How would my server handle the InfiniTV 4 card?

[FeloniusMonkey]

I have a Acer EasyStore H340 with the following specs:
Processor Intel® Atom™ Processor 230 1.6Ghz
Chipset Intel 945GC Express Chipset and ICH7R
SATA Hard Disk Bus
2 GB DDR2 unbuffered SDRAM
Gigabit Ethernet
200W Power
1 half-height PCI-E slot (not advertised, but it's there, and it's usable)
Ubuntu Server 10 (Maverick) (running headless)

At the moment, I use the server only for weekly workstation backups and DLNA-- it serves up pictures, video, and music for two HTPC clients (on-demand, of course).
I plan to use this as my lone cableCARD tuner and DVR, and access it with several HTPC's around the house (via Mythbuntu/XBMC/etc).

Given this information, how would you expect the server to handle the added load of the InfiniTV 4 card? Bear in mind that I'm running the server headless to keep the memory usage low.

I'm a bit confused about just how much "work" needs to be done in the entire processing of a channel stream. I know the server would need to decode each stream, and repackage it for each client. But is this process accelerated by the hardware of the card itself, am I limited by my server's CPU? Would the USB version perform any better for me?

First post, so please take it easy on me

Thanks!

[barnabas1969]

1) Your server is under-powered for use with a CableCARD tuner. Don't use an Atom processor. See Ceton's recommended minimum hardware configuration here (click the "Requirements" tab at the top of the page).
2) You cannot get copy-protected content into Myth or XBMC. You must use Windows Media Center for this. It is possible to use some CableCARD tuners to get the copy-freely content into Myth, but you cannot watch copy-protected content without Media Center.
3) The copy-protected shows can only be played on the PC where they were recorded, or using an extender for Windows Media Center like the Xbox360, Ceton Echo (coming soon), the HP X280N, or the Linksys DMA-2100/DMA-2200.

If you plan to use one of these tuners with Windows Media Center, the recommendations are:
A) You need one CPU core per extender that will be in use simultaneously.
B) You need 2GB of RAM minimum, plus another 1GB of RAM for each extender that you plan to run simultaneously.

I can vouch for the Intel Core i3/i5/i7 processors. They work great for Windows Media Center. I've also tried it with the AMD "Phenom II" X4 processor. It works fine too.

EDIT: Edited to make the corrections suggested by Richard.

[foxwood]

It should be noted that using the Ceton card doesn't exactly tax even a 1st generation i3, but an Atom 230 has a benchmark score of barely 10% of an i3.

If you had a ceton card handy, it might be fun to try it out, but I wouldn't spend the money and go through the hassle with the cable company on the off chance that it might work in this particular rig. If you had one of the 2nd or 3rd generation D atoms, you could probably get away with it, but I wouldn't even try with a 330.

And, as barnabas points out, you'll need Windows 7 Media Center if your Cable provider applies Copy Protection to the channels you are interested in.

[richard1980]

I agree with the above, except for this (I've edited to make it correct):

2) You cannot get encrypted copy protected channels content into Myth or XBMC. You must use Windows Media Center for this. It is possible to use some CableCARD tuners to get the non-encrypted copy-freely channels content into Myth, but you cannot watch encrypted copy protected channels content without Media Center.

There's a difference between encrypted and copy protected.

[FeloniusMonkey]

Thank you for all these replies. I want to reiterate that Windows is definitely out of the picture. All of my HTPCs are Linux, and I like it that way. Had I intended to go with Windows, I would already understand that my server falls short of the Ceton's posted hardware requirements. The reason I posted is because I haven't seen any information about whether Ceton's hardware requirements are any looser under a headless Linux server.

I know all about the CCI flags, which is why I'm getting FIOS. With very few exceptions, FIOS marks its channels Copy Freely. I don't plan on getting HBO or Cinemax, so I don't need to be concerned limitations due to copy-protection.

Given that I'm definitely going with Linux, can I get away with using my Atom CPU, or is it definitely out of the picture? After all, Myth is extremely lightweight compared to WMC. The server would not need to drive the environment for each HTPC-- it would only provide program data and streams. The impression I'm getting so far is "probably won't work, but let us know if it does."

