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PCI-E Analog Card

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brent at brentnorris

Jan 22, 2010, 12:55 PM

Post #1 of 39 (2282 views)
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PCI-E Analog Card

My school is talking about building backend that could handle recording
around 10 analog cable channels at a time. When we started talking
about it, the PVR500s seemed like our best bet, but our new Dell server
only has PCI-E slots.

We started looking at different cards, but a lot of them don't seem to
be supported in Linux or maybe only the digital side is. What we would
really like is a dual tuner analog card, but those have started to get
scarce so we could work with any card that took analog as long as it
works in Linux and MythTV.

Does anyone have any good information on which cards would be the best
to look at?

Thanks
Brent
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bkamen at benjammin

Jan 22, 2010, 1:03 PM

Post #2 of 39 (2228 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On 1/22/2010 2:55 PM, Brent Norris wrote:
> My school is talking about building backend that could handle recording
> around 10 analog cable channels at a time. When we started talking about
> it, the PVR500s seemed like our best bet, but our new Dell server only
> has PCI-E slots.
>
> We started looking at different cards, but a lot of them don't seem to
> be supported in Linux or maybe only the digital side is. What we would
> really like is a dual tuner analog card, but those have started to get
> scarce so we could work with any card that took analog as long as it
> works in Linux and MythTV.
>
> Does anyone have any good information on which cards would be the best
> to look at?

Does the CATV company do the same channels of interest in digital?

-Ben
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brent at brentnorris

Jan 22, 2010, 1:09 PM

Post #3 of 39 (2225 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On 1/22/2010 3:03 PM, Ben Kamen wrote:
>
> Does the CATV company do the same channels of interest in digital?
>
> -Ben

We don't know right now. That is still on our list of stuff to check.
It is mediacom cable. In that situation though we would probably have
to deal with encryption. Since we are a school system, right now we get
the analog cable for free, with no boxes or anything, so we haven't paid
a lot of attention to what they are pushing down the line in digital.

Brent
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bkamen at benjammin

Jan 22, 2010, 1:19 PM

Post #4 of 39 (2227 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On 1/22/2010 3:09 PM, Brent Norris wrote:
>
> We don't know right now. That is still on our list of stuff to check. It
> is mediacom cable. In that situation though we would probably have to
> deal with encryption. Since we are a school system, right now we get the
> analog cable for free, with no boxes or anything, so we haven't paid a
> lot of attention to what they are pushing down the line in digital.

The reason I ask is because of the fact that they mux a lot of channels onto a single
frequency.

Maybe the more savvy guys here can correct me - but I'm thinking instead of needing 10 analog tuners, if the CATV folks have more than one channel of interest available on a single analog freq, then a single digital tuner can record those multiple streams for you.

First, it's a matter of finding out what digital channels (if any) are available to you.

-Ben
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fairlane at springcom

Jan 22, 2010, 3:33 PM

Post #5 of 39 (2216 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

Brent Norris wrote:
> My school is talking about building backend that could handle
> recording around 10 analog cable channels at a time. When we started
> talking about it, the PVR500s seemed like our best bet, but our new
> Dell server only has PCI-E slots.
>
> We started looking at different cards, but a lot of them don't seem to
> be supported in Linux or maybe only the digital side is. What we
> would really like is a dual tuner analog card, but those have started
> to get scarce so we could work with any card that took analog as long
> as it works in Linux and MythTV.
>
> Does anyone have any good information on which cards would be the best
> to look at?
>
> Thanks
> Brent
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Wow, that's gonna be a busy system. If you truly need 10 analog
concurrent channels, go PVR-500's on a motherboard with 5 pci slots.
I'm not sure how many concurrent streams you can get over 133 Mbits
though. Probably you'll be fine.
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bkamen at benjammin

Jan 22, 2010, 3:39 PM

Post #6 of 39 (2217 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On 1/22/2010 5:33 PM, Mark wrote:
> Wow, that's gonna be a busy system. If you truly need 10 analog
> concurrent channels, go PVR-500's on a motherboard with 5 pci slots.
> I'm not sure how many concurrent streams you can get over 133 Mbits
> though. Probably you'll be fine.

