Getting started in HTPC's

[beelzerob]

Have you heard of anyone installing these in their attic, with any success? I will be unable to put one of these on my roof. The other potential problem for this in my attic, is that I will have radiant barrier roof sheathing covering my entire roof. I'm not sure if this will screw up the reception or not, but I'm thinking it might.

I can't find a link to my antenna....bought it at Radio Shack a while ago. It looks like a B-2 bomber...big around center part and then 2 large wings that stick out, angled back. It also comes with a signal amp.

Where we lived in AZ, I struggled forever with that thing. It was a directional antenna, and I could see the mountains that the transmitters was supposedly on, and I almost killed myself mounting it at the top of our roofline on that end of the house, pointing to the mountains. It was disappointing. Constant dropouts, and some channels didn't come in at all.

Then one day, and I have no idea why, I decided to stick it in our attic. I just stuck my head up the attic access (it was a ranch style house with vaulted ceilings, so the access area was about the extent of our attic). Boom! Great strong clear signal. And we had one of those radiant barrier tinfoil hats for our roof also. I was doubly pleased because not only did we get a BETTER signal with it in the attic (who knows, maybe the aluminum foil helps??), but it was no longer an eyesore nor subject to the sometimes very fierce winds and lightning.

Give 'er a try, sace.

 

[bfisher]

I have 1 hr250 and 1 Hr21 that go in to component video amps. It shoots them to multiple tvs in the house. I also have an ota, standard directv box and cctv cameras modulated and sent to all the tvs via coax. We watch most everything in HD with the most being the networks, ESPN, Food network,USA,TBS,TNT,FX. My local ABC is still not HD so that I have to get through Directv. How and why would I want Sage? How did you get your 3 Directv units into your pc? I'm always looking to improve my set up but I'm not sure how or why I would integrate Sage.

I don't see any DVRs (or maybe that's what hr250/hr21 are... don't recognize the numbers). Even if they are DVRs... the difference is that Sage is like having 6 DVRs and x DVD players all wired to every TV in my house. It can record 6 things at once, and any TV can watch anything live/recorded or any DVDs... and all my wiring was 1 Cat 5 wire to each TV. My TVs can be HD or SD and it will display at that TVs resolution (including upscaling, HD to SD transcoding, etc). I don't need to have an intricate IR system to manage all my sources... it's 1 source - my Sage extender.

Hopefully that helps. You've put enough effort into your system it may not make sense to replace it with Sage. In my case, I wanted HD at my TVs, I wanted many DVRs capability, I wanted to get rid of physical DVDs, and I didn't want to drag several cables around to do it...

 

[CollinR]

Bruce you use Niel's custom menus? Wanna trade menu files? Mine is getting pretty customized with icons for most items and you can easily support 9 items per page so if you just add scene lighting to your menus it's cake. The file is menu.xml in the SageTV directory.


Also if you install AnyDVD on the server you can stream DVDs to the extenders in realtime, makes mom's coworker's daughter's wedding DVD much easier to cope with.

 

[bfisher]

yeah, I use AnyDVD (and Clone) - those guys are awesome.

I'm not using custom menus yet... been using SageMC. It's on my list of to-dos

 

[CollinR]

If/When you do it go back to the original STV and reimport any modifications you use.

 

[Sacedog]

yeah, I use AnyDVD (and Clone) - those guys are awesome.

I'm not using custom menus yet... been using SageMC. It's on my list of to-dos

How does everyone rip their DVDs? Do you compress them at all, or rip them at 100% quality.

 

[IVB]

I rip DVDs at 100%.

if they are DVRs... the difference is that Sage is like having 6 DVRs and x DVD players all wired to every TV in my house.

FYI, the HR21 is a DVR. To me, that's the killer feature of SageTV that makes DVRs useless. I have 2 primary video zones. I would have to get 2 HR21's, each of which would have their own recording schedule, neither of which could playback shows recorded on the other HR21. That is a world I cannot fathom, as it screams "every TV is an island, and integration is irrelevant".

 

[bfisher]

How does everyone rip their DVDs? Do you compress them at all, or rip them at 100% quality.

