Options for distributing TV throughout the house?

[scbesterman]

Hi Folks

Would love your help and guidance on figuring out the best way to distribute TV throughout the house. SageTV looks like it should the trick but wanted to check it with you folks first. Would also be interested in learning about other potential alternatives.

Objective:
- Ability to record 1 channel while watching another on each TV/pc in the house (or record 2 channels while watching a movie from the central library, etc). All should have smooth motion when watching either live or recorded programming.

Here's my situation:
Two story, single-family home. There are TV's in the basement, office (also in basement), family room (ground floor) and each of 4 bedrooms (2nd floor). The only real 'TV' sets are in the basement and family room, the rest are all pc's with connected monitors.

The TV's in the basement and family room are connected to htpcs. In the office, there are 2 pc's which I'd also like to use as TV's. All pc's in the house are running either Vista Home Premium (w/TVPack installed) or XP Pro. Using Media Center (with MediaBrowser plug-in) as the GUI for those pc's running Vista.

Right now the only htpc/TV combo with an actual STB is the one in the family room. All other pc's/TV's are connected to the straight cable (so pick up only the unprotected/basic channels which are starting to disappear). My main pc in the basement office and the family room htpc have hauppauge 2250 dual tuners (so the family room htpc/plasma gets all the STB channels plus 2 available sets of unprotected/basic cable). The family room setup also includes a haupp HD-PVR.

Am currently using my main (office) pc as the home server which I know is clearly sub-optimal. With time and $ will eventually add a separate server (and run WHS).

The house has cable/coax outlets in every room. A couple of weeks ago had the entire house wired with Cat6 (single outlet per room). All Cat6 runs are connected to a Netgear Gb switch (GS116). All wiring (cable and Cat6) come through an unfinished area in the basement so everything's out of sight. Plan to add a roof-mount antenna as, in my area, that should provide 30-40 OTA channels, many of which are HD.

OK...so...here's my current thought.
OPTION 1:
- Pay for an additional STB. Then there will be STB's connected to the htpcs in the basement and family room. Those two htpcs will be fine running VMC.
- Run the antenna lead from the roof to the basement area.
- Amplify and split the antenna lead. Run one lead directly to the basement htpc.
- Add more tuners to the primary office pc (which, as mentioned above, is currently acting as the home server) and run antenna leads to all available tuners. Maybe add 1-2 HDHomerun's(?)...if so, then run antenna leads to those, too.
- Run SageTV Server on the primary office pc (seems to offer the best support for central multi-tuner and distribution at the moment).
- Run SageTV Client on all other pc's in the house (except for the basement one which has its own antenna lead and STB).

OPTION2:
- Disconnect all non-STB clients from the coax splitter installed in the basement by the cable company.
- After splitting the roof-mounted antenna lead, connect all those coax ends above to the antenna splitter.
- Install additional HD 2250 tuners in those clients that don't have one already.

OPTION 3:
Buy 1 HDHomerun for each pc and plug them all in to the split antenna leads in the basement.

OPTION 4 - n:
?

What are other options? Am hoping that someone here can provide some guidance. Would my network be able to handle having 8-10 central tuners feeding all the clients? Certainly don't mind paying for however many SageTV licenses I'd need but want to make sure that I find the right/best solution for my situation. Definitely need all live tv to come through smoothly on the client pc's.

Any help, tips, suggestions, thoughts, etc would be very much appreciated. Want to research this a little better before randomly pulling the trigger on stuff. Already found out that while I was getting the electricians to install the Cat6 throughout the house I should've had them run at least 2 lines to each location instead of one (hdmi and whatnot).

Anyway....thanks much for your help!
-Stefan

[GKusnick]

Some general points:

With SageTV you want all your tuners and STBs in one central location if possible instead of scattered around among client PCs and TVs. Ideally this central location would be your basement wiring closet, not your home office.

The total number of tuners you need depends more on how many people you have watching TV than on the number of TVs in the house. There is no concept of dedicating specific tuners to specific TVs; Sage manages tuners as a pool and assigns them to clients dynamically as needed. So unless you're in the habit of leaving TVs playing in rooms where nobody's watching, you'll probably need less tuners than you think you do.

Also, once you have a whole-house DVR system with all your favorite programs scheduled to record automatically, you'll probably find yourself doing a lot less channel surfing than you used to. So that also helps save on tuners, because you'll mostly be watching pre-recorded content.

