Adequate Server?

[StephanPeterson]

I have an old P4 2.1GHz with 1.5GB of RAM and some 2TB drives that I'd like to put into service as a SageTV server. I'd like to run Sage 7 on Linux and I'm concerned about having enough horsepower. The system will include an HDHomeRun hooked up to an OTA signal, gigabit network, and a couple of HD300s hooked up to HDTVs.

Will I have trouble using this old of a PC?

[vhurst]

SageTV doesn't need much CPU, IF...

1) You aren't transcoding on the fly. HD300's mean that's not a problem. Will you be using Placeshifter?

2) ComSkip will bury your CPU. While setting it's priority to low mostly aleviates the problems, you still experience noticable lags while ComSkip is analyzing. Hyperthreading helps, but I highly recommend multi-core CPU's, or multi-processor machines to keep things smooth.

3) PlayonTV. Probably the coolest thing I ever added to my SageTV server. But the service needs processor power. Again, multi-core/multi-proc a plus.

I also like to run my JVM heap at 1Gb, so I like at least 2Gb of RAM. You may want to play around with it at some point.

Just my 2ȼ worth...

[david1234]

You should be ok with that. It won't win any awards for speed, but since your recording OTA, you don't have to do any real work on the CPU to capture video. And like vhurst said, you may not be able to run comskip while your serving video, but it should work. If your proc can do hyperthreading, that would help, but it isn't neccessary.

I'd give it a try- the worst case if the performance is poor, you track down a used motherboard and dual-core proc and throw it at the system. (I don't run sage on Linux... is the license tied to the cpu in a way that makes this sort of cpu upgrade expensive?)

[StephanPeterson]

Thanks for the advice. I'll probably look for some beefier hardware. I'm in the planning stages at the point.

[Brent]

Hi Stephan!
If you have the $ for it, a SageTV server with more firepower = happier HTPC'r long term. As said above you can run the server with a pretty old computer and get by fine but I prefer to have:

• Dual or Quad-core CPU
• Relatively fast OS hard drive and fast recording drive/s (if you have extra room a separate, slower drive for movies & music works just fine but the recording drive works best when a bit faster
• Plenty of memory - especially if you'll be doing anything in addition to HTPC serving on this PC

The upgraded parts above make things snappier and lends itself to happy commercial detecting, placeshifting (you're going to want to do this eventually - at least on a mobile device) and PlayOn or hopefully other online services transcoding down the road.

Disclaimer: I got by just fine with lower specs for years so it DOES work. But if you have the means to upgrade those key parts now, it will open up your HTPC options.

[StephanPeterson]

Thanks for the additional info Brent. I was gonna bug you on Twitter again about this, but thought I'd join the forums. Funny that you ended up offering advice anyway. :-)

I think I'm going to look at some modern hardware. I'm definitely interested in comskip and PlayOn.

Another decision to make is Win7 or Linux? I'm a Mac guy, so I'm leaning towards Linux. Any suggestions on this decision?

[Brent]

Sorry if I missed your question on twitter. I get a LOT of messages on there and travel a lot on occasion so it's difficult to keep up. I always recommend asking HTPC questions on the SageTV forums, MissingRemote forums or even GreenButton forums as you'll get multiple feedback that way. Most times I hang out here at the SageTV forums and try to respond if I think I can contribute to the conversation.

Originally Posted by StephanPeterson

Another decision to make is Win7 or Linux? I'm a Mac guy, so I'm leaning towards Linux. Any suggestions on this decision?

I've only used XP and Windows 7 so I can't really help with that question. I can say that Windows 7 has worked very nicely on my HTPC server.

One consideration some don't think about is the 32bit versus 64bit OS. If you plan to use firewire for channel changing like I do for my HD-PVR, you'll want to go with 32bit version of windows as there are no firewire drivers for 64bit.