Server
Update, Jan, 2, 2011
I just realized I never said anything about an important hiccup (bug) I've run into when using Beyond TV on my WHS. When booting the server, I must open the client from one of my PCs and do the following:
Open the client, it will look normal, opening on the Computers and Backup screen.
Switch to the Advanced Admin Console (a plug-in app for better control of the server)
Click on the "Show Desktop" button (top left of Advanced Admin screen)
This minimizes the Home Server Console and shows the server's desktop. Once I do this, Beyond TV will launch. If I don't do this, BTV will not launch. I've tried both; a shortcut icon to BTVagent2.exe in the startup folder (run as administrator), and telling BTV to start minimized using the Web Admin interface, neither works...
It's not a big deal, as I usually check the server every time I re-boot it, just to make sure every thing's OK, but I missed some recordings when I started using BTV on a WHS before I discovered this behavior.
Update, August 26, 2010
What Cox giveth, Cox takes away...
A&E was scrambled yesterday, when they did it, BTV was recording. Nuked the channel map again. Just 30 minutes to remap the QAM channels, but this is getting old....
This time, I tried saving a backup of the QAM channel mappings, maybe this will give me a way to get BTV back on-line before I get a chance to remap.
Update, August 17, 2010
Daum, Cox wasn't through... I watched it happen, tonight at about 8:15, two recordings quit, then Beyond TV resumed recording, but the files were empty. It seems that when the channel quits broadcasting a signal while BTV is recording it, all the mappings in BTV's database file are corrupted/blanked. Did yet another quick mapping operation.
There was an up-side, Cox added a couple of free HD broadcasts, the only useful one to me was A&E, they have a couple of decent shows I watch.
Update, August 16, 2010
Same as April update, 'cept this time the file containing the mapping information for Beyond TV got wiped. At least this time I knew the most probable reason my HD content on cable quit... How is it cable TVs can cope with this and tuner cards can't ?
Moved my monitor and keyboard to my WHS machine and re-mapped my free HD channels in the Beyond TV Setup Wizard;
NBC -> 80116-4 -> 704
ABC -> 80116-5 -> 705
ION -> 80115-1 -> 707
CBS -> 80106-9 -> 709
CW -> 80069-34 -> 711
FOX -> 80069-25 -> 712
PBS -> 80106-13 -> 713
WGN -> 80131-1 -> 734
A&E -> -> 742
This still isn't a deal breaker, but I am beginning to have the occasional Sage TV thought. Then I think about how BTV and BTV's Link client seem to be completely bullet-proof. Always a great picture and sound, excellent scheduling capabilities and very good scheduling conflict management. If a scheduled recording is interrupted, or doesn't happen, BTV will go looking for additional airings of the program and keep recording it until an uninterrupted recording is made, it's nice.
Update, April, 2010
Using my cable service for local high definition signals for the tuner cards in my server has been convenient, and provides adequate quality for most of the programs I like to record. The main reason this is a nice set up for me is that my cable provider broadcasts the local channels in high definition, unencrypted, with their basic cable service, thus I don't need to mess with an antenna.
Learned some valuable lessons this week.
Your cable provider (Cox Cable in Oklahoma City for me) can and will change the actual (physical) channels your unencrypted QAM channels are broadcast on.
Your cable provider's tech support and sales personnel won't be aware of this.
Your cable provider's tech support and sales personnel probably will not know that the local channels are available in high definition format for free (they will insist that their digital tuner is required to see high definition content on your TV).
Tech support will insist that you are using the cable system as a giant antenna to receive over the air signals, and your TV is tuning to these OTA signals.
Your cable provider's tech support and sales personnel probably will not know what a QAM tuner is.
Your cable provider's tech support and sales personnel probably will not know what an ATSC tuner is.
Your cable provider's tech support and sales personnel aren't much help these days.
I find it hard to put myself in a tolerant frame-of-mind when dealing with people
Who should have the information I need, but don't.
Who do not know the information exists.
Who think I'm wrong, crazy, and mis-informed when, in fact, it is they who do not know.