For wired gigibit networks, LAN bandwidth is not the bottleneck in delivering smooth playback. Problems usually revolve around disk bandwidth or CPU/GPU horsepower. The latter can be largely avoided by using HD200 extenders instead of PC clients to drive your TVs.

[tahoetim]

Option 4:

Plan out your future "ultimate system" from the get go and then build the system slowly a piece at a time. My path is similar to yours. I would spend the $100 now for WHS and dedicate a pc as the server. Then, you can start playing with the other options you listed and see which one you like best. I noticed that you didn't list any HD200's in your plans. I would encourage you to try one HD200 in your bedroom. I did and ended up with three of them. They are quiet and family friendly compared to HTPC's. Since you have cat5 wired to all rooms, your setup is a natural for hd200's and WHS.

Good luck!

[sic0048]

I agree with what has been said so far. Try to move one of the computers down to the basement and use it as a SageTV Server. Connect as many tuners as you need to that machine. Get HDHRs for any OTA or clear QAM stations you can watch, or HD-PVRs and cable boxes for encrypted QAM channels.

You certainly don't need tuners at every location. If you use Sage, I believe that would actually be a greater expense too because you would need to have a full SageTV license at every computer with a tuner rather than the less expensive Client license.

I would also suggest getting a HD-200 to try out. I think you'll quickly tire of having HTPCs at every location. They are generally not silent, use more power, and are less stable than the HD-200s.

[scbesterman]

Hi Greg...thanks for the feedback!

- yep...have a wiring closet (actually...a good-sized section of the unfinished portion of the basement) so that's fine. Was thinking of using the STB's directly connected to those htpc/tv combos that'll use them. Gets me out of having to worry being able to control those STB's from every room with a pc/tv setup. Can SageTV give control of an available STB then allow that location to change channels?

- We have 3 kids who insist on leaving TV's on wherever they happen to travel. Makes me wish they allowed parents to taser their children hehe (j/k) but point taken. With 7 total viewing stations could most likely get by with 7-10 tuners. With about 800 movies and loads of recorded tv series already on the network, you're right...let's say 8 tuners to start should be plenty.

- All pc clients are pretty current with min. 2.4ghz p4 or better (most of the pc's are all dual-cores at this point) with good graphic cards except for the 2 htpc's where I'm using the GeForce 8300 on-board (asus m3n78-em motherboards) and either 74gig raptors or raid0 arrays (the htpcs are using the 1.5TB wd green drives). All these pc's should be fully capable from a cpu/gpu/bandwidth perspective, shouldn't they? They play everything I throw at them without hiccups.

- The only 2 actual tv's are the ones connected to the htpcs. The other 5 clients are pc's with monitors.

Thanks much for helping me out with this....your thoughts are definitely much appreciated.

[scbesterman]

hiya sic0048!

There are 5 of us and 5 computers atm (excluding the 2 htpc/tv combos) so, unfortunately don't have a box that I could move in to the wire room as a server.

My pc (e8500, 4g ram, 2x300g raid0 arrays, 2xwd1.5TB drives, hd4870x2, hd 2250, vista home premium x64) is currently acting as the home server. Was using a maxtor central axis (central pos, actually) to hold the movies and stuff but ran out of space.

All the pc's in the house, particularly the htpcs, are quite quiet so that's not an issue. How would I connect the HD200 to the computer monitors? Again...we've only got 2 hdtv's (connected to the existing htpcs)...the rest are all monitors connected to everyone's pc's. Also...if the current 5 pc's are 'up to snuff'...would prefer to save myself the extra $1,000 in HD200's (that's a nice start to a server build).

Thanks again sic0048...appreciate your thoughts and welcome further
-Stefan

[scbesterman]

howdy tahoetim!

Thanks much for your advise. Am pretty close to my ultimate system already...the htpc/hdtv combos are awesome and work perfectly. The movie library (mediabrowser through media center) is great. Everything also works nicely on my pc (priorities hehe). Even one of the pc's upstairs is great except that there's no tv. All that said...may end up going with an HD200 for the master bedroom at some point down the road.

The hold-up atm is not having tv available on the pc's in the bedrooms plus my wife's pc in the basement office. That's what I'm working on now. Granted, without being able to build a server atm...that'll be one of the parts that I'll have to wait to build out.

