Will Sagetv 7 run on my Windows XP machine?

[riverrat56]

Will Sagetv 7 run on my Windows XP machine?

If yes, is there a hardware mimimum requirement list somewhere?

[davephan]

It should work on Windows XP. Windows 7 is much more stable than Windows XP though. Time is running out for Windows XP. The patching will stop on April 8, 2014. After that date Windows XP will be more vulnerable to problems.

I recommend a dual or quad core close to 3 gigs for best results. A single core 1.8 gig is too old and slow. Check for PCIE slots if you have internal tuners. Check to make sure you have enough USB connections for external tuners. Check for how many drive connections. You can expand SageTV quite a bit, but you might not need to expand SageTV that much.

Do you have a SageTV license? You cannot buy a license now, and you might never be able to buy a license in the future. You might be stuck using the 21-day trial. It may be possible to use the trial over and over with imaging and an automated install process. This method may work, but using a license is the best way to go. Unfortunately, Google is not offering a license and is not even commenting if they will or will not offer a license. Google is absolutely silent if they will ever sell licenses.

If you do decide to try SageTV, but sure to take an image of your computer before you install SageTV. If you don't own imaging software, buy it or use Clonezilla, which is free.


Dave

[stanger89]

It depends on what you want to do, for a server with no playback, it works great. I ran Sage 7 on an Athlon XP 1800+ running XP for a long time.

[riverrat56]

Thanks for responding. I already use Sagetv. I only want to record analog tv for later viewing. I have 2 Plextor PX TV402U which will not work with Windows 7. Unlike the 3 different tuners cards and USB tuners (Hauppauge HVR-950Q) I tried (with a new machine, Windows 7, upgraded memory, upgraded video card, etc...) which were fussy and just plain a pain, the Plextor's have worked trouble free in the past with older versions of Sagetv up to my current 6.6 version.

Unless you can recommend an analog/digital channel box then my old system suits me if I can get it back up and running (hopefully via Sagetv 7).

Thanks again

[nyplayer]

Windows XP is fine... no need to worry as SageTV development has stopped except for plugins. Right now I would not invest any money in building a SageTV server... There are probably going to be better options in the future. I would not worry about future patching for XP if all you are going to only use it is for Sage. Heck I was using a windows 2000 machine for Sage Server. MY old P4 2.0 Ghz 2 gig ram. Is running 4 clients with no problem.

[riverrat56]

Thanks folks for the help. I will use my XP and Sagetv 7.1. Hope we have it around for a few years. I have gotten a lot of use out of Sagetv. From what I can best tell it has been one of best programs of its kind around.

[will]

Originally Posted by stanger89

It depends on what you want to do, for a server with no playback, it works great. I ran Sage 7 on an Athlon XP 1800+ running XP for a long time.

I second that. I'm using a dual-core processor that was released 6 years ago and my system runs great. However, I use SageTV on my system as a headless server and only use hardware encoding recorders.

If I could move SageTV to a new system without having to re-setup the tuners I might consider building a new system (only because I could) but as it is now, plan to stay with this system until it stops working. Especially since I can expand my storage indefinitely without needing a new motherboard.

[will]

Originally Posted by riverrat56

Thanks for responding. I already use Sagetv. I only want to record analog tv for later viewing.

Older SageTV servers can easily do HD recording as long as the tuner supports hardware encoding of the files, like the HVR-2250 or HD-PVR because the tuner does all the work (very low to zero CPU utilization while recording).

[davephan]

I started off with an Athlon XP 1800+. It had a lot of problems when I tried to playback non-mpeg2 formatted files to MVP extenders (which I no longer use). The computer has to transcode the video on the fly. If the computer cannot keep up, it stutters, which is what happened. The Comskip processing took a long time and usually had to be done off-hours to reduce the CPU load during normal usage times.

I switched to a 3 gig dual core, then later to a 3 gig quad core. The performance is really worth it if you want fast Comskip processing. I tried processing files with 3 old clunker computers at one point in time. They took 8 hours to process an hour of video. For me, it was well worth it to run SageTV on a decent fast quad core instead of an old outdated clunker. However, if you don't need Comskip, and don't need to transcode video, then an older, slower computer might work for you.

Dave

[stanger89]

Well and you can always run comskip or Showanalyzer on a more powerful machine on your lan. That's what I did, I ran it on my i7 920. The big things are transcoding and if you're doing local playback you'll want more.