SageTV Basic Hardware Questions

So i think i may get a PVR-500 so i can have 2 tuners for essentially 'basic expanded cable'.

Whats card are suitable for premium channels (not HD, but HBO, etc) ? Or do all these card capture a video out from am STB as well?

Also i am looking to build an energy efficeint rackmount SageTV server which will also run CQC server and some other minor things. Can anybody recommend some hardware? I've seen some recommendation on a Abit IP35 for running SageTV Media Server, can this mobo made to be energy efficeint?

The following would be the requirements on the server:
- Be energy efficeint
- Be rackmountable
- Support at least 4 'tuners' (so at least 2 or 3 cards)
- Support HD component capture (i understand this is currently only via USB).
- Support serial expansion card (to control lighting, thermsostats, AV Receiver, etc)
- Support at least 4 SATA hard drives (2 drives in mirror mode for OS and 'critical' data, 2 other drives for video storage). I may want to use the WD 'green' drives.
- Support 2 to 3 SageTV HD media extenders (i.e. not transcoding needs)

Questions are:
- WHat mobo is recommended?
- What rackmount chasis and PSU are recommend?
- Minimum CPU/RAM needs?

Any words of advice woudl be greatly appreciated.
 
FYI - my research showed that even green drives take up 8watts. To cut it down to bare minimum, you could get a single 1TB drive for video storage.

For serial expansion, if you use an IP-based serial server, then you could cut down on another PCI slot. My IP serial server takes up very very little power (<5W if i recall). The goal would be to get down to only needing a single PCI slot, so you could get one of those itty bitty PCs that take up very little power and generate very little heat.
 
If it's all hardware encoding on the tuners and hardware decoding on the HD extenders the server is essentially just a file server right and should need little CPU/RAM?

I'm thinking a 2U rackserver with a small PSU (250w or so should do the trick).

Does CQC take any signifcant resources?
 
basically right mavric... with a couple notes.

- If you record HD video, but need to use an MVP (SD only), then the server is transcoding on the fly from HD to SD. This requires CPU power. A HD Extender does not have this issue since the conversion occurs in it.
- Commercial skip processing takes some CPU power and RAM. It's analyzing video/audio looking for patterns.
- Compressing video (to make it portable for example) takes processing/RAM
- Using Placeshifter requires real-time transcoding and takes processing and RAM.

Personally, I over designed my server. But I never wanted to have to explain to the wife "no, you can't watch that right now because the server is doing something else". I'm a firm believer in paying a little extra to save a lot of headaches ;)
 
ok....SageTV must be doing good business...they're out of stock on all the good stuff...

What else and from what store can i use to tune 2 digital cable (non premium) channels?

Will a PVR-500MCE from any shop do the trick? Does it come with an IR blaster?

Can i buy the MVP direct from Haupage.com instead from Sagetv.com and somehow make it work with SageTV? Anybody have a step by step set of instructions for this?
 
Any PVR-500 will work with Sage. Different versions come with different remotes. I don't remember about the IR blaster - I don't use one.

Any MVP will work with Sage. There's nothing special about the hardware from Sage. You will need to buy a placeshifter license from Sage.
 
Any PVR-500 will work with Sage. Different versions come with different remotes. I don't remember about the IR blaster - I don't use one.

Any MVP will work with Sage. There's nothing special about the hardware from Sage. You will need to buy a placeshifter license from Sage.

Buy placeshifter? Why placeshifter and not just a SageTV client license? Or is the client license only for software clients?
 
Here's my thread with info about SageTV software:
http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=10137&hl=

I think smee combined his answer to a couple of your questions. If you are going to buy an MVP elsewhere, yes you will need "SageTV MVP Client" from SageTV's store (for your MVP).

I don't have any media extenders yet, but maybe a placeshifter license will work for a media extender (maybe that's what smee was inferring), that I don't know.

Just an update....I ended up purchasing a Hauppauge 1600 with SageTV server, along with a Placeshifter license. So far the wife likes it (I'm waiting for the store to get more of the HD Extenders in stock). The only complaint that I have is that I can't record two shows at once :)

So I guess I'll need to get another tuner card for the wife! lol

For the mean time she likes using placeshift via laptop. I can't wait to get an extender so we can watch it on the big TV!
 
To get started I suggest anyone get:

SageTV+Placeshifter Combo

PVR500
USBUIRT

MVP (no wireless!)



Placeshifter license is the same as extender license and are interchangable, client licences are only good fot Windows PCs on the local network.

You need a placeshifter license for every MVP/placeshifter to be in use any any one point in time.
 
I can control SageTV with my 1600's Hauppauge remote control. It's a pretty cool feature, but I usually don't watch stuff on my server. I mainly use the placeshifter on a laptop. I can't wait to get an extender!
 
ok, SageTV + PVR500 combo and placeshifter ordered from SageTv.com and MVP ordered from Hauppage.com...soon i will be able to join the cool kid SageTV club.

I am moving into a temporary appartment for 6 months while the new house is being built, this should give me a good bit of time to exeriment with all the toys so there is minimal delays (and thus good WAF) implementing the solutions into the new house when it's ready.
 
I have just added some edits to a couple of my posts in this thread. In those posts, I previously said that the Hauppauge 2250 will not have hardware mpeg2 encoders. This originally came from communications with Hauppauge, but I believe there may have been a misunderstanding concerning the 1250 and 2250.

I have just gotten confirmation from Hauppauge that the 2250 will have dual mpeg2 encoders on it.
 
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