This leads me to doubt myself, when it shouldn't...
Last Wednesday Cox Cable moved NBC and CBS HD signals and Beyond TV could no longer tune in those channels. The real things I learned that may help other BTV users are:
After installing the Nvidia device drivers on the WHS, you still will not be able to see any video overlays when you remote in to the WHS desktop.
The remote user interface locks the video into a 992 x 673 pixel mode and will not support the video modes which allow BTV to display video.
The bottom line is;
You have to install BTV while physically on the WHS.
Occasionally, you will have to put a keyboard and monitor back onto the WHS, log into it physically, and operate it directly when you need to map or re-map QAM signals.
You can only run the BTV setup wizard while you are physically on the WHS (you have to watch test video to identify the stations).
You have to login to the WHS as the Administrator, user accounts won't have the rights necessary for direct login. This was a bit scary until I realized I had used the same password for the Admin login and my personal user login. Lesson learned, keep track of passwords...
While it isn't a deal breaker, it is a royal PITA.
Server completed January, 2010
The server in my network is running Windows Home Server (WHS) and performs four primary functions:
It serves data files and printers to clients (like any server).
It backs up data files and other computers on the network (if I choose to do so, like any WHS).
It streams ripped audio and video to clients (like many WHS).
It records analog and HDTV shows, and streams live and recorded analog and HDTV to clients (unlike most WHS implementations).
The first two services are fairly easy to implement, especially if you use Windows Home Server in a work group for your network. DHCP is handled by a router which also serves as a four port switch and wireless G access point.
The third service can be tougher with media players (little Linux devices, optimized to play streamed audio and video files) and game boxes (like PS3 and XBOX), you may find yourself having to run software on the server to "push" the media stream to the client, possibly while simultaneously transcoding it. With PCs as clients, the server is free of these duties and goes back to simply serving raw data files.
To implement the fourth service, you'll have to place one or more TV tuner cards in the server for recording and serving recorded and live TV. It will also require a program running on the server. I already had SnapSteram's Beyond TV, so I used it. Sage looks to be the other contender, while Windows Media Center will probably have the capability to do this in the next year or two.
Windows Home Server provides a unique way to backup on-site files by simply turning on data duplication for the folders containing the files you want backups of. This requires at least two physical hard drives and will protect the files in the event of a drive failure (it works like mirroring hard drives in a regular server). While drive failures are the most common way "to lose everything". You're still responsible for not deleting the file by mistake, and if you're serious, you'll also want something for off-site storage of the files you really can't afford to loose. A simple USB connected SATA drive can now give you up to 2 TB for this purpose.
I keep a fail-safe copy of my data and my audio rips, updated about every 3 months, using an old drive in a USB ported enclosure.
THE SERVER SOFTARE
I used Windows Home Server (WHS) as the operating system for the server for several reasons.
It is basically the Server 2003 code and stable.
It allows you to increase the storage capacity of the server by simply adding drives to "The Drive Pool". This sounds trivial until you consider; If my hard drive with the music directory is full, and I add another drive, how do I get everything to look in two places for the music? I know that's a pretty simple example, but other cases can be a lot more complicated. With WHS, if you add a 1 TB drive to the drive pool (where the music directory is located), that 1 TB of space will now be available in that directory. You don't have to do anything else to the shares, the places your programs look, etc. Once you try it, you'll really like it.
Simple data backup (basically mirroring) using folder duplication.
It is designed to operate as a "headless" machine, you administer it from remote clients (no monitor, mouse, or keyboard required). It's just a box, located anywhere, accessible from anywhere on your network, nice.
You can access the server, and any of the PCs on your home network you choose, from the Internet. This can be quite useful, and you control the access to the computers on your home network.
Very little networking experience is required, it's easy to set up. This can be a bit of a disadvantage sometimes though. If something goes wrong, you'll find yourself having to learn what is required anyway, and low level access to services is intentionally left out (don't worry, there are very good "Add-In" programs available for access to any of the programs on the server).
