Placeshifter VS client at home and multiple servers?

[Delbrutis]

Hey all I had a couple of questions for anyone who cares .I have ben running Sage Media Center as a stand alone HTPC system in my living room for quite a long time. I had a small difference of opinion with my cable company about a year ago. Basically they said they wanted me to pay x amount of money and I told them where to stick the bill . Right now I only get broadband and have ben satisfied with ATSC and now that sage supports it on my Hauppauge 1600 QAM . I just got some new hardware for Xmas and I would like to do my first major overhaul in a long time. I would like to move my HD cards to a server box in another room of my apartment where I get better ATSC reception and I would like to build a linux box for my 250's to take work and leach regular cable from there. I work in a group home and I live there for 3 days at a time. I would like to build a full linux Media box to use in the staff room at work . So the questions are how many of what license's do i need ? And what works best? I have the full Windows media center I thought I could buy the linux media center and placeshifter license combo . How many server's can a placeshifter be hooked up to at one time? Also I see in the downloads that their is a windows and linux media server ? but I don't see those listed to buy a license in the store or see them listed under products? Sorry for this post being so long but I felt it was important to explain what I wanted to do .

Thanks

[Fuzzy]

Sage really isn't set up to use multiple servers in the same setup (well, not remote servers, you could have multiple boxes on a LAN doing the recordings). as for watching the vids from EITHER your home ATSC/QAM recordings, or your work NTSC recordings, there is a gray area here. The placeshifter liscense is stored on the server, so you would have to install the liscense on each server. I'm not sure about the rules on installing the SAME placeshifter liscense on multiple servers, but my guess is it's not allowed. It might work, but probably not allowed. T surely be correct, I'd just buy 2 placeshifter liscenses, and install one on each server.

When running Placeshifter, you will get a dialog asking what server you want to connect to. Just choose which one, based on what you want to watch, and you'll be on your way.

[Delbrutis]

Thanks Fuzzy Thats pretty much what I thought .Its to bad you cant integrate all your tuners into a single program guide whatever server they are on. I'm probably going to go ahead and get the linux package.Because I tried Vista and I hated it so I'll need to get a OS for future Upgrades . I wont get a second placeshifter until I see what the deal is with the Hauppauge component HD card that everyone on the forum is talking about . I could not justify getting the new HD Extender because the number of HD channel's you could get into Sage has gone down lately . A number of QAM channel's have disappear'd from comcast here in Salem in the last few months . I was thinking this upgrade would be a last build for Sage but a component HD card changes everything . Thanks again.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Delbrutis

Its to bad you cant integrate all your tuners into a single program guide whatever server they are on.

You can if you set them up as network encoders instead of servers.

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

You can if you set them up as network encoders instead of servers.

Can you do that across the Internet (per the OP)? Be cool if you could, but somehow I think it won't work.

Stu

[GKusnick]

No, you're right, you can't. (Well, if you had truly massive bandwidth on both ends, you could maybe do it through a VPN.) I missed the "take it to work" part in the first post.

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I missed the "take it to work" part in the first post.

Yeah, I know. Paragraphs are a wonderful tool for posting (hint, hint, Delbrutis )

[Fuzzy]

I guess it would be nice in some distant future to be able to link sage servers over the internet, sharing the recordings, and allowing placeshifter style transcoding over the internet, so you could, say, team up with friends of relatives, and be able to watch shows from around the world, but It sounds like a lot of work, for a very little niche group of people. Placeshifter quality is lacking for everyday viewing anyways, but is good enough for that out of town, need to watch something fix.

Prior to that, something I WOULD like to see is an entry to have a preferred storage location for each encoder. WOuld save on some network bandwidth in multi-server housholds, but having the remote encoders prefer storage on a drive local to them.