Help to create Media Centre system

[c50cnameless]

Hi all,

i'm from the uk and are looking into setting up a sagetv media centre system, and were hoping someone could answer a few questions I have:

1) how many tuners does sageTv support? Is it worth having more than 1 or two? what sort of spec machine do I need for say 2 freeview tuners (e.g. Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT or a few hauppage nova-t)?

2) how easy is sagetv to configure? i dont want to have to constantly be fiddling with it once its setup!

and finally, I really like the idea of having a main machine that sits at the centre, records the actualy tv (e.g. contains the tuners / big hard drive) and then just a small machine that fetchs the data over the network and displays it. Can this be done with sagetv?

I currently have spare a mini-itx system (533Mhz, 512MB RAM) which would idealy be the front end (if not I will have to buy both new). Perhaps someone could advise me on this?

Thanks a lot


Mark

[Opus4]

I can't really comment on specific tuners/setup isues in the UK, but:
how many tuners does sageTv support? Is it worth having more than 1 or two?SageTV can handle pretty much as many tuners as you can give it -- they can be in the server, or in another PC via network encoding. The number of tuners to use depends on how many shows you want to record that happen to air simultaneously, but multipole tuners can also help prevent conflicts when you pad recordings in order to make sure you get the beginning & end of the shows.

and finally, I really like the idea of having a main machine that sits at the centre, records the actualy tv (e.g. contains the tuners / big hard drive) and then just a small machine that fetchs the data over the network and displays it. Can this be done with sagetv?Yes -- that would use SageTV for the server and SageTVClient for the client PC. Also: the Media Extender (MVP) and Placeshifter clients are newer options for clients.

- Andy

[pjwerdna]

1) how many tuners does sageTv support? Is it worth having more than 1 or two? what sort of spec machine do I need for say 2 freeview tuners (e.g. Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT or a few hauppage nova-t)?

I'm sure I read someone had done 8.

I had a mini-ITX MII1000 recording two analog SD channels and playing back one (recorded at 1.6GB/hour). This worked fine until 4.1 came along, then I started having some stuttering during playback.

However if your recording freeview (DVB-T) then the recording quality is fixed as the broadcast stream is simply recorded so you have no control over it. Therefore your playback machien needs to be able to play the maximum quality that freeview broadcast. Dont know what that is unfortuantely.

As freeview gives you lots of channels I'd get at least 3 tuners. I have two, one connected to a freeview box, plus a Nova-t waiting reliable DVB-T support.

2) how easy is sagetv to configure? i dont want to have to constantly be fiddling with it once its setup!
Generally very easy. However, I dont think DVB-T support is fully supported yet. (Its only in the 4.1 betas) I tried 4.1.6 and found channel tuning frequently failed, just comming up with a black screen and no sound. I've not seen this stated as fix in any Beta version since. Tuning also seems to be a problem, so you will have to do some fiddling at the moment.

A program Guide for the UK is also troublesome. There is built in support in 4.1, but I coudlnt get it to work. Sage cant read the freeview program guide either so I'm sticking to XMLTV at the moment..

and finally, I really like the idea of having a main machine that sits at the centre, records the actualy tv and then just a small machine that fetchs the data over the network and displays it. Can this be done with sagetv?
Yep. Works fine too. The best way I think as the server can be as big as you like.


I currently have spare a mini-itx system (533Mhz, 512MB RAM) which would idealy be the front end (if not I will have to buy both new). Perhaps someone could advise me on this?

Definitely not fast enough for 4.1 which is the only version with DVB-T support. 4.1.6 seemed to up the peak CPU requirement from about 75% average to 85% average on my 1GHz mini-itx box