Confused Streaming video and audio

[MrSpeed]

Not sure about what I need but let me tell you whayt I would like to do.

I would like to be able to watch the movies on my computer "windows xp" trough the house. I was thinking about using CQC and touch panels to control everything. I have plenty of cat 6 cables to each tv "5" total and two rg-6 cables to each location. What are my options?

 

[electron]

I personally am a HUGE SageTV believer. It's a truly distributed video (and audio) content system, media can be anywhere on the network, and they have hardware+software players. If you search the forums, you will find many people swear by it as well.

 

[drozwood90]

Dan,

How much processing power does SageServer take up on your local machine?

I've often thought about using Sage...but due to it's cost (more then free) I'd have to ensure I would not have to upgrade the server that I currently own.

Right now I just stream VOB divx, etc. right from my server, to an HTPC, which does all the work of "playing". One of the reasons I am trying to get my server changed over to Windows Server 2008...so I can get SMB2.0...which will aid in getting more bandwidth to the Windows Networking Protocol...

I played around with TVersity for a bit...but found out that I couldn't transcode the video fast enough to play on my phone...so I'm worried that the server will be doing this...

--Dan

 

[electron]

I run my SageTV install on an old P4 3.2Ghz PC, with 1 GB of memory (very slow memory actually). This machine used to be a Windows Media Center, and wasn't fast enough to be upgraded to the Vista version, so this single machine now powers my entire house

It actually doesn't require much cpu if you have the HD extenders, as they decode everything, SageTV just streams it. If you use the Hauppauge MVP extenders (for your analog TV's), they will need some SageTV CPU if you want to read non MPEG2 content. But I have no trouble streaming HD 720p TV shows to these little extenders while recording.

I really need to start documenting my system.

 

[MrSpeed]

Sage integrates with CQC correct?

 

[electron]

CQC can control some aspects of SageTV, yes, but you can't access your CQC interface through SageTV.

 

[sic0048]

I use to run SageTV also with an old P4 machine - a 3.0 ghz one at that. But it acted as my SageTV server - recording shows from my HDHR and HD-PVR. I use a HD-extender to actually watch the media with. There is no way I could use the P4 machine to playback HD video.

I also use CQC and the SageTV driver is very robust. With it, you can control just about every aspect of SageTV. You have all the normal transport controls (including any/all extenders you have), you can browse and select media to play, schedule recordings, etc all inside a CQC interface device.

That being said, all of that can also be done with a normal IR remote control if you have an extender in the room, or a IR receiver (like the USB-UIRT) hooked up to your Sage server. About 95% of my SageTV control is done via a IR remote. But I actually use CQC to control the Sage devices because I have them all in a central wiring closet. So the only two things located in my Den are my TV, and an IR receiver. When I press a button on my remote, CQC takes that command and acts on it accordingly. So if I am watching a show on my HD-Extender #1 and press the stop button, CQC will send the Stop command via the IP connection with the HD Extender #1 box and my show will stop playing.

 

[TXFlatLander]

+1 for SageTV as well.