Jumping ship from MythTV, ergo, questions

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by webwalker

thanks to folks for encouraging comments.

In the server department, I'm going to probably fall back to my Athlon 1.7 for the server, dump the hot video card and push all of the resources at the sage server. I intend to run comskip (which my wife thinks is the bomb!) but I'll just set it up to process off hours and explain to her that if she wants to watch live, or 'near-time' that she'll have to do it with the commercials. She's reasonable: most of what we watch is series tv, documentaries and science programs so we tend to pick up a block of things we like and then spend an evening gorging. Being able to push comskip to a schedule is fantastic.

My ethos in systems design is that the hardware should be able to handle the maximum design load, plus 20%. It's very 1920s engineering, but it serves systems in the high performance realm quite well. (That's what I do for a day job.) Anyway, if the Athlon were running at 80% of its capacity on the CPU at max load (2HD recordings, plus 1SD recording, plus stream of a previously recorded HD program to the HD200) and could handle it, I would not be disappointed. As long as I take care to give the hardware all of the offload capacity possible for drive controllers and NICs, I don't anticipate a problem. I'm considering running Win2k on the back end because I have a lot of experience stripping it down to support a single service. While this configuration won't be quite that spare, I intend to run lean on the OS side to give all 2gb of RAM and as much offload capacity of the network and storage as possible. I think its doable.

BTW, what do y'all use to collect performance stats on your Xp systems? (Don't say taskman...) With Unix I'd just turn up SAR polling, but I hadn't thought of this for Windows...

M

hold up for 1 second. Are you getting 80% cpu usage with 3 records and 1 extender? if so, something else is wrong with your system. Recordings should not be using anything of the cpu processes. Streaming should barely make the computer think. So if you are spiking to 80%, something else is driving the system.

[webwalker]

Nota Bene: "IF the Athlon were running..."

This is entirely hypothetical. At present the whole system is dead, dead, dead, owing to a corrupt Sage installation. I'm simply discussing the design decision concerning how I intend to resurrect it.

The only items that will truly be generating load on the server are:

The block allocation to disk. Something has to manage the transfer between the PVR-150 hardware encoder and the disk. While DMA for both the PVR-150 and the disk controller helps, the CPU still has to direct traffic. That's load.

That goes double for the HDHR, which has to traverse the network stack and then be written to disk. If I'm watching 'live', the server must be both writing to disk the data coming in off of the dedicated HDHR interface, as well as reading the disk to output the stream to the HD200. Multiply that by 2 HD recording streams, plus 1 SD recording, plus viewing one while potentially comskipping another....that's load.

Finally, Database management.

I'm choosing to go this route because I know I can rebuild my hardware to be quiet, compact, and using components I already have. The only rough patch is going the be network interfaces, which are constrained on this chassis.

Thanks for your interest.

M

[webwalker]

I'm going to BUMP this thread.

What do you folks use to record performance stats on your Windows machine? I'm looking to find a reliable way to collect load data. If this were Linux, I'd just use SAR, but it isn't. Suggests for a simple system stats recorder in Windows?

M

[webwalker]

I seem to have the luck of Job. The embedded NIC has blown out on my server, so I get to start all over again...with a new mainboard.

I'm going to go down the Windows Home Server route that everyone here has been crowing about. I'll document the build up as I go.

The plan:

WHS on a headless Core2Duo "Allendale" 2.4ghz
2gb RAM, 1 gb allocated to Sage JavaVM
1 PVR150 SD cap card PCI
1 Pattersontech TVTranslator USB<>DB9 control for DirecTV tuner control
1 Realtek 100F PCI NIC <--xover cable--> HDHR
1 Embedded Gb NIC<---->1Gb Switch<--HD200 extender-->


1 200GB PATA for System Partition and 4k block Data Partition for Music & Photos
2 500GB PATA for DVD rips and STV Recordings

Comments?

