Best setup for Sage with Fios Quantum?

[FlyingShawn]

Really not happy with Verizon right now: I'm moving across town and they're refusing to let me simply transfer my existing service+equipment even though the new place is already wired for Fios.

Current setup: Two QIP 7100-1 STBs (the Motorola boxes with the clock/channel displays on the front) powering Colossus cards and an HDHR Dual for the network channels (connected to Fios, not an antenna). Works great, except for the nightly Colossus reboots, and I'd like nothing better to keep things exactly as they are. I'm currently paying $20/mo in rental fees for the STBs.

The Future: ?? Verizon is absolutely refusing to let me keep my STBs. It seems they have transitioned to a new equipment paradigm of "VMS" boxes (tuning server+DVR) and networked-STBs (extenders, essentially). The cost is higher too: $20/mo for the VMS (consisting of $12/mo for the box and a REQUIRED $8/mo "DVR Service") and presumably another $12/mo for each extender (I haven't gotten an actual number out of them yet).

I've thought about going the CableCard route ($5/mo), but apparently all of the Fox-owned channels were changed to Copy Once on Verizon last summer, which puts a significant damper on both current functionality and future usability if more channels move that direction.

Any recommendations?

-Can the new IPC1100 "extenders" be used as standalone STBs without the VMS? As in, could I return the VMS to get rid of the DVR fee and just run two IPC1100s?
-I've thought about buying "rogue" STBs off Craigslist and trying to return the new boxes after I get them, but I've heard mixed (mostly negative) reports about my chances of getting them activated. Has anyone had any luck with this?

[Telecore]

A few months ago when Fox networks turned CCI on, I ordered two STBs from Verizon and got old QIP-7100s. Currently using them for Fox and NGC channels and cc for others. Are you in CA, TX or FL? Verizon will be transitioning to Frontier around April in those states and I have a bad feeling that more channels will transition.

[FlyingShawn]

UPDATE: After hours of research and chats with multiple VZ representatives (two online, one from the local VZ store), I was finally able to find someone able to transfer my existing services with my existing equipment!

I'll probably still consider adding CableCard tuners in the future as long as I have some other option for Copy Once channels.

For anyone else finding this thread: I was not able to find any useful information on using any of Verizon's new Quantum TV equipment with Sage and the general consensus seems to be that they are inferior in as many ways as they are superior to the previous generation of equipment (and there doesn't seem to be any way to completely eliminate that "DVR Service" fee). Just another barrier to new Sage users...

[FlyingShawn]

Originally Posted by Telecore

A few months ago when Fox networks turned CCI on, I ordered two STBs from Verizon and got old QIP-7100s. Currently using them for Fox and NGC channels and cc for others. Are you in CA, TX or FL? Verizon will be transitioning to Frontier around April in those states and I have a bad feeling that more channels will transition.

I'm in PA and I have the same feeling. I think older STBs might continue to be available for users who don't switch to the Quantum system (everything I've read says you can't have both generations at the same time), but I have no idea how long that'll last.

If you don't mind my asking: which CC tuner hardware and software are you using? Have you found any particular solution/combination works better with Fios than others?

[Telecore]

Using the Ceton Infinitv 6 PCIe and am presently in the process of getting on board with OpenDCT (was using SageDCT for years). Previously used two HDHR Primes. Both worked pretty well but Ceton has twice the tuners per cablecard and I am a fan of the "inside the box" approach to getting a glitch-free video stream.

[EnterNoEscape]

I too agree with the CableCARD approach if you have FiOS in the area that is still owned by Verizon. I used to have 3 STB's with corresponding HD-PVR's. I jumped at the first chance the InfiniTV was finally affordable, got rid of the STB's and haven't looked back. The CC tuners have already paid for themselves. I just decided to live without HBO because I don't feel like they deserve my dollars if they are going to make it hard for me to record their channels where, when and how I want. Also I don't know how many people have tried it, but PPV is copy freely at least at my location. I just need to call it in to get it, then any tuner with a CableCARD can tune into the program.

