# Premiere and Windows Home Server (WHS)



## pinganswer (Apr 21, 2010)

Considering buying a Premiere. Have read a lot of posts about Premiere and various add-on software like StreamBaby, pyTivo and kmttg, but nobody seems to tie it all into a big picture. So Ill ask and see if someone can do that for me. I would guess a lot of other people are equally confused, so helping me should help others:

Background: I have four Windows 7 PCS scattered around the house all connected by gigabit wire to a Windows Home Server (WHS) with 4.5TB of storage. On the WHS I have a bunch of video content consisting of home movies, TV episodes and full movies. In the main TV room I have a 50 1080p plasma tv, a blu-ray player, an xbox 360 and a Comcast Motorola DVR ($22/month). The DVR is a ripoff and so must go, but with what do I replace it?

Choices: Another Win 7 PC or Tivo Premiere.

Premiere would be great because it supports dual tuner-HD Cablecard and I dont have to worry about performance. I own two S2 Tivos and love the experience. But what I dont know is how well the Tivo will play with my WHS. I want to be able to watch videos from my WHS through Premiere. I also want to be able to move some shows recorded on Premiere to my WHS, especially since adding storage to WHS is cheap and easy (1.5TB for $90) and adding storage to Premiere is a ripoff. If Premiere would act as a Windows Media Extender and if I could easily transfer video from Premiere to WHS I would be good.

_BTW-I know the xbox is a media extender but experience shows that no one wants to crank it up to consider video options. I need the video access in the main experience.
_
The alternative is to build another Win 7 PC attached to the TV but I cant find a good cablecard adaptor for the PC. I could instead use two TV turner cards using IR blasters to record off two DTA boxes . But I dont know how good that experience would be.

Can anybody tell me if the Premiere would meet my needs, and what add-ons I would need to make this work?

Thanks in advance. The sooner I work this out the sooner the ripoff DVR goes back to Comcast.


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

I'm very happy with my Tivos HDs and WHS server from HP. There is a lot of room for better integration. I found the HP Tivo extender & Tivo Publisher add-ins lacking to my needs. Though they are not WHS add-ins, I'm running pyTivo & Streambaby to serve up 4TB of archived video off the WHS. I created a walkthrough of how to install both pyTivo & Streambaby on the WHS which you can find here; http://drop.io/kqwxiku

For transfering video from the Tivo to the WHS, I run kmttg & Videoredo on a client PC to trim commercials which is mostly automated.


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## janry (Jan 2, 2003)

So far I have added the TiVo extender to my HP EX495. It transfers to the server well but it is not automatic so about once a week, I pick the prior weeks recordings to transfer to the server. 

Like reneg, I use VideoReDo to edit commercials out once the recording are on the server. 

I then transfer them back to the TiVo as needed for viewing.

I also have a dual tuner HDHomeRun on my network to record OTA programs. I have SageTV software on my server with it's equivalent of 'season passes' to record much of our OTA programming. I'd like to get the new HDHomeRun cablecard tuner when it is available but I don't think the server software will be certified for use with it so that is probably not going to happen, at least not anytime soon.

ETA: I'd love to run kmttg on my server but I am not qualified to install it without someone holding my hand.


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## slowride (Mar 17, 2006)

reneg said:


> I'm very happy with my Tivos HDs and WHS server from HP. There is a lot of room for better integration. I found the HP Tivo extender & Tivo Publisher add-ins lacking to my needs. Though they are not WHS add-ins, I'm running pyTivo & Streambaby to serve up 4TB of archived video off the WHS. I created a walkthrough of how to install both pyTivo & Streambaby on the WHS which you can find here; http://drop.io/kqwxiku
> 
> For transfering video from the Tivo to the WHS, I run kmttg & Videoredo on a client PC to trim commercials which is mostly automated.


RENEG: I just purchased the EX490 and plan on using it to offload shows from my tivo S3 and HD. Can you describe what is lacking in the tivo extender and tivo publisher for you?

Also are you using scripts or some other method to automate the way you trim commercials using kmttg and videoredo.

Any samples or suggestions would be appreciated, I have a lot of work to do to setup and integrate my HP EX490 into my home network. Can't wait to get it all setup. Thanks et


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## janry (Jan 2, 2003)

slowride said:


> RENEG:


I'm not reneg, but I'd like to offer my opinions to your questions.



> Can you describe what is lacking in the tivo extender and tivo publisher for you?


The extender program does not transfer any recordings automatically. IMO, this is something a server should do. Also, you can only call back TiVo encoded recordings through it in the NPL.

