pyTivo Discussion Forum

nyspy · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 7

I was just curious as to what kind of hardware / software configurations people are using for their pyTivos.

I'm currently using:

Supermicro Server Case 742i
Supermicro Server Mobo
Intel Pentium D 775 3.2 Ghz
CentOS
3Ware 9550 Card - (Raid 1+0) across 4 x 750GB Drives
Wired Ethernet and Wireless on 2 Tivo Series 2 boxes

I have the Server working as a pyTivo box and a regular file server (using CIFS)

Seems to work well (probably overkill), but I just wanted one server for my home that I never had to worry about.

It's Gig-E throughout the entire house on Cat 5e
The Tivos have 802.11g USB adapters

TreborPugly · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 52

I'm just running it on my laptop, with some videos on my local hard drive, and some on a networked hard drive.

I was running on a laptop with Vista Ultimate on it, but now I've got a new one with XP. (I hated Vista, and that machine was really running slow)

All the networking is wireless. (Well, the Networked hard drive is plugged into my router)

krkeegan · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 12:39 am Post subject:

Pentium 4 2.8ghz (I think this is the right name for the cpu, I really can't keep up with all of them anymore)
1gig ram (seems like over kill I never use all of it, pyTivo doesn't use much ram)
100Mbps Wired ethernet
1 500Gb hard drive
1 250Gb hard drive

Linux Debian(Etch)

I think the main bottleneck in most setups is the CPU and the network connection(wireless was a limitation before I switched to wired)

wmcbrine · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 514

Athlon 64 3200+ 1G running Ubuntu 7.10 64-bit

Also:
Athlon XP-M 1600+ 640M running Windows XP
PowerPC G4 1.25 Ghz 512M running Mac OS X 10.4

but mostly the first one. All 100 Mbps wired of course.

reneg · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 41

Not a dedicated pyTivo system:

Pentium 4 2.8ghz
1.5 gig ram
100Mbps Wired ethernet
500GB hard drive (RIP, died this weekend)
1TB hard drive

Windows XP SP 2

billdog79 · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 40 Location: Gulf Breeze, FL

pyTivo dedicated server
-Pentium 4 2Ghz running Windows XP Pro
- 640MB Ram
-100 GB internal hard drive
- 300 GB external hard drive
- My Computers connect via wireless G 54Mbps
- My Tivos connect via wired 100Mbps

PaulS · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 148

Sempron 3000+ (2.0GHz)
2GB RAM
160GB HD for WindowsXP-SP2 and apps installs
500GB HD for music and videos
Network is a mixture of 100Mbps wired and 54Mbps 802.11g wireless
PC is connected by 100Mbps wired ethernet to network
TiVo Series3 is connected by 100Mbps wired ethernet to an 802.11g client bridge to get to the rest of the network

MasterCephus · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 173 Location: Hueytown, AL

I'll bite

I run pyTivo on my home desktop which is has:
AMD Athlon 4200+ X2 CPU
2GB memory
100Mb network connected to everything.

All my data is stored on my home server which runs Win Server 2003 Standard, with a 200GB drive for music, data, and photos. It also has a 250GB drive for videos.

edtee · Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Posts: 19

My pytivo sever is currrently running on: MainPC
AMD Athlon XP 2100+ CPU
1GB Ram
3 HDs drives totalling ~900GB(going to to replace, if I don't just scrape entire machine)
100Mb network coneccton to my home network.
OS is Win XP pro SP2.

Most of my data is on: HTPC server
Intel P4 2.8 GHz CPU
1 GB Ram
3 HDs totalling ~ 1.4TB
OS is WinXP Pro SP2

Little data, mostly SageTV recordings, on: HTPC TV client
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ CPU (overclooked to ~3200+ and still runs cooler/quieter than the other PCs as it's a Mobile version running at a lower voltage)
1GB Ram
1 500GB HD
OS is Win XP Pro SP2

My Tivo is a AT&T series 2 model 130040, that I upgraded to 120GB with a second HD. It's currently running 9.1 software.

Soon I'll likely move pytivo, once it working exactly how I want, to the HTPC media server. This is where any other apps that serve media usually end up. I plan to upgrade my main PC and have to buy another OS(old license tied to motherboard) at that time. I'm thinking of going with WHS and putting it on the HTPC server PC. This frees it's floating XP license for my newly rebuilt main PC. I'll likely go Intel C2D for CPU as they currently have the bang for the buck title IMO. I was a big AMD fan, and hope they'll pull it together soon.

stcroix · Joined: 27 Feb 2008 Posts: 1

I'm currently running pyTivo on a laptop with an Intel T2080, 1gb ram, 120gb hard drive.

What's the minimum CPU required to transcode in real time? Are all of you above able to? I'm thinking about buying a cheap desktop to move all of my media and pyTivo over to, but want to be sure I can still do real time.

windracer · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 160 Location: St. Pete, FL

My Ubuntu 7.10 "server" that runs pyTiVo (along with a bunch of other stuff) is an old Dell OptiPlex GX270 with a P4 3.0GHz CPU, 1gb of RAM, and a 120gb HD. It's directly wired to my Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 router running DD-WRT, but all of my TiVos are wireless (using TiVo G adapters).

My videos are stored on a 250gb Buffalo Linkstation NAS, which is mapped via a samba share to the Ubuntu box. The NAS is also wired into the router.

dlfl · Joined: 04 Jan 2008 Posts: 40 Location: Ohio

There is no simple answer. It depends on the video file being transcoded. But here is one data point:

My typical transcode is a 640x480 mpeg4 encoded (xvid or h264) with a total bitrate of 1030 Kbps. My processor is a hyperthreaded P4 at 3 GHz. Memory makes little difference. One GB is plenty for XP. Transcodes run at around 2X real time for this. I've got pyTivo set to use 4096 Kbps but it actually only runs at 2K to 3K. There just isn't enough info in my encodings to need 4K.

HD cases use much larger formats and much higher bitrates. I don't think everyone gets real time with any processor then.

tlc · Joined: 05 Jan 2008 Posts: 13

900 MHz PIII running Kubuntu

Video converts faster than real time.

krkeegan · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:45 pm Post subject:

tivouserac · Joined: 01 Mar 2008 Posts: 1

i have a dell 2.4ghz, w/ 500 mb and it'll transcode at 4mi at about 95-105% real time. Reading some of the other setups, it sounds like win xp is considerably hurting my encode speeds :/

but it works