I know this is a shameless plug, but I now use OpenDCT everywhere.

[FlyingShawn]

Thanks for the input Telecore and EnterNoEscape!

Do either of you know if any of the CableCard tuners on the market do hardware encoding straight to h264 without Sage having to transcode? I know the Prime boxes can stream h264 over the network to DLNA devices, but my understanding is that format's not available to Sage for recording purposes.

That's the main feature I've been waiting for before jumping into the CC fold: I love the storage savings of getting h264 out of my Colossus cards (as opposed to the MPEG2 from my HDHR Dual), so I don't want to go backwards on storage efficiency and I don't want to tie up CPU cycles on my virtualized Sage server with transcoding.

[Telecore]

No cc tuners have a built in hw transcoder - only 1 model of the silicon dust OTA tuner does. But the cc tuners simply give you access to the data stream - so if a channel was h.264 encoded then your recording file would have h.264.

[EnterNoEscape]

From what I understand about the Prime, it does not support hardware transcoding. There are dual tuner HDHomeRun models that do ClearQAM and ATSC that support hardware transcoding, but that's probably not what you're after here as that will be, not useless, but very limited channel-wise. ClearQAM only gets me the locals and the weather channel. Someone chime in here if I'm wrong about the Prime.

[KryptoNyte]

I'm not sure how much television you record, but the idea of adding 3 or even 6 tuners to any given Sage system (even if there are a small handful of channels that would still require you to just leave the STB's as the are, Fox, etc.) would immediately send me to the store for more hard drives.

I wouldn't even think twice about this one - it's so ridiculously more efficient than recording video from a set top box.

[EnterNoEscape]

I agree about the hard drives. In fact I think it's cheaper electricity-wise if you record a lot of content to just expand/upgrade. To comment on the STB thing, I haven't needed an STB for years now, but obviously you will need to see what you can and can't get before you make a similar decision. I have a free for life standard definition STB that I normally don't power on, but it's there just in case. For reference, I can't record the SD version of the Fox sports channels, but I can record the HD ones. It's weird.

Also keep in mind giving up the STB is giving up VOD with most providers too. I've never been impressed with what is free from any provider I've ever had, so my version of VOD is Netflix and Amazon Prime.

[FlyingShawn]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I agree about the hard drives. In fact I think it's cheaper electricity-wise if you record a lot of content to just expand/upgrade. To comment on the STB thing, I haven't needed an STB for years now, but obviously you will need to see what you can and can't get before you make a similar decision. I have a free for life standard definition STB that I normally don't power on, but it's there just in case. For reference, I can't record the SD version of the Fox sports channels, but I can record the HD ones. It's weird.

Also keep in mind giving up the STB is giving up VOD with most providers too. I've never been impressed with what is free from any provider I've ever had, so my version of VOD is Netflix and Amazon Prime.

I tend to save a lot of what I record (including a now-ridiculous quantity of classic Doctor Who episodes), so space is definitely a concern for me. I've currently got about 9.3 TB of Sage recordings on my 20TB storage array (which is also my personal storage server, so it has a lot of other non-video content as well), so I'm not looking to downgrade in storage efficiency.

Aside from the inefficiency of my HDHR's MPEG2 format and the power required to run my two STBs, my tuner setup meets my current needs and I only rarely run into recording conflicts, so I'm probably going to just continue to wait until I either need more tuners or a Cablecard-solution with hardware encoding comes along.

Thanks for all the input!

[KryptoNyte]

Not sure it's feasible to expect an efficient cable card tuner to ever have any kind of on-the-fly compression. I'm trying to picture a Ceton 6-tuner device with enough horsepower to convert 6 incoming data streams simultaneously. I think that the tuner would still need to offload this onto the SageTV server processor in some fashion.

Oh well, to each their own.