Large system build questions

[heffe2001]

I have a customer who's wanting a Media server at their home, but after they looked at MCE2005, they determined that it wasn't nearly scalable enough for their situation.

In his house, he has a mixture of 8 SD & HD TV's (not sure the exact number of HD's, but lets just say 2 for now). He's wanting to be able to watch live-tv on any of those TV's (of course at the same time). He also uses both cable & satellite (not sure which, direct or dish).

What he basically wants, is to be able to of course pause and resume live TV, be able start watching something in say the bedroom, stop it, go into the kitchen and cook while whatching where he left off, stop it there, and go to another room after that. I know Sage will do this, but what I'm wanting to know is what type of hardware we should quote.

Right now I'm thinking of a main file-server running Sage Linux, and at least 4, possibly 5 PVR500's(I'm going to say for now he's going to run at least 2 or 3 cable boxes and a satellite receiver on the SVID connections on the 500's, and regular analog cable on the other tuners). For storage I'm suggesting a minimum of 1tb, and at least 1gb memory (would most likely set it up with 2g just to be safe). He'll be running at least one, possibly 2 regular Sage clients for the HD TV's (3.2-3.4ghz, 1gb, Nvidia 7800 clients most likely), and the rest would be MVP extender boxes. I'm also wondering what to do about remotes, as we definitely want them all to be the same (he'll most likely want to use a Harmony type remote on all the systems, to keep them consistant).

Would it be good to go with some sort of Dell file server for the main server, and would it be compatible with the PVR500's, and Sage Linux? For this particular customer, money is definitely no object, so whatever would be best-class hardware would definitely be in order.

The only other problem I can see is that he does want to use Comskip (or SA rather), so would it be best to use say Server 2k3 on the main system with Sage Windows, and run Dirmon/SA there, or could it be used on one of the lesser-used client pc's, with say a gigabit network connection (I believe he has gigabit in his house now, to all his various PC's)?

[SHS]

be able start watching something in say the bedroom, stop it, go into the kitchen and cook while whatching where he left off, stop it there, and go to another room after that

This I Know dosen't work that way it start rigth at the being of the video on each device so he have to skip to that part where left off on the other device, unless I miss a setting some where that allow for that but he have reber that he need to be record show mode.

You need sit down with that customer and fig out just how min tuner's he or his really want's.

I'm also wondering what to do about remotes, as we definitely want them all to be the same (he'll most likely want to use a Harmony type remote on all the systems, to keep them consistant).

This shouldn't be a problem just reuse the Hauppage new 45 button remote profile that will keep them consistant

Sage Linux may not be the best option due lack 3rdparty IR Blaster which only well support under Retail 150 being that LIRC itself wasn't reliable enough to be satisfactory for IR blasting other that it would be the best option.
To bad this dosen't have Windows drivers http://www.commandir.com/mini/ but it cost 3x more then USB-UIRT Ouch! $150.
It really don't matter on CPU hosepower on the SageTV server as long he dosen't start DivX video which do need hosepower for Transcoding to DivX or the other way around for MVP would suggesting a minimum 2GHz celeon, But you said he want to used Comskip well I then would suggesting a minimum Dual CPU and 1TB memory is more then enougth it not like he be runing some kind of hardcore data base and it should be more enough to use for Transcoding in tell today we start seeing Hardware Transcoding in US.

[ben_95sl1]

I don't know what's different SHS, but I stop the video in my livingroom and go to the bedroom and it always starts where I left off, for as long as I've been using sage anyway. Otherwise my fiance would complain about it

Honestly, 1TB of storage isn't much IMO, when we're talking about significant budget and 8 tuners, and maybe some HDTV. More storage space has so much potential: DVD collection, entire seasons of every series, music, etc, etc, etc. Even with one tuner, I'd like to have 1tb of storage.

[SHS]

ben_95sl1 like I said unless I miss a setting some where that allow for that, but here it not that way becuases my brother and I may watch the same show but he watch them at diff time and he complain about it being watch all ready when he hasn't watch it so I disable that which was a long ago and forgot about it.

[jptaz]

Personally I would find the best server hardware available that supports lots of PCI slots for the PVR 500s and make sure the server has a built in fibre channel por SCSI connector and then get one or more external RAID boxes with lots of disk and expansion. At my last job we had an AtaBoy RAID from http://www.nexsan.com/. They now have SataBoy, SataBeast, and SataBlade which are better.

