New Setup, what to use? extenders / recorders?

[irishattorney]

I started with Sagetv 2.0, and just love it. I stopped using my old server a few years ago but I want to go back to sage and start with a new set up.

I noticed an issue with the HDHR extendr not being able to transcode into .264

What do you recommend for capturing OTA and Clearqam?

For placeshifting I read t hat .264 is better since smaller, right?

Can you just run a program to convert all the files to .264 after they are fully recorded and will sage recognize the transcoded shows?


The miniclient, does can it use all the plug ins that we had before like weather, IMDB etc?

What miniclient options do we have for 4k TVs? Whats best? Nvidea etc?

Do you prefer windows or Linux? Either one have more features?

Basically... what would you buy to setup your system now if you were starting fresh?

I have old licenses but can I just start with the new opensource V9? any reason to first install the older version? or any benefit to the older version?

Thanks in advance...

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by irishattorney

I started with Sagetv 2.0, and just love it. I stopped using my old server a few years ago but I want to go back to sage and start with a new set up.

I noticed an issue with the HDHR extendr not being able to transcode into .264

What do you recommend for capturing OTA and Clearqam?

For placeshifting I read t hat .264 is better since smaller, right?

Can you just run a program to convert all the files to .264 after they are fully recorded and will sage recognize the transcoded shows?


The miniclient, does can it use all the plug ins that we had before like weather, IMDB etc?

What miniclient options do we have for 4k TVs? Whats best? Nvidea etc?

Do you prefer windows or Linux? Either one have more features?

Basically... what would you buy to setup your system now if you were starting fresh?

I have old licenses but can I just start with the new opensource V9? any reason to first install the older version? or any benefit to the older version?

Thanks in advance...

Your best bet is probably to use unRAID with the SageTV docker (this sub-forum has more details: https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59), and an HDHR Connect Duo/Quad. I recently moved from Windows to unRAID and the whole setup took maybe an hour or two, (and I did my lineups / favorites from scratch instead of moving them over, which would have shaved some time off the process). Moving all my existing recordings and data files over took much longer.

The plugins run on the server, so no issues using them with the mini-client.

I used to run the built-in transcoding for SageTV on favorites after recording, (this is an option when setting up the favorite, so is automatic). I just did that because it cleaned things up with my Comcast Cable Card recordings. I would first see if you have playback issues and if not don't bother with the transcoding.

The two main client favorites seem to be the SHIELD (which I have) and the MiBox. The SHIELD is more capable, but costs a bit more. I don't have any experience with 4k.

No need to muck around with licenses. You will, however, need EPG data. The popular option is Schedules Direct, which is something like $25/year and now built into the SageTV Docker. The only reason some people install v7 and then v9 is to get a certain decoder that was bundled with v7. I think that's only needed if you want closed captioning.

[wayner]

What 4K content do you want to use with Sage? There isn't currently a way to record 4K TV content, assuming that you get some, into SageTV. There currently isn't 4K OTA content, although the FCC is supposed to make some decisions regarding ATSC 3.0 on Thursday of next week - that includes 4K amongst other things. Hopefully we will start to get OTA 4K in the near future and have some way of capturing it as well.

Are you sure you still have clear QAM as in many areas that is now encrypted.

But you can get 4K files for stuff like movies. Apparently some Android devices running the Android client can play 4K content, as can SageTV client with the proper configuration - and video card. The tricky thing here is that you need support for the newer H.265 codecs.

IMHO the best client for Sage is still the HD200s and HD300s, especially if you will be using OTA content as the AndroidTV devices can struggle with MPEG-2 files.

[irishattorney]

Thanks for the info.

You are right, OTa is HD not 4k, but I do have some 4k content in my personal media library that I would like to stream. Will Sage and the Nvidea Shield do that?

Curious, if I take my Shield with me on vacation and hook it up to the hotel TV, I am guessing it will work as a placeshifter? or client over the internet?

I am looking into UNRaid, Seems interesting, but could someone tell me what are the advantages or reasons to using unraid instead of just a windows machine or linux machine?


your input is very valuable.. last time I build a media server was over 10 years ago and I used xp for that... so I am a little out of touch.

[KarylFStein]

I mostly switched to unRAID because it seems the most supported by the community now. But it lets you assign more memory, (SageTV under Windows is 32bit only right now, although it seems like a 64bit version is close). And it is very easy to add various Dockers and VMs. Plus disk management is very easy.

Before moving all my stuff to unRAID I installed a trial version on some equipment I had. I'd recommend that if you can, install the Community Applications plugin then look at all the Dockers available.

I take my tablet with me on the road and use the mini-client on that fine. I don't see why it wouldn't work on a MiBox (better form factor for travel) or a SHIELD.

[wayner]

unRAID is a server version of Linux that was written to provide NAS functionality. So it is really good at storing your files with redundancies to protect against hard drive failures. You can run applications in dockers which are self-contained virtualized environments. You can also run Virtual Machines running any OS that you want. unRAID is meant to be managed through a web browser so you can easily manage it through any PC without working about Remote Desktop/VNC, etc. unRAID isn't free but it is cheaper than Windows.

Many, or even most, of the SageTV developers are running this version so as Karyl said it is the most supported version in some ways. Stuckless maintains the unRAID Docker version of Sage and he also built the Android client. On Linux you can use the 64 bit version of Java which lets you assign more memory to your JVM which means you can run pretty much an infinite number or miniclients at the same time. On Windows and 32 bit I could only run 3-4 miniclients before Sage started choking.

There are Dockers for running lots of other applications. You can tell that a lot of the folks using this are into BitTorrent as a ton of the Dockers are related to file sharing of various sorts.

I have Dockers running Plex, AirVideo HD (to facilitate streaming to iOS devices), Unifi (to manage my network), Apache to act as a webserver, Let's Encrypt/nginx to facilitate secure web access for Sage, etc

I think you can watch 4K content on a Shield as it has the codecs for H.265 content. But I have never tried.

[irishattorney]

Thanks for the info. I might try unraid.

I started another thread since I can not get my HDHR quatro to work, any suggestions?