If the included sites hold true:

PCI is about 132MB/s (bytes, not bits)

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/buses/funcBandwidth-c.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI

Regards,

-Ben

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fairlane at springcom

Jan 22, 2010, 3:43 PM

Post #7 of 39 (2216 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

Ben Kamen wrote:
>
> If the included sites hold true:
>
> PCI is about 132MB/s (bytes, not bits)
>
> http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/buses/funcBandwidth-c.html
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI
Sorry, that's what I meant. With overhead, throughput is more likely to
max out around 100 MB/s.
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beww at beww

Jan 22, 2010, 3:52 PM

Post #8 of 39 (2218 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On Friday 22 January 2010 04:33:09 pm Mark wrote:

> Wow, that's gonna be a busy system. If you truly need 10 analog
> concurrent channels, go PVR-500's on a motherboard with 5 pci slots.
> I'm not sure how many concurrent streams you can get over 133 Mbits
> though. Probably you'll be fine.

You'll want to make disk I/O doesn't become a bottleneck. Certainly don't try
to use USB-connected drives. USB may theoretically be able to handle the speed
required, but USB systems somehow never live up to their performance claims.

You'll want fast drives, and you may consider a RAID system that will increase
performance (RAID0 or a variant thereof that spreads the R/W load over several
drives).

I'd go with a server class motherboard for a system like you describe, or even
multiple systems capturing 5 channels per machine.

An older SCSI-based server might work for you, they can be had relatively
cheaply these days (at least compared to their original cost). SCSI drives are
also available cheaply, but large capacity SCSI drives are expensive. You
might look into SAS as well.

Don't try to cheap out, a system like you want will have to perform very well,
and you generally have to pay for that. Disk I/O will be more important than
CPU power, and that's usually found in server machines.
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fairlane at springcom

Jan 22, 2010, 3:57 PM

Post #9 of 39 (2219 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

Brian Wood wrote:
> You'll want to make disk I/O doesn't become a bottleneck. Certainly don't try
> to use USB-connected drives. USB may theoretically be able to handle the speed
> required, but USB systems somehow never live up to their performance claims.
>
> You'll want fast drives, and you may consider a RAID system that will increase
> performance (RAID0 or a variant thereof that spreads the R/W load over several
> drives).
>
> I'd go with a server class motherboard for a system like you describe, or even
> multiple systems capturing 5 channels per machine.
>
> An older SCSI-based server might work for you, they can be had relatively
> cheaply these days (at least compared to their original cost). SCSI drives are
> also available cheaply, but large capacity SCSI drives are expensive. You
> might look into SAS as well.
>
> Don't try to cheap out, a system like you want will have to perform very well,
> and you generally have to pay for that. Disk I/O will be more important than
> CPU power, and that's usually found in server machines.
>
Those are good points. I'm guessing you'll want a sata or sas system
with a pci-e or pci-x controller with as
many ports as you can get. There's some good threads on this over at
AVSforums. media servers.
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bkamen at benjammin

Jan 22, 2010, 4:03 PM

Post #10 of 39 (2214 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On 1/22/2010 5:52 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
>
> An older SCSI-based server might work for you, they can be had relatively
> cheaply these days (at least compared to their original cost). SCSI drives are
> also available cheaply, but large capacity SCSI drives are expensive. You
> might look into SAS as well.
>
> Don't try to cheap out, a system like you want will have to perform very well,
> and you generally have to pay for that. Disk I/O will be more important than
> CPU power, and that's usually found in server machines.

Amen -- and when RAID is mentioned in the same discussion as performance, consider HARDWARE based RAID vs RAID done in the operating system's software.

