Sat System Structure Optimization

[zamar23]

Sat TV & Home Entertainment System Structure Optimization

Was looking around the forum and web, and can't find a detail advice on selecting the whole sat system structure, say from cost-benefit standpoint.

Aiming to target the whole NA Arc, is it better and why to have a motorized, mixed motorized/multifeed on a single dish, stationary multi-dish multifeed, 2-thoroidal or a mixed dish farm type setup? How such choice would affect total system price, including switches, LNBs, etc - approx. numbers?

Is it better to have a PC DVB-Card versus STB Sat Receiver based system, or a mixed PC Card / Sat STB setup, and what are the advantages of such choices? What minimal set of Sat STBs + PC Cards would cover all available in NA sat signal spectrum (assuming subscription is available, or earlier pre-activated old equipment is purchased)?

Are there any cost/choice benefits on increasing number of sat receivers versus distributing already decoded signal from a 2-tuner or 2-3 different receivers around one's home, and using a Radio / IR Universal Remote Control to control a single room multi-equipment setup from any room with a TV Set? Is SMATV system, where every receiver decoded signal is modulated and added to a common coax, a better choice? How it can be controlled from any room?

To summarize, any advice or links regarding overall Sat & OTA & AV home system structure optimization for a family of 3-4? Any good overview links of 2-3 optimal complete system setup solutions for a small house and/or larger condo apartment, including EVERYTHING?

 

[hd fan]

It all depends what you need and what you want to do with it. In my opinion it will always be better to have it motorized rather than several fixed dishes or a few toroidal systems. And of course for more than 1 receiver setups then consider more than 1 motorized system. Depending on how heavy the tv viewing is in the family maybe the dual tuner with a remote tv modulated signal (like the 9242 Bell receiver uses) is not a good option and would be better to have more than 1 single tuner PVR ready receiver instead.

For hobbist like us the PC board solution is better but not for the average family.

For the IR solution it will increase the costs and like I said most dual tuners if not all are pvr ready and depending how often family members need to record and watch at the same time then it will be better to have several single tuner pvrs instead at every tv locally.

In my opinion systems like this should always be custom made depending on the users needs. You could have a family with 4 receivers that watch most of the time spanish shows from Hispasat , in that case you could considered a fixed dish so they flip channels faster back to that bird.

 

[zamar23]

Thanks, I do agree with you on several points.

Are you the only one, who can do a heavy lifting on this broad topic, which is typically one of the very first questions every sat warrior asks?

 

[pendragon]

A lot depends on the family's viewing habits and where they watch. Do the same members watch the same channels off the same satellite(s) in the same location? If so you may be able to have a few mini-systems, each customized for each viewing area. That's about as easy as it can get.

We had six members until one moved off to college, and everyone seemed to want something different. We started with OTA, added a DN subscription and then started throwing up FTA dishes. Each person is after something unique and yet each viewing location can be used for just about anything. This is about the worst one can get.

I saw the tornado coming, so we went with SageTV as the overall unifying component. I've been able to integrate OTA, DN and FTA receivers with a centralized Sage server and a separate media server. That way anyone can watch anything anywhere, and we didn't have to outfit each viewing position with a suite of dedicated receivers. Everything comes out of the pool, and I simply have to make sure there are enough receivers of each kind to handle a nominal worst case.

That means everything ultimately has to stream through a PC. The OTA unit has two tuners and hangs off Ethernet. Nextcom has interfaces for the DN receivers, and we use a collection of USB/PCI receivers for FTA. There is one Sage HD Media Extender at each viewing location, and a universal remote programmed to make each viewing location 'feel' the same, even though a lot of the audio/video components are completely different. At the moment most viewing positions also have a dedicated OTA STB and there is one FTA STB for me to mess with.

FTA has proved to be the hardest to integrate because there are so many satellites and bands. Originally I put up motorized dishes, but the level of integration required is beyond anything off-the-shelf to move everything automatically at the moment. So I largely move the dishes before they are needed. Half a year ago I put up a toroid more out of curiosity than anything else. It worked better than expected, and I am finishing off the wiring to get most, if not all, of the Ku birds coming off a substantial switching matrix into the receiver pool. That will eliminate the positioning problem for Ku at least, and make instant channel access to the Ku birds automatic. It will also make feed hunting very quick. I see no such solution for C-band, because we follow too many satellites. But we will soon have four BUDs running and that will cover most of the overlap in viewing habits.

