Figuring out what I need to go from VMCE to SageTV in our house

[gtfreymann]

This is my first post in the SageTV forums, but I have been reviewing the website for about 2 years or more.

My experience with HTPC's has been with LinuxMCE (which I even hate to admit nowadays), then Mythbuntu 7.10-8.10 (which was great really), then back to <cough> LinuxMCE 7.10 (which actually sorta worked) and then finally to Vista MCE with extenders.

Overall I'm quite pleased with VMCE, but in our house, the "server" is in the basement, connected to two Bell Dish Receivers (I am in Canada), and we watch and use our HTPC system mostly upstairs in the main living room, master bedroom and spare bedroom, using Extenders (by linksys) and most of the fun stuff we can't do on the extenders.

LiveTV and RecordedTV is fine, but some of our other fun stuff no longer wants to play nicely with the extenders.

So I'm thinking, get rid of the LinkSys extender in the living room and simply use the HTPC that is sitting behind the TV full time, running SageTV.

Let's install the SageTV 'server software' on the main HTPC in the basement. I'm using a Microsoft IR remote with the beanbag IR transmitter if that matters. And two Hauupage PVR-150 PCI cards for video capture out of the two bell dish receivers.

Now for the master bedroom and spare bedroom, I'd like to utilize the SageTV extenders.

And for my office, the Placeshifter software and perhaps on our notebooks the same thing.

What I need to know is what do I need from SageTV?

For the living room, I want the full blown remote experience from our HTPC.

I don't really care about our notebooks (or iPhone or iTouch) but that would be nice to have too.

And as stated, for the master bedroom and spare bedroom, a SageTV Extender.

What is my shopping list from SageTV? (sales team - come a calling please!)

I like tinkering, I don't mind tweaking, and I think my setup is plain as can be. Our Bell receivers aren't even HD and we have no plans to make them so.

Since the main VMCE server is already configured to run Media Center, how I make it not respond anymore and let SageTV take over? Would an OS reinstall be better than installing SageTV over top of what is already running?

Server right now is an AMD 4600 Dual Core, 4GB Ram. 2 x 500GB Sata drives. One drive is about 75GB OS with the rest for LiveTV recordings, and the other drive is 500GB for media/data. This machine is working well.

Living room HTPC is an AMD 4200 Dual Core, 2GB Ram, 320GB Sata Drive, Nvidia 8400 or something video card, SPDIF out, etc. Works well. Connected to a 42" LCD TV and surround 5.1 stereo.

Master Bedroom and Spare Bedroom are just connected to smaller LCD TV's with no stereo systems.... plain jane really.

Any suggestions or guidance on how to drop VMCE and go fully with SageTV?

[pjpjpjpj]

I can't speak for the move from VCME (I'm sure someone else will), but it sounds like you need this:
*SageTV media center software bundle with HD300 extender (just because the bundle saves you money). The software goes on the server in the basement and the extender in a bedroom. You won't need any sort of remote or anything for the computer in the basement - that's just where the server will "serve" the software. I don't know if your IR gadgets for channel changing on the boxes are compatible (probably are) - someone else can speak to that.
*Another HD300 for the other bedroom.
*SageTV Client for the PC that will be at your main TV. You will use SageTV for, well, SageTV stuff, but for other surfing/viewing you will just minimize SageTV.
*SageTV Placeshifter license for your office (assuming this is not at home?). Placeshifter is only if you are accessing from outside the house - otherwise you could just install a client license on other PCs. Someone else can speak to this, but I believe you don't even need one license per computer, just enough licenses for however many might be running Sage at once (?).

Hope that helps.

[gtfreymann]

Thanks pjpjpjpj!

This morning I wrote down pretty well the same list of items.

From what I read, since this is a new installation, going with Version 7 is likely a good place to start?

I'm using a Microsoft USB IR Transmitter/Receiver right now to change channels on my two bell dish receivers. I guess if that isn't compatible I'll be forced to go buy a USB-UIRT.

I'm getting anxious to 'test drive' things, there's a 21 day trial available, but that's likely only for version 6.6?

