Help me go Sage (new user hardware help)

[madpoet]

Only of the SD feeds. Not the HD.

[bastage]

Originally Posted by madpoet

Only of the SD feeds. Not the HD.

oh.. hmm oh well.. Atleast according to SiliconDust Mine come clearqam & the channel numbers listed are in HD

[madpoet]

Then you're good to go, hopefully for years to come. Honestly I had them for probably 4 years before Comcast decided to filter me. Heck, in the early days of QAM I got EVERYTHING wide open Was very nice, except that it included the various PPV channels and every once in a while I'd be flipping through channels and if someone in my neighborhood had rented porn it would pop up.

[bastage]

Originally Posted by madpoet

Then you're good to go, hopefully for years to come. Honestly I had them for probably 4 years before Comcast decided to filter me. Heck, in the early days of QAM I got EVERYTHING wide open Was very nice, except that it included the various PPV channels and every once in a while I'd be flipping through channels and if someone in my neighborhood had rented porn it would pop up.

That would be VERY nice.. & I would have no problem with free porn.. well unless its some south of the border type stuff that includes animals.. That would be bad..

[madpoet]

It didn't offend ME... my wife was not amused though.

[bastage]

Originally Posted by madpoet

It didn't offend ME... my wife was not amused though.

lol.. I Can guarantee you that it wouldn't offend mine.. We both grew up in vegas so neither of us shy about that stuff.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

That depends on what you want to watch. I watch lots of sports, especially basketball and hockey. For that you will likely need multiple cable boxes and tuners since most games of this sort are only on cable stations and even if they are showed on a delayed basis that doesn't help you much.

Yeah, I guess that's true.. the one true professional sport only ever has one game at a time on cable, so i never had a problem with that.

[Spectrum]

I'll just chime in that it wouldn't be advisable to do any commercial skipping on that atom cpu and that is one of the best things about Sage

[bastage]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

I'll just chime in that it wouldn't be advisable to do any commercial skipping on that atom cpu and that is one of the best things about Sage

I didn't even know that that was an option. It would make my wife happy as then we wouldn't have to make the tivo FF noises at each other whenever a commercial came on to tell the other to pick up the remote.

[JetreL]

Originally Posted by bastage

I didn't even know that that was an option. It would make my wife happy

Yeah, as you start working with SageTV you'll begin to see that Sage is an extremely versatile HTPC platform with a strong hobbyist developer community not to mention Sage does listen to it's community for features. Pretty much if you can dream it up there is a plugin or someone is working on it in some way. Along the way there will be times you will get frustrated (VERY FRUSTRATED) but there isn't anything out there on the market that works as well.

BTW, The sage motto is, "If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!"

[sdsean]

Others here are right though. . . don't go with an Atom. . .its just not going to have a enough horsepower.

for good middle of the road intel, i'd recommend and i5 or even an i3. I just built a system for a buddy of mine with the i3, and no video card (since i3's and i5's have one built in) and its working great for him. . . they are very resonably priced. . . overclockable (if your into that), and allow you to go video card / no video card setup).

(Actually if it were me. . .i'd spend as much money on CPU and RAM as possible. . . but nothing wrong with going middle of the road, defintely atom processor's are no bueno though for a sage setup).

[madpoet]

I just built mine with an i3 and it's working out really nicely so far. Can handle everything I've tossed at it. TigerDirect has a really nice i3 kit:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...261&CatId=5205

Just add ram and hard drive. Very roomy, quiet, and cheap

Or this one that includes ram:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...384&CatId=5205

[bastage]

I already have the atom. And not knowing much about sage, but a fair amount about the atom cpu's I would say most of the people talking about the atom have probably never used an atom beyond a n270 (its what is most common in netbook's). The d510 I have is a whole nother beast. It transcodes dvd quality video at about 2x real time (using pytivo). And that should be way more CPU intensive then most of what sage should be doing assuming you have hardware encoding.

If I buy a new CPU it will be an athlon ii x2 240e or athlon ii x4 600e due to there 45w tdp.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by bastage

I already have the atom. And not knowing much about sage, but a fair amount about the atom cpu's I would say most of the people talking about the atom have probably never used an atom beyond a n270 (its what is most common in netbook's). The d510 I have is a whole nother beast. It transcodes dvd quality video at about 2x real time (using pytivo). And that should be way more CPU intensive then most of what sage should be doing assuming you have hardware encoding.

If I buy a new CPU it will be an athlon ii x2 240e or athlon ii x4 600e due to there 45w tdp.

Based on your various replies/challenges/arguments, it's hard to tell if you are really interested in the recommendations of the members of this forum or not.

My best advice to you, at this point, is to spend the $250-$300 for a HD300 and a usb tuner, and try it yourself for 21 days on your atom motherboard. Then you can decide for yourself what additional equipment you need, based on your specific experience. If you decide not to proceed forward with Sage, you can probably sell the HD300 and tuner for close to what you paid for it.

[bastage]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

Based on your various replies/challenges/arguments, it's hard to tell if you are really interested in the recommendations of the members of this forum or not.

My best advice to you, at this point, is to spend the $250-$300 for a HD300 and a usb tuner, and try it yourself for 21 days on your atom motherboard. Then you can decide for yourself what additional equipment you need, based on your specific experience. If you decide not to proceed forward with Sage, you can probably sell the HD300 and tuner for close to what you paid for it.

I have already been trying to find a Hauppauge HVR-1950 USB TV Tuner at a decent price (sub 100 is easy enough to find, but I am hoping to get closer to 75) and will then hopefully be able to pick up a used extender or 2 (hd200 or hd100) that will get moved to the rooms that currently have nothing later if I go sage for sure (as I will have no problem dropping the cash to rebuild my WHS once I know this solution is going to be MY solution).

So on a side note, is there anything major that I will loose getting a HD100 or HD200 compared to paying full price for the HD300.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by bastage

So on a side note, is there anything major that I will loose getting a HD100 or HD200 compared to paying full price for the HD300.

My HD300 arrives tomorrow, so I can't speak directly to your question. This thread may answer your question, however.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50555

[bastage]

TY for the linkage there. Any opinion as to how far I would be shorting myself with a HD100? Cant find many HD200's used & there cost is too close to the 300 to jump, but I can find a 100 for less then 70 shipped on ebay.

Its almost kind of depressing that I cant find used stuff, but at the same time that is also a good sign for the product itself.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by bastage

Any opinion as to how far I would be shorting myself with a HD100?

Also never owning a HD100, I can't speak from experience. A lot of people in this forum still have a lot of good things to say about the HD100. There is a power supply issue with some of the units, see this thread:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ht=hd100+power

[bastage]

Yep I knew that was an issue from the auction for the hd100.

How close is the PC ui to the HDx00 series since I believe I can test that without buying a sage specific piece of hardware?

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by bastage

How close is the PC ui to the HDx00 series since I believe I can test that without buying a sage specific piece of hardware?

Identical, assuming you are using the HDx00 in extender mode. The HDx00s also have a standalone mode, which allows the unit to be used without a SageTV backend.

One notable difference, though, is the remote that comes with the extenders makes it quite a bit easier to use than the keyboard navigation with the PC ui, IMHO.