# Options



## Muttley1900

Now we have notice to quit, I'm thinking about options. Some of you have already moved on from your S1, for various reasons, so I'm interested to hear from yourselves too.

I think my options are:-

1) See if someone comes up with a hack that allows epg data from other places to be used on the S1 (I can just about follow step by step instructions on how too do these things, but do not have the brain power to start working out how it is to be done);

2) Just go for another PVR (this time with HD and freeview inbuilt) - but it just wont be Tivo - what are the best ones (on a user interface point of view) out there, or you have had experience of;

3) Go for sky - erm, not for me, but others may be interested;

4) Hope that VM upgrade the old analogue cable system in my area (not happening this year);

5) Go for BT vision;

6) Use MC? (I have to admit of knowing absolutely nothing about it - can someone point me to an overview of it?);

7) Use the internet as my pvr (e.g. download bittorrent versions of what I want to watch, but have missed and either watch on the mac, or stream via apple tv to the tv) - not good on the old copyright bit;

8) Other options?

Thanks,

J.


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## warrenrb

What he said.

I've been wondering on a viable replacent for my parents (70 y/o) who are in a VM area, but can't afford the subscription charges.

I'm watching with interest for the first sparks of a replacement guide service (although I'm gonna have to get them a network card - hopefully there'll be some cheap ones in the "post S1" market. This seems the best option, assuming there's no technical knowledge required after the initial setup. 

Alternatively, I think it will be Freeview PVR. What are they like? Any decent ones? Is the software specific to each manufacturer, or is there someone licencing it to manufacturers?

Anyone have a good source for reviews?


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## steveroe

I've started a thread in UK Chit-Chat to discuss Freeview+ options.


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## TCM2007

"1" has been done in Australia and South Africa and if you Google oztivo or tivoza you'll find out how to do it.

It requires hacking the TiVo with a new image, and a community effort to maintain the guide data. It's much better with a networked TiVo, but I believe it can be made to work by dial-up


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## TCM2007

Re: 6 there is a lengthy thread in Chit Chat, but broadly speaking any Windows 7 PC has most TiVo features (and a bunch of extra ones) built in. Cheap PCs are available with HDMI outputs now; you just need to add TV tuners, a remote control & IR receiver.

Getting it working "just so" can take some fiddling, but getting a basic system working is easy for anyone with basic PC skills.


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## Muttley1900

TCM2007 said:


> broadly speaking any Windows 7 PC has most TiVo features (and a bunch of extra ones) built in. Cheap PCs are available with HDMI outputs now; you just need to add TV tuners, a remote control & IR receiver.


Thanks, that was very helpful.

J.


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## kweller

TCM2007 said:


> Re: 6 there is a lengthy thread in Chit Chat, but broadly speaking any Windows 7 PC has most TiVo features (and a bunch of extra ones) built in. Cheap PCs are available with HDMI outputs now; you just need to add TV tuners, a remote control & IR receiver.
> 
> Getting it working "just so" can take some fiddling, but getting a basic system working is easy for anyone with basic PC skills.


I've been trying to find a way to do this for a while but I want to view Sky and it looks like the only output-from-sky-to-a-PC option is composite video so the picture quality isn't going to be good. I was surprised I couldn't find a SCART-to-PC interface.

Unless someone knows another way?

Kevin


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## DX30

kweller said:


> it looks like the only output-from-sky-to-a-PC option is component video so the picture quality isn't going to be good


I assume you meant composite? Component can be pretty good. I haven't used it myself but the Hauppauge HD PVR will record component at 1080i

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

Or from SCART the WINTV-HVR-2200 will let you use S-Video for recording.


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## kweller

DX30 said:


> I assume you meant composite? Component can be pretty good. I haven't used it myself but the Hauppauge HD PVR will record component at 1080i
> 
> http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
> 
> Or from SCART the WINTV-HVR-2200 will let you use S-Video for recording.


Idiot (me, not you!), yes I meant composite. I use component elsewhere and it is pretty good. I'll correct my original.

Kevin


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## TCM2007

kweller said:


> I've been trying to find a way to do this for a while but I want to view Sky and it looks like the only output-from-sky-to-a-PC option is composite video so the picture quality isn't going to be good. I was surprised I couldn't find a SCART-to-PC interface.
> 
> Unless someone knows another way?
> 
> Kevin


Google dragoncam


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## kweller

TCM2007 said:


> Google dragoncam


AIUI this was broken by the last release of Sky cards.

Kevin


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## FJSRiDER

Muttley1900 said:


> I think my options are:-
> 
> 1) See if someone comes up with a hack that allows epg data from other places to be used on the S1 (I can just about follow step by step instructions on how too do these things, but do not have the brain power to start working out how it is to be done);
> 
> 2) Just go for another PVR (this time with HD and freeview inbuilt) - but it just wont be Tivo - what are the best ones (on a user interface point of view) out there, or you have had experience of;


I would pay for 1. but will probably end up paying for 2.

I too would like to know what the 'best' replacement would be. Given we can get an Freeview HD PVR now for about the price of the old 'lifetime' sub it's not the end of the world. Loss of functionality for sure, but we are losing the TiVo anyway. 


Muttley1900 said:


> 3) Go for sky - erm, not for me, but others may be interested;.


Nor me. I have a dish on the house so I could get a Freesat PVR.


Muttley1900 said:


> 4) Hope that VM upgrade the old analogue cable system in my area (not happening this year);.


No cable here and not likely to get it. So no.


Muttley1900 said:


> 5) Go for BT vision.


Meh.

What does it cost?


Muttley1900 said:


> 6) Use MC? (I have to admit of knowing absolutely nothing about it - can someone point me to an overview of it?);


What is this?


Muttley1900 said:


> 7) Use the internet as my pvr (e.g. download bittorrent versions of what I want to watch, but have missed and either watch on the mac, or stream via apple tv to the tv) - not good on the old copyright bit;.


Too much hassle.


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## davisa

The Humax Freeview HD PVR seems my best option, but hardly good.

I don't know of any other PVR that offers proper full screen menu's when one can navigate without having to mess around with all those silly coloured buttons (which I don't have).


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## cwaring

FJSRiDER said:


> What is this?


Windows Media Centre


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## VirginMediaPhil

cwaring said:


> Windows Media Centre


*Center


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## cwaring

Well I am British and here in the UK


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## davisa

cwaring said:


> Windows Media Centre


Is the product as slow and poorly laid out as the website?!


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## FJSRiDER

cwaring said:


> Windows Media Centre


Thanks.

I'm a bit allergic to Windows and wouldn't really want a howling PC box under my TV either. My Mac mini would be ideal but they are not really priced for home entertainment!


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## FJSRiDER

davisa said:


> The Humax Freeview HD PVR seems my best option, but hardly good.
> 
> I don't know of any other PVR that offers proper full screen menu's when one can navigate without having to mess around with all those silly coloured buttons (which I don't have).


My brother has recently bought a Humax Freesat HD box and seems happy enough with it. He says it does record series, not just individual programmes. I've not seen it in operation though.


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## Fred Smith

FJSRiDER said:


> My brother has recently bought a Humax Freesat HD box and seems happy enough with it. He says it does record series, not just individual programmes. I've not seen it in operation though.


I've recently bought a Digitalstream Freeview HD PVR. As above it records a series or at least prompts to to ask if you wish too. Most channels it actually records the programme from the actual start to finish not just the advertised time. But no suggestions, thumbs etc.