My other issue is how to shut down VistaMCE so it no longer downloads the guide or wants to record shows (I can easily delete everything in the recorded show schedule)... and if you hit the green button on the remote, I'd want SageTV to load, not MCE.

This is leading me towards reinstalling the OS to start clean, but it will be a bit of a pita having to reinstall all the helper apps, but if that would make the switch over to SageTV better in the long run I'd do it, in fact, I'd likely plunk in a brand new AMD Quad Core system while I'm at it! :-)

I have an AMD 4600 Dual Core box now, 4GB Ram, 2 x 500GB SATA Drives, nVidia 8400 video card, 2 x PVR-150's, etc. I suppose I could save some bucks and just continue to use this machine too.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Someone else can speak to this, but I believe you don't even need one license per computer, just enough licenses for however many might be running Sage at once (?).

Placeshifter is licensed per connection but client is licensed per installation. So you need a license for every computer you install client on and enough placeshifter licenses to support however many concurrent placeshifter connections you may have.

Originally Posted by gtfreymann

From what I read, since this is a new installation, going with Version 7 is likely a good place to start?

For sure, no need to install V6.

Originally Posted by gtfreymann

I'm using a Microsoft USB IR Transmitter/Receiver right now to change channels on my two bell dish receivers. I guess if that isn't compatible I'll be forced to go buy a USB-UIRT.

The MS transceiver is not directly supported for IR blasting, but LM Remote Keymap will let you use the blasting functionality. Might need the paid version for it, but from what I hear it's worth it.

Originally Posted by gtfreymann

I'm getting anxious to 'test drive' things, there's a 21 day trial available, but that's likely only for version 6.6?

V7 runs as a trial too. Just download from the beta forum.

Originally Posted by gtfreymann

My other issue is how to shut down VistaMCE so it no longer downloads the guide or wants to record shows (I can easily delete everything in the recorded show schedule)... and if you hit the green button on the remote, I'd want SageTV to load, not MCE.

LM Remote Keymap will let you map the green button to Sage. I'm not sure how to disable VMC but I know it's not that hard

Originally Posted by gtfreymann

This is leading me towards reinstalling the OS to start clean, but it will be a bit of a pita having to reinstall all the helper apps, but if that would make the switch over to SageTV better in the long run I'd do it, in fact, I'd likely plunk in a brand new AMD Quad Core system while I'm at it! :-)

I have an AMD 4600 Dual Core box now, 4GB Ram, 2 x 500GB SATA Drives, nVidia 8400 video card, 2 x PVR-150's, etc. I suppose I could save some bucks and just continue to use this machine too.

The dually is more than enough for Sage and HD playback. It's when you start wanting to be able to run 4 instances of Comskip while serving 2 placeshifter clients and transcoding videos all at the same time where more cores come in handy.

[davephan]

Welcome to the SageTV forum! You've been holding back a long time before your first post!

The first decision is do you have HD TVs or intend on migrating to HD TVs? Or, you you plan to stick with SD TVs? If all your TVs are SD, then you could setup your system for recording only SD with the two PVR 150 cards that you already have.

If you do have HD TVs or intend to migrate to HD TVs, then it would make sense to setup the system for HD. You can watch the HD recorded content on SD TVs, although the picture on the screen will be smaller with black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. You could add a HVR-2250 or a HDHomerun for over the air HD recording and keep the PVR-150s for SD recordings. You could also watch HD with DVD rips.

The living room PC could run the SageTV client software. I have never used SageTV client software though. I think the best way to setup SageTV is to have one SageTV headless computer running the SageTV software, located in the basement or a rarely used room. The computer will make some noise unless you aren't bothered by the noise or take extreme measures to limit the noise. You can then use a SageTV HD-200 if you buy one used or new HD-300 extenders, one for each TV. The extenders will work with either SD or HD TVs, so you will have the flexibility to upgrade your TVs from SD to HD over time.

The SageTV server could be Windows or Linux. There isn't a trial for Linux, and it can be more difficult to setup. I maybe migrating to the SageTV Linux version in the future, since Linux is generally more stable than Windows. The OS/programs should be on a separate non-partitioned drive. The videos should be stored on separate data drives. One TB might not be enough storage if you do a lot of recording. Over time, you'll have to periodically delete a lot of recordings to avoid running out of disk space.