-Ben
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beww at beww

Jan 22, 2010, 4:09 PM

Post #11 of 39 (2217 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On Friday 22 January 2010 04:57:28 pm Mark wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
> > You'll want to make disk I/O doesn't become a bottleneck. Certainly don't
> > try to use USB-connected drives. USB may theoretically be able to handle
> > the speed required, but USB systems somehow never live up to their
> > performance claims.
> >
> > You'll want fast drives, and you may consider a RAID system that will
> > increase performance (RAID0 or a variant thereof that spreads the R/W
> > load over several drives).
> >
> > I'd go with a server class motherboard for a system like you describe, or
> > even multiple systems capturing 5 channels per machine.
> >
> > An older SCSI-based server might work for you, they can be had relatively
> > cheaply these days (at least compared to their original cost). SCSI
> > drives are also available cheaply, but large capacity SCSI drives are
> > expensive. You might look into SAS as well.
> >
> > Don't try to cheap out, a system like you want will have to perform very
> > well, and you generally have to pay for that. Disk I/O will be more
> > important than CPU power, and that's usually found in server machines.
>
> Those are good points. I'm guessing you'll want a sata or sas system
> with a pci-e or pci-x controller with as
> many ports as you can get. There's some good threads on this over at
> AVSforums. media servers.

Depending on how much total storage is needed, an older PCI-X type server with
SCSI drives might be adequate, and would certainly be cheaper than a new SAS
machine. Machines of that type are power hogs by today's standards, but that
might not be a big factor if running in an institutional environment with
demand billing.

I'm not suggesting these particular machines or the vendor, but this is an
example of the prices on older SCSI servers:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ML570-XEON20X2-1R&cat=SYS

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DL580G2-XEON30X2-R&cat=SYS

Going to 15K RPM drives would provide even faster I/O.

Older Sun machines are also available used these days.

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beww at beww

Jan 22, 2010, 4:18 PM

Post #12 of 39 (2217 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On Friday 22 January 2010 05:03:00 pm Ben Kamen wrote:
> On 1/22/2010 5:52 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
> > An older SCSI-based server might work for you, they can be had relatively
> > cheaply these days (at least compared to their original cost). SCSI
> > drives are also available cheaply, but large capacity SCSI drives are
> > expensive. You might look into SAS as well.
> >
> > Don't try to cheap out, a system like you want will have to perform very
> > well, and you generally have to pay for that. Disk I/O will be more
> > important than CPU power, and that's usually found in server machines.
>
> Amen -- and when RAID is mentioned in the same discussion as performance,
> consider HARDWARE based RAID vs RAID done in the operating system's
> software.

Agreed. I'm glad you put it the way you did, because *all* RAID is "software",
it's just a question of where that software is running :-)

I've bought several older servers, some of them came with high-end RAID cards,
even though the sales material failed to mention them, no complaint from me of
course.

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bkamen at benjammin

Jan 22, 2010, 4:38 PM

Post #13 of 39 (2194 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On 1/22/2010 6:09 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
>
> I'm not suggesting these particular machines or the vendor, but this is an
> example of the prices on older SCSI servers:
>
> http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ML570-XEON20X2-1R&cat=SYS
>
> http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DL580G2-XEON30X2-R&cat=SYS

Now that you point those out -- I forgot we were thinking high-avail too.

So those redundant supplies -- very important. Make sure you can get spares.
My web/mail/dns server runs on an old compaq proliant. Not fast, but dual supplies and
easy to replace hard disks.

> Older Sun machines are also available used these days.

I have a sparc ultra5 in specialty 2U rack case free for anyone who wants to pay shipping.
Has quad Ethernet (was firewall once upon a time at an old company I worked that went dotBUST).

I think the CPU is 330MHz and it has like 512MB RAM (I'd have to power it up again).

-Ben
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fmerrill1 at gmail

Jan 22, 2010, 4:47 PM

Post #14 of 39 (2191 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

This thread seems to have gone off course based upon what the OP
originally indicated and asked about:

"our new Dell server only has PCI-E slots."

He already has a server.

And:

"We started looking at different cards, but a lot of them don't seem
to be supported in Linux or maybe only the digital side is. What we
would really like is a dual tuner analog card, but those have started
to get scarce so we could work with any card that took analog as long
as it works in Linux and MythTV."

