# Windows 7 and Media Center.......Heaven????



## routerspecialist (Jun 19, 2008)

So, I setup Windows 7 on a spare PC with Media Center. I also installed an Hauppauge 2250. Win 7 recognized it immediately, setup both analog and digital channels perfectly. The Hauppauge kit I purchased included a remote, so I decided to get it all a test drive.

Surprising Results!

I'm thoroughly impressed. I recorded Fringe and some other stuff in HD. Then I reviewed it today. Very, very nice.

The guide is great. Very easy to use, selecting programs to record also easy. Scheduling recordings very simple.

Excellent playback, especially in HD. Easily as good as my Tivo, if not better. Commercial skip built-in to the remote.

This is very usable!


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

MCE is good. However, good luck finding a system in a HTPC case designed to be always on that fits into a entertainment center and cablecard support (and is quiet). You can buy these but they cost much more than a TiVo HD with lifetime. Personally, it isn't worth the trouble in my household of 4 people. The software does work pretty well (although wishlist support doesn't exist to the level of TiVo's system which makes it hard to auto record sports).


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

routerspecialist said:


> So, I setup Windows 7 on a spare PC with Media Center. I also installed an Hauppauge 2250. Win 7 recognized it immediately, setup both analog and digital channels perfectly. The Hauppauge kit I purchased included a remote, so I decided to get it all a test drive.
> 
> Surprising Results!
> 
> ...


Hmmm. Interesting! What are the hardware & CPU specs? Is there a need for a big processor (or several)?

Thanks!


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## routerspecialist (Jun 19, 2008)

No big cpu; It's a q6600, quite old actually (2 years old, design dates back over three years). Hard disk is 1 TB WD. The tuner is, as I mentioned in my original post, an Hauppauge 2250. Graphics is strictly average: an nVidia 9600GT.

It's all connected to the same TV as my Tivo is. And GUESS which is more reliable????? (Hint: it ain't the Tivo....)


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

routerspecialist said:


> It's all connected to the same TV as my Tivo is. And GUESS which is more reliable????? (Hint: it ain't the Tivo....)


Reliable how? Don't hint. Give us the facts.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

routerspecialist said:


> No big cpu; It's a q6600, quite old actually (2 years old, design dates back over three years). Hard disk is 1 TB WD. The tuner is, as I mentioned in my original post, an Hauppauge 2250. Graphics is strictly average: an nVidia 9600GT.
> 
> It's all connected to the same TV as my Tivo is. And GUESS which is more reliable????? (Hint: it ain't the Tivo....)


how did you record HD from cable with that setup?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

routerspecialist said:


> No big cpu; It's a q6600, quite old actually (2 years old, design dates back over three years). Hard disk is 1 TB WD. The tuner is, as I mentioned in my original post, an Hauppauge 2250. Graphics is strictly average: an nVidia 9600GT.


Even at idle a PC like that is drawing ~200W of electricity. A TiVoHD only draws 38W.

I have a decent MCE PC, in a nice home theater friendly case, but I almost never use it because I feel guilty leaving it on all the time because it's such a power hog.

Dan


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## TiVo Steve (Nov 8, 2005)

I built a HTPC using a very power efficient AOpen MoDT (Mobile on DeskTop) motherboard. I use a HDHomerun for ClearQAM, and I run Vista Media Center to record network TV. The "green" news... it draws around 65 watts and runs very _cool and quiet_! It's been in use for over a year now, and has been extremely reliable! :up:

I recently sold my "lifetimed" Series 1 and Series 2 units... I may soon put my TiVo HD up for grabs... those new "ads" are starting to bug me!


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

routerspecialist said:


> No big cpu; It's a q6600, quite old actually (2 years old, design dates back over three years). Hard disk is 1 TB WD. The tuner is, as I mentioned in my original post, an Hauppauge 2250. Graphics is strictly average: an nVidia 9600GT.
> 
> It's all connected to the same TV as my Tivo is. And GUESS which is more reliable????? (Hint: it ain't the Tivo....)


And guess which costs you $40 a month in electricity to run....

A full time running desktop PC running media center is NOT a good use of resources.


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## bschuler2007 (Feb 25, 2007)

AMD just demo'd their DTX form factor that will make the "fit into an entertainment center" thing moot. I am sure a Tivoish case will me made in the DTX factor.


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## Revolutionary (Dec 1, 2004)

AOpen is coming out with a PC designed to _hang on the back of a flat panel TV_ later this year. It is small and quiet and runs an Atom CPU. It won't do h.264 in HD, but is perfectly capable of HD MPEG2. Pared with a cable-card tuner and Windows 7, it might make for a very capable and inexpensive HD DVR. It should be capable of running DVRMSToolbox to at least tag commercials to be skipped, as well. But you would have to offload recordings to do anything with them (just like a Tivo). I'm toying with the idea, but I may wait until something like this comes out that can handle video conversion duties.