I am migrating the FTA USB/PCI units to Linux very slowly. At the moment I do all positioning and dish tuning through Linux. I have the Sage spec for writing network encoders, and I expect to ultimately have everything feeding Sage going through Linux. That means I could implement a master that would steer all the C-band dishes and optimize which one is the best choice for a given channel.

 

[zamar23]

I've been able to integrate OTA, DN and FTA receivers with a centralized Sage server and a separate media server. We will soon have four BUDs.

Thanks for very interesting info. Could you eleborate a bit on 2 servers part - why 2, and what Media Server does in your setup, how its connected to what? Also, why do you need 4 BUDs, are they different in any way?

 

[dashaund]

Welcome zamar23!

I'll give you my $0.02. Sounds like you're looking to distribute FTA through the house. Is this to replace cable/DirecTV/DISH or something to that effect? If you're looking to get EVERYTHING you can in EVERY room of the house and everyone be able to watch different things at same time, you're going to need a BUD for every room, because they're all going to have to tune a different satellite at the same time. If what you're wanting to do is watch is two (or more) channels on the same satellite and the same polarity, you can slave the boxes off each other (or you can install a 4x1 DiSEQc switch to take care of the polarity issue...still the same satellite). But putting up multiple BUDs can be a pain and expensive (which I wouldn't recommend setup up a BUD for a first timer...those can be a beast). My advice would be to setup one motorized dish and play with it to see if you can figure what the other rooms would want programming and then setup a fixed dish (if you need multiple satellites, multiple dishes or a toroidal with multiple LNBs) and you can use a switch to feed those signals to the other rooms. You can check out lyngsat.com or the TheList here to see what's up there. As far as subscription services, you'd need to get a BUD and a 4DTV box for most of that. As far as I know, outside of Bell/DirecTV/Dish, there are no other subscription based services available to consumers. But tons of free stuff!

As far as STB vs PC card, the hobbyist have both. STB will get you a large percentage of programming, but the PC card will help you tune in those feeds that the STB can't decode. Just make sure you have a PC with some serious horsepower (I have a 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo that does the job...anything much less than that won't cut it for some of the 30+ Mbps feeds). Only draw back to the PC cards are a) unless you have a cool home theather PC setup, you're stuck watching it on your computer and b) some of the cards don't handle moving the dishes very well.

As far as what is cost beneficial, I say checkout one of the packages from Sadoun. I would definitely go with a 90cm Ku dish and a motor with a QPH-031 LNB. The bigger dish will help a lot to pull in some of those slightly weaker signals and help reduce rain face. The QPH-031 LNB gives you circular and linear reception so you can work all the satellites with one piece of equipment (all of the DBS satellites are circular...for example on 119 you can get NASA TV and some free music channels). Add in a 2x1 DiSEqC and this gives you both circular and linear sides of the LNB on one piece of coax. This gives you access to the full NA arc with one dish, one LNB, and one STB on one piece of coax. Then you can pickup an inexpensive PCI card and slave it off the STB (tune the satelilite with the STB, and tune the frequency with the PCI card). This is the setup I run, works great, great way to get started.

This is the great thing about this hobby is there's no right or wrong way to do things. And you can build on what you have. Everyone's setup is tailored to their needs. But based on your initial post, it sounds like you're really not sure what you need. The setup I gave you will run about $300 + shipping ($235 for the package, $20 for the larger dish, $49 for the QPH-031 LNB) and this will get you started and give you everything Ku has to offer. If you wanna dig deeper you can get a C-band dish and explore even more. It'll take more time and effort (and more money unless you can find one used) to install the dish, but you'll get more out of it. Most of us start with Ku and go from there. Good luck! Feel free to ask all the questions you want, that's what the forums are here for.

 

[zamar23]

On 119 you can get NASA TV and some free music channels

Thanks for a very good and valuable advice! I started this thread, because quality review type advice on how would one approach a Total Home Sat System design is largely missing from any forum picture. But the gap seems to be filling out really well now. What clear music channels one can get on 119? Did you face any major challenges implementing your setup?

Anyone else from FTA wolfs can share own approach to Total FTA Home design, and the problems you faced?

 

[willie8605]

What clear music channels one can get on 119? Did you face any major challenges implementing your setup?

I don't think there are any FTA music channels on 119W. I currently have a Dish Network dish at 119W for NASA and ION and I have scanned it many times when fiddling with stuff but never found any music channels on it.