Again, he only has PCIe slots.

Frank
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beww at beww

Jan 22, 2010, 5:21 PM

Post #15 of 39 (2192 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On Friday 22 January 2010 05:47:20 pm Frank Merrill wrote:
> This thread seems to have gone off course based upon what the OP
> originally indicated and asked about:
>
> "our new Dell server only has PCI-E slots."
>
> He already has a server.
>
> And:
>
> "We started looking at different cards, but a lot of them don't seem
> to be supported in Linux or maybe only the digital side is. What we
> would really like is a dual tuner analog card, but those have started
> to get scarce so we could work with any card that took analog as long
> as it works in Linux and MythTV."
>
> Again, he only has PCIe slots.

Thanks, I missed that.

That doesn't mean that USB and firewire solutions (if there are any that fit
here) shouldn't be topical, and the general requirements for a 10-channel
machine are germain.

It might turn out to be cheaper in the short term to try and find PVR-500's on
Ebay, and spend $300 on a server machine that can use them, at least until the
PCIe options get better, or at least more numerous. Might actually cost less
than ten channels worth of new PCIe capture cards.

I think USB isn't usable, at least not for more than 1 or 2 channels. I'm not
sure if Firewire is an option, I certainly read about a lot of problems with
it here, but if the cable provider eventually goes all digital, as most of
them are, and you need an STB for each channel anyway...

I agree with what was said here earlier, I'd check to see what's on the wire
in QAM format before proceeding much farther, I'd also try to get some sort of
long-term commitment from the cable company, you wouldn't want to buy a lot of
analog hardware only to have it become useless.
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brent at brentnorris

Jan 24, 2010, 6:35 AM

Post #16 of 39 (2027 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On 1/22/2010 5:52 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
> On Friday 22 January 2010 04:33:09 pm Mark wrote:
>
>> Wow, that's gonna be a busy system. If you truly need 10 analog
>> concurrent channels, go PVR-500's on a motherboard with 5 pci slots.
>> I'm not sure how many concurrent streams you can get over 133 Mbits
>> though. Probably you'll be fine.

<snikp>

Yeah we aren't being cheap about it. We have several hard drive
systems. The box itself is a brand new dell server with onboard RAID.
We also have two other servers that will most likely be storage
backends. It will be unlikely that there will be 10 streams going on at
any one time, but we are building big to cover the chance. Plus we have
a company called Vbrick that is wanting to sell us a 10 channel system
for a lot of money, so I am specing a system of equal capacity. Their
encoders don't change channels or anything so you have to have tuners in
front of them, and for that reason alone I am more interested in mythtv
to run it.

I can use an old server that has PCI slots, but this new deal server is
the one that was purchased for this project, so I would like to work
with it if I can.

Brent
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anothersname at googlemail

Jan 24, 2010, 10:01 AM

Post #17 of 39 (2019 views)
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Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

2010/1/24 Brent Norris <brent [at] brentnorris>:
> On 1/22/2010 5:52 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
>>
>> On Friday 22 January 2010 04:33:09 pm Mark wrote:
>>
>>> Wow, that's gonna be a busy system. �If you truly need 10 analog
>>> concurrent channels, go PVR-500's on a motherboard with 5 pci slots.
>>> I'm not sure how many concurrent streams you can get over 133 Mbits
>>> though. �Probably you'll be fine.
>
> <snikp>
>
> Yeah we aren't being cheap about it. �We have several hard drive systems.
> �The box itself is a brand new dell server with onboard RAID. We also have
> two other servers that will most likely be storage backends. �It will be
> unlikely that there will be 10 streams going on at any one time, but we are
> building big to cover the chance. �Plus we have a company called Vbrick that
> is wanting to sell us a 10 channel system for a lot of money, so I am
> specing a system of equal capacity. �Their encoders don't change channels or
> anything so you have to have tuners in front of them, and for that reason
> alone I am more interested in mythtv to run it.
>
> I can use an old server that has PCI slots, but this new deal server is the
> one that was purchased for this project, so I would like to work with it if
> I can.
>
> Brent
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

Brent

One solution is to go for a motherboard like an Asus P5WDG2 Pro which
supports PCI-X slots. The bus structure of the board splits the PCI
slots from the PCI-X slots (you can plug a Hauppauge 500 into a PCI-X
slot because I do) and you shouldn't get bus saturation.