That said...here's what I'm thinking would be ideal:
- being able to watch a tv channel while recording a different one on each install within the house
- a couple STB's, shared or otherwise, to keep the wife and kids happy (the single STB with attached HD-PVR on the family room htpc/plasma combo works great)
- internet and all that comes with that (hulu, youtube, etc) available on each install (done)
- ability to watch HD/BD movies on each install (done)
- ability for any/all users to watch something from the central movie/tv library (done)

Am sure I'll think of other 'needs' over time (ain't it always that way? hehe) but for now, if'n I could get tv working on all the upstairs pc's (and wife's in basement) it'd thrill me.

Thoughts? Again tahoetim (and others)...thank you for your patience and guidance!
-Stefan

[PiX64]

What do you think about this:

Take one of the HTPC's in the basement and turn that into the SageTV Server. The SageTV Server can run in service mode, and then allow you to also use that server as a client. Depending on how big your server is you could have all of your turner cards in the HTPC (Server) and use a ir blaster to change the channels on your STB(s).

On each of the client PC's as well as the other HTPC you would simply need the SageTV Client Software.

As for the HDHR, you can simply keep those in the basement at a central location right next to your gigabit switch. They don't need to be plugged into a pc or server. You can just access across the network.

This setup is not quite as extensible as some of the previous posts which were GREAT ideas and I would highly recommend. This setup is quite cost efficient though in the near term.

~Mike

[scbesterman]

Hi PiX64 (and thanks for responding!)

The 2 htpcs are heavily used....my wife and kids would be howling if one of them disappeared. They're well-hoooked hehe.

The basement htpc was my test-build htpc slapped together with parts that were laying around (had to add a hd1600 tuner)...p4 2.4, intel d875pbz mobo, x1950pro, couple gig ram in an old mid-tower case. Not sure that'd really be the right stuff for a server build, anyway.

How about, short-term-ish (until I can sneak in parts for a server hehe) if I run SageTV Server in service mode as you describe but on my pc (see earlier post for specs)? Clearly I wouldn't be able to game (already limiting that to times when no one's accessing movies/tv library as those drives are in this pc) but how about file transfers, general surfing, winrar, etc and not watching tv on it? Thoughts?

Would like to understand the optimal for my situation given that there's no chance for quite a while to run additional cat6, hdmi or anything like that, though. So...guess I need a roadmap so I can work toward the optimal.

Current situation is that each room in play has a pretty modern pc and monitor along with single coax and cat6 outlets. Folks don't seem very happy with the idea of having htpc's everywhere but for now, makes sense to use them (especially since all those rooms have pc monitors not actual tv's).

Maybe proceed as follows?
- get/install SageTV Server on my pc (is this idea doomed to fail?) and run in service mode
- get/install SageTV Client on a couple of the kids' pcs (won't use the wife's as the pilot hehe)
- using the existing hd 2250, see if I can get everything working on those clients
- get an hdhr..gonna use it no matter what config...may as well add 2 tuners to the pool
- add another SageTV client...test
- get/mount/install rooftop antenna...try various configs with 2250 and hdhr
- obtain needed parts for server and get that done :\
- study and ask for help getting WHS up and running properly hehe
- migrate everything to the server and reclaim my own pc!
- add more tuners
- ?

Want to get everything up and running in the short-term with a plan toward building. Ideas, thoughts, suggestions, tips, links?

Thanks again all
-Stefan

[tahoetim]

Yep, turn one pc into a WHS server and buy one HD200 as a test. The wife will instantly like the HD200 and the standard remote. You added support time of the hd 200 will be zero...

Then load sagemc and netflix and watch what happens.

My family lives on netflix now. I asked in another thread if I could launch netflix more than once on different tuners from the same server. I am going to try it this weekend. I doubt that it will work but you never know until you try.

Don't be afraid of WHS. The guide on this forum is excellent. I had mine up and running in no time. I would start with a copy of WHS and a dedicated server box and build from there. Your pc running the service will be problematic.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by scbesterman

Was thinking of using the STB's directly connected to those htpc/tv combos that'll use them. Gets me out of having to worry being able to control those STB's from every room with a pc/tv setup. Can SageTV give control of an available STB then allow that location to change channels?

Not quite sure what you're asking here. If you mean you want to be able to watch TV directly through the STB and change channels manually using the STB's remote, that would be possible, but not recommended, since SageTV won't know you're doing that and you could end up ruining scheduled recordings that way. If you're going to use STBs as part of your Sage system, it's best to give Sage exclusive control over them and let it manage the channel changing.

