New to Sage & HD-PVR & Building an HTPC

[TorontoSage]

My first HTPC will run SageTV connected to 5-HD200's. It will have 3-Hauppauge HD-PVR's, which will be connected to 3 Rogers Cable HD4250 cable boxes channel-switched via firewire (rather than the HD-PVR's built-in IR flashers in order to make channel switching faster). I chose 3 HD-PVR's because with the SA8300HD DVR I have right now I often record two programs at the same time. And I hate it that I am limited to recording 2 programs and not being able to watch a third. So, given I want to be able to watch and pause live TV while I record these two programs, I think I need the 3rd PVR, right?
I have some questions:

3 HD-PVR's - I'm concerned about running 3 at the same time. Using tuner cards is not an option as I am in Toronto, Canada where all the QAM channels are encrypted. Also, even though we can get a lot of OTA HD channels up here, they duplicate the HD cable channels that we already paying for in the basic HD cable package and I need the HD cable to get the HD specialty channels I want (HBO, Oasis, Equator, HDNET, etc.)

Is anyone running 3 HD-PVR's with no problem? I am not worried about the 3 HD cable boxes as we can buy them instead of renting them for $99 each (CDN, which is like $125 USD) and pay the same monthly fee no matter how many are hooked up.

CPU - i7-920, as reviews claim it's the best value in the new i7 family (which succeeds the Intel Core 2 family). I feel this is necessary as I hear on here that commercial skip detection for H.264 files takes a lot of processing power (one user apparently reports that it can be up to 90% of the processing power on an Intel Q6600, which is a Core 2 Quad CPU. So, given the i7-920 is more powerful it should be less.). I am curious as to what people know about how much processing power the mere recording and H.264 encoding HD video from an HD-PVR takes. Does the recording and commercial skip detection steps occur simultaneously? Or does the latter happen only when you play back?

Motherboard - ASUS P6T-Deluxe, mainly because it was the Editor's choice on Anandtech.com (2nd choice went to the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5). The i7 needs to have motherboard with an x58 chipset and there are not that many of them and they are just starting to be reviewed. Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Memory - I think I should have 4 GB, or is that overkill? Can I use DDR3 or DDR2? I hear the former is very expensive and just buying a greater amount of the latter can do almost the same trick.

HDD - 7200rpm for sure, but would my performance would be better if I bought one HDD for each of the 3 HD-PVRs, rather than 1 or 2 HDD? Can you map each HD-PVR to record exclusively on it's own HDD? I don't want to go with any flavour of RAID as I hear it can slow things down. I'll just back up frequently.

SDD - 32GB to store only the OS, but I hear that even though it's SDD, the performance can vary by brand. What are your thoughts on brand and even on using SDD instead of HDD for the OS?. I know boot up will be faster, but is performance faster after that?

OS - I was thinking of WHS, but know nothing about it or operating systems in general, but I use WinXP on my laptop because I heard it was more stable than the rest and it has proven to be so.

PS - I'd welcome your suggestions. I am a really greenie, so I'd like something that was a power conserving as possible, but I guess that is more of a function of the power requirements of my hardware choices. Or are there PS's that are more energy conserving? I've read that I should get a 'solid high efficiency' one, but am not sure how I find that.

Case - I don't have a clue, bit it will be in a cabinet so aesthetics aren't that much of a concern, but I don't want it to be ugly. Those black horizontal ones look nice, but there are so many models. Any thoughts?

Video - I am not going to use the HTPC to view content and only view it through the HD200 extenders, so does this matter?

Audio - It's on the motherboard and I use Sonos for my whole house audio, so, should I care?

I am sure I'll need a few other things like a fan, heat sink so I'd appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks!

P.S. This is my first post!

[Slugger]

Your first cause for concern is the number of HD-PVRs you want to connect to the server. Most, including myself, have one happily connected and it works just fine. If you read through this forum you'll find mixed results when you add a second HD-PVR to the mix. I haven't heard of any reports of someone running three units on one server. I think most of the issues revolve around the drivers and their inability to play nice when more than one unit is connected. Don't quote me on that though - others who are actually using more than one on a single server are better equipped to address the issues, if they still exist.

Next, you'll want to ask yourself if you really need three HD-PVRs. This will be driven by your recording habits and your need to have everything recorded in HD.