From the start, you should also think about disaster recovery. The SageTV server quickly can become a critical computer, where downtime is to be avoided. You could you disk imaging to quickly recover your system back to a working state if you have system problems. I use both Ghost and Acronis to image my Windows SageTV computer. I plan to test Clonezilla, which is free and is supposed to work with Linux.

Can you provide more information about if you want to setup SageTV for SD or migrate to HD? Don't wait another two years before your next post!

Dave

[gtfreymann]

Originally Posted by davephan

The first decision is do you have HD TVs or intend on migrating to HD TVs? Or, you you plan to stick with SD TVs? If all your TVs are SD, then you could setup your system for recording only SD with the two PVR 150 cards that you already have.

All of our TV's are actually wide screen LCD's. Our receivers are SD and we have no plans to change that. Sounds weird but it doesn't really matter to us. I just zoom the recordings so it fills the entire 16:9 screen on the TV's. So for us, continuing to use the PVR-150's is what I'll be doing. In fact, I have two more in the cupboard as spares.

The living room PC could run the SageTV client software. I think the best way to setup SageTV is to have one SageTV headless computer running the SageTV software, located in the basement or a rarely used room. The computer will make some noise unless you aren't bothered by the noise or take extreme measures to limit the noise. You can then use a SageTV HD-200 if you buy one used or new HD-300 extenders, one for each TV.

We enjoy having a full PC in the living room as we can surf, check email, look up stuff, etc. The SageTV Client will definitely be installed on that PC and most likely one more.

The server in the basement (and the living room computer) both have very fancy "fan less" power supplies in them. The only noise we hear is from the CPU fan, and that is very faint and you don't hear it when there is sound coming from the system through the speakers. The other PC (which would make #3) is a small MSI Wind PC with an Intel Atom CPU and 2GB of RAM. It makes very little noise as well.

All PC's use the Logitech EX110 USB Wireless keyboard/mouse combos, so the keyboards feel the same no matter where you are.

The SageTV server could be Windows or Linux. The OS/programs should be on a separate non-partitioned drive. The videos should be stored on separate data drives.

I'll be upgrading to Windows 7 (from Vista) most likely. I have a lot of X10 modules throughout the house and use software to control and program them. I have been a big fan of Ubuntu in the past but have gone back to Windoze on all machines.

My 2x500GB Sata Drives give us plenty of space. One drive is partitioned with the OS (about 75 GB's or so for Vista) while the remaining space is for our media storage (pictures/music/movies). The second drive is used solely for TV Recordings and this setup has been working well throughout my Media Center experiences.

I guess I may have a little work ahead of me to get the MCE IR Transmitter/Receiver working, but if that lets me map the green button to launch SageTV as well then that seems like the way to go.

As I've been researching the forums and other web sites that talk about SageTV I can see all of my needs will be met quite nicely. For instance, I have the Call Display thing working in VistaMCE and am happy to see there are a couple plugins available to do that.

Thanks very much for your comments Dave.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by gtfreymann

All of our TV's are actually wide screen LCD's. Our receivers are SD and we have no plans to change that. Sounds weird but it doesn't really matter to us. I just zoom the recordings so it fills the entire 16:9 screen on the TV's.

That is kind of surprising to me... The HD picture quality is so much better than SD. It seems like a waste to buy HD TVs and still experience poor picture quality. This seems to defeat the reason to buy HD TVs instead of keeping the old SD TVs.

Do you watch over the air HD TV on those HD TVs? Maybe you could use a dual HD tuner card, such as the HVR-2250 or the HDHomerun dual HD tuner to record the over the air HD channels. The PVR-150s could be configured to record all channels except for locals. Then you would have HD for the locals. If a cable outage occurred, then you would still have your locals. If you switched to satellite and there was a satellite rain fade outage, you would still have your locals.