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## routerspecialist (Jun 19, 2008)

djmayne2001 said:


> pretty smart that you managed to get HD out of it. Sounds like a good work around


Okay, I'm responding to three questions:

Regarding Reliability: My Tivo blows up almost every time it plays downloaded Internet Video. Sometimes it blows up doing nothing. And, for those so offended by these remarks (and they ARE TRUE), I've been down the road of troubleshooting with it and with some of the folks on this board (who INSISTED it was the disk causing the problem, which it turned out not to be - wasting ENORMOUS amounts of my time.) and I'm NOT going there again. This board is filled with owners of Tivo HDs having problems with rebooting.

Regarding HD Content: Comcast cable provides HD content on the local channels. That means I can pick up ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, in HD and some others local to my area. No, I can't pick up USA HD, TNT HD, etc.....
But the bulk of what I record turn out is on the major channels.


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## routerspecialist (Jun 19, 2008)

TiVo Steve said:


> I built a HTPC using a very power efficient AOpen MoDT (Mobile on DeskTop) motherboard. I use a HDHomerun for ClearQAM, and I run Vista Media Center to record network TV. The "green" news... it draws around 65 watts and runs very _cool and quiet_! It's been in use for over a year now, and has been extremely reliable! :up:
> 
> I recently sold my "lifetimed" Series 1 and Series 2 units... I may soon put my TiVo HD up for grabs... those new "ads" are starting to bug me!


Very interesting! I could see your setup working very well. Someone else mentioned using an Atom processor to keep power usage down; I could see that working, as I think the main issue to making this work is a good graphics card and a good tuner.

But, the fact that Win 7 recognized everything right away, and was up in literally in about 20 minutes.....plus you get Win 7, which I think is fabulous......and the Win 7 price is just fine...


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## jlac839 (Nov 7, 2004)

The Nvidia Ion platform is also looking interesting. Acer have produced the first "desktop" version. The Atom processor on its own is not up to handling 1080 HD but coupled with the Ion graphics processor, this apparently changes for the better...

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_69675.html

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/28/acer-aspirerevo-review/

However, not everyone likes the combination...

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1051695/acer-releases-aspire-revo-ion-nettop


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

jlac839 said:


> The Nvidia Ion platform is also looking interesting. Acer have produced the first "desktop" version. The Atom processor on its own is not up to handling 1080 HD but coupled with the Ion graphics processor, this apparently changes for the better...
> 
> http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_69675.html
> 
> ...


engadget seemed less than pleased as well. Seems the Atom setup in that revo made gamers scale back the graphic quality and since flash could not make use of the graphic card acceleration thinks like HuLu and YouTube just did not run well at full screen.


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## bschuler2007 (Feb 25, 2007)

I like the AMD spyder DTX platform myself. With the onboard power management throttling down/turning off cores and gfx.. Unlike some, I am willing to spend a little on power to have performance and the size of a TivoHD, I am used to that. Dunno why people look at Atom, Ion, etc. The cost saving are not THAT huge compared to going from 32" SDTV to 65" HDTV. Overall, I cannot wait for the 3rd party Win7 media centers and media center add ons.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

routerspecialist said:


> Regarding HD Content: Comcast cable provides HD content on the local channels. That means I can pick up ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, in HD and some others local to my area. No, I can't pick up USA HD, TNT HD, etc.....
> But the bulk of what I record turn out is on the major channels.


And there's the rub. This thread is completely apples and oranges compared to a Tivo used for full digital cable recording. For OTA and clear QAM? Sure, you've got an argument. But for the majority of Tivo HD buyers (IMO), you don't. Cablecard HTPCs are still too damned expensive because of the tuner cost, and you're stuck with Windows.


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## fyodor (Sep 19, 2006)

slowbiscuit said:


> And there's the rub. This thread is completely apples and oranges compared to a Tivo used for full digital cable recording. For OTA and clear QAM? Sure, you've got an argument. But for the majority of Tivo HD buyers (IMO), you don't. Cablecard HTPCs are still too damned expensive because of the tuner cost, and you're stuck with Windows.


In theory, once Comcast's "cavalry" digital transition project is over, you should be able to get all of the basic cable SD channels via QAM (Comcast's DTAs do not support decryption). Thus far, the switched-over areas have been able to receive all of their basic SD channels via QAM. This doesn't necessarily make it a good idea though. I used to have a computer PVR that could receive all of my channels over firewire, but got rid of it because it was too unstable and unreliable.

The other problem with QAM is that your cable provider can change the channel mappings without warning.

F


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## routerspecialist (Jun 19, 2008)

slowbiscuit said:


> And there's the rub. This thread is completely apples and oranges compared to a Tivo used for full digital cable recording. For OTA and clear QAM? Sure, you've got an argument. But for the majority of Tivo HD buyers (IMO), you don't. Cablecard HTPCs are still too damned expensive because of the tuner cost, and you're stuck with Windows.


