Newbie setting up Sagetv

[Radiorara]

I have been wanting to setup ota digital/analog and ota sat for some time now but have never made the plunge. Now I have decided to get sagetv and deploy it. I have setup a desktop computer with two hauppauge tv tuner cards and even have a dvb-s sat card that I could use but I am not certain. My goal is to incorporate ota digital and ota sat and my personal movies, videos and pictures on this machine and run sagetv server on it. I have 6 hauppauge media mvp hardware boxes that will run as clients connected to the server. I may add a sagetv extender to one tv in the mix. I need help and input as to what sat dish/converter box and amplifiers/diplexers that would make this happen as I am overwhelmed at the choices and information out there. I appreciate any help and I apologize in advance as I am sure this has been something that people have been answering for some time.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by Radiorara

I have been wanting to setup ota digital/analog and ota sat for some time now but have never made the plunge. Now I have decided to get sagetv and deploy it. I have setup a desktop computer with two hauppauge tv tuner cards and even have a dvb-s sat card that I could use but I am not certain. My goal is to incorporate ota digital and ota sat and my personal movies, videos and pictures on this machine and run sagetv server on it. I have 6 hauppauge media mvp hardware boxes that will run as clients connected to the server. I may add a sagetv extender to one tv in the mix. I need help and input as to what sat dish/converter box and amplifiers/diplexers that would make this happen as I am overwhelmed at the choices and information out there. I appreciate any help and I apologize in advance as I am sure this has been something that people have been answering for some time.

Well... your going to have to give us a bit more...

Server Specs? - With 6 MVP's you will need to have quite a bit of horsepower on your server to run them all simultaneously!

Network? For your MVP's, I would recommend a wired gigabit route... Wireless never seems to make it.

Source? For OTA, I would go with an outdoor (or at the least an attic mounted version) antenna. Go here to get some rec's... http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx For your sat choices, who is your provider? It will vary depending on your provider and country. For a slightly generic primer on DVB-S setup, try the MythTV wiki... http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/DVB-S.

I know you will get plenty of responses when you give a bit to work with...

-Jason

[pjpjpjpj]

Also, things like, do you (ever?) want HD? The MVPs do not do HD, so you would either need to buy a Sage extender (currently out of stock), or watch on your server (again, how's the specs?). You'd need an HD-PVR for HD satellite, not to mention HD sat STB(s) from your sat provider.

The MVPs require encoding of streams in the server, that's why Jason asked about your specs. How many MVPs would be running at once? The HD Extenders do the encoding themselves, so your server can be much less stout (all it has to do is run the Sage software and pass data streams from hard drives to the network).

If you are MVP only, you probably don't need Gigabit, though wired is always a good idea. I doubt SD programming (through MVPs) would use enough bandwidth to make a 10/100 system hiccup - you'd likely hit encoding or hard drive access issues first.

Check out this thread, or, since you are going to have multiple tuners, my post within it that has a link to another “beginner basics” thread I created a while ago:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48013

[tchapin]

Here are some questions to help you figure some things out:

1. How many people live in your home?
2. How many would be accessing content via the MVPs at the same time?
3. Do you think that your video viewing will be mostly recorded TV, or do you also have a lot of other video content?
4. Are you interested in Hulu / Netflix / etc online content?
5. Which hauppauge TV tuners do you have? Are they HD or SD?
6. What is the model of the dvb-s tuner you have?
7. What are the stats of the computer that you want to install everything on?
8. Do you have a wired network in place? If so, how fast is it?

As you know, the MVPs are older devices and the only video format that they understand without the server having to do a conversion is the one used by SageTV for DVR recordings. Any other video content, whether ripped DVDs or online content will have to be converted by the server for the MVP to display properly.

If your tuners are only SD, it will not make sense for you to record in HD, because the MVPs cannot do HD, so the server will have to convert even DVR recordings.