I run a backend with 2 dual terrestrial and 3 satellite feeds (all
digital though) but with multirec that's 8 terrestrial and 6 satellite
on that board. The most I've had recording was two HiDef channels at
about 8gb per hour, 3 satellite channels at about 4.5GB per hour and 6
terrestrial at about 1.6GB per hour all at the same time. With the
loading split it worked like a charm.

It is a quad core processor with 4 hard disks to spread the recording
load as well.

Have fun
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beww at beww

Jan 24, 2010, 10:13 AM

Post #18 of 39 (2021 views)
Permalink

Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On Sunday 24 January 2010 11:01:00 am Another Sillyname wrote:
> 2010/1/24 Brent Norris <brent [at] brentnorris>:
> One solution is to go for a motherboard like an Asus P5WDG2 Pro which
> supports PCI-X slots. The bus structure of the board splits the PCI
> slots from the PCI-X slots (you can plug a Hauppauge 500 into a PCI-X
> slot because I do) and you shouldn't get bus saturation.
>
> I run a backend with 2 dual terrestrial and 3 satellite feeds (all
> digital though) but with multirec that's 8 terrestrial and 6 satellite
> on that board. The most I've had recording was two HiDef channels at
> about 8gb per hour, 3 satellite channels at about 4.5GB per hour and 6
> terrestrial at about 1.6GB per hour all at the same time. With the
> loading split it worked like a charm.
>
> It is a quad core processor with 4 hard disks to spread the recording
> load as well.

I agree with you, I have many PCI-X server boards, they can be had cheaply
today, and perform very well, though they do draw a lot of watts (or rather
the CPUs that fit into them do).

But the OP wants to use a new server, with PCIe slots, so let's see what we
can find to help him do that.

If power consumption is a factor, this will probably be better for him.

Looking at his situation, I think the main thing is to be certain what sort of
signals the cable company sending him, and how that might change in the
future.

Nobody wants to make a substantial investment in hardware and time, only to
have to re-do it when the cable company decides to go all digital.

If it were me, I'd start by sitting down with a cable company exec, and finding
out what their plans might be, assuming they even know.

Since his new server has gigabit NICs, perhaps multiple HDHRs would work, if
the channels he wants are available as clear QAM, and will continue to be.
This will remove any dependency on a particular type of slot.
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anothersname at googlemail

Jan 24, 2010, 10:38 AM

Post #19 of 39 (2006 views)
Permalink

Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

2010/1/24 Brian Wood <beww [at] beww>:
> On Sunday 24 January 2010 11:01:00 am Another Sillyname wrote:
>> 2010/1/24 Brent Norris <brent [at] brentnorris>:
>> One solution is to go for a motherboard like an Asus P5WDG2 Pro which
>> supports PCI-X slots. �The bus structure of the board splits the PCI
>> slots from the PCI-X slots (you can plug a Hauppauge 500 into a PCI-X
>> slot because I do) and you shouldn't get bus saturation.
>>
>> I run a backend with 2 dual terrestrial and 3 satellite feeds (all
>> digital though) but with multirec that's 8 terrestrial and 6 satellite
>> on that board. �The most I've had recording was two HiDef channels at
>> about 8gb per hour, 3 satellite channels at about 4.5GB per hour and 6
>> terrestrial at about 1.6GB per hour all at the same time. �With the
>> loading split it worked like a charm.
>>
>> It is a quad core processor with 4 hard disks to spread the recording
>> load as well.
>
> I agree with you, I have many PCI-X server boards, they can be had cheaply
> today, and perform very well, though they do draw a lot of watts (or rather
> the CPUs that fit into them do).
>
> But the OP wants to use a new server, with PCIe slots, so let's see what we
> can find to help him do that.
>
> If power consumption is a factor, this will probably be better for him.
>
> Looking at his situation, I think the main thing is to be certain what sort of
> signals the cable company sending him, and how that might change in the
> future.
>
> Nobody wants to make a substantial investment in hardware and time, only to
> have to re-do it when the cable company decides to go all digital.
>
> If it were me, I'd start by sitting down with a cable company exec, and finding
> out what their plans might be, assuming they even know.
>
> Since his new server has gigabit NICs, perhaps multiple HDHRs would work, if
> the channels he wants are available as clear QAM, and will continue to be.
> This will remove any dependency on a particular type of slot.
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