I just made the jump to HD back in November. Prior to the HD upgrade I was running two PVR-250 tuners, which handled all my recording with no conflicts at all. I originally was going to add two HD-PVRs to the mix, but at $250 a shot plus $115 for the HD receiver I started out by just getting one. Turns out I don't really have a need for a second one (at least not yet). With just one HD-PVR I'm able to get 90% of my recordings in HD because of the various time shifted channels. The single unit basically records half my shows from the eastern time zone feeds then catches the rest on the pacific time zone feeds. A few times each week I have to settle for some things being recorded in SD because they can't all be scheduled on the HD-PVR and Letterman is recorded in HD while Leno usually isn't, but as I say, 90% of what can be recorded in HD is and the other 10% I'm fine with having in SD.

If you think you can live with the same results then start with just one HD-PVR and a single PVR-150 for SD recording. Unless you record absolutely everything under the sun, it's my experience that two tuners will record most people's schedules with no conflicts. If you feel you need more recorded in HD then add another HD-PVR after a few weeks. I'd be surpised if you needed more than two HD-PVRs to fulfill 100% of your HD recording needs (unless you plan on watching a lot of live tv, then all bets are off, but once you get used to SageTV the need for live tv should simply vanish). Personally, I'm fine with my 90% HD recordings setup, especially because it saved me nearly $400 in extra hardware costs (HD-PVR + HD receiver). YMMV, but as I stated at the start, you may want to investigate the success of running more than one HD-PVR if you're dead set on going that way.

Good luck and welcome to the SageTV community!

[TallMomof2]

I strongly suggest you look at using a SilconDust HDHR for OTA channels. Assuming that at least some are broadcast in HD it will take some of the load off the HDPVRs. If you don't watch any of the OTA channels this wouldn't be an option but adding one to my system really helped.

Eventually I plan to have 2 HDPVRs and 2 HDHRs in my setup. This should take care of 99% of my family of four's viewing.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

3 HD-PVR's - I'm concerned about running 3 at the same time. Using tuner cards is not an option as I am in Toronto, Canada where all the QAM channels are encrypted. Also, even though we can get a lot of OTA HD channels up here, they duplicate the HD cable channels that we already paying for in the basic HD cable package and I need the HD cable to get the HD specialty channels I want (HBO, Oasis, Equator, HDNET, etc.)

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

I strongly suggest you look at using a SilconDust HDHR for OTA channels. Assuming that at least some are broadcast in HD it will take some of the load off the HDPVRs. If you don't watch any of the OTA channels this wouldn't be an option but adding one to my system really helped.

I think that the HD Home Run (HDHR) mentioned above is a good bet at this point, assuming that you do want to watch OTA broadcast programs. You could start with 1 HDHR + 1 HDPVR and then add later as necessary.

It's really easy to hook up, assuming that you have the antenna/aerial portion already done/thought through.

Just because you get the HD shows via your cable, doesn't mean that you have to record them. The OTA will be uncompressed too, so you'll get a better picture (again, assuming that you legitimately get good signal quality).

If you take the OTA recordings out of the picture, how many other HD shows do you have to record concurrently? Remember that Sage will look ahead in the EPG to deconflict your schedule automatically.

Matt

[TorontoSage]

TallMomof2 and Matt91: I checked into the HD Homerun and that seems like a great idea, thanks. I did wire my house for a rooftop antenna so I will hook one up as soon as it gets warmer up here and try the HDHR.

Originally Posted by matt91

If you take the OTA recordings out of the picture, how many other HD shows do you have to record concurrently? Remember that Sage will look ahead in the EPG to deconflict your schedule automatically.

I know that know I record the same shows concurrently at least 1-2x per week, but with the OTA recordings working on the side, then maybe one HD-PVR will do. I mean, right now all I have is the ability to watch or record 2 at a time. I didn't know that the EPG could deconflict, so that's a good point. I'll likely start with 1 HD-PVR and the OTA and see how that goes.

And I take it that with 1 HDHR and 1 HD-PVR that I would be able to record 3/watch 0 programs, record 0/watch 3, record 2/watch 1 or record 1/watch 2 (with 2 of the 3 being restricted to OTA)?

[SWKerr]

This post will assume that money has some weight in the buying process.