The answers to the above questions will help you decide:
1. How many many "SageTV Client License for MVP"s you'll need. This will be the number of TVs that you expect people will be using simultaneously.
2. How powerful your server will need to be and how fast your network will need to be. This will depend on what type of content you'll be watching and how many simultaneous users you'll have.

Jason, do you really think that Gigabit is necessary if he's using only MVPs? What's the bandwidth that'll be used by transcoded HD content for the MVP? When watching SD recordings, I only see usage of between 3 and 5 Mbps on my server.

When I watch an AVI, I see between 4 and 15% CPU usage on my server. It perhaps averages around 8%. It's a dual-core AMD 5050e at 2.76 GHz chip, so it's not super powerful.

Depending on the tuners you have, and if they contain hardware encoding or not, it will determine how powerful your server will need to be.

Wouldn't the sat box you get be determined by your sat provider? While I have cable and have never had satellite, is it all that different?

[Radiorara]

Thanks guys for all your responses and insightful information. I built a dual core amd athlon a couple or more years ago and was going to use that. It has 2gigs of ram and I believe a 2.4ghz Opteron that is over-clocked to 3.2. I will be going wired as I have made my cat6 drops to the rooms as well as rg6 coax.(Cat6 gigabit network) I wont be subscribing to cable or satellite, (I had fios). HD is not necessary for me as I dont need to replace perfectly good working tv's, although I might upgrade one tv in the bedroom and if I do will use it with the sagetv extender in place of the mediamvp.

I want to pursue the fta sat option and tie that in with ota digital/analog channels and have it work with sagetv. If possible I would like to access hulu, netflix, pandora but its not absolutely necessary. Not all the tv's would be accessed simultaneously. Probably at most 3 but at certain times when people visit that could spike to 5.

I have a Digistar DVB-S pci card that I could use or if someone has a better option that let me know. The tuner cards that I have are Hauppauge 1800's. I purchased a Channel Master #CM3418 8WYamplifier and I already have a new in box antenna Lava A-2605 hdtv remote controlled antenna. I have a couple of skywalker 8 way splitters as well. My router was recently updated to a Netgear WNR-3500L so I hope there is not an issue with that.

Id like to know what kind of fta dish I should get. Maybe something with multiple lnb's? Could I reuse my old Directv dish? I would deduce that a multiswitch is in order for my setup but I am unsure of which to get. Would I need fta boxes at each tv or could the add in card suffice for sat?

[tchapin]

Thanks for the additional information.

The only thing that you'd need at each location would be the MVPs. You'd connect your tuners and your satellite dish to your SageTV server. Which would then distribute your content to your displays.

Now, if you wanted to distribute the live Sat feed to each of the TVs, you'd need some sort of distributer. Unfortunately, I can't help you with that. If you can't get an answer about that, you could check at http://www.avsforum.com/,

The specs on your server seem like they would work nicely.

For Hulu / Netflix and other online content, you'd want to get the playon software (which has a cost associated) and the associated plugin (which is free).

[davephan]

Can you still return your MVP units? If so, I recommend returning the MVP units and buying HD-200 units instead. If the cost is too high, return your MVP units and get half as many HD-200 units.

The audio quality is drastically better and the video is better with the HD-200. The HD-200 can playback a variety of formats without your computer transcoding the videos on-the-fly.

I have two HD-200 units and two MVP. I almost never use the MVP units because the quality is pretty lousy compared to the HD-200 units. The reliability of the HD-200 units is also much better. Sometimes the MVP units have trouble reconnecting to the server and have to be unplugged for awhile. The HD-200 units are trouble-free and are more future-proof, working with both SD and HD TVs.

Dave

[wrems]

I agree with Davephan about replacing at least some of those MVP's with HD200's. I don't think your server would be up to all that transcoding for simultaneous viewing. The MVP's can be fussy, and the UI isn't that fast. If you try to do Playon as well as accessing multiple MVP's your server is going to be taxing your system. Commercial skipping is a whole other thing too... Are you thinking about that?