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## Muttley1900

Well, I have to admit that I'm now seriously looking at option 5, which is BT Vision.

- I have to have BT broadband - which I do anyway (but was willing to go to VM if they did offer a VM Tivo with services over ADSL);

- Activation fee is &#163;30 (mmm, wonder if I can get a deal as an ex S1 user  ) ;

- It then seems to be a choice of just the box (with pay as you go options for on demand tv etc) which costs &#163;90 and will record the freeview stuff, or the box and some package or other that costs circa &#163;12.50 a month, but covers most of the "on demand" as well as the freiview bit. You can add more if you like too (sports etc) - So I think I could be happy with either the "box only" or the &#163;12.50 a month.

- Both options are a 12 month minimum contract;

- It has a season pass option for recording (not much else for what I've looked at so far - but I'll read the manual later tomorrow);

- The hard drive is small! A meagre 160gb or 80 hours which is for the freeview recordings only.

Think I may have to go to a BT shop and see one in action.


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## TCM2007

FJSRiDER said:


> Thanks.
> 
> I'm a bit allergic to Windows and wouldn't really want a howling PC box under my TV either. My Mac mini would be ideal but they are not really priced for home entertainment!


Runs fine on a tiny Atom powered low energy PC. MC7 is as near as you'll get to TiVo in terms of functionality and how it looks and feels.


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## Fizz

I have no cable, no tv ariel and no digital service where I am, just telephone line and a sky box. I love my tivo, had it since the beginning and really want something I can download recordings off. the tivo is perfect........ or at least was... three dying in june...


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## VirginMediaPhil

cwaring said:


> Well I am British and here in the UK


I know, it's just the official spelling of it is 'Center', I guess it doesn't matter.

Yeah, I have no idea why I bothered posting that.


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## FJSRiDER

TCM2007 said:


> Runs fine on a tiny Atom powered low energy PC. MC7 is as near as you'll get to TiVo in terms of functionality and how it looks and feels.


Mmm....

Does the PC need a TV card?


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## cwaring

It will do, yes.


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## AMc

Fizz said:


> I have no cable, no tv ariel and no digital service where I am, just telephone line and a sky box. I love my tivo, had it since the beginning and really want something I can download recordings off. the tivo is perfect........ or at least was... three dying in june...


Freesat+ recorders - there is a Humax one that does this see this thread...
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=463043

MS Media Centre obviously has the recordings on the disk of the computer.

If you want the pay channels then you'll have to look at an analogue capture card.


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## Sneals2000

kweller said:


> AIUI this was broken by the last release of Sky cards.
> 
> Kevin


Other solutions haven't been though.

AVForums has an excellent thread on the subject. It isn't for the faint hearted, and many solutions require the card to be replaced into a Sky box every so often. (Not great if you go on holiday for longer than a certain period)


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## Sneals2000

FJSRiDER said:


> Mmm....
> 
> Does the PC need a TV card?


If you want to receive Freeview, Freesat etc. then a PC in your home needs a tuner or two. If you run bog-standard 7MC then you either need a locally installed (USB, Firewire, PCI, PCI-E etc.) tuner(s) or something like the Silicon Dust Ethernet tuners OR you can run DVBLogic's Network Pack that allows PCs in one PC to appear virtualised into other PCs. (Out of the box 7MC doesn't allow tuner sharing)

If you just want a simple replacement for a Freeview STB + Tivo combo, then you may well find the 7MC solution a more "Tivo-like" replacement than the Freeview+ PVRs.

However if HD is important, Freeview HD tuners for PCs are only just beginning to appear, and Freeview+HD boxes are likely to be lower cost solutions.

If you look at PCs AND HD is important to you - and are looking at low-power CPU solutions ensure that your solution has a decent GPU (Atom+Ion is a good solution popular with many, and there are some new AMD solutions beginning to appear)

I went with WMC when I finally got fed up with the cascaded double-encoding that Tivo introduced when recording digital TV sources. (7MC with a digital tuner card, like Sky+ and Freeview/Freesat+ boxes, introduces no extra encoding - so the recorded picture is identical in quality to the live one)


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## stevensdrs

I have relied on my Tivo since day 1 and have a lifetime subscription :down:, networked Tivo. I also have 2 Humax PVR9200TB with 320gb drives.

While the Humax works (most of the time) and has series link, it is no where near the Tivo in terms of software, it is indeed thick in comparison.

So what to do now with my reliable Tivo?

Not in a cable area so cant take the Virgin Box.

I hope someone can come up with a hack to use some other guide source!


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## hawkida

Muttley1900 said:


> Now we have notice to quit, I'm thinking about options. Some of you have already moved on from your S1, for various reasons, so I'm interested to hear from yourselves too.


My issue is that nothing offers the same deal I get by hooking Tivo up to the Sky box. I want something that will do what Tivo does - learn and explore and record stuff from a wishlist. (I've blogged about it but can't post the link as I'm too new to this forum - if you're interested google for "geekeration").

The only alternative for me is user-supplied data to keep the same service running. Downloading torrents and other PVRs don't do what Tivo does. I can't get Virgin cable, so that's it come June, bye bye, nice knowing you.


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## FJSRiDER

Sneals2000 said:


> If you want to receive Freeview, Freesat etc. then a PC in your home needs a tuner or two. If you run bog-standard 7MC....


Lost me already. 7MC?


Sneals2000 said:


> ... then you either need a locally installed (USB, Firewire, PCI, PCI-E etc.) tuner(s) or something like the Silicon Dust Ethernet tuners OR you can run DVBLogic's Network Pack that allows PCs in one PC to appear virtualised into other PCs. (Out of the box 7MC doesn't allow tuner sharing)


No idea what that means!


Sneals2000 said:


> If you just want a simple replacement for a Freeview STB + Tivo combo, then you may well find the 7MC solution a more "Tivo-like" replacement than the Freeview+ PVRs.


Ok. What is 7MC?


Sneals2000 said:


> However if HD is important, Freeview HD tuners for PCs are only just beginning to appear, and Freeview+HD boxes are likely to be lower cost solutions.
> 
> If you look at PCs AND HD is important to you - and are looking at low-power CPU solutions ensure that your solution has a decent GPU (Atom+Ion is a good solution popular with many, and there are some new AMD solutions beginning to appear)


Might as well, but presumably any cards can be changed when HD versions come along (not sure how you get a card into something silent like an Acer Rivo but there you go......)


Sneals2000 said:


> I went with WMC when I finally got fed up with the cascaded double-encoding that Tivo introduced when recording digital TV sources. (7MC with a digital tuner card, like Sky+ and Freeview/Freesat+ boxes, introduces no extra encoding - so the recorded picture is identical in quality to the live one)


Whatever 7MC is, it sounds a good way to go.


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## mikerr

MC,WMC = Windows Media Centre - comes with Windows XP Vista and 7

7MC = the enhanced version of windows media centre that comes with windows 7.


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## alek

mikerr said:


> MC,WMC = Windows Media Centre - comes with Windows XP Vista and 7


Only with Vista & 7 I believe

Alek


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## FJSRiDER

mikerr said:


> MC,WMC = Windows Media Centre - comes with Windows XP Vista and 7
> 
> 7MC = the enhanced version of windows media centre that comes with windows 7.


So we are discussing software that costs how much? £100?

