Newbie hardware help

[OhOneWS6]

After posting @ AVS forum, I have decided to give SageTV a try. I still have some questions about hardware. To increase the WAF budget is a concern as well.

We recently tried the Hughes TiVO receiver from DTV as a replacement for my Sony A-65-A DTV receiver. I thought the Hughes box was junk but the more I research it I believe it is the TiVO sogftware that we hate so much. The biggest complaints my wife and I have are with the guide. After posting an AVS it sounds like Sage has guide features I want.

The primary function of this HTPC will be to replace a DirecTiVO. This will be a dedicated machine. I realize I will need two DTV receivers as well as two capture cards for the features I want.
This will be connected through my Sony STR-DE835 receiver to a 36” Vega TV using S-video and optical sound.

Can a stable and reliable machine be built for a reasonable amount of money? ($500 - $600)

Just FYI, I am MCP and have been in the IT industry for about 9 years. I have worked with Windows since 3.1 and I like to tinker with stuff.

[mls]

Originally posted by OhOneWS6

Can a stable and reliable machine be built for a reasonable amount of money? ($500 - $600)

I'll say MAYBE, depending just how many spare parts you may already have to work with.

For stability, I'd recommend going with a pair of PVR-250 capture cards (there are a LOT of bugs that still need to be worked out of the cheaper Roslyn card drivers).

So, a pair of 250's will eat up a good chunk of your budget range.

Then there the cost of getting decent video out also. If you can live with the limitations of a PVR-350 for the video out, then you could use a 350 and a 250 for the capture.

Otherwise, the most often recommended video cards are nVidia 5700 or an ATI 9600.

As you can see, all of that pretty much already blows your budget range.

As for the compter itself, not anything really fancy needed there other than fast bus and hard drive speeds. You could probibly find a cheap deal on an older 1GHz machine with Windows 98SE already installed at some rummage sale that would work reasonably well.

On my end I had run SageTV with 2 PVR-250's and an external USB2 (total 3 tuners) for several weeks under Win98SE on a 2.6Ghz Celeron machine with very few problems.

Wasn't until I tried to add a 4th tuner, a Roslyn... then had all kinds of problems to work out (personally I think the Roslyn cards are just too much a hassle to work with right now, although some people have had some luck with them).

Win XP or 2K would give you somewhat better performance and allow larger file sizes with NTFS hard drive partitions, but I can't say I've seen any better stability with XP than I have with 98SE on my own "test" machines here (personally, I think XP is a joke, and prefer 98SE).

[OhOneWS6]

I have 98SE, Win 2k pro, win 2K server and Win XP that I can use. I was thinking 2K pro for stability. No need for server, XP just uses more resources and I'm not a big fan of 98.

I've got an ECS P4VXASD2+ with a Celeron sitting on the shelf. Don't remember the processor speed but it is ~ 2Ghz. I also have a GeForce 5200 video card I can use. My first instinct was to buy all new hardware for this but the budget really won't allow it.

Picture quality and delay are important. I tried this a while back and the delay from hitting the button on the DTV remote to the time the channel actually changes was ~2 sec. The wife did not approve of this. The picture quality needs to be at least as good as the DrecTiVO box.

Is there any benefit to capturing sound from the optical feed from the DirecTV reciever? If so what is the best way to capture this feed?

kny3twalker, Just in case you poke your head in here, any chance you post on the LS1/LS2 boards? I see you are from Dallas and with that Formula avitar I thought we may have met at some of the local gatherings.

<------ Lives in Rowlett and drives an 01 WS6

[mls]

Originally posted by OhOneWS6

Picture quality and delay are important. I tried this a while back and the delay from hitting the button on the DTV remote to the time the channel actually changes was ~2 sec. The wife did not approve of this.

The delay is always going to be there for any system that allows pausing or timeshifting. The system needs to start recording (or buffering) at least some amount of the video (especially if using MPEG format) before starting to play it back out.

There is also some delay initializing the tuner. The tuner in my 20" TV itself sometimes takes a second or 2 to change channels.

To some extent, those delays can be tweaked a bit in the SageTV properties file, but I think doing so might actualy reduce performance rather than improve it.

Oddly enough, I have a friend that had a DirectTivo and has often complained about all kinds of other delays it has had from time to time. As such, I don't think the delays with a SageTV system are any worse than those with a Tivo (but I never owned a Tivo, so I can't say for sure).