[gplasky]

Looks good. I don't bother with the extra NIC for xover to my HDHR. I just have it plugged into the switch. I've had 2 recordings going while watching to previously recording HD recordings with no issues. (Watching on HD100 and HD200 extenders) I'm finding out the newer mb are coming with just the one PATA channel. So in my WHS I have a 500GB PATA for the OS and a PATA DVD drive. All the rest of the drives (4) are SATA.

Gerry

[webwalker]

Gerr,

Thanks for the lookover. I had planned to do the HDHR on the crossover for two reasons:

1. Diagnostics. When there's only one wire, there are precious few things to go wrong.
2. Network isolation. I've had just enough grief from my router that I intend to segregate the whole Sage back end from the rest of the network. The HDHR doesn't need to be seen by any device other than the Sage Server for recording purposes.

Going a long with #2, the front end of the Sage Server will be connected to a GB switch, as will the HD200. That switch uplinks to the router. This will effectively isolate the whole STV broadcast infrastructure from the rest of the network, but still allow data to pass to other devices on the network if necessary.

Comments on the theory? Yes, its overkill, but as long as it works and produces superior stability, I'll consider it worth it.

M

[bhyman1]

This is what I do with my Sage server and two HD Homeruns. There's an 8 port GigE switch just for that, but it's linked back to the rest of the network.

My HD100's and HD200 are plugged into the regular network however.

Everything works great. And given the cost of a GigE switch I wouldn't call it overkill at all.

[webwalker]

My buddy at work (the one with no wife, no kids and makes more than I do) just threw me a bone in the form of his 5 port GB switch that he sold to me for beer money. So I've got the infrastructure to make it go.

I got the STV rig built last night after my new mainboard came in from newegg. (three day shipping my tired butt! Six days!) I was really pleased about how quiet and cool the new rig ran. I only have and issue to sort out with the DVD drive and I should be golden on the server. No if I could just get 6.5 Gold....

[mikejaner]

SWAP file was sized to 2048mb, (min+max, so windows doesn't waste cycles managing its size to save disk when I don't need the disk saved.)

In any system running XP with a gig or more of RAM, you might want to look into disabling the SWAP in windows completely. I read some articles a few months back about how it's pretty much useless in windows, unless you are doing Photoshop etc.... It's only used by windows for RAM spillover, and parking stuff which was idle in RAM for a while.

YMMV, but I did some testing and implemented this on my XP and Vista machines at home, and work with nothing but positive results (no slowdown when coming back from screen saver, or long periods of idle, etc.)

[webwalker]

Thanks for the tip on swap. Any chance you still have access to those articles?

M

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by webwalker

Thanks for the tip on swap. Any chance you still have access to those articles?

M

I can't find the article that started my research on it, but here's a few sites to let you see what the issues/benifits are.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000422.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...op,1775-6.html
http://www.softdistrict.com/speed-tweaks-for-xp/

[webwalker]

Thanks for those tips. I'll disable swap tonight.

Here's the latest on my rig:

2.4ghz Core2Duo Allendale 2gb RAM WinXPsp3
1gb NIC / Embedded Video / Sage Server only
PVR150 cap card for Sat Tuner (svid+stereo)
PattersonTech TVtranslator Serial to USB for channel change control of Sat Tuner
HDHR with current firmware to diplexed Yagi UHF antenna for ATSC OTA
Single HD200 extender to Mitsubishi 1080i via Component
HD200 Audio SPDIF to Pioneer Amp

I'm getting closer by the day.

My current outstanding items:
HD200: With HDMI configured in the GUI, I can't get any digital signal out of this thing. The Mitsubishi has an HDCP aware DVI port which I've use previously and I know that it works. (Sent 1080i to it with an Nvidia 7600GS which has HDCP.) I've tested two different cables: the HDMI/HDMI+DVI adapter that came with the HD200 and a 10ft HDMI/DVI cable bought from Monoprice. Both cables produce the same result: a brief flash of the Sage logo when the HD200 comes on line and then nothing. If the TV is powered up after the HD200, I just get a bluescreen when the DVI port is selected (meaning the TV sees NO signal.)
I've tried to downrezz the interface to start in only 480p or 480i mode to see if the HDCP is the problem. No change.

