10 Tuners with WinTV-PVR-500MCE???

[medialivingroom]

I would like to try this? Do you know when the WinTV-PVR-500MCE will be supported?

(1) ATI RADEON X800
(4) 300GB SATA HD
(4) 256MB Dual-Channel DDR400
(1) Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
(5) WinTV-PVR-500MCE

[dagar]

Implementation wise you may (probably will) have PCI bus issues with that type of board; most likely bus-mastering problems. Server boards can get around those bus issues (multi-bus.) Good question actually

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by dagar

Implementation wise you may (probably will) have PCI bus issues with that type of board;

I doubt it:
10x Video stream bandwidth - 10 x 8Mbps = 80Mbps.
PCI Bus bandwidth - 32 x 33MHz ~= 1Gbps
Average new 7200rpm HDD bandwidth ~= 40MB/sec ~= 320Mbps
Even at max quality 10x streams would only be 120Mbps. Granted there would be some loss of efficiency due to many separate streams, but still the PCI bus has more than enough bandwidth for 10x streams. And then there's the issue of how you find 10 things to record simultaneously

FWIW, I believe 8 tuners in one system has already been done. As for supporting the 500, I would guess there's a good chance it will work out of the box (if it's drivers are similar to the 250/MCE/Roslyn) and if not, then soon after. Dan already mentioned they were testing the 150 now.

[mls]

Anyone have any of the MCE cards (especially the PVR-500MCE)? If so, could you PLEASE post a list of what the driver adds to the "Sound, video, and game controllers" section in Device Manager?

If it adds 5 or 6 items (like the Roslyn) then I don't want anything to do with an MCE card. On the other hand, if it adds only one (like a PVR-250) then I might consider getting a PVR-500MCE (just so I can get the Roslyn out of my machine and also move my USB2 over to another machine).

[krutaw]

Originally Posted by mls

Anyone have any of the MCE cards (especially the PVR-500MCE)? If so, could you PLEASE post a list of what the driver adds to the "Sound, video, and game controllers" section in Device Manager?

If it adds 5 or 6 items (like the Roslyn) then I don't want anything to do with an MCE card. On the other hand, if it adds only one (like a PVR-250) then I might consider getting a PVR-500MCE (just so I can get the Roslyn out of my machine and also move my USB2 over to another machine).

While I don't have one and am only guessing here, I'd be willing to wager that it will show up as a single device just like the PVR-250 and PVR-350 do.

[SHS]

stanger89 you have set wrong the PCI Bus bandwidth = 133 MBytes/second or rigth way (32/8*33.3*1,000,000/1,048,576 = 127.2 MBytes/second)
You should be able run 12 tuner but like all thing it going boild the bitrate you use.

[stanger89]

SHS, I said bits/sec not bytes/sec 1Gbps ~ 127MBps

[ravenray]

Does anybody know if we can use the pvr500 with sagetv or will we be waiting till it can support it.

[RageFury]

1Gbit = 125MB, actually If you're actually going to record more than like three streams simultaneously, they will become choppy...the hard drive can not store data that fast on separate streams. Make a few copies of 1GB VOB files from a DVD and then copy them to another part of the drive simultaneously. Each copy will represent two recording streams, from a drive usage and performance standpoint....it will actually be a bit faster, as drives can read noticeably faster than they can write. Now....if you are serious about doing it you will want to partition your drive, and have one partition to each TV tuner. Why, you ask? Well, if you're recording more than one stream to a single drive simultaneously, it writes a teeny bit from one stream, then writes a teeny bit from the other stream, on the same area of the drive. This will fragment your drive horribly. If you setup partitions initially, each partition has it's own set area on the hard drive itself. So if you have two streams recording simultaneously on one partition, the data will look like this: -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ and so on....but if you give each stream it's own partition, it will be like -------------------- for one stream and ___________________ for the other, resulting in much better overall drive performance.

Just a suggestion =) Your drive still has to go back and forth as much, but it keeps the streams separated. It won't help a lot while writing, but general read performance will be much more efficient. Honestly though, 10 simultaneous streams is useful for bragging purposes only Maybe twice a year I find myself actually wanting to watch more than one thing at once.......TV has gone so downhill lol

[ravenray]

Is that a raid setup or a non raid setup?

