What To Do about DirecTV?

[bfisher]

I hesitate to answer since you seem to be an expert at this

I have the H20 HiDef receiver (standard with new installs I believe). It's OK... not lightening quick. I'd guess it takes about 2 seconds to change channels, for it to tune in, and then display a picture.

I don't want anything live except a few sporting events - and even those I start late. I couldn't tell you when any shows are on TV anymore, they just show up on my Sage server.

 

[IVB]

I have the H20 HiDef receiver (standard with new installs I believe). It's OK... not lightening quick. I'd guess it takes about 2 seconds to change channels, for it to tune in, and then display a picture.

I have an H21-100, it's about the same. The lagtime with SageTV isn't much longer, but too long for surfing. I need sub-second for that.

I don't want anything live except a few sporting events - and even those I start late. I couldn't tell you when any shows are on TV anymore, they just show up on my Sage server.

Yep, same here. I haven't watched Live TV in 5 years as there's never anything on to watch when I want to watch it. The wife/kids/I have 45 "favorites" and climbing, they just show up. Given that I have terabytes of space available and multiple tuners, i don't think twice about putting something on the list.

 

[Kevin L]

I'm surprised at UpstateMike's viewing habits, too. Seems to buck the trend. Why surf when you can have a library of ready to view TV shows at your disposal. I, too, have terabytes of storage, including some entire seasons of shows I haven't watched yet. It irritates my wife when I can't FF through commercials on the rare occasion we are watching live.

 

[felixrosbergen]

I wonder when the cable networks will catch on that none of us are watching the commericals....actually when their advertisers catch on i suppose....

For the time being we're probabaly the exceptions rather than the rule. So far i don't seem to get too many complaints from the wife when she surf using SageTV with the internal tuners...whcih are ofcourse much faster than any external box.

Is the serial connection any bit fast than the IR? I have my IR control of SageTV to digital cable box turned down to 10MS between transmits and so far so good..i wonder if somehow it's not actually going down that far since i didnt notice a true improvement when i dialed it down from 25ms to 10ms. Going from the standard 300ms to 25ms was a good improvement though.

 

[upstatemike]

I'm surprised at UpstateMike's viewing habits, too. Seems to buck the trend. Why surf when you can have a library of ready to view TV shows at your disposal. I, too, have terabytes of storage, including some entire seasons of shows I haven't watched yet. It irritates my wife when I can't FF through commercials on the rare occasion we are watching live.

I have no problem with creating a library of ready to view shows at my disosal but where would they come from? Over the last year I used my DVR to make sure I didn't miss episodes of 3 series, and that's pretty much it. There were no other regularly scheduled programs that I cared if I missed or not. Usually I just flip through the channels and look for a 1 off show or movie that catches my interest. While I like the idea of Sage as a centralized DVR, it still won't get used all that much because there just isn't that much programming out there that is "Sageworthy".

 

[upstatemike]

I hesitate to answer since you seem to be an expert at this

I have the H20 HiDef receiver (standard with new installs I believe). It's OK... not lightening quick. I'd guess it takes about 2 seconds to change channels, for it to tune in, and then display a picture.

I don't want anything live except a few sporting events - and even those I start late. I couldn't tell you when any shows are on TV anymore, they just show up on my Sage server.

The Sony is not lightning quick but it is a little faster than 2 seconds to change channels. I guess I will have an H20 next month so hopefully they are not too different.

 

[upstatemike]

Read a little bit on the SageTV forums today... kind of scary! Folks having a lot of problems with IR blaster drivers. It's not clear if anybody is successfully controlling more than 1 STB with IR. Also the ongoing issues with the HD-PVR are a concern. And lots of folks talking about taking as much as 20 seconds to change channels?!!

Took another look at the reviews on the DirecTV DVRs to see if I should just go that route for awhile but can't find anything but negative comments for these. Apparently they just randomly fail to record shows! TiVo no longer supports satellite receivers and Sony and most other TV makers seem to have stopped making DVRs altogether. It looks like there is currently no satellite compatible DVR solution that is easy to implement, easy to use, and reliable. I may have to hang on to my ReplayTV units for another year or two until things improve!