I rip at 100% also. For my kids movies, I rip just the movie itself... it's awesome to open up the "kids DVDs" page, see the DVD cover we want, press play and instantly the kids are watching the movie. No waiting for promos, trailers, ads, menus...

When I rent DVDs, I rip them too - but these I rip the whole DVD. Sometimes we want to see the extras, etc. Once we're done, I delete the movie.

For my wife's exercise DVDs (she's a personal trainer), I'll rip specific chapters for her, then create custom playlists which string them together like she wants. She absolutely loves this capability.

 

[Ranger Digital]

I've been a little confused on were I would use Sage.

I have 1 hr250 and 1 Hr21 that go in to component video amps. It shoots them to multiple tvs in the house. I also have an ota, standard directv box and cctv cameras modulated and sent to all the tvs via coax. We watch most everything in HD with the most being the networks, ESPN, Food network,USA,TBS,TNT,FX. My local ABC is still not HD so that I have to get through Directv. How and why would I want Sage? How did you get your 3 Directv units into your pc? I'm always looking to improve my set up but I'm not sure how or why I would integrate Sage.

Thanks
Lance

Lance I am with you! I just dont get the Sage. Their website is even extremely poor in demo'ing what they do. Just dont see the need. Would be nice if it could replace a video matrix .

I feel silly just not "gettin' it."

 

[DavidL]

I've been a little confused on were I would use Sage.

I have 1 hr250 and 1 Hr21 that go in to component video amps. It shoots them to multiple tvs in the house. I also have an ota, standard directv box and cctv cameras modulated and sent to all the tvs via coax. We watch most everything in HD with the most being the networks, ESPN, Food network,USA,TBS,TNT,FX. My local ABC is still not HD so that I have to get through Directv. How and why would I want Sage? How did you get your 3 Directv units into your pc? I'm always looking to improve my set up but I'm not sure how or why I would integrate Sage.

Thanks
Lance

Lance I am with you! I just dont get the Sage. Their website is even extremely poor in demo'ing what they do. Just dont see the need. Would be nice if it could replace a video matrix . If you are using a distributed PC model architecture, then you really don't need a matrix switcher. The PC(s) handles all media and routes accordingly.

I feel silly just not "gettin' it."

Sage provides the means to record broadcasts onto PC hard drives and manages what should be recorded and what was recorded. This recordings can then be played back at any networked PC (including over the Internet).

Sage also provides the means to handle multiple TV listings, and multiple tuners, and multiple tuner types. So, if you have OTA HD broadcast and hardware (or QAM - cable) and satellite, you can view listings for each in a common UI.

Sage also has their new HD Extender which provides an HDMI 1080i connection via ethernet to display your TV broadcasts, your photos, your music, and other media that is stored on a PC somewhere in the LAN. Works very nicely.

Basically, it's a box'd PVR on steroids. It also supports external software integration for a high level of integration with all other home subsystems (lighting, security, etc).

In some respects it can be a component that can replace some roles of a matrix switcher as all PC accesible content is able to be routed via Sage software to PCs at Watch locations.

 

[IVB]

Sage is a TIVO-replacement, but is much much nicer than TIVO for multi-room models for the reasons stated above.

If you have a distributed PC architecture, Sage still adds value as for $90 for SageServer plus ($35?) per client, you can use SageClient to show any TV show on any PC, setup or modify recording schedules on any PC, etc.

But with SageTV, you can also get Sage TVPlaceShifter for your laptop so you can watch TV on the road from a hotel room. (ie slingbox) You can add new programs to be recorded remotely as well.

You can get the Sage HD extenders, so you don't need to deal with the heat, maintenance, or cost of PCs (btw, for $300 on a PC, you're not going to get a very good PQ comparitively).

 

[bfisher]

Sage also has their new HD Extender which provides an HDMI 1080i connection via ethernet to display your TV broadcasts, your photos, your music, and other media that is stored on a PC somewhere in the LAN. Works very nicely.

I agree with your post... except I wanted to clarify that the HD Extender supports 1080p also - and does upscaling (DVDs look VERY nice on this box).