OS - I have recently gone through an excise of converting to WHS as my primary Sage server. I have been very pleased with the result and would recommend it without reservations.

CPU - First the recording process does not take very much CPU so you don’t need it for that. As stated the Comskip process is somewhat CPU intensive but I have found the latest version is much more efficient. Regardless I have found that with Sage I end up having such a large selection of decent programming that I almost never watch anything besides the news immediately after recording. In the real world even though I have set up Dirmon to only use only one core from the server that everything is ready by the time a watch it with the exception of the news. I would guess each show takes about an hour for HD-PVR files but the are always all complete by morning. Where you might need more CPU is for the Placeshifter app. It encodes things real time and could probably use the extra cpu. I don’t use it so I can’t say. I would recommend you use an AMD 780G motherboard with the low power X2 cpu. It will be a whole lot cheaper than i7 and I would guess the extra processing power would really be wasted. With the i7 it is not just the cpu cost but the board and memory that run up the cost. You could always add the new X4 to that same motherboard later. They will likely be less than $100 bucks in the next six months.

Memory – You probably don’t need 1gb for the sever but it is so cheap right now I would stick in 2gb just to be sure.

Hard drive –WHS it will manage you drives with good redundancy automatically. You mainly just pick the folders you want duplicated and it takes care of it. If one fails you can put rest in any machine and read it just fine. I have a boot drive and two 1.5tb and two 500gb drives in mine and it plenty fast for 3 at a time recordings. You can setup Sage to have each tuner pointed to a specific disks but it really should not be necessary. The SSDs are so pricy that I would probably just setup a pair of mirrored drives for the OS instead. The mirrored raid setup would be plenty fast. One thing I tried with my original WHS setup was using a bunch of old drives but they just slowed the whole thing to a crawl. If you are going to include old ones do not add them to the shared storage just use them as backup drives. Also: make sure to you buy a motherboard with as many SATA ports as possible. You can always add another card later but why if you don’t have to.

PS – depends on what you buy but a 400w should be plenty for everything no problem. It will only draw what it needs so going higher will not be a negative. Go to Tom Hardware about the green PSUs but I did not see anything in reviews that would guilt trip me about not buying one.

Case – I just bought another one of these, they are great. $60 from NewEgg shipped. Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX. I added another 120mm fan to the front. This thing has great ventilation and room for 6 hard drives with good spacing between them. The big fans will move a lot of air without much noise. It is perfect for a WHS. If you will have it in a closet then the CPU fan that came with it will be fine but if you want it quite then a cpu cooler with a big 120mm fan is what you want. The case is tall enough to support any fan you can buy. NewEgg link to case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129042

Video: For the server it really does not matter but I also use mine to pipe TV to all my old TVs. I have a $20 VGA to Composite converter that then gets converted to coax that goes to three old SD TVs in my shop, office, bathroom. (The bathroom is really for news in the morning but I also like to have a game on while I sit in the Jacuzzi tub, laugh all you want.) I control the whole setup with IR repeaters to the server in the closet. Works great. Even if you don’t ever use the local video the 780G motherboard would not cost any extra.

Audio: Will not mater on the server. I like HDMI with audio which the AMD will have.

Other issues: Heat! Even if you put it in a cabinet you will need airflow I there or it will bet hot. I put my server in a closet and it was like a sauna in there. I had to add a vent and fan to keep it cool. Same thing with my HTPCs in the entertainment center. It may not seem like much but if all the air is trapped it will add up faster than you think.

Other suggestions:
I agree that on HDHR and one or two HD-PVR will probably work best. Since the OTA are network you have two at a time recording of those and the HD-PVR for another network or a extened cable show. The non-networks usually run thier stuff several time a day so conflicts are usually not an issue since they can be recored later. I have two HD-PVRs but one is a remote server since I wanted to have one receiver attached to the TV just in case the system was down for some reason. Upgrades, bad drive, human error. Etc. I know people have had difficulty setting up 2 HD-PVS on the same machine but they seem to resove it eventually.

Good Universal remote. I use the Harmony 755s.

I would still add an HTPC in the mix. There is a lot of online content and Sage will never be able to support it all. Having one HTPC on your main TV will let likely let you run anything that comes out in the future.