The picture quality needs to be at least as good as the DrecTiVO box.

Well, I'm gonna say something here that I'm sure others will start jumping all over me about.... The pic quality will never be as good as that of a DirectTiVo simply because the signal has to be converted back to video and then reconverted to MPEG again for storage, then decoded again for playback. Each step will add some amount of loss to quality.

My understanding is that DirectTivo just records the digital video signal it receives directly to the hard drive and only decodes it for playback. Of course that would produce better quality than decoding, recoding, and decoding again later.

I feel I should also point out that all of this stuff is designed for SDTV quality, so people should not expect to get HDTV quality output. At best, it will only come close to a really good SDTV image.

Is there any benefit to capturing sound from the optical feed from the DirecTV reciever? If so what is the best way to capture this feed?

Don't have any idea how you would get an optical audio feed into any of the capture devices usable with SageTV.

Maybe kny3twalker has more info about that area of things.

[OhOneWS6]

Thanks for the input mls. The picture quality thing may nix the whole plan. I don't expect HDTV quality but at the very least I want it to be as good as what I get now from the DirecTiVO.

I may build a single reciever box for the game room just to play with the technology.

Newbie alert: What is SDTV?

[carlgar]

Standard Def. TV

[mls]

Originally posted by OhOneWS6

Newbie alert: What is SDTV?

SDTV = Standard Definition TeleVision

For those into the HDTV (Hi-Def TV) stuff, that basically equates to something like 480i for quality comparison.

There are very few HDTV capture cards for computers, and even fewer HDTV PVR's (Personal Video Recorders) currently available.

In general, the majority of computer video capture cards (especially those with TV tuners) are designed to work with either standard NTFS video signals (in the U.S.) or PAL signals (outside the U.S.).

Things are changing over to DTV (Digital TV) signals which also will allow HDTV, but the change over will take time (read that as years) to become complete.

However, you might be suprised at just how qood of quality the Hauppauge devices can produce, so don't give up hope. At least give it a try and decide for youself if it is good enough for your own use.

My statement about never being as good as DirecTV was not intended to say it is that much worse. I just didn't want to mis-lead anyone into thinking it was better, or in anyway comparable to true HDTV.

I'm very happy with the results I get, but then again I'm only watchin on a 20" SDTV set (fed via S-video from my computer video card). However, I have burned a few recordings to DVD for my friend to try playing back on his 100" projection system and he thought it was "reasonable" quality.

Gonna be a while before I can afford a projector myself, and even longer before I could afford a nice big flat panel (maybe plasma) display. Those are just way to expensive yet, but I have planned ahead for such future expansion by having video cards that support DVI output. Will be interesting to actually see how well (or poorly) my set up works that way someday.

[kny3twalker]

no have not
I have been to alot of LT1/LS1(including LS6) sites though
give me a link
and LS2 (new '05 corevette engine?)
I am in Coppell
'99 Formula with a few goodies



and looks like everyone kind of covered the topic

but the quality will not be as good as a DirecTiVo
but as I heard the quality is better than a standard TiVo
because the pvr 250s and such are more configurable

I heard you can defrag(or something similiar again I do not have one) the TiVos and it can clear up laggin with TiVos but it would mean destroying your recorded shows I think

and there will always be delay
Hauppauge has gotten pretty good with it though
it takes longer to get my DirecTV feed than to change channels though
(I see black screen at the beginning of most of my recording for half a second)

I would look at a pvr 350 though for the best quality picture with a SDTV
just you may want to find a proven hardware list before you go that direction(using a pvr 350 they are picky)

the pvr 250s are fine but the video cards TV out suck
they have to rescale the image and reinterlace it before outputting it so the picture is some what blurry in most cases but there are tweaks like everything else in the computer world

with a HD compatible TV you use the TV as a monitor

and thats something current TiVo cannot do (HDTV outputs)

also one thing I find the digital DirecTV to be much better quality than my analogue cable just so you know (but both are ok, I think sports seems to be hardest thing to do without a hardware decoder like the pvr 350 has)

kny3twalker

[OhOneWS6]

Originally posted by kny3twalker
LS2 (new '05 corevette engine?)

Will also be in the 05 GTO. Sent you a PM with more sites I visit.
My Car


Thanks for the help again guys. We'll see how it goes.