I have 2 dishes. One Primestar dish and an 18" Dish Network dish. The reason I'm using the Primestar dish is because it was free and the LNB it came with works fine. The reason I decided to use the Dish Network dish for 119W to get NASA and ION is b/c the previous tenants at my house used it for subscription service so it was already mounted and pointed at 119W. The mast I have my Primestar dish mounted on was also given to me. The only thing I have actually bought is my Viewsat receiver, a multiswitch, and a few 75 ohm terminators. So, the reason behind how I have my setup is b/c it was extremely cheap for me to go this way (even if I would have liked to be able to drop a few hundred on a T-90 setup). I think the cheapest setup up is really dependent on your situation. You may be able to post some wanted ads on freecycle.org and get some free stuff like I did, or you may not be able to find anything for free and have to buy everything.

 

[Phottoman]

Just for grins and giggles, I just scanned 119 for FTA channels, came up with a lot of what I already knew was up there, but found a Hawaaiian Music channel at 981 (free, and no $). And sounds pretty good too.

Photto

 

[dashaund]

I don't think there are any FTA music channels on 119W. I currently have a Dish Network dish at 119W for NASA and ION and I have scanned it many times when fiddling with stuff but never found any music channels on it.

My mistake for not checking the updated TheList. There used to be music channels on 119W and now they've disappeared. Thanks for correcting me on that willie8605. Yes, you can pick up some used Primestar or HughesNet or Direcway or other large Ku dishes for free or cheap that someone is looking to get rid of. I chose to purchase mine because I couldn't really find any in my local area after posting some ads and scowering around. If you go with that route, you're probably still going to want to pickup a motor and possibly an LNB unless you get lucky and find a Primestar dish with a working LNB. The only difficulty I ran into while setting up my dish was I couldn't get it to track correctly, and come to find out my mast for the motor/dish was out of plumb Once you have a plumb mast and can hit your true south satellite, you're in good shape, it's a cakewalk after that.

 

[willie8605]

My mistake for not checking the updated TheList. There used to be music channels on 119W and now they've disappeared. Thanks for correcting me on that willie8605. Yes, you can pick up some used Primestar or HughesNet or Direcway or other large Ku dishes for free or cheap that someone is looking to get rid of. I chose to purchase mine because I couldn't really find any in my local area after posting some ads and scowering around. If you go with that route, you're probably still going to want to pickup a motor and possibly an LNB unless you get lucky and find a Primestar dish with a working LNB. The only difficulty I ran into while setting up my dish was I couldn't get it to track correctly, and come to find out my mast for the motor/dish was out of plumb Once you have a plumb mast and can hit your true south satellite, you're in good shape, it's a cakewalk after that.

Looks like phottoman found a music channel on 119W. I'll have to rescan tonight! I have a hughesnet dish with the original LNB arm but missing the LNB and mounting brackets. I'd just give it to you if you pay for shipping. I could ship it from my work where I can get cheaper shipping via UPS or Fedex b/c we ship so much stuff so we get discounts. I have another Hughesnet dish with the original LNB, but it is warped so I hate to give it to anyone b/c I would hate to see anyone get as mad at it as I did when trying to get it working. The LNB works fine though (it won't fit on the other Hughesnet dish, already tried).

 

[zamar23]

Thanks willie8605 for the offer.

I already have a good motorized setup, which gave me a huge headache at the start, but a lot of valuable experience in the outcome, apart from nice TV pics. Thinking of further expansion, as it seems to limit our independent needs despite being carefully crafted. Started looking for more generalized approach, found nothing, hence wanted to gather more shared experience of various approaches to setting up a whole home entertainment system, based on Sat, OTA and Web programming sources.

And so far I see, there're commonalities, but also big differences in how people approach this planning stage, and the info is going to be very useful overall for many, if we try to stay on topic of course.

Still waiting from Pendragon to get back with his experience on integrating Media Server with Sage TV Server. Hope, it allows to use separate speaker sets in any room without the need to have separate receivers there, and play Sat Music channels via any speaker set.

 

[willie8605]

I think that a modulator works good for combining and distributing OTA and SAT signals throughout a house to multiple TVs. The gold sponsors should have some. I know Sadoun does. I'm not really sure about web programming sources...do you mean like streaming video like hulu or fancast or something like watching youtube videos? or are you talking more along the lines of streaming radio?

:EDIT:
Is this something like what you're looking for (see attachment)?

 

[pendragon]

Thanks for very interesting info. Could you eleborate a bit on 2 servers part - why 2, and what Media Server does in your setup, how its connected to what?

It's much worse than I made it sound. We started out with a Mac server about 10 years ago to serve files, email and diskless clients. That has expanded several times since, but it simply got overwhelmed. So I got a RAID card and decided to add a Linux file server to off-load the Mac server.

