New Member and have some questions

[Bigb]

Greeting everyone

I am new here, but have been reading and trying to learn about SageTV and it sound great. I have been comparing sage with HP media extender trying to decide on which one to choose. My understanding, HP has made that choose for me. I here on a Pod cast that HP no longer makes the MediaSmart Extender. Looks like Sage it will be. Like I said I have been read a lot of your post and they are very helpful, but still have some question before I lay out the cash.

At this time I only plan to implement the photos, music and movies in dvd format.
This is my thinking for the server:
1. Intel Xeon Quad Core 2.6 or 3.0
2. 4gb ram
3. Windows server 2003 as workgroup and seperate boot drive in Raid 1 for the OS, Date storage drive with be on a seperate 3ware controller in Raid 5 or 6.
4. On board video controller
5. At this time not planning on implementing PVR or Turners so onboard video card should be fine as I understand it.
6. Sage Media Center Console
7. DvdFab to put music and dvd to HD.
8. 3 - HD200 Media Extenders.

Also what is the difference between stand alone mode and server mode. I under in either mode the extender can still connect to the server.

Thanks for you help
Jerry

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by Bigb

Greeting everyone


5. At this time not planning on implementing PVR or Turners so onboard video card should be fine as I understand it.
6. Sage Media Center Console
7. DvdFab to put music and dvd to HD.
8. 3 - HD200 Media Extenders.

Also what is the difference between stand alone mode and server mode. I under in either mode the extender can still connect to the server.

Thanks for you help
Jerry

Are you not going to record tv at all? If not then all you need to run the HD200 in media mode, it will read files off your server. You will need Sage Media server if you want to connect to the server computer running sagetv to give you more functionality and fan are and such.
If your not going to use as a PVR then why get SageTV server. The main difference between the HD200 in server mode, that you can

[Bigb]

Thanks for the Reply

Yes I will be recording but at this time that is handle by Dish. I was under the impression that I needed Sage Media Center to manage everything, even though I was not using PVR and TV side of Sage.

If running the Extenders in stand alone mode I was under the understanding that there was a limit.

Thanks
Jerry

[davephan]

You might consider using Windows Home Server instead of Windows Server 2003. There are some advantages with WHS that make it easier to add disk. If I were to build a new SageTV server, I would do it with WHS instead of XP or some other operating system.

Dave

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Bigb

Thanks for the Reply

Yes I will be recording but at this time that is handle by Dish. I was under the impression that I needed Sage Media Center to manage everything, even though I was not using PVR and TV side of Sage.

Just to be clear - you intending on using your Dish Network DVRs... but are you trying to implement that into Sage? That won't work. If you going to use your DVRs entirely separately - meaning, the DVR on one TV input, and the HD200 for other uses (DVDs, MP3s, etc.) on another input, that's fine, but that defeats so many of the purposes (and advantages) of the SageTV system....

[Bigb]

Just wanted to thank everyone for you input.

For the time being, watching photos, mp3's and movies are my main goal.

Maybe I will add more to later.

Thanks
Jerry