I think the best thing for a whole house system is lots of fast disk and lots of tuners. Start with 8 to 10 tuners with the PVR 500s and add external Tuners via USB2. I currently have 2 HD Tuners via USB (VBOX) and 5 SD via PCI. I don't use SA so someone else will know CPU requirments. I have 1.3TB of RAID 5 storage with a hot spare and I am already down to under 500GB free. I have a bad habbit of keeping whole seasons of shows...and I rebuilding my collection of FoodTV shows. I also like a bunch of PBS HD shows so they are starting to eat away space quickly as I am collecting them.

Just a warning:

1. I am having issues with the VBOX USB2 tuners not always correctly tuning ABC HD, it occasionally tunes to the 3rd sub channel which is a lovely view of the tower, but Frey is investigating the issue. I don't know what kind of Support is availabe in Linux.

2. I and several other people have experiences audio hiccups when we start recording or live TV with the PVR 500...but this only on the server, the client never sees this issue so as long as the SageTV Server is not used for playback it should not be an issue. Also this may not be an issue on linux.

John

[dvd_maniac]

On the space issue:

I have put my entire DVD collection and recorded movies (About 1300 all together) on an internal Raid-5 setup.
The 1300 movies take up around 550GB. I use Nero Recode to encode them into AVC MP4 files for an average of 500MB each. I have 3 clients and they are all windows machines and use the Hauppauge 45 button remote. I also have many many series of TV shows on my server as well. They are all either AVC MP4 or Xvid encodes. This saves me a ton of space as each 1 hour episode, after commercials are stripped, end up at around 145MB for AVC and 225MB for xvid. Now the Media MVP can not play AVC MP4 but I beleive it can play Divx/Xvid. So maybe you should setup your customer with batch encoding his TV recordings and DVD's?

[dbfresh23]

May not be able to find 5 PCI slots in newer Dell servers as they are starting to ship their stuff with PCI-E slots.

[jptaz]

On the space issue:

If I have money to spend on storage space why destroy the quality of a DVD or show just to save space? Also there is the question of tech savy consumer. I am guessing his target is someone who is not wanting to fiddle or they would not be paying someone else to stup a whole house solution. If the transcode is not automated and perfectly reliable it is going to cause more headaches than it helps and for a couple thousand dollars more he was willing to spend anyway?

Just my view,
John

[Opus4]

One consideration for so many 500s... do they still require a bracket for the 2nd svideo input? If so, that might use up space where you would have installed another 500, but this only comes into play if there are enough svideo inputs to use both on a card.

(I think someone said they at least come with the bracket now.)

- Andy

[jptaz]

Also given that servers do not have many PCI slots it might make sense to look at PCI Express PowerColor cards. Frankly from what I have seen the ATI encoder is better than the PVR 500 in quality. With a DELL or other good server you are likely to find up to 4 PCI E x4 slots and a bunch PCI 64 bit slots. I am not sure if the PCI 64 Bit slots are backward compatible with PCI 32 Bit cards.

John

[heffe2001]

I looked at Dell's rack-mount solutions today, and the only rack-mount server with the slot-space even close to what we're wanting was over 6000, without the storage needed. It has 2 PCI-X 32 slots, 1 PCI-X 64, and 3 PCI-E, 2 4x & 1 8x (I think that's right on the PCIE's). I think we're actually going to go with a Supermicro 775 server board, with a total of 5 PCIE slots, 2-4g memory, and go with 2tb of Disk storage (we'll offer it in a raid 5 config, or just a Raid 0, and see which the customer wants). I'm still on the fence about using Linux or Windows sage though. I'm thinking the prudent way would be Linux, with MVP's for the SD clients, and possibly the Mediaready 5000 boxes for the HD clients (assuming you can upgrade a 5000 box to the latest version of sage, and use it as a pure client machine to the Linux OEM server). He IS in the process of replacing some of his TV's in his home with flat-panels, so we may very well end up using all MR 5k boxes as clients (as I said, to this guy money's no object, so a 7 or 8k install is absolutely nothing to him).

Here's another question... I know the Mediaready 5000 box is running OEM'ed Sage for the PVR system, does anybody here know what the 4000 box runs on it's backend? Is it Sage, or some other Media front-end?

[jptaz]

Linux is nice because it is locked down, but on the other hand you will have more choices for HD tuners with Windows.

For protecting a Windows server a friend pointed this out to me:
http://www.diamondcs.com.au/processguard/

It basicaly prevents any program that is not explicitly in the allow list to execute. Since I am not surfing or anything on my server I have a very limited list of programs I allow to run.

John