 

[electron]

FWIW, I use the MCE blaster to control my set top box, and some 3rd party software, which makes it work 100%. From what I can tell, the blaster also supports multiple zones (multiple outputs, and the driver seems to support sending data to a certain output), so I would think if you went that route, it would work well. I agree about the HD-PVR tho, I have my doubts about this product as well (I am sure it works, just not 100% smooth/fast from what I can tell so far).

 

[IVB]

FWIW, my HD-PVR has been rock solid since day one, and I was in the very first batch that went out. I had to reboot it once a few weeks ago, but other than that I've not had any of the heat issues. No idea how long it takes to tune as I don't watch live TV, but I couldn't be happier with the recorded stuff.

No idea how many people are like me where all you hear about is the folks with issues. Then again, folks are still buying Insteon, despite the horror stories that abound, and there's a lot more of those than HD-PVR sufferers.

 

[CollinR]

This is why I brought up the USBUIRT in your plan, each unit can control 3 identical boxes. If you have an IR code swicth as many sat boxes do, you can multiple the the number of positions on the switch by 3 and that the total number of STB you can control. Often this is a 3 position switch so that bring syou to 9 boxes.

If you use EventGhost for IR control you can run multiple USBUIRT's but really I doubt you need more then 9 STBs. :lol:

 

[upstatemike]

This is why I brought up the USBUIRT in your plan, each unit can control 3 identical boxes. If you have an IR code swicth as many sat boxes do, you can multiple the the number of positions on the switch by 3 and that the total number of STB you can control. Often this is a 3 position switch so that bring syou to 9 boxes.

If you use EventGhost for IR control you can run multiple USBUIRT's but really I doubt you need more then 9 STBs. :lol:

That should work fine. I don't expect to go past 4 STBs max. Now I have folks scaring me about bandwidth. Do I need to segment the Sage traffic to avoid viewing glitches? Do the HD extenders have decent sized buffers? Should I be looking into gigabit switches?

 

[CollinR]

Well none of the extenders have a gigabit NIC but you need to allow for the combined bandwidth. I would say gigabit on the server is a must and a gigabit uplink port on the switch is too.

I personally would subnet off the media stuff from the data network just for reliablity sake, in this manner nothing on one network effects the other. The cost of doing so is rather cheap ($80) and you can implement it over time if need be. I am just a segmentation freak though in reality it probably doesn't matter.

A fine example would be:

Existing data network >>>> vvv

Linksys WRT wifi router ($50) with aftermarket firmware ($0)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16833124010
to
vvvvvvvv
Linksys 8 port workgroup gigabit switch ($50) <<< Example ONLY, see edit note.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16833124027
vvvvvvvv
server, extenders, pc clients


You could also do it with a managed switch, get E's input on that. I think you may already have a layer2 switch anyway???

Either way you can do this after the fact.


EDIT: EEEK!!! Don't buy that switch, it appears to be a POS!!!!

 

[upstatemike]

Yes the 10/100 version of that Linksys 8-port gave me all kinds of problems getting my Elk M1 going. I'll look to Netgear for any Gigabit stuff.

 

[bfisher]

That should work fine. I don't expect to go past 4 STBs max. Now I have folks scaring me about bandwidth. Do I need to segment the Sage traffic to avoid viewing glitches? Do the HD extenders have decent sized buffers? Should I be looking into gigabit switches?

Saw your note about IR... I use serial control on 3 boxes... no issues - highly recommended.

As for bandwidth - I have a dedicated video network - seperate from my PC network. I did a test with 3 HD extenders and 1 MVP running 4 HD shows (required 1 show to be transcoded), while recording 3 HD shows (with all 3 shows running commercial skip processing) - all at the same time with no issues. That was the hardest test I could come up with. No bandwidth issues... no cpu issues (Quad core)... no hard-drive issues.