I should have mentioned that I have all of the SD (in analog) channels and only the local channels in HD. I can record USA, but not USA HD.

Still, my overall point is that this is pretty awesome. Previous MCE encantations were troublesome and problematic (at least for me). This one works, receives HD just fine, does not need cable cards and is very stable. No pause ads either!


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## bschuler2007 (Feb 25, 2007)

Actually the apples and oranges thing is why I am so excited. That's just not true anymore. I guess you didn't hear.. but Windows 7 no longer requires OCCUR for HD. So every HD channel you can get via cablecard is now available in Windows 7 including Payperview, etc.. One of the sat TV providers has already announced a tuner for Windows 7 that will allow it to tune all it's channels and record, etc.. in full HD. You can even build your own HD HTPC again! OCCURS is dead. It still requires/has HDCP protection so, if you have a HDTV from 10 years ago.. yeah.. your screwed.. but otherwise.. YIPPEE! Will have to wait and see how the broadcast flag is used though.. but that will affect Tivo HD's as well.

So basically.. design your own TivoHD and lose nothing but the annoyances and monthly fee.. sounds great to me.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

bschuler2007 said:


> Actually the apples and oranges thing is why I am so excited. That's just not true anymore. I guess you didn't hear.. but Windows 7 no longer requires OCCUR for HD.


Sorry, you're wrong, AFAICT. Windows 7 still requires OCUR (note spelling). The new thing out there is that there's now a hack so you can tell your computer to lie to Windows 7 about whether it is OCUR compliant. That hack can be disabled by Microsoft any time they want to.

Please go ahead and try it out. Be sure to report back to us after 6 months or so, once you discover all the warts and can fairly compare the systems.


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## djwilso (Dec 23, 2006)

bschuler2007 said:


> Actually the apples and oranges thing is why I am so excited. That's just not true anymore. I guess you didn't hear.. but Windows 7 no longer requires OCCUR for HD. So every HD channel you can get via cablecard is now available in Windows 7 including Payperview, etc.. One of the sat TV providers has already announced a tuner for Windows 7 that will allow it to tune all it's channels and record, etc.. in full HD. You can even build your own HD HTPC again! OCCURS is dead. It still requires/has HDCP protection so, if you have a HDTV from 10 years ago.. yeah.. your screwed.. but otherwise.. YIPPEE! Will have to wait and see how the broadcast flag is used though.. but that will affect Tivo HD's as well.
> 
> So basically.. design your own TivoHD and lose nothing but the annoyances and monthly fee.. sounds great to me.


Can you please explain what you're talking about?

It sounds like you're saying that Windows 7 is capable of receiving encrypted channels without the use of a CableCard. How?

I did some searching to see if I could find out what this "OCCUR" or "OCCURS" you referred to is, but I was unable to find anything since "occur" is only a common word. Can you provide a link with details about what this means as I want to learn.

Thanks,
Dennis


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## djwilso (Dec 23, 2006)

CrispyCritter said:


> Sorry, you're wrong, AFAICT. Windows 7 still requires OCUR (note spelling). The new thing out there is that there's now a hack so you can tell your computer to lie to Windows 7 about whether it is OCUR compliant. That hack can be disabled by Microsoft any time they want to.
> 
> Please go ahead and try it out. Be sure to report back to us after 6 months or so, once you discover all the warts and can fairly compare the systems.


Thanks for the clarification about this.

I can always count on the Internet to be full of misspellings and misinformation.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

I think the poster is confused about the fact that you can now build a cablecard box with Windows 7. Like was said earlier this can be disabled by Microsoft at anytime. And, no, you can't get PPV any different than you can with a TiVo (you have to call your cable provider to order it). You certainly can't get VOD with Windows 7.


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## pilotbob (Nov 8, 2007)

rainwater said:


> However, good luck finding a system in a HTPC case designed to be always on that fits into a entertainment center and cablecard support (and is quiet).


You can get an XBox 360 for $199 these days and use it as a media extender. It support 1080p output. It is small and will fit into your media cabinet. They new version models are pretty quite. Although how quite does it have to be with you surround system at a decent level you've gotta have good ears to hear it, I don't. Of course, I already have two XBox 360s so I woudn't even need the extra cost.

More things that you get with this setup that you don't get with TiVo is that you can watch an HD recording on an SD set and MCE/Extender will down convert for you. You can also have more than two tuners if you want. Adding storage to a PC is as easy as adding storage to, well a PC. you can also store your shows on a Windows Home Server.

That said... MCE does have the problems others have mentioned. There are though now Cable Card based tuners that you can get for DIY machines.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/12/get-a-cablecard-into-your-diy-htpc/

That still doesn't answer the SDV issue. Of course being on FiOS I don't have that issue. Or if you do OTA then you really don't have that issue or even need cable cards.