That was nearly two years ago and in the process we started with Sage, which works better on Windows than Mac or Linux. I set up a dedicated Windows Sage server and it did fine, but it was immediately apparent it could never keep all the media files it recorded because it was running XP (2 TB partition limit).

So even before it was implemented, the Linux server was rethought and I picked up 12 TB of disks to make it the email, file and archived media server (I used to run a sound business and there is a certain amount of high-def sound recordings in addition to video to store). Media files we choose to keep go there, while the Sage server keeps the recently recorded shows that will be dumped after being watched, or are waiting to be edited to final archive form.

That worked well for a year, but the Sage server needed more local storage than XP could handle. In January I upgraded it to Vista and gave it a local 3 TB software RAID5. That sort of works, but Vista has problems and so does the software RAID. In the meantime I never had a chance to migrate the file serving from the Mac to Linux and the Linux server was getting within striking distance of getting full because of archived media.

The Linux server already had a 16 drive RAID5, and I thought why not add another? The PCIe slots were there, but the cabinet was already full with drives . Properly cabling it over to another 16 drive cabinet was going to cost around $600 alone. I had another motherboard sitting idle, and it turns out to be much cheaper to simply set up another Linux file server.

That will become the archived media server with about 24 TB of RAID5. It will also replace our current standalone backup server. Off-loading archived media from the current Linux server will give me enough space to finally complete the migration of non-media file serving from the Mac. I am rolling the Sage server box back to XP and it will have no local recording storage (its current RAID5 drives go toward the 24 TB). In fact it probably won't even have Sage running on it, because I want to run Sage virtualized on my first Linux server and keep the non-archived media recordings there. The XP box will simply host all the drivers and apps to gather the data and record it to the new Sage server (original Linux server). As I migrate the Sage network encoders to Linux, I hope to eliminate the XP box entirely. Is that convoluted enough?

Thus the final lineup will be:

1. XP box running Sage network encoders for all sources. No local storage. May disappear at some point.

2. Original Linux server hosting non-media user files, diskless boot images, email, web and temporary media files (12 TB). Also will run virtualized XP with the Sage server. In time the network encoders will likely end up here, either virtualized under XP or as native Linux.

3. New Linux server hosting archived media (24 TB). Also the server to handle backups to tape since it has the most data.

4. Mac server, mostly to manage the LDAP directory and oversee diskless clients.

5. Two FreeBSD routers for DNS, DHCP, mail exchange, spam filtering, web proxy and firewalling.

Also, why do you need 4 BUDs, are they different in any way?

This is also partly a story of how we got there. We rescued a horizon-to-horizon 3m and added a dual orthomode feed to get both C and Ku, thinking that would be enough with our existing OTA and DN setup. My wife is from Switzerland and soon she was running C-band a lot on the European channels. So up went a motorized 1.2m dedicated to Ku because I was chasing a lot of fine arts.

That still wasn't enough so I put a 1.8m C-band only on the roof to handle the European stuff to free up the 3m. Then the boys got interested in European soccer feeds they couldn't see on DN, and the 3m was tied up again. We rescued a 2.3m in the spring for them, and I thought I would sidecar a circular C-band feed on it for the eastern birds that use it in addition to its linear C-band feed.

But along the way I was modifying the dual ortho feed on the 3m and realizing that it would never do spectacularly on Ku. That begat the toroid to keep the 1.2m from moving all the time. The 3m is now running a single ortho feed (linear), and I experimented with all the available feeds on the 2.3m before deciding to also go single ortho (linear) there, too.

The dual ortho turned out to work quite well with Ku on the 1.8m as it is my only solid BUD. In fact I just modified it to use a prime-focus universal Ku quad LNB for eastern birds below the frequency range of the 1.2m. That leaves the C-band circular ortho feed homeless at the moment.

On top of this a friend rescued another 2.3m and got a GI 920 4DTV receiver, which he kindly gave to me as thanks. I modified this to work with the Nextcom interface and much prefer the quality of master HD feeds to DN. So part of the DN subscription went over to 4DTV, but that is another demand on C-band dishes.

We then rescued a 3.2m mesh which has yet to go up. That will probably end up with a single ortho feed (linear), with the circular C-band ortho sidecared on the 3m.

Thus we have:

1. OTA VHF and UHF roof antennas.

2. One toroid (probably will become two) to handle all North American Ku band.

3. One 1.2m to handle tough North American Ku feeds, hunting and backup to toroids for rain-fade.

4. One 1.8m with C-band for commonly watched Euro channels and universal Ku reception of Atlantic birds that use the lower frequency range that #3 can't pick up.

