Considering total Client/Server Solution. Advice please?

[ghostlobster]

OK, so SageTV has a happy place in my home. I'm a convert, finally. However, I am seeing some random, but frequent problems on my main box. Every now and then, usually when Mrs. Lobster is "channel surfing", SageTV just goes on vacation. It locks up and requires a task kill to get it back up and running. Also, the performance is not exactly stellar. I've got to pause/unpause every now and then when it starts stuttering, even on recordings.
Now, this is all on my main box. This box has all of the tuners (HD-PVR, HDHR, and 2 Hauppauge 150s) connected to it, and it's handling alll of my sage processing, including commercial skip tasks. On the clients I've got hanging off of it, I rarely see any issues, although, to be frank, I don't use them as much as my main box, so it could just be a matter of not using them enough to see the issues.
My question is; would I be better off installing the SageTV server on another box somewhere and running the client on my main PC here in the family room? Would this offload enough of the work for the client to just plain work?

Thanks!

[Brent]

So you are using your main SageTV PC to record everything and also have it hooked up to a TV? And this main SageTV PC is the only one experiencing these problems?

[lotusvball]

I have the same setup (instead of clients I am using MVP's) And I have the exact same issues. I am looking to go to the HD100 for my main tv viewing and moving the sage server to the basement. Is this the best solution? Yes I use the sage server to view to the tv using s-video out.

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by Brent

So you are using your main SageTV PC to record everything and also have it hooked up to a TV? And this main SageTV PC is the only one experiencing these problems?

Yes, it's the only one that I've noticed the problems on. We don't use the client PCs all that much, so they might be waiting to happen there, but I have not seen any.

[Brent]

This post is going to ramble on a bit so sorry in advance...

I used to use my server SageTV PC for playback also. It worked okay, but I occasionally overworked the CPU when it was doing playback, recording multiple channels and comskipping at the same time. So I then moved to using the serverPC as nothing more than a server and used two HD100's & a client HTPC for playback. This was a much better situation - especially since my server PC at the time was underpowered.

In the past month I had a hard drive die and on top of it multiple problems with playback and recording overall. Hours upon hours of checking logs, reviewing system logs etc to no avail.

Move forward to this month where my underpowered server PC's motherboard begain dying. I think its been on its way out for a while, but it really kicked the bucket this month so I built a new one. Since doing so everything has been perfect. Wife is happy, I'm happy and my SageTV is happy. Only downside was my pocketbook.

All of this being said, I can't say for sure that your problem is the fact that you're using the server for playback or if there is even a problem with hardware somewhere. What I'd do first is test the heck using one of the client PC's for playback and using SageTV. See if you experience any problems there. If not then it would be related to the server being overworked by playback and "serving" at the same time. If you are still seeing the same problems when using the client PC, it is more likely something happening on the server itself with recording or high CPU spikes for some reason.

[Menehune]

When I was using my server for playback, I used to have to reboot the server every week or so due to video freezes and lockups. As soon as I started using a client PC to view the content and stopped using the server as a playback device, my problems disappeared. The only time I reboot the server now is every three months or so when windows updates are downloaded and installed-they are manually installed, not automatically installed.

[Olias]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

My question is; would I be better off installing the SageTV server on another box somewhere and running the client on my main PC here in the family room? Would this offload enough of the work for the client to just plain work?

Thanks!

This is close to what I did. Put the server in the basement and purchased two HD100s for the TVs in the living room and family room. The server has two ATSC tuners and two HD sat tuners (one via the HD PVR and the other via an Intensity Pro). When the main SageTV PC was being used to also view, it would have intermittent lockups and I was constantly tweaking it one way or the other. Now that it's out of site, I never mess with it, it just works. The WAF is much better also.
I think that there's only been one time in the past couple of months where I had to hard restart the HD100.

[ghostlobster]

Right now, an HD100 is not on the agenda. I think I'm going to spend a bunch of hours this weekend on this and go full client/server. I've got an AMD 3800+ single core PC with a GB of RAM in it and a 250GB hard drive for recorded TV.
That should do the trick for the server, should it not?
Now, in order to control the STB for the HD-PVR, I'm going to use my MCE blaster config. The Hauppauge blaster on the HD-PVR is just too slow. That leaves me a blaster short here. I've got a Streamzap blaster that I might try to configure with my Harmony for the family room client PC, but I'm not sure if it'll provide all the functionality I want. I'll have to mess with it. Anyone have any recommendations or opinions?

[gplasky]

Streamzap isn't a blaster-it's just an IR receiver. Sage doesn't natively support the blaster on MCE-just the receiver. You'll need to use a third party app like Eventghost or Girder to blast with a MCE IR receiver. I would either try to change settings and find out why your HD-PVR blaster is slow or purchase a USB-UIRT. Your MCE IR receiver/blaster and Streamzap IR receiver will work fine on clients because no blasting is required. And if you have 2 x PVR150 on the same box as the HD-PVR then consider yourself lucky that the HD-PVR IR receiver/blaster works at all. And I would also recommend going the HD100 extender for your clients route. No muss-no fuss.

Gerry

[ghostlobster]

I misspoke about the StreamZap receiver, calling it a blaster, my bad. And I've gone through the MCE blaster config using LMRemote...it was tedious, but it worked.
I'll probably try using the HD-PVR blaster for my server at first and see if there is anything I can do to improve the performance of channel changing. If it takes too much effort or looks hopeless, I'll just toss the MCE blaster on it and step through the LMRemote config again. Then I'll hang the StreamZap receiver on my main client and see about getting that working with my Harmony 880.

