Sage Vista Server Setup

[SJL]

Hello all,
When I was looking to upgrade my server I had questions and concerns about several items, particularly with a Vista setup and if I should use Vista at all. I had a free copy of Ultimate from work, which was my main reason to want to use it. Many of the answers are already here in the forums, but I had to search and troubleshoot quite a bit to get a stable system. I thought I would put a post together documenting my setup/process so hopefully someone going down the same path can find most of the answers in the same place. Much of the information I post in here come from others on the board, kudos to all for the great support here.

Server board is a Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H with an AMD 4850e processor and 2gig of RAM. Although this board is capable of HD video, I'm using extenders only, but it certainly was useful to have the capability during the initial setup.

For storage, thought about NAS but decided to keep it simple and low cost. I installed an Addonics 4SA to give myself 4 hotswap SATA drives. (if you intend to hot swap, make sure you have AHCI set in your BIOS, do this before Vista install if possible). I decided against RAID, and went with what are supposed to be ultra-reliable DVR drives from Seagate (ST3750840SCE), formatted to 64k clusters. I figure if I do lose a drive, it's TV, I'll live. I'll image the boot drive once a month to protect the OS and Sage.

Installing Sage - Reading about many issues with UAC, and the fact that this box's sole purpose is a Sage Server, I started out disabling it before the install. I also read about potential issues with Sage installed under the default Program Files directory at all under Vista, so I just created a folder off the root of C called SageTV and installed it there. Some of these changes I did after the install as I was running into problems, but here's a rundown of all the changes I made to the Operating System:

1) Disable UAC
2) Disable remote differential compression
3) disable network throttling: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948066
4) Set up auto logon: run netplwiz
5) Disabled the following services:
IP Helper
Readyboost
Tablet PC Input Service
6) Changed registry for superfetch:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnableSuperfetch"=dword:00000000
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000003
7) Changed registry for Java Heap Size:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Sage TV\JVMMaxHeapSizeMB
Changed from 0 to 200 Hex
After the install, ran the SageTVServiceControl.exe off the Start Menu to start the service.

I originally purchased a Hauppauge HVR-1600 which I was going to use, and upon first setting it up and viewing SD through the HD-100, while it looked fine on a regular TV, it looked absolutely horrible on the Samsung 50" HD set. It's never going to look great due to the source, and I know many here are happy with their 1600s, but this was like looking through a foggy mirror. Doing a search I found many claims that the Avermedia m780s had much better SD quality. I ordered one and installed it and Vista would crash as soon as I tried to configure the card as a source in Sage. I found others outside the Sage community saying this card was extremely picky about the PCIe clock speed. Looking at my BIOS, the default setting was to allow the BIOS to choose the best speed, with static options ranging from 100-105 MHz. Taking it off auto and setting it to 100 Mhz (default PCIe speed) and rebooted... No more problems. Picture quality for me was excellent, better than from the cable box and far superior than the 1600. I ordered a 2nd and configured the SD and ClearQam tuners giving me a total of four. I used the S-Video input on the 1600 for one cable box I kept for channels above 100 and PPV, 5 tuners total.

Signal became a little weak so I ordered an amplifier. As many recommend here, I used a single two way splitter and hung my cable modem off that and checked to make sure my signal was good there, the second input went to the Amplifier (Don't forget the ground for both). I didn't buy one of the 0 loss return amps, and instead went with something a little cheaper and when I tried to use my cablebox, I had a message that essentially stated it couldn't reach the cable company and would only display channel 1 with adds for TWC. I considered ordering another amp, but instead just put 75 ohm terminators on the remaining unused outputs of the amp and rebooted the cablebox and all was well.

I used an external DVD drive with AnyDVD and set that as an import directory to view DVDs, which works great. A little push-back from the wife on going to the basement to insert a DVD, but after the HTPC was out of the living room and all the wires were gone, she's a happy camper.

To control the one cable box in the basement when I want to use PPV, I purchased a "Next Generation Remote Control Extender". Interesting device, you replace one battery in your Cablebox remote with a 2/3 battery and a transmitter, and your IR is converted to RF and sent to the base station where it is converted back to IR. No cabling, no hassles, use anywhere in the house and it's only $30.

I do have two remaining issues, nothing major. One is a slight delay when I skip FWD or REV with the extender... for example, if I do a 30sec skip forward, you'll see in the progress bar that it went 30sec, then it will drop back an additional 3 seconds, and begin counting forward. There won't be a change in picture/sound until the counter reaches where it was at the original 30sec skip point. Happens almost always when shows are recording/live, and almost never when watching a previously recorded show. 2nd issue is sound getting out of sink with the picture, but this seems to be a known issue with the HD 100 when using an HDMI cable. Was happening constantly before, but since updating to the latest beta firmware I've only seen it happen once.

Again, most of the items I mention here come from others, I just wanted to try and compile the items that I kept track of as I built this to try and save someone else a little time. Of course this is what worked for me and YMMV. Thanks to everyone for their help!

Regards,
SJL

***Update***
Please see the following thread to resolve the last issue with the Avermedia m780:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35135