Which is best design for SageTV environment?

[Petrucci]

I am on the verge of a whole house Sagetv Server extender setup but I have a few questions first before I decide on one of two designs. I already have my whole house wired with CAT6 and 100MB drops to every room. I have a theater room with a large 100" HD display(and im a real snob for video/audio quality) and two other rooms in the house with 32" HD displays. Please give me the pros and cons.

Option #1

Configure SageTV server on existing Windows home server. I would of course store all of my music, movies, and DVR content Home Server and install either Qam Tuners in Server or HD-PVRs with comcast cable boxes to Server. I would then just install an HD-200 on each of my three HD displays. This option would allow me to upgrade my server for raw raid storage power and not worry about audio/video components on the PC. I am assuming that the server will be able to capture video content in HD and stream to the extenders without necessarily being able to play it back locally.

Options #2

Build HTPC for Theater room. Configure SageTV server on HTPC and continue to use Windows Home Server as NAS storage for music, movies, and DVR. I would then switch the WHS and HTPC at 1000MB to be sure it is storing the DVR data without a drop. I would just need HD-200s for the two 32" sets. This options is a little more complicated and a little more expensive but it will allow me to maybe output better video/audio quality from the HTPC than the HD-200 extender(I could be wrong on this) Then HTPC would only be responsible for tuning the data and outputing it to the extenders, I would not store any data on the HTPC.



----Also I am interested in ripping blu-ray and streaming to the HD-200s if that is possible yet----


Thanks for your help guys!!

[freedml]

I don't see any advantages to setup #2.

[Petrucci]

I hope your right. The only advantage I see for option 2 would be video and audio quality to my home theater. If the HD-200 is capable of doing a clean compression free HDMI output with all of the audio intact then I dont see the need to build a HTPC.

[chrishallowell]

I tried Option #2 first but after countless hours of trying to get the codecs right and my video drivers to play nicely, I switched over to Option #1 and I haven't looked back.

Option #2 is the most flexible. You could upconvert all SD/DVD content to HD on-the-fly using free software like avisynth. You can normalize sound between sources. When the next advancement in technology comes along, you just have to add it to the PC. You can use internet plugins like the Stock Manager. You can get uncompressed HD audio but you have to use third party software.

Option #1 is the easiest. It has video aspect adjustment and an automatic video aspect adjustment plugin. Some plugins won't work, like stock manager. You can't get HD audio but I believe the SageTV development team is looking into adding this (HD audio -> LPCM).

You can use SageMC in either Option.

[Petrucci]

Well I guess I am leaning towards option #1. My next problem is deciding how to get TV reception on a Windows Home Server. Originally I planned on just using an HDhomerun and getting whatever Qam channels I can find over the ethernet but today I have noticed that there are users successfully using firewire connectivity from comcast tuners. Has anyone here made this work on WHS software??

Thanks

[vividweb]

Option #1 is going to be your most stable easiest to get setup and running.

Option #2 is going to give you some extra flexibility and allow for other features in parallel to sageTV (ie web browsing, iTunes), but it is a struggle to get a PC client working as quickly as it takes to setup and extender.

[Djc208]

If you decide to go toward option #2 (and one other advantage is that if you really are a snob for video/audio quality you'll have a LOT more options here for playback quality, including the only way to get HD audio support), I would suggest keeping the tuners and recordings on the WHS, and just building a client for the Theater. It would cut down on the costs for that HTPC, as well as allowing you to stick with a smaller/quieter/simpler machine.

[valnar]

I see no reason not to do both, in a way.

Start with option 1. It won't hurt to get the HD200's anyway - they're great. Keep Sage on a backend server with all tuners, hard drives, heat and noise. If you want to supplement, replace, or just compare the output of a HD200 and a Sage Client HTPC, you can build a quieter and/or smaller one for that purpose with the preferred video & audio cards. Tweaking the output of the client (OS, VMR9, video drivers, HD audio, etc) may take on a life of it's own, and it may not be worth the time for the marginal improvement over the HD200, so it's good to have the extender there for the family or comparison. If you frequent the AVS forums, you know how difficult all that can be.

Obviously there are things you can do on a PC which you can't on a HD200, so even if you "fail", it wouldn't hurt to have it there for web browsing, IMDB lookups, Netflix streaming, etc.

The biggest reason I advise both solutions is because you have a 100" screen. I think it's tough for a HTPC to top the HDMI output from a HD200 without a lot of TLC, but it *is* easy for a HTPC to beat it's scaling and deinterlacing capabilities - something your 100" screen may discern better than the average TV. For that reason, and depending on the content, one of the newer nVidia or ATI cards may do a better job. Of course, an external (non-PC) scaler can fit the bill too.

[freedml]

I like the 'both' solution. The HTPC for you to tinker with and the HD200 for 'the rest of us' who just want to 'watch tv.'

[Petrucci]

Well I guess it boils down to this-

- The HD-200 wont stream HD Audio but that is only an issue if your are playing ripped Blu-Rays or HD-DVDs

- The HD-200 has very good HDMI output as is so maybe its not worth the hassle of tweaking a HTPC.

Has anyone done a good comparison of HD output from an HD-200 versus a Comcast STB or maybe a standalone Blur-ray player??

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Petrucci

Has anyone done a good comparison of HD output from an HD-200 versus a Comcast STB or maybe a standalone Blur-ray player??

That's probably not the right question. The better question is has anyone gotten a HTPC to look even close as good as some sort of standalone device? Things look OK when I use one of my software clients, but I do get more studdering, particularly with firewire recorded files off my Comcast STB, which seem particularly difficult to playback.

I have done a very brief, completely unscientific comparison between component-out HD playback on my HD100 and on my Comcast DCT6200 STB. Actually, and I found this very, very surprising, I had better results with the HD100. I was always using the DCT6200 for firewire recording, and on the HD100 I noticed some minor studdering on TNT-HD. I thought there might be something wrong with Sage or the HD100, so I hooked up the TV to the STB and the studdering was a bit worse.

Playback quality on my HDTV over HDMI using a HD4650 card and the PowerDVD decoder is noticeably worse than the HD100.