Originally Posted by scbesterman

- being able to watch a tv channel while recording a different one on each install within the house

This is the wrong way to look at it. In Sage, all recording is managed centrally at the server, not individually at each client. So the correct formula for number of tuners needed is max number of scheduled recordings on opposite each other plus max number of simultaneous channel-surfers. Once you lose the habit of channel-surfing, this will probably be a smaller number than the number of client installations.

Regarding kids forgetting to turn the TV off: there's a sleep timer add-on you may find useful for automatically stopping live TV after a period of inactivity.

[scbesterman]

thanks again tahoetim

so sad sounding like to get my system up a level requires getting a server box. ugh

starting to look like my best, short-term option is to just add cheap tv tuners to the pc's that don't yet have tv? don't really want to turn this in to a server discussion thread but from what i recall, it takes $1,400 when all's said and done to get a decent, quad-core server, including storage, up and running.

appreciate further ideas, etc...
Thanks again tahotim
-Stefan

[scbesterman]

Hi again Greg

Sorry...With an STB there appear to be 2 options. Connect it directly to a particular tv/htpc OR connect it to the central server. With the first, that particular setup has full control over the STB (using a blaster or directly using STB remote). Under the 2nd option, though...can a user, regardless of location within the network, change channels properly (as long as they were the first user to 'call' that STB)? Does it still work with multiple STB's? (please pardon me for being rude...I know this info's covered elsewhere in this forum...will go look around now).

Gotcha on the second part. Central recording. So...with 8 total (eventual...7 atm) clients and want each to be able to watch tv at the same time with 2 recordings going on...10 tuners. Could most likely get away with 8 but not sure beyond/below that. Do you know what maybe average 5-person families use vis-a-vis tuners?

And, yes...will def want to check out the sleep timer add-on

Thanks again!
-Stefan

[freedml]

Don't think anyone's covered this yet, but there is Sage Client and Sage Placeshifter. Wtih Client, you buy a license for each machine it's installed on. With Placeshifter, you have a pool of licenses equal to the max number of clients in use at one time.


I agree Sage sounds like a good fit for you and you can build the system one step at a time.

[scbesterman]

thanks freedmI! That seems like it's certainly a viable option. Thought there were some kind of group license deals...maybe that's it? Wanted to play with placeshifter anyway

[GKusnick]

STBs located at the server and connected to capture cards on the server and controlled by IR blaster from the server work just like any other tuner device connected to the server. That is, the server considers them part of its tuner pool and will assign them to recording tasks as needed (with live TV buffering treated as just another recording task).

There is no one-to-one correspondence of tuners to clients, and clients don't own a particular tuner or STB. A client just requests a particular TV show or channel, and the server finds a free tuner able to receive that show or channel, and directs it to tune in and start recording. If the client then requests a different show or channel, the previously assigned tuner is released back to the pool, the same tuner-assignment process happens all over again, and you may or may not end up with the same tuner as before. It's all up to the server to decide which tuner to use for any given request based on what channels they receive.

If the tuner in question happens to be an STB, then the server uses the IR blaster (or Firewire or RS232 if the box supports it) to do the channel changing. But other than that, STBs are treated just like internal tuner cards installed in the server and managed dynamically by the server to satisfy recording requests from any client.

And yes, you can have multiple STBs connected to your server, so long as you have a way to control them all independently (e.g. via a multi-zone IR blaster such as the USB-UIRT).

[ghostlobster]

All kinds of opinions here! We all can't resist, can we!?
OK, here's my 2 cents (inflation dictates that it's 48 cents now)

Dedicate a PC to be a Sage server. Period. You don't need a quad core processor, you don't need a lot of horsepower at all for it to work. My WHS box is a headless AMD Athlon 3000, not even dual core. I'm running WHS, so as my needs dictate, I just add external USB drives. I'm driving 3 clients off of it and have not had a performance related burp, ever. WHS is rock solid. Pull together some old stranded hardware and create a frankenstein rig for your server if you have to. It's worth it. Once I stopped using my 'server' as a playback device, all my headaches went away.

Play around with Placeshifter if you want to, but don't expect much. My experience with Placeshifter was less than fulfilling. It was slow, and the video quality was terrible. Now, this might be because my server is not powerful, but I don't know. I set the Placeshifter settings to not transcode, and it looked awful. The Sage clients are the way to go. They just plain WORK and you have full control over the configuration.

Hang all your tuners on your server, do not use it as a playback device, and just deliver content to the clients. Put your money into your clients, or, better yet, hang a few HD200s off some TVs. I would not even bother with VMC anymore.