Plain Rcording Service pc

[Delphi]

My current setup is:

 

2 HTPCs.

3 FireDTV C/CI, 2 of wich recieves FTA channels only. The third recieves FTA + TV1000 (I have a subscription card).

Windows XP Pro on both HTPCs

Cabled home network.

 

I am planning to setup a third pc to serve the 2 HTPCs using Recording Service. That's all it should do. Well, I will have my fotos, music and videos on that pc as well.

 

Important to me is that power consumption is low. There is (at least) 2 ways to go:

 

1) A low spec one running 24/7.

2) Using "Go to sleep" policy.

 

Any advice would be much apreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Lars_MQ]

OS : Windows XP is minimum.

 

CPU : only recording and streaming (without transcoding) and serving webpages: 500 mhz CPU is enough.

 

RAM: at least 256 MB better 512+ MB.

 

HD: No limit here, the more the better

[Gioxy]

Important to me is that power consumption is low...

IMO to make a choice you have to consider mainly:

1) how well your cards/stick wake up correctly after a "standby" and after a "hibernation"

2) how many time your PC clients (ehm, read it: the human behind it) can wait the server starts to watch TV (FTA intended): if the server is in "hibernation" it can take ~15-40sec, if in "standby" less than 10sec, only a pair of sec if the server is already on... (I'm sure you already know the difference in power consumption between the different state)

3) how many time the server has (or is presumed) to stay on

4) how many time the server has (or is presumed) to power cicle

 

For me was: 1) ok and ok; 2) no hurry; 3) not so many time in a day; 4) =3; so, for my RS Server, my choice was Hibernation...

 

Other useful considerations:

- less RAM = less time to resume from hibernation

- HD can be joyfully setted to shutdown after 3 min of inactivity (is the Xp minimum, never had a problem with this)

- modern HD can have some interesting "green" additional functions (eg spin reduction, slower arm move, etc)

- video cards can eat a lot of power, a mobo integrated is a good "green" choice

- IMO XP is the better SO for that server: at least DVB cards drivers are more reliable respect item 1) above...

 

[Delphi]

@Lars:

I cannot say I am big surprised, but it is nice to see it on print. I am not sure that people in general are aware how low the required specifications are (no rendering), see:

 

http://www.DVBViewer.info/forum/index.php?...st&p=286581

 

I own an app. 8 years old AMD Atlon 1,5GHz with 1GB ram running XP Pro. This should suffice and it would be tempting to just add a couple of 1TB HD's into that one. However, if I remember right (it's not up and running right now) the motherboard did not support Standby/Hibernation well and it is very power consuming.

To conclude: I will have a new one.

 

@Gioxy:

Considering your advices and since I use FireDTV which wakes up very well but is not supported by vendor any more , I will go for an XP Pro server and use standby (S3). This is acceptable for me compaired to having the server running 24/7.

My HTPC's wakes up just as fast as my LCD screens using Standby (S3). Some extra time should probably be added to wake up the server as well.

 

Thank you both for the answers.

[Lars_MQ]

how low the required specifications are (no rendering)

I wrote it some where else (might have been in the german part, don't remember exactly right now) but all the recording service does ist moving data from A to B (either to a file or a network destination not biggie) and a (really) little bit of processing (EPG takes most of it, then web interface and then the rest (PAT/PMT adjustment etc). We're talking highly optimized routines here

The most part of the RAM usage takes the inmemory EPG database (depending on the amount of channels you can receive, "normal" usage with 2 SATs (19.2E and 23.5E) + 1 x DVB-T is about 64 MB I guess).

 

It should ( if the DVB drivers can do it) work without problems with CPU energy saving and so on. It was no joke, the service WILL work with a 500 mhz PIII PC and several DVB cards and clients.