Long Term Planning... Sage System.

[edwardycho]

Good Evening!

I am looking to build a multimedia center. I have been doing research in various Multimedia Center software, and I have decided to use SageTV for this purpose (for now... still ways out till building this thing).

I have three televisions around the house (2 that accepts component, 1 that just uses plain RCA connections). The LCD TV also accepts component. I want to connect these three TV's with an ITX box with SageTV Client loaded.

I also plan to build a server equipt with SageTV, and the primary purpose would be to provide live television feed throughout the house (as well as other abilities). I want this feed to be a HDTV feed too (so it will house three or more hdtv cards). Of course, this is not yet doable till SageTV supports HDTV (hopefully in 3.0). For storage, I plan to have a huge capacity, but will probably start off small (250 - 300 GB) and add on till I get to 1 TB.

Now... here are my questions...

- Will this work? Is there any other setup that you recommend?
- What kind of ITX box (or if any other box) do you recommend for the client? Will it need a strong processor? A lot of memory? HD space?
- How fast (processor) do you recommend the Server box be? How much memory?
- When I add-on HD space, do I need "RAID" it? or can I just add a drive with a new letter assigned to it.
- Of course, I don't know if the Linux specifications are released yet (a new lurker here) so if it is, do you recommend it for my situation?
- I currently have HD OTA right now... Once I build the system and if I ever switched to satellite, will it be an easy transition? What will I have to do?
- Will wireless work to connect the three clients to the server (I am planning to use 802.11a)? If it isn't enough bandwidth, will the new MIMO wireless routers help?

Thanks a bunch for your advice and suggestions in advance!

- Ed

[jptaz]

Ed,

Since you want to do HDTV playback on the clients I would suggest that your best and maybe only option is Wired connections and it probably would be best to go with Gigabit Ethernet since you are looking at multiple HD Streams down the line. Currently for SageTV I have 4 Hard Drives which I have been adding for several years ( 3 80GB abd 1 300GB for recordings) and 120 GB drive for MP3s and imported Videos.

In terms of memory 512MB is ok for the server, but I and many other run with 1GB. It maybe more expensive, but you may want to look at devices like rokulabs PhotoBridge HD which currently supports playing back HD Streams and also has many other features. It is based on Linux and I could potentially see Frey or a third party creating a plugin for SageTV on these devices and they are going to probably do a far better job as client than an ITX based PC for the money. At $300 it is probably cheaper/quieter/and far superior in playback quality than a comparably priced PC you would want in a TV room.

Having said all of this I have one question:

Have you considered Window MCE 2005?

Right now it has limitations:
2 Analog tuners and 1 HD Tuner.
There are two companies that make Media Center Extenders $300 and I believe they both support HDTV output. Also the XBox can be used as well.

Hope this helpse.

John

[edwardycho]

Originally Posted by jptaz

Having said all of this I have one question:

Have you considered Window MCE 2005?

Right now it has limitations:
2 Analog tuners and 1 HD Tuner.
There are two companies that make Media Center Extenders $300 and I believe they both support HDTV output. Also the XBox can be used as well.

Yes, I have considered Windows MCE (and I see the limitations). Unfortunately, the Extenders do not have support (possibly a physical limitation) for HDTV streams. It is also unstable and was hoping SageTV 3.0 Linux would be more stable than Windows MCE 2005.

Also, what about a Roku (sp?) STB? Do/Can they support a SageTV stream?

Thanks!

- Ed

[jptaz]

I believe the latest ROku beta supports MPEG2 files directly. No SageTV Client is available now so you will have to basically play recorded material via files in directories.

http://www.rokulabs.com/products/pho...e/features.php

This device has huge potential for SageTV since it is linux based. I am not sure if or When Frey will look to using this device with a sageTV client, but you can bet as soon as they do I will be getting one.

John

[shhas]

I just checked out Roku website. It seems like a very cool device but I started reading the "known network issues" and in the pdf file it says the device cannot read files larger than 2 gig (!) and that they recommend splitting the larger files. Also, it cannot recognize file names longer than 12 characters. Unless these issues are fixed in the newer version and I was reading some old stuff, this would be a royal pain to try to configure your library to meet their specs. (really it should be the other way around )

[jptaz]

I think all those issues have been resolved in the 2.0 Beta.

If you look at the beta Whats New PDF it says that 2GB limit is fixed.

http://www.rokulabs.com/support/down...0_WhatsNew.pdf

From the pictures it looks like the file name issue is resolved too.

John

[edwardycho]

This is good...

Now I have SageTV Server with a 3-Roku's around the house wired together through a plug-in. Sounds awesome... whenever the components are released.

I was also wondering if 802.11n would support such streams. I doubt I would be using more than 2-Roku's at a time. I know 802.11n is a new and evolving technology, but it's an interesting possibility... right?

- Ed

[Cayars]

802.11n should handle it just fine.

[edwardycho]

Thanks...

Looks like I have all my general specs down...

- SageTV 3.0 (with multiple HDTV tuner support) on a Pentium 4 Proc with 512 MB Ram (Upgradable harddrives).
- 3 Roku's Connected with 802.11n Wireless/Ethernet Bridges.
- Roku Plugin (if/whenever it comes out)

Now... it's time to wait! SageTV 3.0 with HDTV will take awhile (I assume), but not as long as getting the 802.11n specs steady and finalized. Even the "pre-n" devices aren't stable enough... so I'm gonna hold tight for now (I think).

- Ed

[jptaz]

Ed,

Sounds like a good plan since your ultimate goal is HD. Save some money for all the Disk drives you are gonna need for HD. I chew through Drive space pretty quick with MPEG2 SD.

John

[edwardycho]

:-) ... Yeah. I plan a long LONG term goal of 1-2 TB of space. That should be plenty (and realistic)... don't you say? Just hook up (4) future 500 GB HD's... (I like Seagate... hopefully they produce some awesome 500 GB's).

- Ed