[mikejaner]

I agree with Ragefury on the uslessness of such a setup, though if you were running a bar or club etc, where you wanted to have a tuner for each TV etc.. Does Sage actually split the job load between hard drives during multiple lineups. I have Three tuners, and three hard drives dedicated to Sage for video. I have not actually watched, but it would be neat if I were recording three things at once, that it would split that up between all three disks.
Assuming the above, in a situation of Ten tuners recording at a rate of say 8 Megabits a second, which is pretty good quality, your talking 1 Megabyte times 10 a second. I am pretty sure two to three hard drives could handle that with no problem, including reading one or two streams at the same time. One hard drive for this situation, would be pushing it big time. I would personally do three.

My$0.02

[mls]

SageTV does not have a setup option to have each tuner to use seperate drives.

Anyway, the 10 tuner idea is possible, however nobody seems to be working most of this stuff correctly. The PCI Buss does handle other things, but still should be fast enough. The real problem is the hard drive controller and drive speed. The ATA-100 spec is a "burst" rate. Continous access is usally less than half of that, normally in the mid 40's.

So, with a good system and drive(s), let's assume about 45MegBytes per second is within usable range. At the highest recording quality of 12MBps, then it would barely be able to handle 4 tuners. However, at a more resonable lower recording quality of 4MBps, then it should be able to handle 10 tuners.

However, one also has to add in the transfers for playback. So, 10 tuners all recording with 1 playback would be pushing the max. A more realistic and logical setup would be 4 or 5 tuners with 3 or 4 clients playing back (to stay within limits). Doubt if anyone would find 10 things to record at once anyway, although more tuners would allow more flexability for the clients watch whatever LiveTV while the other tuners were recording scheduled programs.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mls

So, with a good system and drive(s), let's assume about 45MegBytes per second is within usable range.

That's about right, although most new drives are in the 50-60 MByte/sec range.

At the highest recording quality of 12MBps, then it would barely be able to handle 4 tuners.

However that is wrong, the highest quality the recordable is 12Mbit/sec, or 1.5MByte/sec, so 10 tuners would be 15MByte/sec, or roughly 1/4 the total throughput of an average HDD. Even if you only had 50% effieciency due to it being multiple streams instead of one, that's still only half the available throughput of the drive.

[mls]

OOPS! I stand corrected stumbling over myself with the numbers there.

In any case, 10 tuners should be possible, which is about all I was really trying to say anyway.

[SHS]

RageFury you have wrong there major diff in way you try show it let with that Copy wirting vs Chunk wirting there a main diff in way they work.
Copy wirting is accessing drive at full speed "burst mode" make full use it and at the same time it also allocated all bandwith it can unlike Chunk wirting which dosen't accessing drive at full speed and dosen't allocated all bandwith.
With PVR card they do chunk wirting.
Plaese bear in mind that I did not take in to count playback mode only wirte mode after you ask if was possable so the aw is yes
Let take in acount for continous access over network playback so that it fast, stable, and reliable and for that 4 tuner and 4 clinet min of Gigabit NIC and Gigabit Hub all clinet on 100MB NIC with Record profile of 8MB bit.

[mls]

Hmm, seems like we're all stumbling over bits and bites here

Anyway, proper notations are "MB" for Mega-Bytes and "Mb" for Mega-bits. As an example, in SHS's post above the reference "100MB NIC" should have technically been 100Mb. I, myself made a reverse error in my example (further above) with 4MBps (must have been thinking HD quality or something there) instead of 4Mbps. My math was correct the way I had it, but not correct for any bitrate that normally would be used.

Hmm, since I was off by a factor of 8, does that mean it would be possible to go all the way up to 80 tuners? Think would run into some severe RAM buffering problems with that many. Maybe even with just 10. Something else I didn't consider.

See how easy we can confuse ourselfs

[SHS]

Ok enougth of Mb vs MB
Sure that maybe possable if we building Industrial Server designed mls at SVCD PQ but the thing you going to need 4 Industrial Chassis designed like Bridged PCI Bus Active Backplane and far I know of nobody make 20 PCI ver only up 18 PCI slot far I know and need Single Board Computers, Modular and Rackmount Chassis 4U, 5U, 6U, 7U.
But any case I'm pettey it not going beable handel more then 10 PVR 500 at time unless drop PQ down to VCD then should handel 20 but as I said nobody make Backplane with 20 PCI slot.