Well in that case...

Asus P6T6 or even better P6T7 (the 7 has a pretty clever bus
distribution system IIRC).

But by definition that's still going to suck power.

I missed the start of this conversation, any chance you could recap
what exactly you're trying to do and the reasoning behind it....My
system has a single backend as described above but feeds up to 10
frontends (some are laptops) so I've got some experience in this area.

Also I use Asterisk with 7970's , would never go back to normal
phones. Have you thought of using bluetooth rather then your existing
handsets and get the system to redirect when you walk into the house
(bluetooth scanner to detect the MAC in your mobile phone), works
pretty well (not quite perfectly yet!!).
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anothersname at googlemail

Jan 24, 2010, 10:47 AM

Post #20 of 39 (2005 views)
Permalink

Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

2010/1/24 Another Sillyname <anothersname [at] googlemail>:
> 2010/1/24 Brian Wood <beww [at] beww>:
>> On Sunday 24 January 2010 11:01:00 am Another Sillyname wrote:
>>> 2010/1/24 Brent Norris <brent [at] brentnorris>:
>>> One solution is to go for a motherboard like an Asus P5WDG2 Pro which
>>> supports PCI-X slots. �The bus structure of the board splits the PCI
>>> slots from the PCI-X slots (you can plug a Hauppauge 500 into a PCI-X
>>> slot because I do) and you shouldn't get bus saturation.
>>>
>>> I run a backend with 2 dual terrestrial and 3 satellite feeds (all
>>> digital though) but with multirec that's 8 terrestrial and 6 satellite
>>> on that board. �The most I've had recording was two HiDef channels at
>>> about 8gb per hour, 3 satellite channels at about 4.5GB per hour and 6
>>> terrestrial at about 1.6GB per hour all at the same time. �With the
>>> loading split it worked like a charm.
>>>
>>> It is a quad core processor with 4 hard disks to spread the recording
>>> load as well.
>>
>> I agree with you, I have many PCI-X server boards, they can be had cheaply
>> today, and perform very well, though they do draw a lot of watts (or rather
>> the CPUs that fit into them do).
>>
>> But the OP wants to use a new server, with PCIe slots, so let's see what we
>> can find to help him do that.
>>
>> If power consumption is a factor, this will probably be better for him.
>>
>> Looking at his situation, I think the main thing is to be certain what sort of
>> signals the cable company sending him, and how that might change in the
>> future.
>>
>> Nobody wants to make a substantial investment in hardware and time, only to
>> have to re-do it when the cable company decides to go all digital.
>>
>> If it were me, I'd start by sitting down with a cable company exec, and finding
>> out what their plans might be, assuming they even know.
>>
>> Since his new server has gigabit NICs, perhaps multiple HDHRs would work, if
>> the channels he wants are available as clear QAM, and will continue to be.
>> This will remove any dependency on a particular type of slot.
>> _______________________________________________
>> mythtv-users mailing list
>> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
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>>
>
> Well in that case...
>
> Asus P6T6 or even better P6T7 (the 7 has a pretty clever bus
> distribution system IIRC).
>
> But by definition that's still going to suck power.
>
> I missed the start of this conversation, any chance you could recap
> what exactly you're trying to do and the reasoning behind it....My
> system has a single backend as described above but feeds up to 10
> frontends (some are laptops) so I've got some experience in this area.
>
> Also I use Asterisk with 7970's , would never go back to normal
> phones. �Have you thought of using bluetooth rather then your existing
> handsets and get the system to redirect when you walk into the house
> (bluetooth scanner to detect the MAC in your mobile phone), works
> pretty well (not quite perfectly yet!!).
>

Don't worry about the recap I had it in my bin and pulled it out.