 

[CollinR]

I've been a little confused on were I would use Sage.

I have 1 hr250 and 1 Hr21 that go in to component video amps. It shoots them to multiple tvs in the house. I also have an ota, standard directv box and cctv cameras modulated and sent to all the tvs via coax. We watch most everything in HD with the most being the networks, ESPN, Food network,USA,TBS,TNT,FX. My local ABC is still not HD so that I have to get through Directv. How and why would I want Sage? How did you get your 3 Directv units into your pc? I'm always looking to improve my set up but I'm not sure how or why I would integrate Sage.

Thanks
Lance

Lance I am with you! I just dont get the Sage. Their website is even extremely poor in demo'ing what they do. Just dont see the need. Would be nice if it could replace a video matrix .

I feel silly just not "gettin' it."

Okay in that instance you are limited to 3 HD feeds at any one time, with SageTV you can watch unlimited recorded HD streams in HD or transcoded SD or transcoded remotely. This is limited by harddrive access, network bandwidth and in the case of the SD extender CPU cycles for transcoding.

Of course thats also only HD video, I have like 10k MP3s and 1500 family photos. All of which can also be randomly accessed from any client on the system.

I also have mine connected to a 400 Disk DVD changer, however it has the limitations of the hr250 and hr21 in your case. As many clients can watch the same DVD as you like but it's the same disk at the same time.

Same goes for my CCTV multiplex but I just leave that running. You should with some quweaking be able to setup a DVR as a network encoder then each CCTV channel can be randomly accessed.

The logic in dealing with the recording schedule is also impressive, you basically setup "favorites" and give them priorities and other parameters. The recording engine is smart enough to deal with most recording conflicts. Sometimes although rare it's unavoidable and something must be sacrificed to record something else, however it will have used it's EPG data to best determine what will be reaired to be caught in the future.

It is much more then just a matrix switch, maxtrixs don't deal with time. As you learn more about SageTV you see how well it allows you to manage your TV watching time. Once you get well aquainted you'll rarely watch live TV anymore.

SageTV offers you a Windows, Linux or Mac server to allow for breaking of DRM or decrypting content on the fly.

Once Netflix watch now is integrated the whole scene will change, as Netflix provides a bunch of content on the cheap with 24/7 availablity.

Also SageTV provides me my automation interfaces, any TV in my house no matter how inexpensive or antiquated allows for use of my lighting, controls my audio input/outputs and volumes. All from a remote rather then touchscreen, starting from scratch the SD client cost is about $400 with wall mounted LCD. HD steps it up another $150 with HD extender or the sky with a PC for gaming and x. You may launch games directly from the SageTV menus as well.

Also all this stuff is readily available off the shelf parts, if my power supply were to fail I can get another in no time. If that happens to a dedicated PVR like a Tivo it's not so simple.

SageTV makes more sence when you are starting out before you have invested in a component matrix and mutichannel modulator. However as HDCP, DRM and all the other limitations grow being based on a Windows platform ensures you will have hackability not present in dedicated units.

 

[Rupp]

OK guys, yet another newbie question. Why would you / do you need a remote to go with your TV tuner card? The extenders come with remotes to control them right? Do the extenders allow the ability to watch live TV via Sage (TV tuner card)?

 

[CollinR]

OK guys, yet another newbie question. Why would you / do you need a remote to go with your TV tuner card? The extenders come with remotes to control them right? Do the extenders allow the ability to watch live TV via Sage (TV tuner card)?

You don't really need one UNLESS you wish to watch direct from the server via in your case your HDMI connection.

If that is the case I suggest the SnapStream FireFly, it's cheap and works very well. It has about 100' of RF range.

To use it with SageTV you'll want to download the drivers ONLY directly from Snapstream. Then install EventGhost and add the SageTV plugin and the x10 remote>Snapstream FireFly plug. Then just match the button presses to the SageTV commands, this will work regaurdless of focus. So you can surf Cocoontech while the wife watches HGTV. On an HD 16:9 display it works awesome with a SD feed in a 704x480 box on one side and the rest browser space.