Atom desktops with Windows 7 are £300 boxes _before_ getting a tuner!  Then it would need a remote(?). What else?


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## TCM2007

FJSRiDER said:


> Mmm....
> 
> Does the PC need a TV card?


Well clearly, yes. I have two USB stick DVB-T tuners, one a dual SD, one a single HD, giving me three tuners and high definition. You also need to add a IR reveiver, which can be bought with a Media Center remote.

I run an Acer ReeVoo which is low power and very small (sits out of sign and sound behind the TV, with only the IR recver showing). It has built in HDMI. I also have an external USB 1.5Tb hard disk attached to it to hold the TV, and 2TB of NAS on the network for DVDs.


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## TCM2007

FJSRiDER said:


> So we are discussing software that costs how much? £100?


£0.

Comes as standard in Win7, including the EPG data.


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## Jolltax

Comes at a pretty price but this Tranquil PC looks nice for a one box solution (in my case would be with dual tuner DVB-T2)

Fanless and virtually silent according to the reviews :

http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/

Runs Windows 7 and whatever media centre thingy it comes with - supposed to be quite good.

I normally build my own stuff but this looks a bit specialist and I don't want a big ugly PC case howling away under the telly - the WAF needs to be high.

I must have given up on TiVo to be looking at all this stuff..... 

Jolltax


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## TCM2007

FJSRiDER said:


> Whatever 7MC is, it sounds a good way to go.


If your current setup is TiVo + Freeview, you can build a Windows 7 PC solution which works in a very similar way to TiVo - the looks and feel and functionality is similar (I would argue better).

The only TiVo functions missing are:

* Suggestions
* Being able to save the Live TV buffer as a recording

But 7MC adds lots, not least:

* Multi tuner support
* Superior picture quality in SD and HD
* Better organisation of shows (folders, sort options including OAD and episode name)
* Integration of music, photos, DVDs, downloaded TV, streaming TV
* Integrated SkyPlayer for live sport / movies (paid for)
* Ability to share TV to other devices around your home
* More sophisticated season passes and wishlists
* Ease of customisation

Price wise, if you gave yourself the budget of an original lifetimed S1 TiVo (£600) you could build something quite swish. You could get something workable for ~£400. Of course if you have best of PCs lying around you could possibly make one even cheaper.


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## FJSRiDER

TCM2007 said:


> £0.
> 
> Comes as standard in Win7, including the EPG data.


@£100

I don't have Windows 7.


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## TCM2007

Comes with a new PC of course.

Built in to Vista too. If the PC you're building it on is older than that I suspect it would be too old for a good experience.


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## FJSRiDER

Jolltax said:


> Fanless and virtually silent according to the reviews :
> 
> http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/
> 
> Runs Windows 7 and whatever media centre thingy it comes with - supposed to be quite good.


I hope it steers by the stars and predicts earthquakes too because they are asking '£1,079.00 (Excluding VAT at 20%)' to record TV programmes!


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## FJSRiDER

TCM2007 said:


> Comes with a new PC of course.
> 
> Built in to Vista too. If the PC you're building it on is older than that I suspect it would be too old for a good experience.


As I said above, it is getting into silly money just to record TV programmes. Compare with a twin tuner PVR? @£160-£220? Plug in job done?


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## TCM2007

People said the same about TiVo; my first one cost &#163;598. Every penny will spent.

If you want something to record the odd show whil you're out, a &#163;200 Freeview recorder will be fine.

If you want a TiVo like 100&#37; time shift world, you'll need to spend, or go the hacking route.

Pre-built PC systems are silly money, and are aimed a those with OTT custom install home cinemas.


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## FJSRiDER

TCM2007 said:


> People said the same about TiVo; my first one cost £598. Every penny will spent.


Mine only cost @£140 (in 2003) I think.


TCM2007 said:


> If you want something to record the odd show whil you're out, a £200 Freeview recorder will be fine.


That and pause live TV would be fine. HD recording and 'series linking' would be nice.


TCM2007 said:


> If you want a TiVo like 100% time shift world, you'll need to spend, or go the hacking route.


If I could hack the TiVo to keep it running I would.


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## Jolltax

FJSRiDER said:


> I hope it steers by the stars and predicts earthquakes too because they are asking '£1,079.00 (Excluding VAT at 20%)' to record TV programmes!


You are right its very expensive, personally I like the custom fan-less case design and the single box solution with sufficient power and flexibility to run PC applications.

If there is a better / cheaper solution then please share it as I am loking at all options at the moment.

For the same functionality, looks and performance a home-build HTPC is still going to be expensive.

It depends on your circumstances, I suppose, my PC's are hidden away in an office and are purely functional - I don't care how they look and a bit of fan noise is no issue but I wouldn't entertain one in our living space.

Any replacement for my TiVo is going to have to be classy, unobtrusive, small and quiet whilst still performing acceptably.

Jolltax


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## AndyP

Jolltax said:


> You are right its very expensive, personally I like the custom fan-less case design and the single box solution with sufficient power and flexibility to run PC applications.
> 
> If there is a better / cheaper solution then please share it as I am loking at all options at the moment.
> 
> For the same functionality, looks and performance a home-build HTPC is still going to be expensive.
> 
> It depends on your circumstances, I suppose, my PC's are hidden away in an office and are purely functional - I don't care how they look and a bit of fan noise is no issue but I wouldn't entertain one in our living space.
> 
> Any replacement for my TiVo is going to have to be classy, unobtrusive, small and quiet whilst still performing acceptably.
> 
> Jolltax


The PC doesn't absolutely have to be under the telly, it can be somewhere else on the network, so appearance, noise (and consequently cost) may not be the primary concern.


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## TCM2007

Mine is so small it fits invisibly behind the TV, and it's a low power job which is near silent unless I stress the hell out of it and make the main fan come on.

Many of these devices can be actually screwed to the back of an LCD using the ESIA mounting plate!










My previous setup had a full size PC, but in the cupboard under the stairs with a 10m HDMI cable to the TV (and a 10m USB extender for the IR).


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## FJSRiDER

Jolltax said:


> You are right its very expensive, personally I like the custom fan-less case design and the single box solution with sufficient power and flexibility to run PC applications.
> 
> If there is a better / cheaper solution then please share it as I am loking at all options at the moment.


My computer is an efficiently silent Mac mini. That would be ideal in a living room. Even at Mac prices it is not near £1000! I have no idea if there is suitable PVR software for it.

(I expect the Acer Aspire Revo and Windows would be cheaper still)


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## TCM2007

Best way to use the Mac Mini would, bizarrely, to be to install Win7 on it!

There is PVR software for the Mac, but it's not well integrated, surprisingly.


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## davisa

TCM2007 said:


> Best way to use the Mac Mini would, bizarrely, to be to install Win7 on it!
> 
> There is PVR software for the Mac, but it's not well integrated, surprisingly.


I'm thinking of doing this! Question is whether a Mac Mini + Win7 + USB freeview card would be better (read: easier to use, better performance etc) than just going out and getting a Humax Freeview HD recorder which is an easy plug-in-and-go solution?


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## TCM2007

Definitely easier to use. Performance - not sure; the Mac Minis are a bit light on the GPU side. The Atom+Ion PC definitely outperforms my Mac Mini, which is the last but one generation.


