SageTV Server Configuration Questions

[Hooz]

First a bit of background...

I currently have 3 HDTVs in the house, two HDDVRs and a regular HD cable box. That gives me a total of 5 HD tuners, but the 2 DVRs are each tied to a specific TV, and my 3rd TV can only watch live HD. I am currently in the process of planning a dedicated SageTV server/extender setup to replace all of that.

I'm kind of planning the entire setup around a pair of the upcoming 3-tuner "M" card tuners from SiliconDust, a dedicated server and three of the HD Theater 300s. That will give me a total of 6 HD tuners, and the ability to watch live TV, recorded TV and stream other media files to any/all 3 TVs in the house. And as a side benefit, it'll cut my cable bill by $27/month.

So my question is this...

How much "Umph" is my server going to need to record/stream/etc for my proposed scenario?

I'm not hurting for computer hardware at the moment. My house is wired for gigabit and wireless N networking. I have several dual Xeon (dual quad-core with and without hyper-threading) machines with anywhere from 8-24gb of memory. I have a nice Adaptec SAS RAID controller. I have a few X25-M SSDs to boot from and a stack of Caviar Green drives to store/record on.

Do I need a server anywhere near that beefy? I'd hate to have a machine sitting around doing nothing but sucking 400w of power if I could get by with half that. How much server would I really need to capture (potentially) 6 HD streams at once while streaming to 3 TVs?

[paulbeers]

Well not to burst your bubble, but cable card is not yet supported by Sage. That isn't to say it isn't being worked on and that this device might be the final piece needed to get it to work, but as of now it does not work with Sage.

Disclaimer: I have no inside knowledge of what Sage is working on so take the above with a grain of salt.

[Hooz]

Why does Sage have to be cablecard aware? Won't that all be handled on the tuner itself?

[SWKerr]

The problem is with DRM related crap. Sage may support it some day but it will likely be awhile. You would need a HD-PVR setup to get HD on anything other than the local Network stations.

Server Requirements:
I have since upgraded but I had an old AMD 780G setup with a Athlon X2 processor, 2GB RAM running WHS.
On this fairly weak hardware I was able to record 2 HDHR feeds and 2 HD-PVR recordings while watching from 3 separate SageTV Client PC. (Gig Lan)

No that was just a test because that much activity never occurs naturally at my house but I want to see if it could handle it. There were no problem. Maybe the skips were slower. Most HTPC tasks are i\o intensive not cpu. I suspect you are fine.