BluRay – Do you care? I seldom watch the actual disk but I do rip them and make the movie available thru Sage as an m2ts or mkv file.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

And I take it that with 1 HDHR and 1 HD-PVR that I would be able to record 3/watch 0 programs, record 0/watch 3, record 2/watch 1 or record 1/watch 2 (with 2 of the 3 being restricted to OTA)?

With 1 HDHR + 1 HDPVR, you can record three shows at once, as you note. Watching a show "live" counts as a recording (since it's using a tuner).

So your five TVs can all watch 5 (different) recorded shows, or up to 2 recorded shows and 3 (separate) "live" shows.

Many folks (myself included) find that they watch very little live TV anymore. Unless it's the news, we're almost always a week or two behind in our watching.

Matt

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

TallMomof2 and Matt91: I checked into the HD Homerun and that seems like a great idea, thanks. I did wire my house for a rooftop antenna so I will hook one up as soon as it gets warmer up here and try the HDHR.



I know that know I record the same shows concurrently at least 1-2x per week, but with the OTA recordings working on the side, then maybe one HD-PVR will do. I mean, right now all I have is the ability to watch or record 2 at a time. I didn't know that the EPG could deconflict, so that's a good point. I'll likely start with 1 HD-PVR and the OTA and see how that goes.

And I take it that with 1 HDHR and 1 HD-PVR that I would be able to record 3/watch 0 programs, record 0/watch 3, record 2/watch 1 or record 1/watch 2 (with 2 of the 3 being restricted to OTA)?

I agree with the others. Start with 1 HD-PVR and 1 HD Homerun. You can always expand.

CPU - an I7 is way overkill. I run h264 commercial skpping and while it is cpu intensive, it's not that bad. It used to be about 90% cpu across 4 cores. Now it is about 25-35% cpu useage across 4 cores. I can run up to 5 commercial skip processes (2 -h264, 3 mpg) at one time on a q6600 (core2quad).

Memory - 4 Gb is good. Some of the internal capture cards have problems with more than 2GB so keep that in mind if you ever need to add one. HDPVR and HD homerun are fine with 4gb.

SDD - you are not going to see any real benefit in running a solid state drive. There is not much on the OS side of things. Your bottlenecks in the setup are going to be your network and the speed of your storage drives.

OS - I run WHS. I chose it initially for it's backup ability of all computers on the LAN, storage redundancy, and ease of adding storage.

It is the best option short of building an XP or Vista computer and separate linux based NAS.

PS - I like corsair. Splurge for a modular.

HDD - You do not have the ability to record to a designated drive. Storage is so cheap nowadays you can just add more as need. I have 4 TB's and just ordered another. I filled up 4tb's in 6 weeks time.

CASE - How many HD's? Is noise a concern? This is a place where you can save some money. I run this case http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-No...4202814&sr=8-2 as it was under 100 bucks and was 5.25 bays all the way down. This allowed me to add sata backplanes http://www.amazon.com/Addonics-AE4RC...4202966&sr=1-6 all the way down the case.

Video - Does not matter.

Audio - Does not matter.

Optical - Do you want to rip your dvd's? Blu-ray?

[TorontoSage]

Thanks for the input so far. Even though I've read a lot about HTPC's in the past few days, there's nothing like good feedback. Great to know I don't have to worry about audio/video. I didn't think so, as it's only going to serve content up to SageTV HD200's, but I just wanted to make sure. (I may decide to get another HTPC with a video card for the home theatre, as someone suggested, at some point but I'll decide that after I have this SageTV media server set up).

Here's what I think now that I have had your input and time to think about it, plus some other questions:

CPU - Core 2 Quad or compatible - My desire for a faster processor like the i7 was driven by reports about the processing power required commercial skip detection, but these reports seemed to have been based on old skip detection software. I think I can lower my sights now and go with something less expensive. Also, going with a Core 2 processor, as has been pointed out, makes the memory and motherboard way cheaper. Many seem to have the Q6600 or E6600 processor.

I've done some research but choosing which processor in the Core 2 or compatible family seems daunting. I think I should go with something that is Quad or Quad-compatible, rather than duo. But, should I go with Intel or AMD? Is it more about money, wattage, both or some other attribute? The prices seems to be bout the same Any tips on how I should choose or can someone just tell me what to use? Also, will I need a cooler/fan for the CPU?

