New prospective user...

[GovtMule]

BTW, great thanks to all of you for chatting with me about this. I am very used to Windows Media Center and a little nervous about the transition (yet excited). I just wanna make sure I can make this work for my family and hopefully expand some of the features beyond what we were able to do before.

[brewston]

Originally Posted by GovtMule

So you're saying transmitting content to an HD300 requires little or no CPU cycles?

My server has a 1.3Ghz VIA CPU and its currently using less than 5% whilst the kids watch an SD video....

[bcjenkins]

As long as you are not trying to play back content on the server, the things you should focus on are RAM, disk i/o, and network i/o

B

[GovtMule]

My server will have to play back content as it is connected to the main television

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by GovtMule

I will likely install Arcsoft TMT3 for playing HD-DVD's until I can figure out how to rip them all to H.264. I am under the impression that Sage plays Blu-ray natively with the proper codec. Is that correct? Which codec is most used? Otherwise, most of the activity will happen at the PC where the SageTV software is installed. Live/recorded TV, ripped media, and DVD/BR will be played at the 2 extenders. I also plan to add a 3rd extender and SageTV client to a desktop PC once the sting of the initial purchase has wore off.

Use tsmuxer to convert them to .m2ts or .ts files. You could even convert to .mkv and avoid having to use tmt3. If you do decide to go the tmt3 route (which i do for blu ray rips so I can use menus) then fuzzy's plugin makes it very easy. Take it a step further and use SMM to organize your movie collection and you are good to go.