[tchapin]

I'm still using 2 MVPs regularly and haven't had any problems. But I'm also not yet using v7, which some people report has really slowed down the interface on MVPs.

Also, remember that currently HD Theaters are out of stock.

Does the HD Theater really make a big difference on non-HD displays? The original poster states that he hasn't moved to HD yet.

[Radiorara]

Hey Guys. Once again thanks for you input and suggestions. I bought my mvp's a long time ago thinking I was going to do this and then shelved everything due to other more important matters. I agree that having hd-200's are better and I might get a couple when they become available. I could always sell mine. I dont have any hd sets and there is no rush for me to get any as sd is perfectly fine for what tv and movies I do watch.

Your probably right in that I would need more horsepower for a server running those clients and transcoding on the fly would be taxing. I suppose it could work for a couple of mvp's but that will have to wait until those newer units come in stock.

Good to know about v7 on the mvp. Ill stick with 6x. Thanks tchapin for the link.

[davephan]

The HD-200 is a much better choice than the MVP even if you don't have an HD TV yet. Eventually, the SD TV will be replaced with an HD TV. The SD TV will probably not be used for another decade. The sound quality on the SD TV is still vastly superior with the HD-200. The connection to the network is far more reliable. The MVP units can loose their network connection to the LAN from time to time, requiring a power reset. The HD-200 network connection is reliable. The MVP functions much worse with version 7, even with the animation off. I've had trouble with resuming a video playback and using the skipping function. I think the MVP units should be considered obsolete, and shouldn't be purchased new anymore.

Dave

[wrems]

Originally Posted by tchapin

Does the HD Theater really make a big difference on non-HD displays?

Yes. The UI speed is much snappier, seeking in videos is much faster, the overall video quality is much better and the sound is better. I still think the sound is a bit low even on the HD200.

I've hooked up my MVP and my HD200 to my old 27 CRT and the HD200 is hands down better. Does that mean the OP shouldn't use his MVP's? No, absolutely not. I think they can be re-purposed in lower use areas. I think running 2 MVP's simultaneously would be ok, but 3+ might be a stretch. Especially, if he adds other functionality like Playon, comskip etc. I don't know for sure, I only have one MVP...

[Radiorara]

I agree with the fact that the mvp's have limited life left in them and they should not be purchased anymore unless used for limited viewing areas. Eventually I will have hd sets to replace all my sd ones and things I am sure will be more seamless and intregrated. But for now why spend all that money when things work fine as is? I probably will test things to see just how they work in my situation but I agree with you all in that the newer devices are going to be much better which makes sense. I was wondering if anyone here combined fta sat and ota analog/digital and used it with sage. Thats what I would like to do as I am tired of paying for it especially when I dont watch much tv to warrant the expense.

[FriscoJohn]

Radiorara,

See my following post titled "Prof 7301..." for my experiences with satellite TV and Sage. I wasn't so lucky with OTA. Although I'm only a couple of miles from Mt. Sutro, I don't have a line of sight path to the transmitters. I found that multi-path interference from such things as the trees blowing in the wind severely degraded the signals of a lot of stations I wanted to watch. Hence I am using Comcast which provides the locals and a few others in unscrambled QAM, tunable with my Hauppauge 2250.

I highly recommend SageTV. It's a fantastic system and support through the forum is good.

Regards.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by tchapin

I'm still using 2 MVPs regularly and haven't had any problems. But I'm also not yet using v7, which some people report has really slowed down the interface on MVPs.non-HD displays? The original poster states that he hasn't moved to HD yet.

When you switch to version 7, I think you'll want to retire the MVP units. I checked one of my MVP units that I rarely use after version 7, and it is a lot worse, even with the animation off.

Dave

[tchapin]

Supposedly it's better even if you use the older interface w/ v7. You can still switch to sagetv3 stv xml. You can also use the SageMC interface, which has been upgraded to work with Sage7. So, I suspect that those of use with MVPs are not out of luck.

In any case, what do you have to lost by trying, since the HD Theaters are out of stock.