Memory - I read on these forums that 4GB can be less stable with large processes and WHS only reports it as 3GB anyway, so I am thinking I should use 3GB instead of 4GB. I'd rather use more than 2GB if it will help performance, especially since DDR2 memory is so cheap, but then one post says that few users should require more than 2GB. How do I know if I am going to one of those 'few users'. Should I just install 2 GB and put another 1GB in later?

Motherboard - Given now I am going with a Core 2 Quad I have to rethink this. Any more suggestions for the motherboard are welcomed.

Tuners/Recorders/HD200's - 1 Silicon Dust HD Homerun ATSC, 1 Rogers Cable SA4250HD cable box, 1 Hauppage HD-PVR (which changes the channels on the cable box via firewire) and 5 HD200's. I thought of only getting 3 HD200's because the living/kitchen/dining room (which is a great room) has 2 HDTV's and both sets will always be watching the same program (same with the master bedroom/bathroom). But, the cost of a component video splitter to split the signal out of the HD200 and the IR devices required for the other HDTV is more than the cost of an HD200!

PS - Corsair HX620W, which is modular. Peter_h: What a great tip for going modular. I didn't even know such power supplies existed. I take it the advantages of modular are: 1) You can omit the cables you don't need which has the dual benefit of a cleaner less cluttered box and better airflow; and 2) It will accomodate the next generation of cables. I did a configuration on the Corsair website always specifying a Core 2 Quad CPU with 20 hard disks and varied the graphics card from low end to high end (the video doesn't matter for my application, right now anyway, but I just wanted to see) and it was only with the higher end video cards that I needed the HX620W. All of the other configurations yielded a HX520W. Even though video doesn't matter to me, I will go with the more expensive HX620W as it is only $100 ($130 which includes a $30 rebate coupon) at Provantage. The HX520 is $80 with the rebate coupon. So, for the extra $20 I think it is worth it to future-proof the server against higher power demands.

SDD - I am going to omit this. The benefits seem dubious and any potential benefits seem to be outweighed by the high cost.

OS - WHS seems like the way to go from your input and other threads I've read. But, I read something on these forums that 'Microsoft limits non-server operating systems to 5 simultaneous network connections from other computers'. Does the reference to 'computers' include HD200's?

Optical/Blu-Ray - I usually rent disks, never buy them and never rip them. I was thinking of using a stand-alone Blu-Ray player for now as they are so inexpensive and are plug 'n play when all you do is hook them up to a plasma. I understand that HTPC Blu-Ray players are not ready for prime time or am I mistaken? It would be kind of nice to have one in the HTPC, but how much will this affect the perfomance if it is being used while the server is serving up and recording live TV channels?

Remotes - I need to get a 3rd party remote, as I understand the HD200 remote won't turn the TV on and off. I am going to look at the Harmony and will need a total of 5 remotes for the 5 HTDV's, even though I only have 3 HD200's because 2 of them will have IR receivers connected to them for the other HDTV.

Case and HDD bays - With the ability to archive, back up and edit HDTV I think I will be using significantly more hard disk storage than the current 1.16 TB I have on my SA8300HD PVR, which is usually about 70% utilized. I tend to like to save home reno shows, cooking shows and shows with music video like from the Academy Awards, Grammys, concerts etc. I tend not to save movies as I delete ones recorded from cable after I watch them and tend to only rent movies. Also, most of what I store is in HD format, which takes a significantly more space than SD. I am thinking I will eventually need a minimum of at least 4 - 1TB, 1.5TB or 2TB hard disks, so that's 4-8TB minimum. I would like to have a horizontal case because this is going in a low cabinet in the great room. Can one put 4 1 TB, 1.5TB or 2TB disks in such a cabinet or should they be housed in a separate housing like someone suggested?

Fan - The cabinet that the server will be in will be in a a cabinet that is in a sunken living room so that the top of the cabinet is flush with the rest of the floor in the non-sunken areas of the great room (it sits in the corner beside the stair). The front of the cabinet will have a door that will normally be closed. The back of the cabinet will be open to the basement, which will provide some air flow. In this situation, is a fan for the cabinet still advisable or is a fan always advisable? (Being very into energy conservation I like to only use the electrical power I absolutely have to)

HDD - As mentioned, I'd like up to 4-8 TB, but will just add them as my need occurs. Is a separate HDD advisable for the OS? Also, I am not sure that I understand WHS managing redundancy vs mirroring vs RAID. Can someone enlighten me? Does the redundancy then mean that I need to multiply my HDD requirement by a factor of 2? Do any of these technologies slow down the SageTV media server performance?

