Hardware Suggestions for HD server

[dbfresh23]

I'm in the early stages of planning an hd server and I'm trying to spec something out that will be powerful enough to be able to handle 4 HDTV recordings at once. This will be strictly an HTPC server and not used to view or for anything else.

Right now I'm considering something in the range of a Dual 1.6ghz-2.4ghz HT Xeon with 1-2gb DDR. Video I'm not too concerned with since it will not be used for playback. I am debating a raid 5 array for the storage, and i'm pretty sure my os drive will be one of those new Gigabyte solid state Ram drives. Plan is to run XP Pro or Server 2k3.

Now the goal is to be able to record from 2 ATSC cards(models unknown at this time) and 2 Firewire inputs(169time moded D* receivers - and the 169time box has been confirmed to work with SageTV - Though NOT by Sage!).

As powerful of a system as this sounds, I'm still not sure if it will be able to keep up with all that processing of HD files. I'm also considering getting 2 P4s and trying to get 2 servers going with each handling 2 tuners.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[stanger89]

You asked for it

Originally Posted by dbfresh23

I'm in the early stages of planning an hd server and I'm trying to spec something out that will be powerful enough to be able to handle 4 HDTV recordings at once. This will be strictly an HTPC server and not used to view or for anything else.

Planning is a good thing.

Right now I'm considering something in the range of a Dual 1.6ghz-2.4ghz HT Xeon with 1-2gb DDR.[/QUOTE]

This is absolutely, unconditionally overkill. There is no way, considering HD is already compressed, you need a dual-CPU machine for a SageTV server. Neither do you need over 1GB of RAM. And finally there is no reason to waste your money on a Xeon.

OK, now that that's out of the way. Recording HD is just like recording SD in SageTV, that is the requirements, especially CPU/Memory wise, are negligible. My recommendation, would be for a proven, stable, inexpensive CPU/motherboard and 512MB-1GB of RAM (512 should be plenty).

OK, so it's not really unconditional, if you plan on encoding/transcoding video, you'll probably want something a bit more, my recommendation would be the fastest Dual-Core CPU you can afford.

Video I'm not too concerned with since it will not be used for playback. I am debating a raid 5 array for the storage, and i'm pretty sure my os drive will be one of those new Gigabyte solid state Ram drives. Plan is to run XP Pro or Server 2k3.

A Gigabyte ram drive is overkill again for this, all you need is a cheap "normal" HDD for the OS. If it were an HTPC (in an "HT" type area) I'd be all over the gigabyte though.

RAID-5 I would only do if 1-2 large drives don't offer you sufficient capacity.

And finally, Server doesn't offer anything beneficial to justify the retail/OEM price. If you've got a copy, go for it, otherwise just stick with XP.

Now the goal is to be able to record from 2 ATSC cards(models unknown at this time) and 2 Firewire inputs(169time moded D* receivers - and the 169time box has been confirmed to work with SageTV - Though NOT by Sage!).

As powerful of a system as this sounds, I'm still not sure if it will be able to keep up with all that processing of HD files. I'm also considering getting 2 P4s and trying to get 2 servers going with each handling 2 tuners.

Unless there's something specific to the 169time mods, remember, there's really no processing involved in capturing HD it's just written to disk. About all you need to worry about is being able to record 19.4Mbps (or about 2.5MB/sec) for each simultaneous stream. Your system would max at about 10MB/sec which child's play for any modern drive.

[dbfresh23]

Ahh, a couple of things I forgot to mention. I would like to run comskip on the server at specified times. I figured that the Xeons, which can be had very very cheap on Ebay would be great for making that faster. Also I would plan on being able to convert the HD streams to either Divx or WVM-HD to save space.

Main thing is that I don't want it to get bogged down trying to watch live tv on a client while converting or commercial processing a show on the server.

[stanger89]

For comskip, or, at least for ShowAnalyzer, that's still overkill. SA just isn't that demanding, it will run an many times realtime on most hardware.

Now for transcoding HD, that's definitely not enough. You'll need a lot more power to do HD transcoding at any reasonable rate. Honestly, it's just not practical at this time. IMO you're better off getting more storage, stripping commercials, and removing null padding than trying to transcode HD.

Case in point, my Athlon 64 3400 (socket 740 IIRC) goes about 1-3fps to transcode HD into either WM9 or H.264. That means it takes over a day to transcode a movie, more like 2 days.

To get a significant improvement, you'd need something on the order of an Athlon 64 X2 4800. If I had to guess it would be about 3x as fast for transcoding. That's being generous though as it runs at the same clock speed (2.4GHz) as my 3400, so it would probably be more like 2x.

Consider this: An Athlon 64 X2 4800, is $884, ignoring motherboard/ram/etc as those would be needed anyway. For approximately the same price, you can get 1.6TB of HDD space.