How do you like it? Bugs? Annoyances? Been doing some reading but I figure some of the huge nerds have to have played with it as well.
I’m considering a simple box primarily to play with MC. I’ve spent very little time with it even though I have a Vista machine & MCE now… but I think it’d be fun to toy with and may actually be pretty convenient - this will be fed to a bedroom tv (720p), and I have an xbox360 for an MCE @ the primary TV (though I haven’t played with MC too much obv).
Uptodate specs on the box (prolly a cheap dell) running Vista 64 Home, plus a tuner (avermedia pcie looks like the winner) to take in decrpyted QAM & ATSC for pvr (timeshift).
Questions that are lingering:
How much of a pita to run two independant displays? The main concern is being able to run a line from the vid card to a TV (2ndary input) and have the TV basically always show the MC interface.
Can MC control (air, record, programming info) the timeshift or am i stuck with the tuners OEM s/w?
How is MC with live tv? Particularly taking decrypted QAM (Fios)?
Can MC handle recording ATSC while broadcasting QAM?
DIY DVR is a pain in the ass. The biggest problem is perhaps that your TV Tuner card will not pick up all of the Digital/HD channels that you get with the cable box. You will spend a lot of time and a lot of money building a decent box, when you are just better off renting the shitty box that your cable company gives you.
In most cases, it just is not worth the trouble.
I use a Mac OS X Leopard box, running Front Row for all of my downloaded media. I stick to my cable box for everything else.
^ yup… AFAIK any ‘protected’ stations (HD and otherwise) wont show through your tuner card. It’s great for standard analog cable and stuff, but not too sure on how well it will work with a dish or digital cable.
what you “might” be able to do is use an HDCP stripper between your cable box and the computer to filter out any of that bullshit.
There might be other solutions these days too, but last time I checked this out it didn’t seem all that worth while due to them limiting which stations you can actually view
however, if you’re going to buy a tuner card, I have a hauppauge HD card thats pretty much brand new I’ll give ya for a good price. It was installed for like 3 weeks, and then got a double slot video card, thus eliminating room for the tuner
This is not a project to replace my current STB DVR.
This is a side “hobby level” project. As a matter of fact it will be necessary to have a “mini” STB from VZ to feed all of my subscrbed channels to the tuner. It’s $4/mo, i’m not too worried. That plus ATSC OTA. Honestly, the stuff being DVR’d anyways is primarily: FOX, CBS, Discovery, History. that about it.
Walter: XBMC looks pretty cool. Will look more into that for an improvement on XBX MCE, in addition to.
As far as expense, I have $400 in dell giftcards and they have aworthwhile box for what would cost me ~200 (the price of a OEM Vista license alone) Add in the tuner card cost. So it’s not a huge deal in that respect.
Honestly man, if your gonna spend 4 a month on a feed, spend 10 and get the damn box. Spend the gift cards on a hobby worthwhile. I am not lying when I say that it’s more money/time than it’s worth.
Walter - I would grab the lil guy, but I’m not a fan of the USB tuners that I’ve been reading about. Also, this doesn’t need to be sleek at all, the box will be up in my office (tied to the DLP via XBMCE & the LCD in the bedroom by RG6 coax). Lastly, fwiw - BRD is a non-issue.
Thom, this is not a gaming rig, nor a modeling rig, nor anything that will crunch a large amount of data - especially seeing as the tuner cards have onboard hardware to handle encoding. So, :lol: @ “top of the line” equipment. Why buy a ferarri if you’re only going to drive it around in 2nd gear?
I could come out of pocket $204 for a (new) dell and need to buy a tuner card ($90 - 120)… or $249 (refurb) and have to buy nothing.
How much of a pita to run two independant displays? The main concern is being able to run a line from the vid card to a TV (2ndary input) and have the TV basically always show the MC interface.
Can MC control (air, record, programming info) the timeshift or am i stuck with the tuners OEM s/w?
How is MC with live tv? Particularly taking decrypted QAM (Fios)?
Can MC handle recording ATSC while broadcasting QAM?