Clean slate

[profit]

What equipment would you buy if you were starting from scratch today?

[gilded07]

Not an expert but I think you really need to be more specific about your desired outcome.

do you want to extend it? or record & watch from the same box?

what's your content source (OTA, clear QAM, analog cable, satellite)

movies, music?

[davephan]

If you don't need firewire, then Windows 7 - 64-bit for the server. The CPU should be a 3.0 gig or faster quad core. At least 3 gig fast fairly fast memory. Six or more SATA connections. Many extra slots. Many USB connections. A fast SSD for the boot/programs drive. Ghost or Acronis imaging to periodically back up the system. HD-200 or HD-300 extenders. Extra client licenses in case the HD extenders go bad and used HD extenders are not for sale. If you need more mass storage for long term storage, a separate unRAID server. Print out license keys and store them in a safe, also store them electronically several places. Keep a set of backups off-site.

Use Newegg reviews to help determine the computer hardware to purchase and which models to avoid.

During the system build process, take periodic images. In case you have problems during the build, you can recover to the last known good state, without having to start over.

Many parameter configurations are done during the build process. Many accessory programs are also used. It's too much to try to document every step to rebuild the system from scratch. An image will recover the system quickly if there are problems. After you can others use SageTV and become accustom to using it instead of watching TV the old way, watching commercials, the SageTV system will become a critical system that needs to be recovered quickly if there are problems. You have to prepare for the recovery before the recover is needed. SageTV is very reliable, so a recovery might not be needed in actual use, but you have to be prepared just in case it is needed. WHS it totally unacceptable for a SageTV OS since the recovery options are poor.

If you use set top boxes, many set top boxes can be controlled by one USB-UIRT. Owning a spare USB-UIRT is a wise idea, in case the USB-UIRT goes bad. An identical system board/CPU/memory might be a bit extreme, but could come in very handy for a quick recovery if the hardware goes bad. Since models change quickly, you would have to purchase duplicate hardware at the same time. Imaging software can recover onto different hardware, so you might not need duplicate hardware, but owning duplicate hardware can reduce your downtime.

To give you more advise, it would be helpful to know what you expect to do with SageTV. How big you need to scale it, and how much you can budget for the system.

Dave

[KarylFStein]

I disagree with the WHS comment. In fact I think it's a great OS to use due to the easy client backup ability. WHS 2011 has no problems with taking Acronis snapshots and restoring from them. Client restores from WHS are also very easy.

I also disagree with the documentation bit. It's not too bad as long as you're doing it in real-time as you do an install/configuration and not after the fact. My install and configuration of everything is documented and that has been helpful to have. But then I tend to rebuild all my systems over Christmas break--I think just to get my "tinkering" fix in for the year--and am something of a documentation nut anyway .

As for hardware, I agree with others that it depends on what you're doing. My "2013" rebuild is a new Xeon-based platform with 32G RAM. It's way overkill just for SageTV, but I'm also consolidating my current servers into one, (using VirtualBox), and SageTV is only a part of what it does...

[davephan]

I would stay away from WHS as a SageTV OS. There's no easy way to recover the WHS computer, other than a scratch rebuild. The WHS computer can recover other computers easily, but not itself, which is the main reason to avoid WHS. You may be able to take an image of WHS, but the recovery will fail from the many horror stories I've heard about WHS. WHS is also very inefficient mass storage, similar to RAID 1.

I don't think I've ever seen my memory load exceed 1.5 gig. So, 3 gigs is way more than you'll need. You will need a fast quad core if you do Commskip processing. The Commskip processing is much faster than the slower CPU and the Commskip processing does not effect other SageTV operations when using a quad core CPU.

Dave

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by davephan

I would stay away from WHS as a SageTV OS. There's no easy way to recover the WHS computer, other than a scratch rebuild. The WHS computer can recover other computers easily, but not itself, which is the main reason to avoid WHS. You may be able to take an image of WHS, but the recovery will fail from the many horror stories I've heard about WHS. WHS is also very inefficient mass storage, similar to RAID 1.

I believe you're thinking of WHSv1. I tried that for a year then went to Win7 because of what you're talking about. But WHS 2011 has addressed the server backup/restore/3rd-party imaging issues. The JBOD/software "RAID1"-type storage system has also been ripped out, (which many don't see as a good thing, but doesn't affect me). I think it's a strong product now although not without quirks. The client backup is mostly why I use it over Win7. If that's not important, I'd go with Win7.

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by davephan

I don't think I've ever seen my memory load exceed 1.5 gig. So, 3 gigs is way more than you'll need. You will need a fast quad core if you do Commskip processing. The Commskip processing is much faster than the slower CPU and the Commskip processing does not effect other SageTV operations when using a quad core CPU.Dave

I've been running a quad core Q8400 with 2GB of RAM since mid 2009 on XP Home and the CPU has yet to break a sweat. I have comskip set to run on the fly and works well. Two gigs of RAM haven't been a problem either. Although if I was building today, I'd go with Win7 and 4GB.

Question: you suggest a quad core as a minimum if running comskip. However, I've been very impressed with what I've read about the 3rd gen Ivy Bridge CPUs (e.g. i3 32xx). The have a faster clock but are only dual cores though - would this not be processing power to do what my Q8400 does today?

[KryptoNyte]

Comskips multicore usage has traditionally been fairly hit or miss it seems. The 2500k quad that I use today only draws about 50 to 55% of the overall CPU usage, however, it does use a bit of all 4 cores, so there is 'some' advantage there. Others have claimed that they ping out their dual core processors with Comskip.

Has Comskip gotten better at multicore processing in the last 3 months or so?

[wbarber69]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Comskips multicore usage has traditionally been fairly hit or miss it seems. The 2500k quad that I use today only draws about 50 to 55% of the overall CPU usage, however, it does use a bit of all 4 cores, so there is 'some' advantage there. Others have claimed that they ping out their dual core processors with Comskip.

Has Comskip gotten better at multicore processing in the last 3 months or so?

Comkip is a beast. That said it is a bit of a hog. I'm running quad cores with 4gigs of ram. Although I don't really "see" any hiccups, Task manager says that comskip is filling in all the gaps. If sage is using 50 percent of cpu then comskip is using 24% per instance (I have it set to 2 at a time). But it does a great job at weeding out commercials. I used SA forever, but since I've seen 2 new windows os since there was an update to SA I had to quit using it as it became buggy and unworkable.

My sig has my system specs, and yes they are up to date. This system has been rock solid for nearly 4 years now. U don't need a big exspensive system. All I recommend is that you get as good as you can afford right now. you don't need 18 tuners. I was using all 5 I have listed in sig, but now I'm down to only using the 3 HDPVR's after cable company encrypted all channels.

And when you get it working to your satisfaction, leave it alone until something major either breaks or stops working all together. Make a system image after you perfect everything and store it in a safe place.

Sagetv was built to work on Windows XP. so if you have a good enough pc to run xp then you should be fine.