THE TUNER FARM
The object here was to get the TV recording duties out of any of the client PCs on the network and onto the server. It isn't that TV recording imposes a heavy load on a PC (it doesn't), it's just that having to reboot occasionally interrupts recordings, and the recording PC really needs to be left on 24/7. Also, as I realized that I wanted to serve the TV content to all of the clients on the network, it seemed much simpler to put the cards on the server so the data was recorded locally, instead of streaming it to the server, then back out again (if you record more than one program at a time, you really don't want to do this, any momentary interruptions in network traffic will cause problems in the recorded program, from drop-outs to possibly corrupted files).
I used Beyond TV (BTV) v4.92 to control three dual tuner cards. I already had the program, all I needed was the client side software, Beyond TV Link for the client computers looking at the server for TV. If you are starting out, you should probably look at Sage TV . These programs are about $80 to $100, and the client software is about $30/license. It appears that Beyond TV is no longer a primary revenue producer for SnapStream and probably won't be developed very far beyond its current state. SnapStream is still supporting BTV and its Electronic Programming Guide (EPG). The next big step appears to be accommodating these types of programs in Windows 7's Media Center. Sage just might be recognized and integrated into Window's Media Center, but I doubt if BTV will.
I was initially worried about all sorts of problems when trying to run a TV tuner farm on a dedicated server, but it turned out quite nicely and presented no real problems at all. I used two of the Hauppauge 2250 hybrid tuner cards and an older AverTV M780 card. These are all dual tuner cards, with MP2 encoders in hardware (they put almost no strain on the CPU when operating). They produce recordings of excellent quality, both video and audio. I'm not referring to just analog TV recordings, but HDTV recordings that rival BluRay movies in clarity and audio quality.
The TV system is configured as four QAM tuners to record high definition content (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CW, and PBS) broadcast over Cox's cable network in Oklahoma City, and two analog tuners for recording standard quality analog content (USA, FX, TBS, SyFy etc.)
To test the Server/Tuner Farm system after I built it, I recorded high definition content from four sources and two analog shows simultaneously. While recording, I played two HD recordings. This load on the server pushed CPU usage to peaks as high as 70%, and averaged less than 30%. While this may sound absurdly light to uninitiated users of TV recording systems, I assure you, it isn't. The cards are doing the work on the analog channels, and high def recording is really a matter of directing the digital data stream to a file instead of a decoding device for display on a TV.
I did find that I needed a signal amplifier for the 4-way split at the tuner card inputs. The analog signals were very bad, and I was seeing occasional drop-outs in the digital media. This Electroline drop amp is one of the better ones. I found it for about $85 at Parts Express.
THE HARDWARE
Performance
I did use a dual core Celeron E3200 CPU and two GB of ram on a good motherboard to help handle the extra load of TV recording, but I didn't need to go to high performance (i.e., expensive) parts to get the level of performance needed for this application.
Noise
I used an Antec 300 tower case with large (140 mm and 120 mm) top, and top rear mounted fans. The case also bottom-mounts a Sea Sonic 500 W power supply. I was trying to build something that wouldn't sound like a jet taking off in my study. There's plenty of room for a large CPU heat sink, and it can be safely operated without its fan. The video card is the cheapest passively cooled card I could buy (it does nothing after you build the server). I also used Western Digital's 5400 RPM "green drives" with 32 MB caches.
All of this was an effort to put a machine in the room with me that I can't hear six feet away. It worked out well. With everything (including AC and the ceiling fan) turned off, the server can be heard if you concentrate. Hard drive activity is the loudest activity in the machine, and a special service in WHS called Drive Extender Migrator will cause incredible amounts of head seek activity for several minutes every hour. This actually produces more noise than I've ever heard a PC make. It can be controlled by using Windows Scheduling Service to turn this service off when you expect to use the server for streaming, or (in my case) be in the same room with it to reduce noise.
I use an APC 1000 VA battery back-up for the server and the PC in the room. It has a small fan in it that is way louder than either PC. The foam actually helps with the noise, but I had to be careful not to restrict the air flow from the PC and UPS to the room.
The attachment details the server components, TV cards, and software installation.
Jay R. Taylor
March 2010
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