Hi,

Newbie questions; I'm looking for some advice to help me to decide on a media extender. Listed is what I have and what I'd like to be able to do..

What I have:
HTPC: Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz, GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H w/ATI Radeon HD 3200, 2gb RAM, 500Gb
Hauppauge HD-PVR (on order) connected to FIOS Cable box
Ripped Content, MP3s etc stored on NAS
Gigabit Ethernet (or possibly a wireless N Bridge to the extender)

What I'd like to be able to do.. in order of priority... I know, I know.. I want a lot!

1. Watch & Control Live HDTV (with the Hauppauge HD-PVR as the source)
2. Watch & Control 'My DVR' content from the FIOS box
3. Watch Netflix 'Watch Now'
4. Watch Ripped HD-DVD & Blu-Ray with the minimum of converting, etc

Other things like watching ripped DVD, listening to MP3s, Pandora etc seems to be easy enough with the two of the possible solutions I'm looking at.
I've read various forums and posts (and got myself thoroughly confused) and think I have narrowed it to two options.

SageTV and their HD Extender STX-HD100

or a

GB-PVR with a Popcorn Hour A-100.

I'm using Vista Media Center at the moment, but have not been impressed with the Extender reviews (save the 360 which is not an option) plus the lack of HD-PVR support means it may be time to jump.

Am I right in thinking I can achieve most of my wish list with either of these two (I think I would need an USB IR blaster to control the FIOS box)?
If so, which do you think is the better option? I'm not in a huge rush, is there anything more suitable rumoured on the horizon? I would be very grateful for any advice.

Thanks in advance,

Dan

I believe you might run into a problem trying to record HD content. Unless you are happy with OTA HD. If you are using a cable box, because of HDCP, you will only be able to record in SD.

I believe you might run into a problem trying to record HD content. Unless you are happy with OTA HD. If you are using a cable box, because of HDCP, you will only be able to record in SD.

I'm not too worried about recording to be honest, plus (from my understanding) HDCP isn't an issue as the HD-PVR uses the component output which doesn't support HDCP.

After some more reading, I'm leaning towards the SageTV option. Any users out there already doing what I'm trying to acheive or anyone have any comments/advice?

Thanks,

Dan

Try Sage, sounds best for Hauppage. You will need to read here to get ideas, you need to look at chokepoints ( I/O, network card ) and you will need a big fast hard drive formatted in 64k blocks, and defragged often to record to. Hd is big. Usually cat 6 cable, with Jumbo frames on the card and switches works best, some people keep the frames to 7k for best results. Google vista network fix, apply it, and get tcpoptimizer and apply that.

Ben

Ben,

Thanks for the reply, I'll look into the points you mentioned.

Dan