Stop recording!

[Fredrik]

SageTV has by far the best video quality compared to other software I have tested with my Hauppauge PVR-250. I'm evaluating SageTV version 2.0.
All I demand from SageTV is to watch live TV and to schedule recordings. WinTV2000 can do this, but the video quality is really crap compared to SageTV.

Is it possible to turn off timeshifting?

I would like to turn it off beacuse the constant writing on the disk makes too much noise, as my HTPC otherwise is totally silent. Further on it consumes disk space. At least 1Gb seems to be the minimum setting. I don't care about the features of timeshifting, my points above is much more important.

Thanks, Fredrik

[mlbdude]

You can't NOT write to disk first with the Hauppauge 250 since it is a hardware encoder.

[mls]

Ya, even WinTV2000 writes to the disk. Not sure why he thinks it doesn't look as good though, since it should be using the same Intervideo non-CSS decoder that a stock SageTV bundle would include. Unless he means he has some other better decoder that he prefers.

Actually, I think it's kind of hard to find anything that doesn't write to disk anymore. Even the ATI All-in-Wonder software does and the AIW doesn't have a built in encoder (it's all software done).

[Fredrik]

Thanks mlbdude and mls.
I have to consider why SageTV looks much better than Wintv2000, as you say the same drivers are used. For some reason SageTV does a better job.
And yes Wintv2000 writes to the disk as well, I misunderstood. What is the settings I can do to minimize disk usage by SageTV? Is 1Gb the minimum?

[mlbdude]

Setting that smaller won't get Sage to write less data. If you never record anything and just timeshift TV you need to look at your recording bitrate and the max lenght of a show you would watch.

Ex. If you use 2.5GB per hour and start to watch a 3 hour program, Sage will want a little more than 7.5 GB.

If you set it to about 20 GB that would be safest. Maybe 10, just don't ever watch something really long .

[pengdahl]

Maybe he could set up a ramdrive and tell Sage to put its recordings there?

[nielm]

a 20Gb ramdrive?

[mls]

His main complaint seems to be the hard drive noise. Either needs a better/quiter case with drive vibration mounts, or a better/quiter hard drive. Can't hardly hear my drives. In fact, that's one thing that bugs me with most of the new drives... their too quite and I can't tell when something is accessing the drives (I like knowing when my computer is doing something, especially when it shouldn't be).

[kny3twalker]

if he added some more Ram to the computer
it should quiet it down some
256 is not enough for SageTV and Win XP

[Fredrik]

I'm using 512Mb RAM so I dont think swapping is an issue here, if thats what you ment kny3walker.

Ramdrive is an working option when working with Wintv2000, both performance and noise are affected. Only 10Mb needs to be dedicated for that ramdrive.

I want to use maximum video quality when watching TV, but then SageTV is eating my disk very fast. In the setup I have tried to use the rule of use only 1Gb. But last time when watching TV, I had to shutdown SageTV when the program vere using 6Gb disk space. Is there really no way in limiting how much disk space SageTV may use?

Could not SageTV be limited to use only 10Mb disk space, the same way as WinTV2000 is working?

Thanks for all the answers.
Fredrik

[mlbdude]

Could not SageTV be limited to use only 10Mb disk space, the same way as WinTV2000 is working?

A PVR generally needs a bigger buffer than that - so no Sage can't run on that little. If you just want something to watch TV, have you looked at SageRecorder? It is more like WInTV.

[dagar]

I run 768MB and 1GB in my various Sage systems. That stops the churning ... plus I use CachemanXP

[Fredrik]

Thanks mlbdude, SageTV recorder seems like the app for me!
Downloaded the trial and did a quick test, works really good.