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## djqster

TCM2007 said:


> Definitely easier to use. Performance - not sure; the Mac Minis are a bit light on the GPU side. The Atom+Ion PC definitely outperforms my Mac Mini, which is the last but one generation.


I wouldn't expect any performance problems with the current Mini. Even my old 2007 MacBook with its crappy Intel GMA 950 can happily drive a secondary display (my telly) at 1080p.
My concerns would be cost, power consumption and possible fan noise.


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## davisa

Mini is 1.66 Core Duo (not 2). Donated to me by work, after 3 years 24/7 as a web server 

Will try and see how it goes...


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## Jolltax

Alternatively, this is well reviewed and seems to have plenty of muscle. Cheaper than the Tranquil PC as well although it sounds like its a bit louder :

Asrock Vision 3D

Would need to add a copy of Win7 and a USB tuner of some kind I guess, its £660 preorder at Scan (plus about £200 for a USB tuner and a copy of Win 7)

Still researching......

Jolltax


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## CH1

One other option is to try to persuade Virgin to improve their coverage - I know some TiVo execs read this site - could they talk to Virgin for us? I am midway between two towns (8 miles in one direction 9 in the other) that have Virgin cable but I have tried e-mailing 3 times in last 8 months to see if they might be extending the cabling and get absolutely NO response.

I can definitely say DON'T go for the Thompson DVR - mine constantly locks, fails to record programs, can't remember that I selected series for something that comes back after a seasonal break and doesn't recognise that radio programs can have series links at all. I shall be bereft without my TiVo but it will be some consolation if fellow devotees can point me to the next best thing - the feature I shall really miss above all else is the "suggestions" TiVo makes for me - I have picked up so many programs I wouldn't have noticed in the normal listings.

I'll post the comment about Virgin on that thread to in the hope someone from Virgin might pick it up!


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## irrelevant

CH1 said:


> One other option is to try to persuade Virgin to improve their coverage - I know some TiVo execs read this site - could they talk to Virgin for us? I am midway between two towns (8 miles in one direction 9 in the other) that have Virgin cable but I have tried e-mailing 3 times in last 8 months to see if they might be extending the cabling and get absolutely NO response.


I live in a inner city housing estate that has zero cable coverage. There IS cable within half a mile or so of here, but their response to me last September was:


> We have completed our investigation into the area you suggested for cable infill. Unfortunately to cable this area would require a major network extension.
> 
> At his time, there are no immediate plans to extend the network into new areas if this requires main build - as this is very expensive.
> 
> Regrettably we are not in a position to offer service at this time, but we have a clear understanding of the need for provision in this area. As we find new ways of serving areas such as this that are outwith the existing network, we will look at your request further and may be able to include this in build programmes in future years.


So you've got no hope...


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## CH1

irrelevant said:


> I live in a inner city housing estate that has zero cable coverage. There IS cable within half a mile or so of here, but their response to me last September was:
> 
> So you've got no hope...


Well, I knew the odds were probably on par with winning the lottery but I was clutching at straws, maybe what wasn't financially viable then may be worth it to them in the future.


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## gary cheshire

well the family are gutted at the thought of losing tivo, its part of the family. 

I know there are alternatives, but all are inferior to the original and still the best IMO.

We refuse to go to sky+, no VM in the channel islands, would be interested in WMC but its down to ease of control and usability


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## einstein

CH1 said:


> One other option is to try to persuade Virgin to improve their coverage


I live in a rural idle, think of the Shire out of Lord of the Rings, 16 properties, not enough wire for telephone lines, 3.7km from the nearest BT Exchange, just about got eletricity and running water, no drainage. Broadband is faster via 3G, than wires, Cable will never be here!

Someone's telling porkies, here, TiVo obviously don't know, what the Dark Ages is like when it comes to Cable and Broadband in the UK! (in the rural areas).

I still don't understand, why they cannot continue service and just take the money, it's easy money isn't it? £10 a month from subscribers!


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## davisa

For those who want to try Windows Media Center, I installed WM7 on my MacMini last night. Other than a problem with drivers (Wireless Mouse/Keyboard stopped working AFTER I installed the drivers) the whole things seems to run fine.

However, I just don't see it having the Wife Friendly factor so will probably have to go with the Humax PVR-FOX T2 or Digital Stream. AV Forums seems to rate the former higher.


----------



## -MC-

TCM2007 said:


> Well clearly, yes. I have two USB stick DVB-T tuners, one a dual SD, one a single HD, giving me three tuners and high definition. You also need to add a IR reveiver, which can be bought with a Media Center remote.
> 
> I run an Acer ReeVoo which is low power and very small (sits out of sign and sound behind the TV, with only the IR recver showing). It has built in HDMI. I also have an external USB 1.5Tb hard disk attached to it to hold the TV, and 2TB of NAS on the network for DVDs.


I would be very interested to know which USB tuners you use / recommend.

The last time I looked at Media Center (pre Windows 7), people seemed to have a lot of problems with tuners, (card tuners mainly).

Is W7MC a big improvement ?


----------



## TCM2007

davisa said:


> However, I just don't see it having the Wife Friendly factor so will probably have to go with the Humax PVR-FOX T2 or Digital Stream. AV Forums seems to rate the former higher.


It's fine with wife and kids - once the MCE interface is up, it's just like a TiVo really. Much friendlier than a Humax IMHO. Mine's set to auto-boot into MCE, but it stay's on 24/7 so when the TV is turned on MCE is just there.


----------



## TCM2007

-MC- said:


> I would be very interested to know which USB tuners you use / recommend.
> 
> The last time I looked at Media Center (pre Windows 7), people seemed to have a lot of problems with tuners, (card tuners mainly).
> 
> Is W7MC a big improvement ?


Yes 7MC is step up.

Tuner wise, I use a PCTV NanoStick T2 290e for HD (it's the only one available, so that's a simple choice) and for the SD dual tuner I used a £30 one from Maplin, I forget the brand.

Freeview is easy; satellite is more problematic.


----------



## FJSRiDER

TCM2007 said:


> Tuner wise, I use a PCTV NanoStick T2 290e for HD (it's the only one available, so that's a simple choice) and for the SD dual tuner I used a £30 one from Maplin, I forget the brand.


Thanks for the tips there.


TCM2007 said:


> Freeview is easy; satellite is more problematic.


What about Freesat?


----------



## Paul_J

I know Satalite is more of an issue but I live in an area without Freeview and although I have sky+ I don't use it much because if forgets series from one year to the next where as my MC PC just picks up from the previouse year all be it just 4.5 channels (Channel 5 is to poor quality to watch) So the best alternative would be a MC PC which could control my Satalite box with a good quality input much the way the TIVo currently works faultlessly.


----------



## TCM2007

FJSRiDER said:


> Thanks for the tips there.
> 
> What about Freesat?


DVB-S tuners are available and work fine. I'm told the EPG data of the more obscure Freesat channels is of poorer quality, but don't have direct experience of that.


----------



## Nimbus

TCM2007 said:


> Triple-tuner (1 HD, 2 SD) Win7MC on Acer Aspire Revo & Linksys DMA2200


I see you are using an Acer Revo to run Win7MC. 
How is this in terms of speed ? Are the menus and guide data quick to display ?
and does it cope with recording HD ok ?

This would seem a really good, quiet solution, but most of the comments I've seen on AVForums seem complain that it is slow, or underpowered ?


