Planning on getting settled in the new place this weekend, i want to have a PC hooked up to my living room TV, Having that pc being able to stream movies, tv, record tv (act as a dvr), and function as a computer with the tv as the monitor is no problem for me…
But the master bedroom is on the other side of the house, and id like to be able to stream movies, tv programs, and what not directly off that PC… whats the easiest way to accomplish this… i do not have an xbox,
also is HD able to be recorded and streamed?
I’ll have more questions… this is just to start up?
also, anybody have a link to a good pc that is not overly priced that will accomplish these things? im not sure which tv card to go with as of yet either?..
recording tv is pretty limited. You will only be able to record basic cable.
honestly, I wouldn’t bother with the recording part…I have looked into it, and it’s just not worth it. I would get a WDTV HD Live or a popcorn hour device, and just use that to stream movies from a main desktop/server. It is super easy to setup a network share in almost any OS and the devices listed above will automatically detect them on the network and give you streaming access. Also, remember that with the computer, you will need a remote and possibly a keyboard/mouse to control it and such…It becomes cumbersome over time…I’ve tried everything, and I really just love the simplicity of the WDTV HD Live.
How would you run it through a satellite box? Then you would have to have the satellite box turned onto whatever channel you want to record. Just get the DVR box from Directv. TV signals usually come in an encrypted format. The TV Tuner cards can only handle certain types of encryption, the kind used for basic cable. Anything outside of that is going to get difficult to the point where you are better off just paying for the DVR box.
edit: Quick google search reveals that there are not any Tuner cards compatible with DirecTv. Just an abandoned Dircetv project that seems like it wasn’t released.
You can record through your STB just be prepared to put some time and effort into it.
I’ve done it with TW and DirecTV… You need to decide what software suite you are going to use and go from there… I’ve been slacking but I’m going to start a new setup with boxee as a frontend and mythtv on the backend.
thanks… i think im going to go with comcast for now anyway… and see if i can stomach cable with 1 DVR box… it’ll be 102 a month… for phone, interet and cable… (no contract will be nice for the first couple months at the house until i get settled in)
BACK TO THE MEDIA SERVER… whats the most cost effective way to go… right now the only things i have are…
3 tv’s… i know i’ll need a desktop pc to hold all my movies on it, and the tv card if i want to just record in SD…
I will say this though. The WDTV unit is VERY easy to setup, the unit small, so it doesn’t take up much space, it has an app for youtube and pandora which is nice too.
popcorn hour is so customizable, and with YAMJ its almost perfect for what i use it for. The only thing it wont do, at least the one i have is play Bluray HD audio streams, but the next model up will. nothing im too concerned about at the moment, im waiting till they come out with popbox.
also with the pch u can have it grab nzb’s automatically and download the movies automatically. you do need an internal drive tho, since its an app and needs to be placed on the internal drive
PCH if you don’t mind doing some reading and tinkering to get something that makes people who come over to watch movies go “OMG, how the hell does all this work!?!” I went with the PCH, but I wouldn’t recommend it to computer n00bs.
WD Live if you aren’t up for reading or tinkering and don’t mind an interface that looks like windows explorer (just browsing files).
Or wait for this: http://www.popbox.com/
Which should give you the easier setup of the WD live with a much better looking interface.