HD200: In the STV interface you can select your background color for letterbox or pillars. I can't find this anywhere in the HD200 interface. This is one of the last Rear Projection CRT HDTVs ever made, so burn in IS a real problem and I need to bump the background color on the bars from pure black to a charcoal to keep from burning the screen in at the edge. I can't afford a new TV right now....

DVD interfacing: I've heard tell that you can use AnyDVD on the Sage Server to permit discoverable playback of DVDs without ripping directly from an extender. What is the procedure for this. (Assume I own AnyDVD, which expect to shortly.)

Any comments or suggestions on these outstanding items would be helpful.

M

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by webwalker

Thanks for those tips. I'll disable swap tonight.

DVD interfacing: I've heard tell that you can use AnyDVD on the Sage Server to permit discoverable playback of DVDs without ripping directly from an extender. What is the procedure for this. (Assume I own AnyDVD, which expect to shortly.)

M

I have not tried this directly, so somebody else might chime in, but SageTV supports movies stored in DVD file structure, so if you have a DVD in your DVD drive that is unencrypted, and you have that drive listed as an import directory, it should see it and play it just fine. AnyDVD, makes all encrypted DVD's look as if they were unencrypted, so it should work for those also, as you are stating in your senario.

[webwalker]

Yeah, I got it 'sorta' working last night. Sorta means, I could put the HD200 in standalone mode and browse to the Sage Server's DVD player and select a vob. But that ain't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for 'how do I do this WITHIN the Sage Infrastructure and have the DVD behave as a mounted object, rather than as a file system where I have to pick and guess at the vob files?'

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by webwalker

Yeah, I got it 'sorta' working last night. Sorta means, I could put the HD200 in standalone mode and browse to the Sage Server's DVD player and select a vob. But that ain't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for 'how do I do this WITHIN the Sage Infrastructure and have the DVD behave as a mounted object, rather than as a file system where I have to pick and guess at the vob files?'

I was referring to SageTV Media Center. So, once you are connected to that, not standalone mode, make sure the DVD drive letter is selected as a media import directory, refresh imported media, and you should see the DVD show up in your Videos folder under Media Center.

[webwalker]

Pachang! Perfect!

I'll give this a try when I get home.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by webwalker

...Nor do I begrudge Mythtv for being hacker centric. I just think that, if it gives someone who's been in the industry as long as have this much trouble (and the documentation is a disaster) I can only imagine the problems it would give a noob....

Here's a noob that's been struggling with MythTV for over three months (and who is also jumping ship in favor of SageTV).

I don't *think* I'm that dense. My day job consists of developing custom database applications for small groups within large companies in the financial industry.

But if I had worked at Burger King (entry level) the same number of hours I've spent unsuccessfully trying to get MythTV working I'm sure I'd have enough money for at least one SageTV server license, two client licenses, a server box, and a couple of client boxes - with a few bucks left over..... -)

You are not alone.

[webwalker]

This is not to say that Sage is perfect either: it isn't. And it doesn't have the benefits of hackability.

I appreciate the fact that the forums take much of the load off of support. But it also means that it creates the false impression that this is the ONLY support.

FWIW, I've been trying to get this installation of SAGE running reliably since the fall. Prior to that, I spent and entire year trying to get MythTV to run reliably. Ha. Nothing special, nothing exotic, and no under powered hardware. Just one damn headache after another that has tried my patience and even started to chip away at the patience of my long suffering wife.

M

[toricred]

On your HDMI issue, do you have one of the latest beta firmwares installed on you HD200? If so, try going into the detailed setup and set the force HDMI enabled. That fixed it for me.

[webwalker]

I have the 1230 firmware on. I enabled the hdmi force and it changed nothing. If there is a firmware for it later than the 1230, I don't know about it. What is your beta firmware? Later than 1230?

M