----------



## Sneals2000

Nimbus said:


> I see you are using an Acer Revo to run Win7MC.
> How is this in terms of speed ? Are the menus and guide data quick to display ?
> and does it cope with recording HD ok ?
> 
> This would seem a really good, quiet solution, but most of the comments I've seen on AVForums seem complain that it is slow, or underpowered ?


I run a Single Core N230 Revo (3600?) with DVBLink Network pack (so no local tuner but sharing other tuners over the network)

Replay of Live and Recorded SD and HD TV is fine. Little bit of stuttering for the first second or so (which is common to many PCs doing this stuff - not just Atom-based machines). The menus are noticably sluggish - and things like populating the Recorded TV window can take longer the first time you run MC. However it isn't more sluggish than a Tivo with a lot of recordings - it just isn't as slick as a higher-powered PC.

Where you do have to be careful is if you want to watch Flash or Silverlight video - like iPlayer, ITVPlayer, 4oD etc. Some of this stuff doesn't reliably hardware accelerate and falls over on a lower power CPU. (Or requires tweaking to find a Flash build that will hardware accelerate)

I use my Revo for watching 576i, 1080i and 720p SD and HDTV in 7MC and it works pretty well for me. But the menus do annoy me when I've been using a faster machine for any length of time - but you get over it.


----------



## TCM2007

Mine is the dual core Atom. Some activities cause a long pause (like setting up SP of someting with lots of episodes) and it can take 15 mins after power up to "settle down" but it's generally pretty usable.

It is possible stress the thing out - recording three things at once, playing back HD, with an Extender connected say. Then while recording and playback are fine, the menus do slow right down.

MC7 rebuilds some menu contents from scratch on being rebooted and this can make some slow to open the first time.

The compromise is fine overall.


----------



## filbert

I've probably got the same Revo. The R3610? I've been running XBMC LIve off a USB stick and Boxee on it and it can play 1080p no problem. I'll have to have a look into how well it would work using MC7. With all these USB sticks how do you split the aerial signal? I assume each tuner requires a feed?

What I don't want to do is end up spending virtually as much as a Humax HD PVR as that is probably the easiest solution.


----------



## Sneals2000

filbert said:


> I've probably got the same Revo. The R3610? I've been running XBMC LIve off a USB stick and Boxee on it and it can play 1080p no problem. I'll have to have a look into how well it would work using MC7. With all these USB sticks how do you split the aerial signal? I assume each tuner requires a feed?
> 
> What I don't want to do is end up spending virtually as much as a Humax HD PVR as that is probably the easiest solution.


Ironically playing back standard format SD and HD video is a walk in the park for the boxes (as the 9400 GPU is well up to the task) - it's the stuff that needs CPU power that the Revo is less optimised for.

You can get some dual-tuner USB DVB-T sticks ISTR (I have a Diversity stick which will run as a single-diversity tuner or dual non-diversity - and has a splitter cable to run from a single aerial in non-diversity dual-tuner mode. I mainly use this with a notebook abroad in diversity mode - which needs two aerials - splitting a single aerial is pointless for diversity reception - but that is not relevant to domestic fixed-aerial set-ups)

I have had no major problems splitting a roof-top aerial via a decent Taylor 1->8 RF Distribution Amp - have error free signals on all my DVB-T devices that way. (I'm on the edge of the offical Crystal Palace coverage area - and can also now get Hannington DVB-T services)


----------



## davisa

Sorry but I've waved the White flag and uninstalled Windows from my Mac Mini. I just couldn't get my wireless mouse and keyboard to work, despite numerous hours googling and trying this and that with device drivers. As far as I'm concerned Windows still isn't ready for consumer use - I've go better things to do than spending hours messing around with configurations.

The mac is back to XBMC use, where it just works.

Humax ordered and should be with me tomorrow.


----------



## TCM2007

My dual tuner stick just requires a single input. I now split the aerial feed at the living room socket to power the 3rd tuner, and since the power was increased at switchover that's fine. The HD stick is very sensitive, an unamplified wire aerial works fine.


----------



## Nebulous

I went for option 6.

I made up a W7MC over Christmas (bought that just in time it seems ). I was pretty dubious that it could live up to my (Tivo based) expectations, but I&#8217;ve been pleasantly surprised.

It&#8217;s got two dual DVB-T2 HD freeview tuner cards, so I no longer have to juggle my stack of tivos when programs clash, it just automatically records up to four programs at once.

I&#8217;m still struggling to get comfortable with the user interface, not because it&#8217;s bad but because it just isn&#8217;t Tivo. Navigating Tivo&#8217;s menus over the last decade became more muscle memory than conscious effort. Now I have to think again.

Having said all that, if a new multi-tuner HD Tivo existed in the UK today, I would definitely have bought one in preference to the PC.

Edit: Of course, I'm jammy, in that I am in an area where HD freeview has been rolled out, but more than half of the country has yet to be done.


----------



## Nimbus

Nebulous said:


> I went for option 6.
> 
> I made up a W7MC over Christmas (bought that just in time it seems ). I was pretty dubious that it could live up to my (Tivo based) expectations, but Ive been pleasantly surprised.
> 
> Its got two dual DVB-T2 HD freeview tuner cards, so I no longer have to juggle my stack of tivos when programs clash, it just automatically records up to four programs at once.
> 
> Im still struggling to get comfortable with the user interface, not because its bad but because it just isnt Tivo. Navigating Tivos menus over the last decade became more muscle memory than conscious effort. Now I have to think again.
> 
> Having said all that, if a new multi-tuner HD Tivo existed in the UK today, I would definitely have bought one in preference to the PC.
> 
> Edit: Of course, I'm jammy, in that I am in an area where HD freeview has been rolled out, but more than half of the country has yet to be done.


ahh, hmm, well I'd seen revo's were upto the job for playing back sd/hd content, and had got one earmarked as a replacement for my xbmc'd xbox..

But had wondered if it was upto the job of recording stuff too, sounds like its not going to be fast enough for OH acceptability...

what spec did you build your new system around ?

at the moment, it seems like the cheapest, and most sensible option is still the foxsat-hdr for me..


----------



## Rob Randall

I've been thinking about trying WMC7 for ages but never got around to it, basically because TiVo just did what I needed. However, now the end is nigh, I've started researching Media Centre again.

I fancy something like the Revo setup that TCM2007 has. However, it also raises some concerns which maybe others can quash or confirm -


The R3610 doesn't seem to be available from many places and I can't find it on the Acer site (in fact I can't find any Revos!), so is it a current product or should I be looking for the last stock from somewhere or second-hand from Ebay?
What about the R3700? That looks more recent and slightly higher spec (some of the 'sluggish' comments for the R3610 concern me). Is that a better option?
When you get a Revo with Win7 preinstalled - is it 64 or 32 bit? Some reviews I've read say 64 bit (which I can't see the point of on this device TBH). Does 64 bit cause problems with drivers, codec packs, plug-ins, etc? Does it come with Win7 media so 32 bit can be installed? or am I better getting the Linux version, flashing the rom and installing a retail 32 bit copy of W7? Any problems with Revo specific drivers when doing a reinstall?
How to get the picture on the TV. My old but very good Panasonic TV only has SCART. So I need to get from VGA to SCART. Would this do the job?
This dual-tuner freeview USB stick looks ideal - anyone tried it?
I may want to add a DVB-S tuner to get additional freesat channels. I can't find many USB ones but this looks a possibility. Although does it need the extra purchase of ProgDVB Pro to get the HD channels into MC? (thinking ahead here for HD when I do get around to replacing the TV).
And finally, are they any similar (but better than Revo) devices available?

