Getting ready for my first Sage Setup..

[SiNiSon]

I would like a system with 3 tuners (I will have a split analog cable signal and a digital cabe box with all the east coast feeds..)

I have had Tivo's both standard and hotrod'd in the past and always ran out of room lol...

I want to hold 300ish hours of video.

So here are my questions as I embark on this adventure..

- What kinda CPU power will I need.. the tuner cards will be doing the majority of the work no?

- How much RAM is needed for real world use (recording 3 streams and playback)

- How much dedicated drive space will I need for 300ish hours (I am planning on making the video storage a SATA Raid)

- I was thinking of using a 350 and 500 PVR cards to get my 3 tuners.. and only use 2 slots

- Do USB Tuners work at all? other option was to go 1 350 and 2 USB Tuners..

Thats really all I was not sure about so far.. I am looking to get my Super Sage System of the ground !!!!

Thanks for any input..

[korben_dallas]

I have a Plextor ConvertX (PX-TV402U) USB 2.0. It works pretty well. It's nice in that it has about 20+ recording qualities covering MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DVD, VCD, and DivX. USB 2.0 is mandatory for it though, so you can't get away w/ USB 1.1.

If you buy the PVR 150 retail version, you get a remote, and you get the IR Blaster which can control the channel changing on your digital cable box. You can get the 150 retail bundled w/ SageTV software in the Sage Store.

Per drive space, it will really depend on your recording quality. For DVD Standard, I'm getting about 2.7GB per hour. So x300 hours would be +800GB. I use MPEG-4 and DivX on some shows, which cuts down the drive space needed, but ups the required processor for playback.

I think a baseline playback system would be a 1.8Ghz processor, 384MB memory, and 64MB DirectX 9 graphics card. You could go less with a server-only system.

The 150 retail bundle with remote, IR blaster, and SageTV is good. And then add on a 500MCE or ConvertX. Or you could get the 500MCE, remote of your choice, a USB-UIRT (for channel changing), SageTV, and then add on another card.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by SiNiSon

I would like a system with 3 tuners (I will have a split analog cable signal and a digital cabe box with all the east coast feeds..)

I have had Tivo's both standard and hotrod'd in the past and always ran out of room lol...

I want to hold 300ish hours of video.

So here are my questions as I embark on this adventure..

- What kinda CPU power will I need.. the tuner cards will be doing the majority of the work no?

- How much RAM is needed for real world use (recording 3 streams and playback)

- How much dedicated drive space will I need for 300ish hours (I am planning on making the video storage a SATA Raid)

- I was thinking of using a 350 and 500 PVR cards to get my 3 tuners.. and only use 2 slots

- Do USB Tuners work at all? other option was to go 1 350 and 2 USB Tuners..

Thats really all I was not sure about so far.. I am looking to get my Super Sage System of the ground !!!!

Thanks for any input..

I would say 1/2 gig of RAM and perhaps a 2.4 P4. If you want 300 hrs., that would depend on your quality. I would say at least 3gig/hr.

I've got 2 PCIs and a USB2 all 250s and all work great. In fact, except for my 20 gig internal drive, all the drives on my machine 4x200gig and a 30gig are all USB2. No problem, very quiet, and very cool.

For the cable, get a 4 way splitter. I split several ways, until I found a 1 in/ 4 out cable splitter.

Good luck!

[Toddly]

I am pretty new at using Sage but I would recommend that you get at least a CPU in the 2 GHz range. I would go with an AMD CPU with an Nforce motherboard and at least 512 MB RAM. If the PC is going to be in the same room as your television pay attention to the noise of the fans, power supply, etc. This was very important for me.
I use one PC for only recordings and use the MVP plugin and a Client on our main computer for playback. I was thinking of using a 350 too but there seems too be to many playback issues for me so I would consider alternatives. Make sure you read the threads here about the card. What type of television are you going to be viewing? As stated above the quality of the recording affects the amount of drive space you need. Lately, I have been using DVD Standard play on a SDTV and I am pleased.

[SiNiSon]

I will be feeding a 50" plasma tv at 1280x720 resolution

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by SiNiSon

I will be feeding a 50" plasma tv at 1280x720 resolution

IMO in which case you'll highly likely go with Best (approx 3GB/hr) or DVD Standard Quality (approx 3.25GB/hr) as your norm (which is what I use). I use MPEG2-Max (approx 5GB/hr) for sports etc. I'd say plan for atleast TB storage. Last May I originally designed my Server with 750GB RAID5 storage. A month later realized it wasn't going to cut it for long and now run 1.49TB main Sage storage RAID5 array plus 500GB Library storage off my workstation array. If you go with a RAID controller that supports OCE you don't have to do it all at once. However, disadvantage of adding HDs and expanding array later is new space would expand the array but not your storage partition. You'd make a new partition. Not that big a deal since Sage support multiple storage partitions. But, Sage uses them in a dumb manner IMO. Fills one up then uses the next. If space becomes available on the first uses it again until full again. Could make physically managing/finding a file for say external ripping more a PIA. Just some rambling thoughts...

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by mdmint

Fills one up then uses the next. If space becomes available on the first uses it again until full again.

Disagree. I have two 600 GBbyte Raid5 arrays and my files are split when recording between the two - fairly equally so think at the time the recording starts it uses the drive with the most space. At least in my setup.

BobP.

[Opus4]

SageTV stores the next recording in the video dir with the most available space at the moment, so it ends up splitting recordings between multiple dirs instead of using all of one first. See Appendix C in the manual: there is a section titled "Where to Store the Next Recording".

- Andy

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by Opus4

SageTV stores the next recording in the video dir with the most available space at the moment, so it ends up splitting recordings between multiple dirs instead of using all of one first. See Appendix C in the manual: there is a section titled "Where to Store the Next Recording".

- Andy

I stand corrected on Sage recording allocation to multiple directories. Still more hassle to find a file for external manipulation!

[Toddly]

Originally Posted by SiNiSon

I will be feeding a 50" plasma tv at 1280x720 resolution

I'm envious. I'm no expert but I don't think I would use a PVR 350 to drive that set. I would probably go with an ATI 9800 or a Nvidia 6600 GT with DVI.