SageTV's last restart?).
With SageTV shut down you can backup all files.

SageTV doesn't backup the future recordings list per-se, as it regenerates the list every few minutes in case of EPG changes.

To restore SageTV on a new computer (with same tuner cards) sometimes it's as easy as installing SageTV and then dropping the wiz.bin and sage.properties files into the SageTV directory.
It is suggested by most that starting with a new sage.properties file is always better. (ie. running the setup wizard so you get a new and clean sage.properties file)

I'll keep everyone updated on the hardware / drivers / SageTV 7 and Windows 7 64bit Odyssey ...


Bobby

[TABLESAWTIM]

perfessor101 and MattHelm,

I appreciate you gentlemen assisting me.

Oh man, am I excited to get going.

I know it's going to be very very, very different than BTV's set-up, and I think that's going to be a good thing after I figure it out. SO MANY MORE OPTIONS...

Thank you for the H.264 codec names. Now I know what search words to use in the forum.

MattHelm, when you mentioned Sage backing-up on Sage restart, did you mean it doesn't back-up everything, and if I want to have a complete back-up, I'll have to back it up while all of the services are shutdown? How is that done?

Here I go gentlemen.


Thank you, Tim

[sic0048]

This might be stating the obvious, but you can also consider other tuner options.

For example, many of us use the HDHomeRun dual tuner (ATSC or QAM) in our setups. It is a network tuner, so you don't have to worry about running out of PCI-e slots, etc. It can be set up to record two ATSC feeds, or two QAM (clear of course), or one ATSC and one QAM.

Just a thought for those of you that either run out of PCI-e slots or don't think your MB can handle multiple tuners.

[IM2BZ2P]

Originally Posted by Bill1426

@Tiki
Tell us what happens when you install SageTV v7, on your Windows 7 64-bit system..

Bill,

I have one 2250 tuner running Sage 7 under 64-bit Windows with absolutely zero problems with analog, digital or clear-QAM cable TV. I'm delighted with the setup and am looking to add a 2nd 2250 card to my system. Also using an HD-200 extender. Again, no issues.