Sorry for all the queries but I want to try and get everything clear in my head before I make the leap.

Like some other people here, I'm almost tempted to just get a Humax HDR and be done with it!  but I'm not sure my inner-geek will let me 

Thanks


----------



## TCM2007

The R3610 doesn't seem to be available from many places and I can't find it on the Acer site (in fact I can't find any Revos!), so is it a current product or should I be looking for the last stock from somewhere or second-hand from Ebay? As long as it uses the "Ion" chipset it's graphics performance will be fine.

What about the R3700? That looks more recent and slightly higher spec (some of the 'sluggish' comments for the R3610 concern me). Is that a better option? Don't stress about the "sluggish" thing, it's slow compared to MC7 running on may main quad-core PC, but it perfectly usable. If you're using an expanded TiVo with lots on the disk it might even feel quick!

When you get a Revo with Win7 preinstalled - is it 64 or 32 bit? Some reviews I've read say 64 bit (which I can't see the point of on this device TBH). Does 64 bit cause problems with drivers, codec packs, plug-ins, etc? Does it come with Win7 media so 32 bit can be installed? or am I better getting the Linux version, flashing the rom and installing a retail 32 bit copy of W7? Any problems with Revo specific drivers when doing a reinstall?
64-bit. Not had any compatibility issues - you don't need to install anything really; no additional drivers needed for Freeview sticks anyway.

How to get the picture on the TV. My old but very good Panasonic TV only has SCART. So I need to get from VGA to SCART. Would this do the job?

It's testing my memory a bit, but when I ran MCE into a CRT TV I had a special cable made up by one of the online AV cable specialists which was VGA at one end and RGB SCART at the other. I then used a hack to override the video card to produce output with the right timings.

http://www.nexusuk.org/projects/vga2scart/circuit
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/p/39520/171351.aspx#171351

I've been wracking my brain trying to think who made it for me, but can't remember.

This dual-tuner freeview USB stick looks ideal - anyone tried it? 
I think that's the one I use. Works fine.

And finally, are they any similar (but better than Revo) devices available?

Most of the far eastern makes (Asus, Gigabyte) have something similar. As long as it has the Ion chipset all should be the same.


----------



## Nimbus

regarding the VGA-> scart hack, there's plenty of info on the web out there on how to do it, but I'm not sure how much success ?

I tried myself, 'back in the day', and could never get it working.. I think it was quite dependent on drivers, and individual crts...

In then end thats what made me hack my xbox, as it has scart output built in..

heres some links to info I tried at the time...

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/39520.aspx?PageIndex=1

http://www.idiots.org.uk/vga_rgb_scart/

I have to say tho, I could never get this working ! and looking at the quality you get from a pc using svga.. I think the final result could be a bit disappointing !


----------



## djb2002

Sorry for a daft question, but how would you connect a media center PC up to a Sky box to enable is to control the channels ?

Thanks in advance


----------



## Rob Randall

Thanks for the info TCM2007 and Nimbus. I probably will be making the leap to WMC but only if I can sort out the VGA to SCART thing. Off to read those links....


----------



## TCM2007

djb2002 said:


> Sorry for a daft question, but how would you connect a media center PC up to a Sky box to enable is to control the channels ?
> 
> Thanks in advance


Doesn't work like that; you'd put a Freesat card in your PC.


----------



## TCM2007

Nimbus said:


> I have to say tho, I could never get this working ! and looking at the quality you get from a pc using svga.. I think the final result could be a bit disappointing !


I got it working with a Panasonic 36-inch CRT TV. Quality was actually surprisingly good, considering.

IIRC it was more dependent on the graphics card than the TV.


----------



## djb2002

TCM2007 said:


> Doesn't work like that; you'd put a Freesat card in your PC.


Thanks - I thought it was a daft question.

That makes a lot of sense.

Thanks again,
Daniel


----------



## TCM2007

It was Keene I got mine from:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/1479046-post165.html


----------



## itm

I installed Windows 7 on my HTPC last year, having read glowing reviews of the Media Centre. I was previously using the open source MediaPortal, running on Windows XP. I have to say that, while Windows 7 Media Centre looks very pretty, it isn't a patch on MediaPortal for ease of use and features (particularly when you use some of the plug-ins which are available for MediaPortal). I actually now run MediaPortal in preference to the native Media Centre app on Windows 7!
The one thing I haven't yet explored is the TV tuner/PVR functionality of MediaPortal (as I don't have a tuner card). Has anyone else explored this option, and compared it with Tivo for ease-of-use?


----------



## Nebulous

Nimbus said:


> what spec did you build your new system around ?


Its an Intel i5, which is well over specd just for recording TV, but I figured if I have to have a PC in my living room, it may as well be a decent spec that I can use for anything.

Its fanless, so completely silent apart from the hard drive.

The graphics is GT430 based, which means I just have a single hdmi output carrying both video and audio.

I also fitted a blu-ray rom, So I dont even need a separate player anymore. In fact all I have now is the PC, TV and A/V receiver for my 7.1 audio. All the separates, with wires everywhere are gone.

This system was not cheap however, so if budget is an issue, then this is not for you.



Rob Randall said:


> I'm almost tempted to just get a Humax HDR


My brother leant me his Humax PVR-9300T for a while, but it was so awful that I would sooner watch live TV, adverts-and-all , than waste my time trying to use it. Maybe Im just spoilt after having a Tivo for so long, but Im sure the designer was going for the Most hopeless user interface ever invented award.


----------



## DX30

TCM2007 said:


> djb2002 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry for a daft question, but how would you connect a media center PC up to a Sky box to enable is to control the channels ?
> 
> Thanks in advance
> 
> 
> 
> Doesn't work like that; you'd put a Freesat card in your PC.
Click to expand...

I believe Media Center can control an external stb too in much the same way as a Series 1 TiVo. You need to get a TV card with a hardware MPEG encoder, and also an IR wand, but it is possible.

If you only want the Freesat channels a Sat card is the better way to go.

Edit:
You might find this helpful

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/86969.aspx


----------



## Sneals2000

WRT to VGA to SCART cables.

I got mine made as a custom build from Keene after building my own spaghetti version to test it worked as a concept.

From memory the passive cable solution only worked with ATI Radeons which could output "composite syncs" or "mixed syncs". The VGA standard is based on horizontal and vertical sync pulses being carried on separate wires, but SCART requires "composite" or "mixed" syncs where the horizontal and vertical sync pulses are combined (in fact SCART is really designed to extract the syncs from the composite video signal carried on that SCART pin usually)

Radeon GPUs in the early/mid 00s could be controlled by Powerstrip and configured to output composite rather than separate H/V syncs - and thus the only thing the cable needed to do was pull over the Fast Blanking input (to force RGB mode on TVs)

Note that regular VGA to SCART cables off-the-shelf are NOT suitable for this task.

The downside of the VGA to SCART solution was that you had to work hard with Powerstrip to create your custom video mode. (I posted my settings for a pretty good 1024x576/50i set-up online on a couple of boards - but that PC has gone the way of all things and I don't have a record of them to hand now)

Also if Powerstrip didn't start up properly you ended up with a standard VGA output - which your TV couldn't sync to. To get out of this I always VNCed into my HTPC from a laptop or a desktop on my network to fix the issue.