[SWKerr]

CPU – For and HTPC the low wattage AMD X2 and a AMD 780G motherboard is the best deal going. For Intel to get equivalent graphics you need the NVIDIA 9300 motherboards but getting one with full ATX and had 6 Sata slots will be difficult. It would also be pricier than the AMD equivalent. You could always add a $40 HDMI card later to any board if you found yourself in need of better graphics but overall the AMD is a better overall value. The 45w AMD will be a little better on power than the older Intel cpus but for the most part the Intel’s are faster. YOu can go to Tom's Hardware to compare how CPS stack up against each other but for our purposes I don’t think you will notice a real world difference between the ones you mentiond and a AMD X2 5050e. Intel clearly has had a better quad core product until the latest AMD release but even that does not touch the i7. The new AMD quad is pin compatible with the 780G motherboards so a future upgrade would be cheap and easy. I would focus on more 6 Sata ports for the motherboard.



Tuner - I have the HDHR and really like it. You can put it anywhere on you network which is nice. That said I have a co-worker who is new to Sage and he bought the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 and really likes it. The Hauppauge also support analog tuning and is cheaper.

Blu-Ray - The disks play great on my HTPC and the drive is about $100. I no longer have it in the server but in my oldsetup I was able to play them while recording without issues. I would be careful buying a cheap standalone Blu-Ray drive right now as a lot of the low end ones don't support the most recent standards and can not be upgraded like a PC would be. The PlayStation is probably your best option for just a little more you get gaming and some online content.

Case - The one I listed before will sit on its side without any issues. You will have limited options with a horizontal case. Most will not have a lot of drive bays. They are usually classified as HTPC cases now days. I wou d not settle for less than 6 3.5 bays. YOu could always add a external encolsure later but they are pricy. An external eSata hard drive is also an option as you need space but I would still start wih extra interal bays. I have a Silverstone that has six 3.5 plus two 5.25 that would work but the airflow would not be as good. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811163054. Airflow and cooling is important to long life in the HDD.

HDD - The 1.5tb drives were $106 buck shipped today. Hard to beat that. The 2tb are still a little pricy now. There has been some problems with them to date but there is a firmware to fix now so I would still go with them. Mine have worked great.

WHS\Raid -
Raid is basicly a process of writing data to the disk in a way that if one fails the other disks in the raid will have data stored in a way so that you do not loose any data. Raid 0 is generally just duplicating everything on one disk on another disk. (Mirror image) If one fails you have lost nothing. Raid 5 is a setup where you may have 3 or more disks but the system will write data in such a way that if any disk in the array fails the others have enough data between them that no data is lost. In a Raid 0 setup two 500gb drives yield only 500gb of usable space but it provides perfect and fast data redundacy. In Raid 5 you have say 4 500gb drives and 1.5tb of usable space. The problem with Raid is that you are usually tied to the hardware that created the Raid. If you motherbord goes bad you need to get the same raid design in you new one to recover the raid. A dedicated raid card is probably a better choice for large Raid 5 build. In a Raid 5 setup it is real important you know and keep track of which disk is which. If you pull or replace the wrong one you could be in trouble when it rebuilds.

WHS does not really support Raid. It creates a big storage volume with all the drives you want to it. When you setup folders in the shared volume you chose if you want them duplicated or not. Stuff you can not live without you don't necessarily duplicate but if you choose to do so WHS will write the data out twice on two physically different drives. That way if one goes bad it is still stored on anther drive. It is a poor man's raid-0 but only for select folders. You could still lose data that is not duplicated if it is stored on a drive that failed but that would be the lock of the draw. I set everything to duplicate. The thing I like about the WHS method is that what ever happens to your system you can put the drives into another system and get the data. Raid drives are not so simple to recover. You mess up a restore on a raid 5 setup and you are SOL.

The one thing about a WHS is that the OS volume is not duplicated across disk so you don't have OS redundancy. You can use a raid-0 setup for install volume and have OS redundancy and then let WHS manage the rest of the disks. If the OS drive fails you can still recover gracefully but it will be more difficult.