[RageFury]

What is theoretically possible and what is realistically possible are two very different things with computers. There is no way you will be able to actually record 10 streams @ 8mbits a piece to one hard drive. Sure the drive can transfer, in read mode, ONE stream, at 50+ mbytes per second - but that gets reduced dramatically with multiple streams.

SHS, I wasn't showing difference between chunk writing and copy writing or anything like that - I was doing it more simplified, and it's NOT wrong. It was a crude way of showing it, but it's accurate, maybe you thought I meant something different. If you format a drive, and setup three partitions, they each have their own designated space on the physical drive. You can write data to one partition, and it will never touch the other partition. So, if you write to two partitions, it keeps two separate streams of data. It still has to constantly go back and forth between the two areas on the drive to write the data, but the two streams are not interrupted. Each data set is consistent, on it's own specific area on the drive. If you record two streams at once onto one partition.....it goes back and forth writing two streams in "one line".....think of it like the lane markings on a road. You have the white line, theres some of stream one, then a blank area, theres stream two, then a white line for stream one again, then a blank area for stream two again. Each stream is split up a bunch, then. Now.....for two partitions, think of it like this - a double solid yellow line set, like you'd see on a rural road, no passing in either direction. Two separate streams of data - the drive has to go back and forth to write them, but they each get written consistently in their own area without touching each other. You can read the data much faster that way.....a 7200 RPM hard drive takes around 3/4ths of a second to spin up to maximum speed, give or take. You think constantly switching back and forth between two streams on the same drive (regardless of whether or not you have multiple partitions) more than once per second is going to write anywhere near normally? Not a chance

Now......there is a similar problem, too, with processors. A normal processor can only do *ONE* thing at once - no matter how hard or how easy the task is, it can only processone thing at a time. Intel has put a bandaid on this issue by having hyper-threading - in a limited capacity, Intel procs with HT can process two things simultaneously. 10 separate streams would, to operate at maximum efficiency, require the ability to process 10 things at once. No processor can do that. That is by no means required to record 10 streams....but even the fastest processor is going to chug like a son of a gun if you have software-rendered TV tuners. If all the tuners have hardware encoding.....not much of a problem, then.

[SHS]

RageFury I never said record 10 streams @ 8mbits I said much lowbit now as for @ 8mbits they can do this with 4 PVR 250 or 2 PVR 500 but in order to do let say we round the recording to 16 streams @ 8mbits it would have be Quad system backplanes allow four individual systems running simultaneosly in one 4U rackmount chassis with each individual systems running 2 PVR 500.
Some like this.

That dosen't count 2 Disk Aray Server and main Network Server
Kind of some like this
PVRServer1-\
PVRServer2--\
--------------> DiskArayServer1-\
---------------------------------> QuadNIC NetworkServer SageTV
--------------> DiskArayServer2-/
PVRServer3--/
PVRServer4-/
Each of PVRServer had custom build SageTV Recoder that can run 4 tuner in stead of one tuner like we have now more like reg SageTV and it Multi-Tuner setup.

Yes I under what your saying
The thing is the CPU don't hardlee any work why thing think we Hardware Encoder which are better then Software Encoder DOA.
Keep in mind that this is a Media Server setup only which dosen't any decoding of the video that where the Client PC come in play in all of this mess.
I all ready tested and push 4 simultaneously streams at same time ho byt the way and that on P2 400Mhz CPU @ 8mbits

[RageFury]

I know with hardware encoding they more or less sit and stare at the wall I said it'd only be a problem with software encoding tuners...and we're talking about the guy who started this thread, who will have four hard drives for ten streams. Two simultaneous streams going to one drive shouldn't be a big problem, but three could give a little bit of stuttering or another issue in the video that is recorded, depending....it'd be interesting to see the results, in any case......and I wasn't talking about PCI bus bandwidth or anything like that I was referring to hard drives, SHS..lol