I also recall I had to registry hack XP MCE to remove the overscan simulation in MCE that zoomed in the video a bit and cropped the edges, and stopped me having 1:1 line-mapping. If this wasn't inhibited I got nasty interlace interference tearing artefacts.

It was a good solution 8 years ago when we only had SD CRTs - but now there are so many pretty decent displays with HDMI inputs I can't recommend it (and it may be trickier to find a video card that supports it)

(If you can't get a video card that will output Composite/Mixed syncs on its VGA output, you need to get an active cable with sync-combining circuitry in it. This is likely to be quite costly and may need a power supply as well)


----------



## davisa

Humax arrived yesterday, and it's good. Not TiVo good, but then nothing is.

Liking the picture quality (especially HD), sound quality, speed, dual tuners and going from a three box solution (TiVo plus freeview box plus rgb/hdmi converter) to a single box.

Guide is far worse as is season passes and general navigation, although better than the other freeview pvr's I tried including sky+.

All in all, it's not TiVo, but liking it so far.


----------



## ac3dman

Useful to know since I am looking at getting a PVR now.

Does it have an '8 second rewind' button (not sure what the image is since it wore away) like Tivo? We use this a lot.

Can you fast-forward the adverts and stop exactly where you want like on Tivo. Tried this on Sky+; absolutely hopeless.



davisa said:


> Humax arrived yesterday, and it's good. Not TiVo good, but then nothing is.
> 
> Liking the picture quality (especially HD), sound quality, speed, dual tuners and going from a three box solution (TiVo plus freeview box plus rgb/hdmi converter) to a single box.
> 
> Guide is far worse as is season passes and general navigation, although better than the other freeview pvr's I tried including sky+.
> 
> All in all, it's not TiVo, but liking it so far.


----------



## davisa

ac3dman said:


> Useful to know since I am looking at getting a PVR now.
> 
> Does it have an '8 second rewind' button (not sure what the image is since it wore away) like Tivo? We use this a lot.
> 
> Can you fast-forward the adverts and stop exactly where you want like on Tivo. Tried this on Sky+; absolutely hopeless.


You can set (in seconds) a skip-back and skip-forward time which works quite well. The winding isn't bad, far better than sky+ or my bluray player - it isn't TiVo though so doesn't do the reaction-time adjusting when you press play, or the blip blip noises which i have to do myself!

I was watching something last night which was still being recorded and when it caught up with real-time it just stopped, and I had to naviagate to the channel it was currently on, wind back a bit and continue from where I left off. How primitive!

I really do hate the grid view all these recorders have although at least this one isn't like treacle like sky+.

The Humax does have a genre listing, but the categories are lacking. There is films, drama etc but no Comedy or Documentary. It also has very weird ideas of what constitutes drama!

It also has search with a choice of input methods- SMS or keyboard layouts but it doesn't autocomplete as you type but at least it does remember your last searches.

There is a menu of sorts, which although you cannot do everything from, you can do quite a lot - recordings, guide and channel list.

All in all, I'm still liking it but do miss all the little things that we took for granted on TiVo which all together made it such a pleasant device.


----------



## Steve_K

Muttley1900 said:


> Well, I have to admit that I'm now seriously looking at option 5, which is BT Vision. . . . . . .


You'd have to be desparate to have it as your main PVR instead of a Sky+/HD. I've got a BT Vision because it was free. It's a good back up recorder but the user interface is even worse than Sky's (yes it is possible to do that)

Other than the need to subscribe to BT (imho not bad as broadband supplier but that's a digression) these are BTV's main shortfalls:

- no slow motion
- it auto shuts down every 8 hours (for my conveneience allegedly - rubbish!)
- no fast jump to point in programme
- no suggestions/anytime feature
- you can only download programmes if you have >2Mbps internet and strangely a map of locations below that rate is very coincidental with those without VM cable access.

On the good side it does have an RF modulator which not all Freeview receivers have nowadays


----------



## Muttley1900

Steve_K said:


> You'd have to be desparate to have it as your main PVR instead of a Sky+/HD. I've got a BT Vision because it was free. It's a good back up recorder but the user interface is even worse than Sky's (yes it is possible to do that)


Thanks Steve, some interesting points.

At the moment, I'm doing without any pvr (as moved the S1 to the loft a couple of days ago) and currently using my apple tv for "on demand" stuff and now I've got the add-ons for "catch-up tv" working on the Apple TV too, I think I have enough "not at broadcast time" tv for the moment.

But yes, I am still "looking" at options, and not until I actually go and "play" with a BT vision will I rule it in fully.

I have to admit though, I have ruled out sky, my own prejudices I know and maybe an example of cutting my nose off etc. But as Groucho Marx said "these are my principles and if you don't like them... I have others".

J.


----------



## JudyB

Fizz said:


> I have no cable, no tv ariel and no digital service where I am, just telephone line and a sky box. I love my tivo, had it since the beginning and really want something I can download recordings off. the tivo is perfect........ or at least was... three dying in june...


We do have Freeview here (and with a reasonable signal) and we also have SkyHD.
However time and time again we get recording failures because the Sky box has crashed, or decided it can't read the Sky card etc so we get failed recordings. At least when the Sky card was "unreadable" our Tivo recordings from the FTA channels worked correctly.
We got this again last night - no Time Team  due to the SkyHD box having crashed. Fortunately I discovered this in time to record off C4+1 so we didn't have to resort to C4's "on demand" service.

What I find frustrating is that the Sky hardware appears to be so much less reliable than the Tivo. (As well as having poorer software).


----------



## Fred Smith

Fizz said:


> I have no cable, no tv ariel and *no digital service* where I am, just telephone line *and a sky box*.




Sky has been digital since 1998.


----------



## Sneals2000

JudyB said:


> We do have Freeview here (and with a reasonable signal) and we also have SkyHD.
> However time and time again we get recording failures because the Sky box has crashed, or decided it can't read the Sky card etc so we get failed recordings. At least when the Sky card was "unreadable" our Tivo recordings from the FTA channels worked correctly.
> We got this again last night - no Time Team  due to the SkyHD box having crashed. Fortunately I discovered this in time to record off C4+1 so we didn't have to resort to C4's "on demand" service.
> 
> What I find frustrating is that the Sky hardware appears to be so much less reliable than the Tivo. (As well as having poorer software).


You don't have a Thomson first gen Sky HD box do you?

There is a known fault with the power supplies on them - caused by poor quality PSU capacitors. This initially manifests itself as seemingly random crashing and freezing, corrupted recordings, no signal reports, missed recordings, some channels not tuning etc.

We run the Sky HD 1TB box (previously we had a Thomson first gen Sky HD box which I upgraded with a 1TB drive) - and don't get any missed recordings, or misread cards any more. Can't remember when we lost a recording apart from in incredibly heavy rain or when a programme was switched from BBC One to BBC Two because of sporting events.

Also - do you have a strong signal from your dish (and is your dish properly aligned?)

I read quite a few reports of dodgy Sky boxes - but since we replaced ours with the 1TB HD box we've had nothing major at all go wrong. (And our original Pace Sky+ SD box was pretty reliable too)

Of course the Sky EPG isn't Tivo - but then Tivo didn't have lossless recording quality, HD, dual-tuners (in fact it relied on external tuners for satellite - so didn't have any satellite hardware to be reliable or unreliable) or cope with Dolby Digital audio. I loved the Tivo's EPG implementation, and the UI is very well engineered. However I was never that sold on the picture quality - even with Mode 0 correctly implemented.


