questions, questions, questions

[kkapp]

I would like to preface this by saying if this is not the correct forum may a mod please move to the correct one.

ok, i have taken the plunge into sagetv. i have somewhat of a media center. I have an hp pavilion media center running the awful vista, with 2 500gig drives, it has a hauppaughe 1800 card with a header attachment so i assume i can actually hook two directv stbs into it and use them both at the same time, is this correct? I will be adding some 1tb drives to the machine as it can hold 4 sata drives.

I have a networked 1tb gigabyte external drive that i have ripped most of my dvd collection to. I currently have one of the hd200 extenders that i use to stream ripped dvds to my hdtv. i plan on getting a couple more for standard tvs in other rooms.

One of my questions is if i locate the stbs with the pc i need to use a usb connection from them to my pc somehow in order for channels to be changed via the extender remotes? I am in the process of running cat5 to the locations.

Next, do you have to "dedicate" any one stb to any one tv for live viewing? I currently have 2 standard and one hddvr, but i would like to downgrade to just the hd and getaway from the dvr fee.

Thanks

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by kkapp

I would like to preface this by saying if this is not the correct forum may a mod please move to the correct one.

ok, i have taken the plunge into sagetv. i have somewhat of a media center. I have an hp pavilion media center running the awful vista, with 2 500gig drives, it has a hauppaughe 1800 card with a header attachment so i assume i can actually hook two directv stbs into it and use them both at the same time, is this correct? I will be adding some 1tb drives to the machine as it can hold 4 sata drives.

I have a networked 1tb gigabyte external drive that i have ripped most of my dvd collection to. I currently have one of the hd200 extenders that i use to stream ripped dvds to my hdtv. i plan on getting a couple more for standard tvs in other rooms.

One of my questions is if i locate the stbs with the pc i need to use a usb connection from them to my pc somehow in order for channels to be changed via the extender remotes? I am in the process of running cat5 to the locations.

Next, do you have to "dedicate" any one stb to any one tv for live viewing? I currently have 2 standard and one hddvr, but i would like to downgrade to just the hd and getaway from the dvr fee.

Thanks

Couple answers:

1. No, the HVR1800 has only one MPEG encoder. This means it can only encode 1 input from an STB at a time. Hooking two to it will serve no purpose. You will need to get another MPEG encoder card to use a second SD STB.

2. To change the channels, there are many ways, The best way is the USB-UIRT that is sold here on the SageTV website and many other websites. It is natively supported within Sage and works pretty darn well. If all your STB's have firewire, you can use that to change the channels as well. Direct TV boxes have serial ports for tuning so your STB's might be able to be tuned that way if they are DirecTV boxes. I myself have Dish Network and therefore my only real option is the USB UIRT

3. No you do not have to dedicate one particular STB to live television. Sage will pick from any available tuner when you request live tv. However, if you do not have an available tuner/STB, then you will get a pop up warning.

hope this helps...

[davephan]

You might consider adding a dual tuner card to your system if you have limited PCI slots. You could then 'downgrade' the DirecTV PVR to reduce your monthly fee. Then you could record up to 3 programs at once, or watch Live TV and record two programs at once.

Running the 100 meg Eithernet cable is a good idea, even if it is a hassle to find paths in your house and opening up walls. Wireless is a poor compromise.

How much CPU and RAM do you have? Dual and quad cores work out much better than single cores. If you don't have two gigs RAM, you might think about adding more RAM.

A USB-UIRT is still a good choice if you have DirecTV. The channel switching might be slower than the USB Patterson device. However, the USB-UIRT will give you more freedom to switch between Dish Network, DirecTV, and cable TV. I periodically switch between them, depending on the deal they can offer.

Adding a HDHomeRun could also make sense, even with DirecTV, which offers locals at no extra cost. The HDHomeRun will allow you to use the DirecTV set top boxes for only 'cable' channels, and during satellite outages during storms, you will still have the locals through the HDHomeRun.

Dave

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by davephan

Running the 100 meg Eithernet cable is a good idea, even if it is a hassle to find paths in your house and opening up walls.

If you're opening up walls, make sure you're using gigabit-capable Cat5e cable instead of 100 megabit Cat5.

[davephan]

Running gigabyte Eithernet cable is a better idea when opening up walls. I ran two gigabyte lines, two coax cables, two multichannel audio cables, and a telephone cable when opening up my walls even though I did not need all the cables immediately, but might need them in the future.

Dave

[kkapp]

sorry, i left the e off, i am running cat5e cable. My machine is a 3ghz, with amd athlon 64X2 dual core processor 6000+. I have 3072mb memory. nvidia geforce 6150 se graphics card.