Fan - If it is open in the back to a ventilated room you are probably good. Just put you hand in there after awhile and make sure it is not really hot. You can always add a fan later. You can get a big 120mm fan and tap it into you computer PS. It will not take up much space and will run very quite. The thing to remember is computers tend to be significantly louder than the ambient sound in a room so if you are watching a movie in a dead silent room it might be distracting. A quite PC takes special effort to build. If some amount of sound is ok in the basment you are probably good.

Oh yea - Gigabit network

[Peter_h]

SWKerr is actually talking about a RAID 1 above and not a RAID 0.

A RAID 0 is stripping across 2 drives, intended for speed, no redundancy.

A RAID 1 is mirroring across 2 drives for redundancy.

[wayner]

Many others have hit most of your points put here is my opinion:

Case - I also have an Antec 300 and I think it is perfect for this. It has room for 6 - 3.5" hard drives and there is also room for 3 optical drives. The most you would need is one so you can use brackets to put in 8 hard drives if you want. I am currently using 6 hard drives in my system. I have put 2x120mm fans in the front to keep the drives cool and they stay at 30C or less.

OTA Tuner - I think an OTA tuner is a good idea but I believe that an HDHR is overkill, especially in Canada where there is nothing available on unencrypted QAM. Go for a cheaper OTA tuner.

Memory - Believe it or not 4Gig can be a problem. I am running WHS and it sees all 4 Gigs (unlike Vista x86 or XP x86). But some Hauppauge drivers, at least the ones for my PVR-150 tuner card, have a bug that will not allow them to work with 4Gigs of memory. Therefore I had to pull out one 2 Gig stick to run with 2 Gigs. I am not sure if this bug will affect you but it is something to keep in mind.

OS - I am running WHS and I think it is a very good choice for Sage as long as you don't want to use your main Sage PC to watch TV.

Mobo - I wanted a mobo with 8 SATA ports to support lots of hard drives. That limits your choice - I went with a Asus P5QPro (I am pretty sure that is the model but not 100%). Other mobos are probably just as good but I am familiar with Asus so I didn't want to rock the boat. Don't forget to get a mobo with firewire, if you are going to use that for changing channels, and you may want to also make sure that you have a couple of PCI slots in case you want them for tuners, modem (for Caller ID to Sage) or something else.

CPU - I have had good luck with Intel so I am using a E8400 which seems plenty fast and is fairly low on power consumption.

Multiple HD-PVRs - I have two HD-PVRs and don't have an issue with them. I agree that two of these plus an OTA tuner is lots but it depends on what you record. You may want to throw in an analog tuner as they are cheap and the MPEG-2 files that result from them are easier to work with than the H.264 files that come from the HD-PVR.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by TorontoSage

SDD - 32GB to store only the OS, but I hear that even though it's SDD, the performance can vary by brand. What are your thoughts on brand and even on using SDD instead of HDD for the OS?. I know boot up will be faster, but is performance faster after that?

OS - I was thinking of WHS, but know nothing about it or operating systems in general, but I use WinXP on my laptop because I heard it was more stable than the rest and it has proven to be so.

You can't install WHS on a 32G drive, it's not big enough. Skip the SDD (or get a much larger one) and get a 320-500G SATAII drive for WHS and you'll still be happy. I wouldn't bother with SDD for WHS, personally.

[TorontoSage]

Originally Posted by wayner

OTA Tuner - I think an OTA tuner is a good idea but I believe that an HDHR is overkill, especially in Canada where there is nothing available on unencrypted QAM. Go for a cheaper OTA tuner.

I should have thought of that. I think I'll start with one OTA tuner and one HD-PVR. For the OTA tuner I'll get a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 which has an analog and ATSC tuner combined into one card. A lot of people seem to be happy with them on here. Or are there any other good choices?

Originally Posted by wayner

Mobo - I wanted a mobo with 8 SATA ports to support lots of hard drives. That limits your choice - I went with a Asus P5QPro (I am pretty sure that is the model but not 100%). Other mobos are probably just as good but I am familiar with Asus so I didn't want to rock the boat. Don't forget to get a mobo with firewire, if you are going to use that for changing channels, and you may want to also make sure that you have a couple of PCI slots in case you want them for tuners, modem (for Caller ID to Sage) or something else.