I'm a little confused.

You seem to be talking about over the air muxing of analog channels?
My understanding of US OTA broadcast was it was using DVB-T where
cahnnels were muxed (so a HVR 2250 card would be ideal). I'm not
aware of any analog OTA muxing?
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fairlane at springcom

Jan 24, 2010, 1:39 PM

Post #21 of 39 (1989 views)
Permalink

Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

Brent Norris wrote:
>
> Yeah we aren't being cheap about it. We have several hard drive
> systems. The box itself is a brand new dell server with onboard RAID.
> We also have two other servers that will most likely be storage
> backends. It will be unlikely that there will be 10 streams going on
> at any one time, but we are building big to cover the chance. Plus we
> have a company called Vbrick that is wanting to sell us a 10 channel
> system for a lot of money, so I am specing a system of equal
> capacity. Their encoders don't change channels or anything so you
> have to have tuners in front of them, and for that reason alone I am
> more interested in mythtv to run it.
>
> I can use an old server that has PCI slots, but this new deal server
> is the one that was purchased for this project, so I would like to
> work with it if I can.
>
> Brent
>
As Brian stated, I *seriously* doubt you can do this with USB tuners,
and that many streams without hardware compression will bring the most
potent server to it's knees,
so if you have to use that Dell server, and if you have at least one PCI
slot, I'd seriously recommend looking at a PCI expansion chassis. They
can be had off Ebay for reasonable
money used, like 300 or less. Look for Magma, Avid, SBS, and others. I
have one of those on my backend, with two PVR250's in it, and it works
just fine. You can get up to 13 slot
versions, but that might be a bit much PCI throughput. I think I paid
about $150 for my chassis, and another $125 for the host card and
cable. I'd be looking hard at your cable service,
and seeing if you can get digital channels too. That would simplify
things I think. It's a lot easier to dump streams to the hard disk than
to compress them in CPU cycles and then save them.
Make SURE your I/O is up to snuff. A fast disk controller and disks
would be a big help. If you don't have PCI slots at all, I'm told that
Magma at least has a PCI-e host card that can talk
to it's PCI expansion chassis line, you'll probably pay some mucho coin
for it though. You'll probably find it's cheaper to go with older
hardware and PCI capture cards I think though...

Good luck
Mark
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hmcgregor at biggeeks

Jan 24, 2010, 2:06 PM

Post #22 of 39 (1989 views)
Permalink

Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 1/24/10 2:39 PM, Mark wrote:
> As Brian stated, I *seriously* doubt you can do this with USB
> tuners, and that many streams without hardware compression will
> bring the most potent server to it's knees,
> so if you have to use that Dell server, and if you have at least one
> PCI slot, I'd seriously recommend looking at a PCI expansion
> chassis. They can be had off Ebay for reasonable
> money used, like 300 or less. Look for Magma, Avid, SBS, and
> others. I have one of those on my backend, with two PVR250's in it,
> and it works just fine. You can get up to 13 slot
> versions, but that might be a bit much PCI throughput. I think I
> paid about $150 for my chassis, and another $125 for the host card
> and cable. I'd be looking hard at your cable service,
> and seeing if you can get digital channels too. That would simplify
> things I think. It's a lot easier to dump streams to the hard disk
> than to compress them in CPU cycles and then save them.
> Make SURE your I/O is up to snuff. A fast disk controller and disks
> would be a big help. If you don't have PCI slots at all, I'm told
> that Magma at least has a PCI-e host card that can talk
> to it's PCI expansion chassis line, you'll probably pay some mucho
> coin for it though. You'll probably find it's cheaper to go with
> older hardware and PCI capture cards I think though...

