First Project Design Questions

[dvr noob]

I need advice designing my first system. I understand that sage TV can now be used on a windows home server and I will be building a machine to be my home server and pvr. Here is my general idea. I would like to have a tuner for each of the 5 TV’s in my house for live TV if possible I wish to lock these somehow so that they are not used for recordings and I wish to be able to record 5 shows at once or more so maybe a total of 10 to 12 tuners therefore I am trying to find the max amount of tuners currently supported in sage TV. I also wish to have as much storage space as possible so another question is can my sage/whs box only use the local hard drives or can sage use NAS storage? I know that windows home server can not use nas as part of its drive pool but can see the nas so will this be a problem. Also looking into myth TV I found that several different boxes can be used as one drive so all recordings appear to be on one unit when in fact they reside on several. Does sage have this also? Which tuners are the best to use? I am looking to do mostly HD recording and want dual tuner cards. Money is no issue on this project. These are my beginning questions. Thanks to everyone in advance

[Endymion]

Originally Posted by dvr noob

I need advice designing my first system. I understand that sage TV can now be used on a windows home server and I will be building a machine to be my home server and pvr. Here is my general idea. I would like to have a tuner for each of the 5 TV’s in my house for live TV if possible I wish to lock these somehow so that they are not used for recordings and I wish to be able to record 5 shows at once or more so maybe a total of 10 to 12 tuners therefore I am trying to find the max amount of tuners currently supported in sage TV. I also wish to have as much storage space as possible so another question is can my sage/whs box only use the local hard drives or can sage use NAS storage? I know that windows home server can not use nas as part of its drive pool but can see the nas so will this be a problem. Also looking into myth TV I found that several different boxes can be used as one drive so all recordings appear to be on one unit when in fact they reside on several. Does sage have this also? Which tuners are the best to use? I am looking to do mostly HD recording and want dual tuner cards. Money is no issue on this project. These are my beginning questions. Thanks to everyone in advance

Well, I don't know for sure if you can have tuners as "Live TV only", but I don't think so. For the most part, I think you would find that to be able to have 5 live TV streams going at the same time while being unlikely to interfere with scheduled recordings, I think 8-10 tuners should be more than enough. AFAIK, Sage has no limit on number of tuners, but practical limits will be the total number of PCI/PCI-E slots and number of USB/Firewire ports, and how well multiple USB devices will work together. I think it shouldn't be to difficult to get to 10-15 tuners. I have had good luck recording HD over firewire from one of my cable boxes, recording HD with my HDPVR on the other box, and pulling OTA HD on my HVR-1600. Along with those I have the analog tuner on the HVR-1600, and a PVR-500 which has dual tuners. So that is 6 tuners without breaking a sweat.
If cost is no obect, I would look into the R5000 mod for cable/sat boxes, HDPVR, and firewire recording (which needs the HD channels to not have 5c encryption). You can also get your local channels with an over-the-air tuner and antenna.
For storage, SageTV can record to local drives of course (Though on Windows Home Server recording drives should NOT be part of the drive pool). Sage can also record to any networked drive it can write to using SMB paths (//server/path) so storage possibilities are almost unlimited. NAS boxes, internal RAID cards, external RAID solutions (*plug* I work for LSI and we have some great low and midrange stuff if you want 12TB+ storage and have lots of cash , always on networked PCs with internal drives, etc.

I would highly recommend looking at the supported tuner sticky and see which cards/USB tuners look to fit the bill. Then search the board and see what kind of issues people have had using them, and using more than one of the same tuner in the same box. You can also search the board and look into setting up Sage on another box with tuners as a networked tuner. Search, search, search, and browse around. It's pretty hard for any one of us to put together a complete system for you as it's all gonna be based on our own experience. I know that some time back there were a few threads on setting up massive Sage setups with lots of tuners and tons of storage, so keep an eye out for those.

Good luck!

[GKusnick]

10-12 tuners in your first-ever DVR system? I think you're way overestimating your needs. Most people find that once they get used to DVR recording, their live TV watching goes way down and channel surfing becomes a thing of the past. So you're probably not going to need five tuners dedicated to live TV. (And anyway there isn't a way in Sage to reserve a tuner for live TV only.)

If there are actually five different shows on at the same time that you want to record, then that would be the determining factor in how many tuners you need. But even this may be an overestimate. It's unlikely you'll find five simultaneous network shows to record, and cable shows generally get rebroadcast several times during the week, so you don't need to catch them all on the first airing.