[timg11]

I'm new to SageTV. I'm building a DVR system and haven't decided between SageTV, BeyondTV, and MythTV.

One of my objectives is to minimize the number of computers in my house that have to run 24/7. I already have a machine running Windows 2000 Server for other purposes (It isn't practical to convert it to Linux, so that's a strike against MythTV). It is a low-end server, though (Dell SC420). It would be great to have it do the recording, since it is going to be on anyway. I would only turn on the system connected to the TV when actually watching TV, and not have to run it all the time to be able to record the shows.

How much "horsepower" does the Sage back-end require? Would it have any trouble running in a Win2K environment? How does the client access the user interface for configuring the shows to be recorded?

[mckinsey]

I use a Dell sc400 and 3 tv cards, one of them is atsc.

Works fine with 3 hauppauge extenders and one hd-100

Scott

[timg11]

That's great. I'm planning to record strictly HD. When you are recording a HD show over the ATSC card, what CPU utilization do you see in task manager? What is your CPU type and speed? I have a 2.5GHz Celeron in the SC420.

If I buy the "SageTV Media Center Version 6" does that include one client and one server? Or do I have to buy an extra client, even though the server will not be used as a client?

[mickp]

Originally Posted by timg11

If I buy the "SageTV Media Center Version 6" does that include one client and one server? Or do I have to buy an extra client, even though the server will not be used as a client?

STVMCV6 doesn't come with a complimentary client other than the fact that you can run the "client" as part of the install on a single machine.

If you install the WHS (Windows Home Server) version which is the same purchase/license as STVMCV6 then it apparently comes with a complimentary placeshifter license. I'd recommend running the client over placeshifter if you're on the Windows platform but that's a pretty marginal call.

Perhaps more ideal for your situation would be the Sage TV HD Extender. It's small, quiet, just works (by all accounts) and is probably cheaper than picking up an ebay reconditioned pc. Cons?: There are some plugins such as netflix and pandora which will only work on a client pc and I'm not sure if it handles WMA lossless yet.

Mick.

[ghostlobster]

Just a follow up to this thread...
I've finally finished the migration to a full client/server implementation. I went with XP as my SageTV server at first, but I was having some serious hard lockup issues for some reason. After replacing the power supply, video card and RAM in the box, it was still locking up. So, before going nuts and completely gutting the machine, I decided to try that machine with Vista. What do ya know! It's been running Vista for 2 full days without a single hard lock.
I was giving serious consideration to migrating this box to WHS as my current WHS box only has one open PCI slot, but I really did not feel like going through all that crap. The free placeshifter license might change my mind, though! For now, I've got it purring along with Vista, 200GB TV recording drive (yes, 64k clusters), AMD 3000+ single core, 1 GB RAM, 2 Hauppauge 150 tuners, HDHR, and an HD-PVR. My clients have not missed a beat either. I've got one of them working across 802.11n and it performs as well as my wired ones.
Loving it!

[timg11]

Thanks for the update. I was ready to do the client-server system, but I want to eventually upgrade to the HD-PVR. I discovered the HD-PVR only connects by USB. So there is no practical way to connect to my server (which is far away). It looks like I'll have to upgrade the client machine (next to the TV and cable box) to give it enough horsepower to support the HD-PVR. It is currently a P4 2.8GHz with 2G of RAM, but the HD-PVR requires dual-core.

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by timg11

Thanks for the update. I was ready to do the client-server system, but I want to eventually upgrade to the HD-PVR. I discovered the HD-PVR only connects by USB. So there is no practical way to connect to my server (which is far away). It looks like I'll have to upgrade the client machine (next to the TV and cable box) to give it enough horsepower to support the HD-PVR. It is currently a P4 2.8GHz with 2G of RAM, but the HD-PVR requires dual-core.

Yeah, the dual-core requirement for the HD-PVR is no joke. As a test, I slapped my ATI HD2600XT into my single core AMD 3000+ box, put it at 2GB of RAM, and hooked up the HD-PVR. It stuttered all over the place and took forever to respond! The exact same stuff placed in my 4600+ X2 is smooth as Jessica Simpson's cleavage.
Just curious...your server is too far away to hook up the HD-PVR, but you can hook up a cable STB to it? Where is it? Is it even in the same house?

[timg11]

The server is hooked up by gigabit Ethernet. It is already run between the upstairs TV area and the basement server room. I have an HDHomeRun tuner, which operates over Ethernet.
USB 2.0 is rated for about 14 feet. There are some USB extension solutions available, but I'm not sure how they would work with something like the HD-PVR. Even if I solved the USB extension issue, I would then have to upgrade my server, which is a single core machine as well.

[rochurch]

Glad I found this thread. I am having all kinds of lockup problems during trial with latest version. My machine should be plenty powerful. AMD 5200+, 4GB Ram, Nvidia 8500, dedicated SATA recording HD w/ 64k blocks. I had problems in Vista, so I did a fresh XP install and I am still having problems! Hauppage 500 dual cable card and HDHR. Got the latest drivers and nothing else installed on machine. Also tried several different codecs some ok, some not so good.

I have started another 21 day trial since the reformat to XP. Maybe I will reformat again and try Vista..... The WAF is now down below Vista Media Center (which was pretty low). Actually, she just wants me to stop spending time messing with it.

[timg11]

rochurch, are you using an HD-PVR? Or only the Hauppauge and HDHR? Are you having lockups during recording, playback, or both? From what I read, the dual-core requirement comes only with the H.264 playback of the HD-PVR. The MPEG2 from the HDHR should have no problems with your hardware setup.
I haven't started a trial until I get the system upgraded to dual-core.