TiVo publisher as I understand can handle only up to 720P. It is also painfully slow.



> Also are you using scripts or some other method to automate the way you trim commercials using kmttg and videoredo.


I found the ad detection in kmttg & VideoReDo to be slow and not too reliable. I therefore do the editing manually in VideoReDo (only takes a bit to do an hour long show), save the projects, and then run a batch overnight on a PC to do the actual edits/cuts.


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## pinganswer (Apr 21, 2010)

Anybody know if there is any extra magic in the WHS from HP? My WHS is home built so I'm trying to figure out if your experience will be applicable to me.


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## reneg (Jun 19, 2002)

My experiences mirrors what Janry posted.



> Anybody know if there is any extra magic in the WHS from HP? My WHS is home built so I'm trying to figure out if your experience will be applicable to me.


HP includes additional software with their WHS that makes a nicely integrated software/hardware solution. I don't use much of the extra bundled HP software except the media collector on the clients to copy music and photos to the server.

If you already have a home built WHS, I'm not sure it's worth getting the WHS from HP. If you didn't have a home built WHS, I'd recommend the HP WHS, it's nicely packaged and easy to drop into your home network. You already have the other great feature of WHS, dirt simple client backups


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

pinganswer said:


> Choices: Another Win 7 PC or Tivo Premiere.
> 
> Premiere would be great because it supports dual tuner-HD Cablecard and I dont have to worry about performance. I own two S2 Tivos and love the experience. But what I dont know is how well the Tivo will play with my WHS. I want to be able to watch videos from my WHS through Premiere. I also want to be able to move some shows recorded on Premiere to my WHS, especially since adding storage to WHS is cheap and easy (1.5TB for $90) and adding storage to Premiere is a ripoff. If Premiere would act as a Windows Media Extender and if I could easily transfer video from Premiere to WHS I would be good.
> 
> ...


Unfortunately for Windows 7 the cable card options aren't out yet. Ceton's InfiniTV 4, quad tuner internal PCI card, is due out May 31st and HDHomerun's Cable Card tuner, dual tuner external, is just entering beta.

I have a similar setup. I have a TiVo Premiere at both TVs along with a 360. At my desk I have a Windows 7 PC running Media Center using 2 of the Avermedia Duet Clearqam/OTA tuners. This way I can record local channels on my PC while leaving the TiVos free to record everything else.

All of my media is stored on my WHS with the various shares and folders setup as networked drives. I run Streambaby on my primary PC pointing to my networked drives for TV and Movies. I also have those same folders pointed to under Windows 7MC so I can also stream them to the 360. As of right now though you can't stream WTV files, which is the file format Windows 7 Media Center records in, but with the 360 you wouldn't need to.

As a result for the most part anything short of my recordings that I would play through the media extender portion of the 360, I can play on the TiVO. When I want to watch a 7MC recording, I just fire up the 360.


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## Austin Bike (Feb 9, 2003)

Do you have windows media center running on your network today?

If not, read this thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=447104

I was a strong tivo proponent (3 tivos and 3 lifetimes) but I switched our main tivo HD in the family room to a win7 WMC system about 6 months ago.

There were strong pros to the situation but stronger limitations. After fighting with it for 6 months I went back to tivo and mothballed the WMC system. Just in case you are wondering, I have been in the tech business for ~20 years and build PCs/servers; this was not my inability to understand the technology, but more a case of either interface quirks or technical glitches that could not be easily cured.

I have a WHS (one of the truly best technologies ever to come out of MSFT) and the Tivo publisher plug in.

I don't like the way it handles music (can only browse by folder), but it does work. I can watch movies on the tivo which is what I care most about.


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## thebigdoghimself (Dec 8, 2010)

Hello, new to WHS just got my Acer easystore a few days ago. My question is can I use Administrative tools to load Tivo desktop onto my server?

All I want to do is save certain shows Tivo desktop can be set up to automatically load the shows you want to save. (no interest in playing files from my WHS on the tivo) 

Technically, If Tivo Desktop saves the shows to the WHS I should be able to use any computer to watch my videos as long as the right codecs are loaded.

Opinions, comments? 

Thanks!


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## tomm1079 (May 10, 2005)

my windows home server i built myself. 

