New user, help me decide on setup

[Korny]

Hello, I've been lurking around the Sage forums for quite a while now and will be taking the plunge shortly on setting my house up.

I'm trying to decide how I want to set my new system. Currently my server is a ubuntu 10.10 server with a 4.5 TB raid 5 array, SANZB, that mainly sits idle most of the time. Its got 2 gigs of ram and a e4500. I'm trying to decide on how I want to change my hardware. I plan on eventually having an HD Homerun, 2 HDPVR's and maybe a 2250 for SD tuning. I'm currently using dish network and would like to stay with them, once I get sage up and running I am going to be switching out my receivers to models that output 1 HD and 1 SD(that's controlled by UHF remote, which now have a kit to convert them to IR) *edit* I will be using extenders for all my tv's My options are as follows
#1 Keep the server the same, buy and install Linux sage. My concerns with this is the IR Blaster setup and and having to run most plugins in WINE. I would eventually find myself converting the raid 5 array to raid 6. I could eventually use this server for my projector I'm installing as well with a Sage Client
#2 Convert the server into a WHS server box, setup folder mirroring and loose a lot of space, but Hard drives are cheap now days. I don't know much about WHS at this time other then what I've read on the forums.

#3 Build a new server with a low power AMD quad core, install Windows 7 on it, turn my old server into a Unraid box and add a few 1.5's. Will be able to use sage client on W7 with no difficulties. Its an OS I'm familiar with. Setup SJQ to copy files after comskip and transcoding is completed(if needed) to unraid box.

#4 Any other suggestions?

Sorry to ramble on just looking for ideas before I take the plunge
Thanks
Aaron

[davephan]

Welcome to the SageTV forum Aaron.

You could start with the SageTV Linux version, although there isn't a trial for the Linux version, so you would be making a commitment. My SageTV computer is setup on XP. I plan to setup SageTV on Linux and migrate to Linux in the future. I don't know how many plugins work without WINE, since I am not a SageTV Linux user yet.

The best way to setup SageTV is with a headless SageTV server and extenders at each TV. Don't bother with the MVP extenders, since the audio and video quality is poor. The HD-200 or HD-300 is a better choice.

Use the USB-UIRT IR blaster, not the built in Hauppauge IR blasters. Some people use the Hauppauge IR blasters successfully, but many people have trouble with them. The USB-UIRT can control 3 set top boxes, or more than 3 set top boxes if different IR codes can be used for the set top boxes.

RAID 6 is safer than RAID 5, but usually the controllers that can do RAID 6 are expensive. You won't be able to watch most of what you record with 4.5 TB. You can expand more though, like I have. The problem is, you will never have enough time to watch much of your recorded content when your disk space gets that large. However, you won't have to struggle deleting files all the time either.

I don't recommend WHS because there isn't a good recovery path. Disk imaging does not work with WHS, but it does with Windows or Linux. The SageTV computer will quickly become a critical computer that will need to be recovered quickly if you have trouble. It helps to prepare for recovering your system before you have trouble. WHS is also very inefficient for file storage.

An unRAID server is an option with SageTV. You can expand unRAID out to about 35 TB with all 2 TB drives. The unRAID server would be for storing your video library. You should record with your on-board SageTV computer's drives. If you use WD Advanced Format Drives with unRAID, you need to install the pin 7 & 8 jumper before adding the drives to the unRAID array.

I recommend starting small, then gradually expand your system as your needs grow. I have a HDHomerun, HD-PVR, and two HVR-2250's. The HD-PVR is the least reliable of the three. Some people do not have trouble with the HD-PVR and some people have trouble. You might also want to consider having some tuners dedicated to over the air and some tuners for your set top boxes. If you have a satellite signal outage, your locals will still be recorded. There will be less contention between the tuners as you add more tuners.

SJQ can be used to selectively Comskip only the commercial channels, so you don't waste CPU resources processing files that are commercial free. SQJ could also be used to move processed files to an unRAID server.

A fast quad-core is a much better choice than a fast dual-core if you need to Comskip a lot of files. You can also 'offload' the Comskip processing to secondary computers.

Again, welcome to the SageTV forum. There are a lot of people on the forum waiting to help you.

Dave

[NetworkGuy]

I use WHS as my SageTV Server. But the video files are NOT handled by WHS. I have a drive which is NOT part of the storage pool and all SageTV recording are stored there.

It has been working well for the past year.

[davephan]

You might want to check out this link about Microsoft abandoning WHS.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52553

Dave

[rrhorer]

Originally Posted by Korny

#3 Build a new server with a low power AMD quad core, install Windows 7 on it, turn my old server into a Unraid box and add a few 1.5's. Will be able to use sage client on W7 with no difficulties. Its an OS I'm familiar with. Setup SJQ to copy files after comskip and transcoding is completed(if needed) to unraid box.

Welcome to SageTV; you won't regret the move. For my money, your #3 option is the way to go. Your should get a quad core processor for comskip and transcoding, etc. and a MB with onboard video to save $ and power. The onboard video is more than adequate if you decide to use the client half of your server machine. My suggestions are:

AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103871

GIGABYTE GA-880GA-UD3H AM3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128444

One additional suggestion:
For recording, I would recommend not using a raid setup and instead opting for two drives (or more) solely for recording purposes. Sage optimizes their use so that mutliple simultaneous recordings can alternate between the two drives depending on which has the most remaining space available. It's like having raid w/o backup. You can handle that part with SJQ or some other archiving strategy.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by rrhorer

It's like having raid w/o backup. You can handle that part with SJQ or some other archiving strategy.

You need to decide if you want to protect the recorded or ripped videos from loss if you lose a hard drive. Some people choose to not have redundancy with the video recordings. If a hard drive fails, then their video recordings are gone. Those people are happy with accepting the risk and that solution is fine with them.

If you choose to protect your video recordings from loss, then you need to use RAID, unRAID, or some other method. You could you file copying, but that can become overwhelming if you have a lot of video recordings.

The operating system / programs drive is another story. If you protect that drive with periodic images, then you can quickly recover to a point in time when the system used to work perfectly. Otherwise, you have to suffer rebuilding the system, installing all the accessory programs, setting thousands of configuration parameters, none of which would be documented. Meanwhile, your system is down for a long time while other family members start believing that you should have used a Tivo or a DVR, which they think never fails.

Clearly, SageTV is a better solution than Tivo a DVR, unless the people are happy with severe limitations and crude menus. I've read other forums where they use stand alone DVRs. They have 4 stand alone DVRs set up in the same room and complain about the interactions between the DVRs and other problems using multiple stand alone DVRs.


Dave

[tt55du]

I have some questions and recommendation requests that could come from the contributers of this thread

I've had the HD-200 for quite some time now and enjoy mostly everything except the UI. It runs in stand-alone mode and pulls all files from a NAS box.
My video collection is getting hard to handle using the file directory browsing, I would like to use imdb scraping and make the overall browsing faster. I do not want to stand up a new server to run sageTV, would like to use my NAS to primarily serve the content, no recording at all.

I have a QNAP NAS that has a dual core atom that should be able to run the linux version of SageTV, did not want to take the no-trial available leap until I did some research.

1. Will the UI be faster if using the HD-200 as an extender?
2. How is the administration of SageTV server on a headless box?
3. How do Plugins work? Do I need windows or linux specifc ones?
4. How is the imdb tagging?

Is it worth my trouble? I looked at other boxes like the popbox that claim to do index and have a better UI, but they seem to have lots of problems. Probably due to to lack of power that a backend server would be much better at.