BOb


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

pilotbob said:


> That said... MCE does have the problems others have mentioned. There are though now Cable Card based tuners that you can get for DIY machines.
> 
> http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/12/get-a-cablecard-into-your-diy-htpc/


Technically it's not getting Cable Card based tuners for DIY machines, it's tricking Vista/Win7 into thinking the machine is approved and as such enabling the cards. There's a big difference in that it's not an approved method and it's not supported. As such I don't expect that hole to stay around forever, especially now that it's public.


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## nrc (Nov 17, 1999)

routerspecialist said:


> This board is filled with owners of Tivo HDs having problems with rebooting.


If it were filled with owners having problems then there wouldn't be any room left for me, who has no problems at all. 

I think it's fair to say that hard drive issues are the most common cause of TiVo reboots and crashes. Those are closely followed by cable card related issues. If you've eliminated your cable cards (sacrificing numerous HD channels in the process) then you've eliminated your second largest potential cause of problems.

TiVo has been largely trouble free for 10 years for me while I've had no end of problems with Windows in all its incarnations during that time. You'll have to forgive me if I'm sceptical.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

pilotbob said:


> That said... MCE does have the problems others have mentioned. There are though now Cable Card based tuners that you can get for DIY machines.
> 
> http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/12/get-a-cablecard-into-your-diy-htpc/
> 
> That still doesn't answer the SDV issue. Of course being on FiOS I don't have that issue. Or if you do OTA then you really don't have that issue or even need cable cards.


Thanks for the link - very nice that you can build a CC HTPC using any mobo you want. Until Microsoft shuts it down under pressure from the content providers, that is. And even if you roll your own, you're looking at a minimum $800 outlay anyway (assuming $400 HTPC cost and 2 tuners @ $200 ea.). 
So an upgraded Tivo HD with lifetime still comes in cheaper, although the HTPC will be much more capable. With the tradeoff being the tweaking to get the HTPC setup to do everything you want, and then dealing with monthly patch reboots etc.


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## CraigHB (Dec 24, 2003)

routerspecialist said:


> My Tivo blows up almost every time it plays downloaded Internet Video


I haven't had much problem with the streaming video. The only thing is when the internet connection goes down during a stream, the TiVo can hang waiting for the stream to resume. In that case, I have to reboot to get out of it. It's only happened a couple times and streaming stuff has otherwise been pretty reliable for me. An HTPC would have to provide something really remarkable over my TiVo for me to open that can of worms. My Desktop computers give me enough headaches already. Other than setup and a hard drive upgrade, my TiVo has been pretty hands free.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

pilotbob said:


> You can get an XBox 360 for $199 these days and use it as a media extender. It support 1080p output. It is small and will fit into your media cabinet. They new version models are pretty quite.


Hmm, I guess everyone's definition of quiet is different. 

Plus, that is not a optimum setup. It requires two different machines to be fully operational at all times. I'm not sure it would pass the WAF factor.


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## routerspecialist (Jun 19, 2008)

nrc said:


> If it were filled with owners having problems then there wouldn't be any room left for me, who has no problems at all.
> 
> I think it's fair to say that hard drive issues are the most common cause of TiVo reboots and crashes. Those are closely followed by cable card related issues. If you've eliminated your cable cards (sacrificing numerous HD channels in the process) then you've eliminated your second largest potential cause of problems.
> 
> TiVo has been largely trouble free for 10 years for me while I've had no end of problems with Windows in all its incarnations during that time. You'll have to forgive me if I'm sceptical.


It AIN'T the hard drive. And it's not the cable card. It's the Tivo.....just live with the truth....


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## routerspecialist (Jun 19, 2008)

You know, I never mentioned this before, but now I will!

It works great! If I want to view a show on another box in my apartment, I can. 

No bs transfer, etc, etc. over poorly designed and poorly performing Tivo Ethernet - just like Slingbox, I can just view it, without all of the hassle that I have to go through with Tivo......

WAY better than Tivo......

I should note that DRM content (copy protected) won't stream....but everything else does...


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

routerspecialist said:


> It AIN'T the hard drive. And it's not the cable card. It's the Tivo.....just live with the truth....


and yet I have 6 TiVo DVRs - 2 of them TiVo HD that do not give me reboot or other issues. I choose to live with them instead of "your truth"


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## twhiting9275 (Nov 17, 2006)

360? new version? Quiet? Uhh, yeah right!!! The new 360 is louder than my PC!


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Well, a PC with media center can work great for those who have the energy and interest to set one up (and if you don't care about CableCARD it might cost only a little more than what a TiVo costs ). Is that news? 

I seriously doubt that the average media center setup is more reliable than the average TiVo, though.


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