I run Stream baby Stream on it as a service so i can stream things to my tivo premiere/HD. This works flawlessly. I run my Tivo Premiere on a Wireless N 5 gh network so it does not have any interference from anything else. The WHS is hardwired to the router.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

thebigdoghimself said:


> Hello, new to WHS just got my Acer easystore a few days ago. My question is can I use Administrative tools to load Tivo desktop onto my server?
> 
> All I want to do is save certain shows Tivo desktop can be set up to automatically load the shows you want to save. (no interest in playing files from my WHS on the tivo)
> 
> ...


you can run install most windows stuff right on the WHS. I can't recall trying tivo destktop but i have pytivo installed and running so i dont see why tivo desktop wouldn't work.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

thebigdoghimself said:


> Hello, new to WHS just got my Acer easystore a few days ago. My question is can I use Administrative tools to load Tivo desktop onto my server?


I definitely recommend Galleon in preference to TDT.



thebigdoghimself said:


> All I want to do is save certain shows Tivo desktop can be set up to automatically load the shows you want to save. (no interest in playing files from my WHS on the tivo)


I know of no reason Galleon would not work. For transferring from the server to the TiVo, I would say pyTiVo is a better choice than Galleon, but for your application, IMO Galleon beats everything else hands down, especially TDT. Galleon has much more flexible downloading filters than TDT, and Galleon is the only software which allows you to choose the programs to upload from the TiVo to the server from the TiVo itself. Not only that but the user can select the programs to upload from any TiVo in the house while sitting at any other networked TiVo, or any networked PC in the house. The Galleon TTG menu appears in the newtork foders on the TiVo, displaying every program on every TiVo for upload, and the Galleon client can be run from any PC, attaching to the Galleon server on your file server. For that matter, the Galleon server does not have to reside on your WHS system. If you like, it could run on any PC in the house, even one running Linux. It's about as flexible as it gets.



thebigdoghimself said:


> Technically, If Tivo Desktop saves the shows to the WHS I should be able to use any computer to watch my videos as long as the right codecs are loaded.


Yeah, or your could automatically transcode them after they are transferred to the server. This is one reason (of many) I am running a Linux server, but such automation is possible on WHS, as well.


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## pinganswer (Apr 21, 2010)

Well, I started this tread along time ago. Here is where I'm at: bought the Premiere and I have been very happy with it. Running WHS on a home built server. I've upgraded it since then. I now have 4.5 TB of video on it.

I also now have two xbox 360s, one sitting next to the premiere on our 50" plasma TV in the family room and the other sitting next to our 42" LCD in the kitchen. My wife likes to watch video in the kitchen when she bakes bread, cans food from our garden or other big projects. 

I use Tivo Desktop (I assume people abbreviate it TDT) to transfer recorded video from the Tivo to WHS. The TDT is running on WHS so that goes pretty well. I get an annoying "There are file conflicts" error message from WHS that seem to stem from TDT, but it hasn't caused any problems.

I have to go into WHS and move all the transferred files to the correct folders about once a week but other than that it all seems to work.

What is driving me nuts is the file format issues. We don't use Media Center on the xbox because it is just too slow, so we use the video option instead. It seems to want either an M4v or an AVI file. It certainly can't deal with a .tivo file. So I need a good .tivo to m4v converter. I've tried a number of free ones, but still haven't found one I really like. 

So I'm looking for recommendations. Most seem to want to format for an Ipod, but I am looking to maintain as much quality as I can.

I will probably also open another thread since this is a different topic than I started with.

But I'll take answers here too.


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## innocentfreak (Aug 25, 2001)

Why not just use KMTTG and have it strip the TiVo container? This would leave you with MPG files.


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## teddykgb715 (Dec 16, 2010)

reneg said:


> I'm very happy with my Tivos HDs and WHS server from HP. There is a lot of room for better integration. I found the HP Tivo extender & Tivo Publisher add-ins lacking to my needs. Though they are not WHS add-ins, I'm running pyTivo & Streambaby to serve up 4TB of archived video off the WHS. I created a walkthrough of how to install both pyTivo & Streambaby on the WHS which you can find here; http://drop.io/kqwxiku
> 
> For transfering video from the Tivo to the WHS, I run kmttg & Videoredo on a client PC to trim commercials which is mostly automated.


This link seems to be down. Anyone have a good guide for installing pyTivo to a new home built WHS? I'm familiar with pyTivo on a full blown machine, but I just reconfigured my whole setup to use WHS and can't seem to get it to work.


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## yoheidiho (Mar 31, 2011)

teddykgb715 said:


> This link seems to be down. Anyone have a good guide for installing pyTivo to a new home built WHS? I'm familiar with pyTivo on a full blown machine, but I just reconfigured my whole setup to use WHS and can't seem to get it to work.


Ditto! Any help would be appreciated.


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## teddykgb715 (Dec 16, 2010)

yoheidiho said:


> Ditto! Any help would be appreciated.


Reneg helped me out on another thread. Here you go.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=440231


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