FYI, the main reason I don't want Windows is because licenses are expensive. MC Extenders certainly aren't cheap either. I find Linux-based HTPC's to be much more versatile. I eventually hope to be able to use those ARM-based thumb-sized computers around the house... once XBMC can be adapted to use the native hardware acceleration.

[barnabas1969]

If you're only going to use it for copy-freely stuff under Linux, then it really won't do anything to your CPU. The big CPU hog is Windows and Media Center. On my i5-760, I can run five TV's in HD and the CPU runs around 30%.

If Myth supports the Ceton InfiniTV PCIe tuner (I think I read that it does), then your only concern would be I/O. If your server can handle four simultaneous HD streams now, then I don't see why it wouldn't work.

As far as I know, you wouldn't need to insert a CableCARD to get the ClearQAM channels. I think I read that one of the firmware versions had a bug that required you to insert one during the installation process, but that you could remove it. That bug may have been fixed. You'd have to ask Ceton about that.

[foxwood]

I paid $99 for a Win7 family pack (3 licenses), which isn't exactly extravagant, especially compared to the $400 I paid for the Ceton InfiniTV at the time, and the $4 a month I pay Verizon for a cable card. But that aside, I doubt that you'll see any significant performance difference between Myth and 7MC in a headless setup. Recording TV requires very little CPU utilization (most of the work is done by the card, the application is mainly responsible for writing the data to the disk), but the 230 is a fairly slow CPU.

I would imagine that the PCI version would be better than the USB version in this situation, but again, I don't have any direct experience.

[foxwood]

Also note that you'll be getting uncompressed MPEG2 streams from the tuner, so there's a lot more I/O than you'd see streaming precompressed mp4 files.

[FeloniusMonkey]

If you're only going to use it for copy-freely stuff under Linux, then it really won't do anything to your CPU. The big CPU hog is Windows and Media Center. On my i5-760, I can run five TV's in HD and the CPU runs around 30%.

If Myth supports the Ceton InfiniTV PCIe tuner (I think I read that it does), then your only concern would be I/O. If your server can handle four simultaneous HD streams now, then I don't see why it wouldn't work.

As far as I know, you wouldn't need to insert a CableCARD to get the ClearQAM channels. I think I read that one of the firmware versions had a bug that required you to insert one during the installation process, but that you could remove it. That bug may have been fixed. You'd have to ask Ceton about that.

Yes, there are proven ways to get Myth to work in the configuration I've described. Since I plan to get the card anyway, I might as well just try it out with my server and hope for the best. You've certainly given me something to look forward to with your answer.

Thanks again, barnabas, and everyone else who replied. I'll report back here once I get everything up and running. I'm not in an immediate rush, so I might wait for another deal on the card to pop up... just missed one at NewEgg last week for $170

[barnabas1969]

I doubt that you'll see any significant performance difference between Myth and 7MC in a headless setup.

I disagree. While the actual process of recording is almost purely I/O, the playback in Media Center does use some CPU... even if the PC is headless. Each extender session is actually logged into the Windows PC, and consumes CPU/memory/disk resources just like a user who is logged into the console.

Myth is an entirely different animal. First of all, Linux is wayyyy less resource intensive than Windows... especially if you run it purely as a headless server without any of the GUI stuff running. Then, Myth runs as a true client/server environment. It is much different than Media Center. The Myth backend services that the OP will have running on his server are much, much less intensive than Media Center ever was or ever will be. The playback tasks are handled by the frontend services that the OP will be running on his client PC's. All his server has to do is stream the data out to the clients... and the Myth frontend does all the heavy lifting.

[foxwood]

I know that extender sessions use CPU cycles - but that's not relevant to his case, as he doesn't plan to use Extenders. If you run a Windows 7 Media center and use PCs instead of extenders, Media center won't use any more CPU cycles to record than Myth does, and then there are no Media Center CPU cycles used to deliver the content to the remote PCs, which is closer to the way Myth works than the Extender model. Whether file-streaming is more efficient in Linux than Windows is a separate discussion.

[FeloniusMonkey]

I'll report back here once I get everything up and running. I'm not in an immediate rush, so I might wait for another deal on the card to pop up... just missed one at NewEgg last week for $170

Well that happened much sooner than later... NewEgg's got a $20 promo going on right now. Snagged it for $180 shipped.