My advice would be to start with two or three tuners and see how that goes. If you get scheduling conflicts, add another tuner. With USB tuners it's pretty easy to add them incrementally as needed (so long as you connect them to a decent powered hub). I have six tuners in my system, but two of them basically never get used. It's very rare that I have more than four shows recording at once.

[dvr noob]

Thanks for all the replies. I am going to be going through the forums daily to educate myself more on sage TV my tuner needs are pretty precise as I record many shows as well as my wife and 3 girls . right now I have a dish network dual tuner dvr in the living room , family room and each bedroom 4 so currently 12 tuners and we still have scheduling conflicts as some programs do not re air later in the week the main problem with this setup is that these dvr are not networked so there maybe nothing recording on either tuner in my oldest daughters room but if I record something for me I have to go in there to watch it or run coax switches between rooms a real pain this is a very expensive setup on a monthly basis and I am not happy with it . Also I am looking to get away from dish and go with Comcast for cable internet and phone as I now have 3 different services and the phone company’s dsl is always going out for 4-5 days at a time. I do not wish to buy dvr from Comcast because I will have the same problems and also I am wanting to do the windows home server project along with this .another question is do I have to have all tuners in the same pc / enclosure or can it be 2 machines with 6 tuners each ? I want it to be seamless and have the look, feel and control of a single system

[GKusnick]

Putting all the tuners in one box is the simplest and least expensive way to go. With USB tuners you don't have to worry about running out of slots.

But if you need to, you can set up a second machine as a network encoder (see Appendix G of the manual) to house additional tuners. You'll still manage everything from your primary Sage server, and see all your recordings in one list on that server.

[wayner]

I have to concur with what some of the others have said. There is no reason that this shouldn't work but you are looking to build an extremely complex system. I would caution you to go slow - build your WHS box and make sure that is running okay.

Then install Sage and a couple of tuners and then add tuners one or two at a time. If you want cable boxes for all tuners then you can get into issues having to change channels on that many tuners - you either need several USB-UIRTs or lots of firewire ports (although you may be able to daisy chain your firewire ports on the STBs).

I am assuming that you still have analog cable in your area then I would think that you can get away with several of your tuners being analog cable, negating the need for changing channels on a box. You may want a couple of the tuners to be OTA, assuming that you can get OTA, if you or the family watch the major networks at all.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by dvr noob

right now I have a dish network dual tuner dvr in the living room , family room and each bedroom 4 so currently 12 tuners and we still have scheduling conflicts as some programs do not re air later in the week the main problem with this setup is that these dvr are not networked so there maybe nothing recording on either tuner in my oldest daughters room but if I record something for me I have to go in there to watch it or run coax switches between rooms a real pain this is a very expensive setup on a monthly basis and I am not happy with it

I was just going to ask that, yes you've got 12 tuners now, but how many are actually used simultaneously? As you noted, since the DVRs aren't integrated, there's no way to intelligently use them, so you'll be much more prone to scheduling conflicts. One thing you'll find with an integrated system is scheduling conflicts drop dramatically with each tuner added.

Also I am looking to get away from dish and go with Comcast for cable internet and phone as I now have 3 different services and the phone company’s dsl is always going out for 4-5 days at a time. I do not wish to buy dvr from Comcast because I will have the same problems and also I am wanting to do the windows home server project along with this .another question is do I have to have all tuners in the same pc / enclosure or can it be 2 machines with 6 tuners each ? I want it to be seamless and have the look, feel and control of a single system

You can set up an encoding server, with tuners in another PC that are integrated with with the main server, but that's a lot of unnecessary complexity.

My advices would be to start "somewhat" small. If you go comcast, I'd probably go with an HDHR for your digital locals and any other clear channels you get, then something like an HVR-2250, or maybe two for your analog channels and any that require cable boxes. Maybe an HD PVR or two if you want to record premium HD channels.

But the real objective measure would be to look at all your scheduled favorites on all of your DVRs and look for scheduling overlaps. That should give you an idea how many tuners you'd actually use.