I have two dual tuners just for over the air HD locals. I then remove the locals from the other tuners recording off of cable boxes. I find that most of the recorded programs are from the locals, not from cable. When my cable contract ends, I will probably drop cable and subscribe to Netflix instead. I will then only be recording over the air HD.

I started with a computer that was used both for SageTV and other functions, like surfing the net. I still have a computer in the family room where I have my largest HD TV. I use extenders on the TVs and the family room computer isn't used for SageTV. It has worked out much better for me to have a dedicated SageTV headless server and extenders for each TV. When SageTV and the web surfing computer were combined, sometimes the tasks would result in poor performance problems for SageTV or the computer user.

If you partition your operating systems / programs drive, then you may be more likely to have contention problems between the recordings and the other functions. It could be more difficult to recover your computer too.

Dave

[gtfreymann]

Originally Posted by davephan

That is kind of surprising to me... The HD picture quality is so much better than SD. It seems like a waste to buy HD TVs and still experience poor picture quality. This seems to defeat the reason to buy HD TVs instead of keeping the old SD TVs.

The old SD TV's died, we replaced them with LCD TV's.

We don't want to give Bell any more money than we need. I'm not interested in replacing our dish receivers and paying more to Bell to get HD.

As I've stated, it's really not that important to us.

If you partition your operating systems / programs drive, then you may be more likely to have contention problems between the recordings and the other functions. It could be more difficult to recover your computer too.

I'm not sure what you mean here?

I could drop in another Sata HD just for the OS, and use 1x500GB for TV Recordings (we don't save the TV shows forever) and 1x500GB for our Media. The only difference here is the OS would have it's own drive, whereas right now I have:

1x500GB:
Partition for OS
Remainder for Media

1x500GB:
Recorded TV

I'm going to order what I need just after the 15th of November.

[Fuzzy]

Depending on where you are, you may be able to just put up an antenna, and replace your 2 PVR-150's with a single HVR-2250. It will be able to record from your SD satellite boxes via S-Video, while still being able to record digital from the antenna, all on the same card. (max of 2 streams at a time). Sage handles the management of the different sources flawlessly, and will integrate the channels together on the program guide. This will get you HD for a lot of your channels, without paying anything extra to bell. (you would then also be able to reduce paying them for locals, if that is a separate item on your bill).

[gtfreymann]

Strangely enough our main Linksys Media Extender appeared to have fried it brains on Sunday, so Monday I spent the day reconfiguring our house to use SageTV 7 with a few clients.

I think that's pretty awesome of SageTV to offer a free 21 day trial.

I have a SageTV Server running in the basement. It's recording TV from our two Bell Satellite Receivers using two PVR-150 cards. I'm using LM Remote Keymap to let me use my existing Microsoft MCE IR Blaster/Receiver. I have two 500GB Hard Drives in the Server.

Disk 1: 120GB Partition for the Operating System
Disk 1: Remaining space for Media Storage
Disk 2: Used entirely for Recorded TV

The server is an AMD 4600 Dual Core with 4GB of RAM. It's connected to a 26" LCD TV and is working great.

I have the SageTV Client installed on four different computers in our house.
-office (HP AMD 4600 CPU with dual monitors)
-main living room (AMD 4200 CPU with 5.1 SPDif Stereo, 42" LCD TV)
-master bedroom (MSI Wind PC, 32" LCD TV)
-one laptop

I've been busy working with the new Plugin System (which rocks) and I have the server processing commercial skipping with Comskip Monitor and Comskip Playback.

For Metadata I used the Batch Metadata Tools and Phoenix Fanart. The web interface is really nice to work with and the auto scan seems to be working fine.

I'm still trying to figure out the InfoPopUp/CallerID plugin using YAC Server on my Office computer :-(

I've disabled Media Center on the various Clients that use the MCE Remote so the Green Button brings up the main menu in SageTV, etc.

I've also made use of the Canadian Channel Logo Packs (I like the transparent ones better) and Movie Trailers.

Since I had a MSI Wind PC here from a previous HTPC setup, my shopping list is slightly altered to:

1 x SageTV V7
1 x HD300
1 x Placeshifter
4 x Client

I plan to order on Monday!!

What an excellent introduction into this wonderful PVR software.