I have not tried this product personally, but it may be worth looking
at, it gives you 4 PCI slots off of one PCI-e x1 slot.

https://www.mwave.com/mwave/SkuSearch_v3.asp?scriteria=4430799

http://www.startech.com/item/PEX2PCI4-PCI-Express-to-Four-Slot-PCI-Expansion-Bay.aspx

The mwave site lists linux compatibility, but the manufacturer does not...

Harry

> Good luck
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

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brent at brentnorris

Jan 24, 2010, 2:51 PM

Post #23 of 39 (1975 views)
Permalink

Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

All,
First, thanks for the conversation.

We have extra servers sitting around, if we decide to go the pci route
we have no shortage of chassis and motherboards to plug cards in.

Mediacom is horrible in our area. Sitting down with one of their execs
is probably impossible and even if we did he probably wouldn't know QAM
from SPAM (either the meat or the mail). We will be testing for digital
content probably on Monday, though even then I imagine because mediacom
is so customer unfriendly most of it will be encrypted.

If digital is available and carries what we need, then we will be using
HDHomeruns most likely. SiliconDust's product is top notch and I love
to give them money for it if I need it.

We will be using some OTA stuff as in Kentucky (where my schools are)
they have Kentucky Education Television (KET) which is used in schools a
lot (carrying PBS content as well as other). We have USB tuners for
that from before the HDHR existed.

We have analog cable into all our buildings, and my main question is
what card should I buy to record it if I am looking at doing so in a
board with PCI-e slots. I would like as few cards as possible that are
best supported in Linux and MythTV. We don't need to talk about PCI,
because if that is where I go I will get the PVR500s using the servers I
have.

As far as clients we have around 150 classrooms that could be watching
content from the server and potentially around 700 if every computer in
the district was some how engaged in watching. That is beyond the scale
of this conversation though.

What I really need right now is what type of card should I be looking at
for best support in this PCI-e system that I will be working with at the
start.

Again, thanks for all the conversation.

Brent
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kevin at familyross

Jan 24, 2010, 3:24 PM

Post #24 of 39 (1973 views)
Permalink

Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

Brent Norris wrote:
> What I really need right now is what type of card should I be looking
> at for best support in this PCI-e system that I will be working with
> at the start.

Looking over the linuxtv.org wiki, your requirements narrows down your
choice to one offering, the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800, which has analog
and digital tuner capabilities, the analog portion is supported in
Linux, and it has built-in MPEG2 encoding for analog sources, so your
CPU doesn't have to do it. But you'd need 10 of them, since it only has
one analog tuner per card.

But because it also has a digital tuner built in, if your cable company
goes purely digital, you won't need to buy new hardware.

You may want to do some Googling to make sure people's experience with
the card in Linux with analog tuning is favorable. I've never used the
card myself.

Good luck!
-- Kevin

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beww at beww

Jan 24, 2010, 4:44 PM

Post #25 of 39 (1966 views)
Permalink

Re: PCI-E Analog Card [In reply to]

On Sunday 24 January 2010 04:24:53 pm Kevin Ross wrote:
> Brent Norris wrote:
> > What I really need right now is what type of card should I be looking
> > at for best support in this PCI-e system that I will be working with
> > at the start.
>
> Looking over the linuxtv.org wiki, your requirements narrows down your
> choice to one offering, the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800, which has analog
> and digital tuner capabilities, the analog portion is supported in
> Linux, and it has built-in MPEG2 encoding for analog sources, so your
> CPU doesn't have to do it. But you'd need 10 of them, since it only has
> one analog tuner per card.
>
> But because it also has a digital tuner built in, if your cable company
> goes purely digital, you won't need to buy new hardware.

Unless they decide encrypt it all, in which case if you used an STB for each
channel they would probably output analog, so you'd still be OK.

>
> You may want to do some Googling to make sure people's experience with
> the card in Linux with analog tuning is favorable. I've never used the
> card myself.

Hauppauge has traditionally been pretty Linux friendly, but it doesn't hurt to
check.

Since a system like this is a substantial investment, making sure it is
obsolescence proof is important.
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