5. One 2.3m with C-band for soccer, other sports and likely 4DTV.

6. One 3m with both linear and circular C-band, primarily for circular, but secondary for #5 overflow.

7. One 3.2m with linear C-band for tough feeds, hunting and overflow.

I'm sorry if this was more detail than you need, but it shows how a nice little idea can mushroom into a major headache. I was fortunate to realize beforehand how this might happen and designed in excess capacity along the way. There has been added wiring with each step, but little throwaway of switches, infrastructure or placed cables.

 

[willie8605]

Pendragon that is all pretty impressive. I could probably spend a weekend analyzing your setup and learning a ton of new stuff!

 

[pendragon]

Still waiting from Pendragon to get back with his experience on integrating Media Server with Sage TV Server. Hope, it allows to use separate speaker sets in any room without the need to have separate receivers there, and play Sat Music channels via any speaker set.

With a Sage HD media server box in each room where there is a screen/speakers, you can call up any channel live on OTA, DN and FTA and all is automatically set up and routed. Same for recording something in the future or playing it back. At the moment the C-band dishes have to be pointed separately, but Ku through the toroid(s) works directly. No receivers are required except for the server pool. We have OTA HD receivers in some rooms for historical reasons, because they were there before Sage. That saved us buying more pool OTA tuners. The remote control for each room makes all of this transparent to the user.

I think that a modulator works good for combining and distributing OTA and SAT signals throughout a house to multiple TVs. The gold sponsors should have some. I know Sadoun does. I'm not really sure about web programming sources...do you mean like streaming video like hulu or fancast or something like watching youtube videos? or are you talking more along the lines of streaming radio?

Modulators work ok for SD, but there isn't a decent solution for HD. Once you get into FTA you quickly realize how much higher quality even a SD feed can have. I set up a SD modulator system a year ago as an experiment, and even though it was a high end solution with AC3 audio, no one liked it because it wasn't as good as feeding digital over the net to a Sage extender. I haven't taken it down, but it never got used.

FWIW Sage can stream stuff from the web, too. We rarely use this because again the quality is so much lower. We're very much into top flight HD, a curse that not all others in the real world share.

 

[pendragon]

Pendragon that is all pretty impressive. I could probably spend a weekend analyzing your setup and learning a ton of new stuff!

I've been taking photos along the way and published a few threads regarding mods that may help others. When I'm done I'll probably publish a few more and diagram how the overall system works.

 

[willie8605]

Modulators work ok for SD, but there isn't a decent solution for HD. Once you get into FTA you quickly realize how much higher quality even a SD feed can have. I set up a SD modulator system a year ago as an experiment, and even though it was a high end solution with AC3 audio, no one liked it because it wasn't as good as feeding digital over the net to a Sage extender. I haven't taken it down, but it never got used.

Why don't they work for HD? And what makes Sage different from just a home-theater PC? It seems like windows media center or mythbuntu does the same thing, only you don't have to add another box to your stack of entertainment devices by the TV. Today is the first I have heard of this Sagetv device, though, so maybe I'm missing something....

 

[zamar23]

willie8605

Thanks, but several knowledgeable people seems to consider SMATV type signal modulation systems obsolete solution for a Total Home, while possibly better suited for Hotels and Schools, despite ATSC HD Modulators are usually used today. Current solution seems to be LAN-based with a Back-end Server and Media Extenders in each room, like pendragon described, and oncoming solution is just wireless one, still server based.

pendragon

Thanks a lot for your poem. Don't expect me be easily confused, but I'd feel like seating in an Abrams Tank with this kind of setup. I still have to comprehend it by portions so. Still what seems to be missing is integrated speakers solution. From what you described, one can use TV Speakers only for this to work. If one wants to use a stand along speaker set in a room, he should run a speaker wire from the central area, where AV Receiver is located, and it won't be a part of the whole LAN-based distro system, despite possibly being controlled (I assume) from each room via a Remote to Sage or MythTV Front-end device. Only if one uses a PC with Audio Card with integrated amplifier as a Front-end Device in a room, he'll be able to connect speaker wire directly to it.

Another thing, I wanted to ask about, why did you put all the eggs into RAID systems - is it because of high value of the collection, or speed required to record HD programs?

 

[willie8605]

Would wireless speakers work?

:EDIT:

If you have a Sage device in each room, can't you just get a RCA to stereo cable so you can output audio via RCA from the sage device and run the video to the TV and use the RCA to stereo cable for your stand alone speakers?

http://www.cablesdirect.com/prodimages/CC399-12_LR.jpg

Again, I'm not sure about the specifics on the sage devices so I'm not sure if this would work....just a suggestion.