[dvr noob]

Hey guys

When I switch to Comcast I will get locals and everything from Comcast and mostly all HD channels. I see we have standard tuners and HD tuners. Is there a problem with running standard cable/ channels into an HD tuner card? I really don’t want to have several different cards. The other question I had is that I have a need to go ahead and build the windows home server to tie into and replace my old home automation computer and I can not seem to find much info on how sage works with windows home server do I need any tuners in the whs box? or just the sage software if just the software the I would like to maybe put 3 dual tuners each in 2 network encoder boxes and store the video to my network attached storage which is currently 12 tb and about 1.5 tb is currently used . When using the network encoders do I need hard drives in the for the video to be written to or can the tuner write directly to the nas? the nas in on gigabit Ethernet throughout the home I am thinking 2 network encoders with 3 tuners each will give me my 12 tuners and leave room for expansion in each what would be some good specs for the network encoders in terms of memory ,processor and internal hard drives if necessary ? Also I seen a lot of talk about cable boxes if I have Comcast going directly to the tuner does it not change the channels? Or do I have to change the channels on a cable box? I am trying to avoid multiple cable boxes. I pan to just have sage media extenders going to each TV

Thanks for everyone’s help this is starting to come together

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by dvr noob

Hey guys

When I switch to Comcast I will get locals and everything from Comcast and mostly all HD channels. I see we have standard tuners and HD tuners. Is there a problem with running standard cable/ channels into an HD tuner card?

Depends on the tuner. The newer "hybrid" models support both analog (with hardware encoding) and digital tuning and recording. Non-hybrid ATSC/QAM tuners are basically worthless for analog (if not actually worthless).

Something to consider is basically the only channels you'll get digitally over cable are your locals (in HD) and maybe a smattering of misc other channels.

Do not expect to be able to record channels like Discovery, SciFi, etc digitally.

See here to get an idea of what channels you'll get digitally:
http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/channels

To record channels like those above, you'll need to either record the analog versions, or you'll need to capture the output of the cable box. To do that you can use an A/V input on one of the hybrid cards, or if their HD and you want them recorded in HD, you'll need the Happauge HD PVR.

I really don’t want to have several different cards.

Frankly it's going to be best to have a couple different cards, as noted above, there's really three modes of capture with cable, and different cards work best for each. Further I don't think any cards let you tune analog and digital on the same connection, you must set them up as one or another.

What I think you'll probably want to end up with is something like this:

• SiliconDust HD Homerun for the digital locals and misc clear digitals.
• Dual-tuner analog/hybrid card for the analog (basic) channels
• HD PVR (or 2) for the HD "premium" channels

Some sort of combination like that. The reason being you really want to use direct tuning as much as is practical. You'll need a separate tuner for the digital vs analog channels, so might as well get the one that's best for each. And you'll need the HD PVR for your HD premiums.

The other question I had is that I have a need to go ahead and build the windows home server to tie into and replace my old home automation computer and I can not seem to find much info on how sage works with windows home server do I need any tuners in the whs box?

Works basically just like "normal" SageTV, except it's got a special WHS installer, and a placeshifter license, instead of including a local UI. So yes, you'd put your tuners in the WHS machine (no it's not strictly necessary, but it is ideal).

or just the sage software if just the software the I would like to maybe put 3 dual tuners each in 2 network encoder boxes and store the video to my network attached storage which is currently 12 tb and about 1.5 tb is currently used .

You could do that, but you'll need an extra SageTV license for each encoding server. I really don't see a point running Sage in a box without any of the tuners. Nor do I see much of a point using network encoders unless you physically can't place them all in the main SageTV PC.

When using the network encoders do I need hard drives in the for the video to be written to or can the tuner write directly to the nas?

Recordings go "directly" to the directory(s) you specify for recording, no local (to the encoding server) storage is necessary.

the nas in on gigabit Ethernet throughout the home I am thinking 2 network encoders with 3 tuners each will give me my 12 tuners and leave room for expansion in each what would be some good specs for the network encoders in terms of memory ,processor and internal hard drives if necessary ?

Seriously man, start smaller. Quarter or at least half that. Try a pair of dual tuners first (maybe an HD PVR) and see how it goes, conflict wise.

Also I seen a lot of talk about cable boxes if I have Comcast going directly to the tuner does it not change the channels? Or do I have to change the channels on a cable box? I am trying to avoid multiple cable boxes. I pan to just have sage media extenders going to each TV

Tuners change channels, yes, but you can't receive all your channels with just a tuner. Most digital cable channels are encrypted, only viewable with a cable box.