Good points. I also want 8 SATA ports, PCI slots and firewire so that gives me something to narrow down the motherboard choices with. Would I need one firewire per HD-PVR that I want to change the channels on or can one firewire be split? (I guess I could always get a firewire card if the mobo doesn't have enough firewire ports).

Originally Posted by wayner

CPU - I have had good luck with Intel so I am using a E8400 which seems plenty fast and is fairly low on power consumption.

I've always liked Intel but AMD seems like a good contender. This choice is driving me nuts. I'll have to spend some more time researching but I haven't been able to find any information on what factors (clock speed, number of cores, cache size, bus speed and other attributes) affect performance of SageTV running on WHS (or of any application for that matter). Should one focus on one attribute more than the other? Is the marginal improvement only very slight when you improve some of the attributes above a certain threshhold? And, what is that threshold? I am wondering about questions like: Is a quad core 2.5 GHz Intel CPU as fast as a dual core 3 Ghz or does it simply not work that way? I don't mind spending a couple of hundred bucks more to get a better chip, but only if I am going to notice the improvement in performance in my situation. Does anyone know?

I am also now wondering about memory. If the board supports from DDR2-667 up to DDR2-1300 what is the performance improvement in having faster memory? Is it even noticeable in this application? And should I get 'low-latency' memory?

[S_M_E]

I'd go Intel, personally...

[TorontoSage]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

HDD - The 1.5tb drives were $106 buck shipped today. Hard to beat that. The 2tb are still a little pricy now. There has been some problems with them to date but there is a firmware to fix now so I would still go with them. Mine have worked great.

Where did you find the 1.5 TB drives for that price? I think the Seagate Barracuda is the only 1.5TB drive at this time. I just did an extensive search and $117 without taxes and shipping is the lowest I could find from a no-name online source that has no stock. Are you sure that is not a 1TB drive?

And yes, it seems that there was a problem with a certain firmware version of the drive, which has been corrected now, and one has to make sure to either buy one with the SD1A firmware (rather than the original SD17 firmware) or update it yourself.

[SWKerr]

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16377

Link above, Dell coupon code

[TorontoSage]

Thanks. The reviews aren't that good of that drive with respect to write performance. Does anyone know how will affect performance with SageTV and WHS? I take it one writes once but do a lot of reading with SageTV.

[TorontoSage]

Processor - I am leaning towards processor from Intel as I am kind of partial to Intel. From other posts and from reading reviews it appears that a slower quad core processor has better performance than a faster dual core processor, as long as the applications you are running are able to take advantage of 4x multi-threading, which I believe both WHS and the SageTV Media Extender software are able to do. So I have pretty well decided to get a Quad core CPU. Please correct me if I am wrong on the multi-threading. Also, this will future-proof me against other multi-threaded applications.

I don't know if this makes a difference, but I think it does: I will be running commercial skip detection software on all programs I record.

Intel has released a whopping number of Quad core CPU's. There is a great article that I just read and its opening paragraph is:

'Figuring out what CPU to get these days is like trying to understand quantum physics. There are so many different products on the market, often with similar prices, that it's difficult to parse exactly which one you should get to build a system for your needs.' That's from this recent Dec 15, 2008 article that you can view at http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2336852,00.asp

Of the 9 Intel Quad CPUs available I am now trying to determine which one to buy. Some of them come in both 95w and 65w (denoted with an 's' suffix) versions, but the lower power version is a lot more expensive and not justified by the price, reviews say.

I also read that L2 cache is not an insignificant factor in processor performance. I don't know how critical the size of cache is in an HTPC server application. Since the cache stores data that is being read, and one does a lot of reads with an HTPC server due to the pausing and playing I would think cache is very important. But would an increase from 4M to 6M to 8M to 12M (the cache sizes of the Quads) provide a noticeable boost in performance? Does anyone know? I think I have to do a bit of price/performance or 'bang for buck' analysis, balancing the clock speed, cache size and price, in order to decide which one I should buy. But that is tough when one does not know how the cache affects a particular application's performance.

Anyway, after reading the above article I am still confused.

[S_M_E]

I'm sold on the idea of getting as much L2 as I can afford (within my budget), I've avoided processors with the least amount for many years. Given a choice of more L2 or a slightly faster clock, I'll take the L2.

YMMV...