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ErsatzTom
12-08-2003, 06:38 PM
Hi! I just purchased SageTV and ordered some hauppauge pvr250 tuners and I'm just sort of getting ready to experiment. I was hoping, before I really settle on how I'm going to put all this together, that I could get some clarification on a few things. Oh, and because it is going to take me a while to get this all together I'm really probably going to be starting off with V2 if that makes a difference for any of my questions.

First off, I was thinking that what I would do is build a SageTV server that would sit in my office with 3 or more pvr250 tuner cards and do basically nothing but record and stream content. Secondly, I want a STB for viewing SageTV content, DVD's, and playing PC games. Eventually, I would imagine we will have a couple of the Hauppauge MediaMVP's when we get our house built and from time to time I'll probably also use the client on one or more of my normal computers.

So, First: What do you guys think that the minimum config should be for the server. I was leaning toward an Athlon system since they seem to be a little cheaper... would a Athlon 2000+/256MB PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM system get the job done? I'd never be viewing tv on this box. It seems like with the hardware encoding on the pvr250's that the recording part wouldn't take much cpu but I wasn't sure about the streaming.

Secondly, for those of you with this sort of setup, is there any noticeable problems with using the client version over the network. All connections would be 100Mb ethernet. Are there noticeable delays? Is there functionality that can't be accessed through the client? If you have several streams going at once does it impact other lan traffic?

I'm less worried about the configuration of the STB since the hardware will be fast enough to play fairly modern games, I can't imagine that the client would cause any problems.

Also, many of our computers are Macs running OS X. Is there anyway to interact with SageTV on a Mac? Maybe with the upcoming web interface? Or, I think I remember reading that the MediaMVP port was fairly easy because it was mostly java?? If that is the case, is there any chance we might see a more portable version of the client at some point?

Thanks for your help!

sixdoubleo
12-08-2003, 07:51 PM
Originally posted by ErsatzTom
So, First: What do you guys think that the minimum config should be for the server. I was leaning toward an Athlon system since they seem to be a little cheaper... would a Athlon 2000+/256MB PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM system get the job done? I'd never be viewing tv on this box. It seems like with the hardware encoding on the pvr250's that the recording part wouldn't take much cpu but I wasn't sure about the streaming.


Currently, I have a Media Server setup in the fashion you describe. It currently has only one PVR-250 in it, but maybe the data will give you an idea on what you can expect.

Media Server
ECS K75SA Pro Motherboard
Athlon XP1800+
512MB PC2100 (DDR 266)
Maxtor 250GB ATA-133 (MB only supports ATA-100)

Desktop Machine
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Athlon XP2500+ "Barton"
512MB PC3200 Dual Channel DDR
Maxtor 40GB ATA-133

I have the SageTV Client running on my desktop machine as I type this. I am watching Live TV that is timeshifted about a minute behind.

The media server is fluctuating between 5 and 15% CPU utilization. Available physical memory is 364,500K (out of 512,000). Memory used by the SageTV process is 35,000K.

I would assume that additional instances of a TV Tuner would produce similar results. So maybe no higher than 50% with 3 tuners? Just a guess.

On my desktop (which is running SageTV Client as I write this), I'm seeing between 4 and 18% CPU utilization, and everything is super fluid. (I also have Yahoo IM, MSN Messenger, Outlook 2003, 4 IE windows (including the one I'm currently typing this message in), and a 16MB Word 2003 Document open)

To give you an idea of network throughput....I am currently running BMExtreme (Bandwidth Meter) and it is showing 800-900KBytes per second throughput on the network adapter of my desktop. Incidentally 1000KB would be 10BaseT speed, so we're barely taxing this 100BaseT network connection.

If I pause the playback in the Sage Client, the throughput drops to zero as it should. Now I unpause....and the throughput is back to about 890KB/sec.

Now I will reach over to my secondary desktop, and copy 4 files totalling 22MB from my media server (the one running SageTV) to the secondary desktop. It took 7 seconds. Now I'll copy DirectX9, which is 37MB from the media server to the same machine....9 seconds. Neither copy did anything to the TV stream being displayed on my desktop. Very fluid.

So I would say that your estimations for a server are probably accurate and that a 100Mbit network can accomodate several SageTV streams.

ErsatzTom
12-10-2003, 02:19 PM
Thanks for the feedback. This is exactly the kind of setup I've been dreaming about. I love our TiVo but, even with all the hacks out there, it isn't nearly as flexible as I would like. Plus, I'm not about to go out and get a series 2 unit when I won't be able to use the home network stuff to connect it to my original TiVo.

One more thing, does the STB need a hardware decoder for DVD playback? I'm not worried about maxing out the CPU, it won't be doing anything else while watching DVD's but I wondered if there are any PQ issues involved with purely software decoding. Also, if you have a hardware decoder, is it only a benefit if you use the tv on the decoder card? Besides the OSD issues involved in using decoder output I also want to be able to access games and such through my tv.