----------



## JudyB

Sneals2000 said:


> You don't have a Thomson first gen Sky HD box do you?
> 
> There is a known fault with the power supplies on them - caused by poor quality PSU capacitors. This initially manifests itself as seemingly random crashing and freezing, corrupted recordings, no signal reports, missed recordings, some channels not tuning etc.
> 
> We run the Sky HD 1TB box (previously we had a Thomson first gen Sky HD box which I upgraded with a 1TB drive) - and don't get any missed recordings, or misread cards any more. Can't remember when we lost a recording apart from in incredibly heavy rain or when a programme was switched from BBC One to BBC Two because of sporting events.
> 
> Also - do you have a strong signal from your dish (and is your dish properly aligned?)
> 
> I read quite a few reports of dodgy Sky boxes - but since we replaced ours with the 1TB HD box we've had nothing major at all go wrong. (And our original Pace Sky+ SD box was pretty reliable too)
> 
> Of course the Sky EPG isn't Tivo - but then Tivo didn't have lossless recording quality, HD, dual-tuners (in fact it relied on external tuners for satellite - so didn't have any satellite hardware to be reliable or unreliable) or cope with Dolby Digital audio. I loved the Tivo's EPG implementation, and the UI is very well engineered. However I was never that sold on the picture quality - even with Mode 0 correctly implemented.


No, we have a Samsung SkyHD box and (the last time I checked) it does have a reasonable signal strength. It is certainly better than the last Sky+ box we had, which was an Amstrad and we couldn't get the Tivo to work with radio channels on it.

Since we only got it last June, what we will do (and did with our first Sky+ box) is to keep an eye on its behaviour and make sure that we complain to Sky before the first year is up if we get too many problems.


----------



## adrianw

I went for a Humax 9300T Freeview+ box, as I'll be ditching Sky soon. I'll miss Sky Arts and a few other Sky only channels, but they are not worth the cost.

I'm underwhelmed by the user interface in comparison to TiVo. The other PVRs must be really awful.

Otherwise, the Humax seems quite good.


----------



## TCM2007

Lots of people jumping ship early; I've every confidence that an alternative EPG will be set up, and it's now looking like it can be done without a network card.


----------



## Sneals2000

Yep - looking at the people on board and the success other countries have had - I wouldn't be surprised if a solution were up and running before June.

How the metadata etc. compares will be interesting.


----------



## TCM2007

I'm virtually certain that something will be done for June. EPG quality will be WIP for a while I should think.


----------



## spitfires

> Lots of people jumping ship early


Just to again appeal to people departing TiVo - please don't scrap your old TiVo but consider donating him/her to the community project - we'll give him/her a good home and refurbish him/her for someone else to use in the future.

.


----------



## sjp

donating "him"?

it may not have any curves but it's certainly a "her" - sexist


----------



## spitfires

... post corrected


----------



## steford

I use XBMC on my HTPC running TinyXP in the living room for music and Japanese TV my wife downloads. This thread got me thinking about updating to Win7 MCE which I wasn't that keen to do.

Took a look around at tvheadend (Linux) and Openelec and thought about the linux route too - although I have 1 Windows app running on my HTPC I'd be reluctant to ditch. Could virtualise it of course which is a possibility. Then started looking at Media Portal as a back end with XBMC Plugin and then finally at Media Portal on its own. 

As far as I can see it can handle all DVB tuner types, has an advanced "Wishlist" plugin, some form of series linking and a nice looking EPG from OTA or XMLTV. I currently only have a single downfeed cable from my Sky dish so that into a DVB-S2 tuner and a DVB-T2 tuner should do me (with the option of adding further DVB-T tuners). Has iPlayer, a web interface for scheduling (where I do most of my weekly planning for Tivo) and loads of other stuff.

I'm ditching Sky to save some money so right now this is looking like the cheapest and most flexible replacement for me with the caveat that it's not plug and play like my other options - the Humax boxes. Also means that my HTPC is a single point of failure (it's now running a lot of stuff) but I guess I have the option to split this out into 2 machines as technlogy/requirements change. Have ordered a WinTV Nova-T from Amazon (£17.99) for an experiment.

Any experiences/advice to stop me doing this?

Note: Will happily donate the Tivo should I do the above and decide it has to go.


----------



## welshpedro

spitfires said:


> Just to again appeal to people departing TiVo - please don't scrap your old TiVo but consider donating him/her to the community project - we'll give him/her a good home and refurbish him/her for someone else to use in the future.
> 
> .


I have a TiVo I can donate .... anything to help in getting alt epg...... what do I need to do to get it to the project


----------



## steveroe

welshpedro said:


> I have a TiVo I can donate .... anything to help in getting alt epg...... what do I need to do to get it to the project


Pop over to tivoland.com and register on the forums, there is a thread accumulating offers of help in which you can post your kind offer.


----------



## welshpedro

steveroe said:


> Pop over to tivoland.com and register on the forums, there is a thread accumulating offers of help in which you can post your kind offer.


Thanks... Just found it and done as you sugggest.


----------



## Nimbus

steford said:


> Took a look around at tvheadend (Linux) and Openelec and thought about the linux route too -


have you thought about mythtv ?

( or mythbuntu )

I installed this on an old P4 desktop at the weekend, with a usb tuner stick, and it seems to perform pretty well... certainly as good as a 'straight' PVR, I'm still trying to access its 'Tivolike' performance.

It wasnt 'easy' to get running, but most of that was down to me 'diving in' rather than reading up on it properly.

I put the P4 running the desktop in the garage acting as the backend, ( as its noisy ), and hid an old laptop around the back of the TV as a frontend for now. 
Seems a nice solution, as I can add as many tuners etc as I want..

I'm going to run it in parallel to tivo and see how it performs for a bit.

Best of all tho, it was made out of old hardware, so hasnt cost me anything


----------



## alek

I bought a freesat tuner and going to put it in an old PC with myth tv to see how it goes.

All it cost is the price of the card, the pc was wasting away in the spare room.

Alek


----------



## Nimbus

alek said:


> I bought a freesat tuner and going to put it in an old PC with myth tv to see how it goes.
> 
> All it cost is the price of the card, the pc was wasting away in the spare room.
> 
> Alek


I'd recommend trying the mythbuntu and also this chaps pages... 

They are what got it working for me.. ( easy when you actually read the instructions ! )

Out of interest what card did you get ? 
I've noticed a lot of the cheaper ones dont have great support under linux 
And you really dont need the extra headache 

I've now bought a Hauppauge WinTV NOVA-HD-S2 card, to give it a proper test, as that seems to be a favoured freesat card..

Sadly, none of this seems as user friendly as my trusty tivo... but probably a better solution than a 'normal' pvr...


----------



## alek

I got a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-S-Plus DVB-S Freesat PCI TV tuner I got it cheap, it is supported in ubuntu and if it's to my liking I will then get a s2.

I didn't fancy splashing out too much wedge till I am sure I like it.

I have been reading that guys pages and intend to follow his instructions.

Does he not recommend installing ubuntu 10.10 and then myth on top.?

Alek


----------



## Nimbus

alek said:


> I got a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-S-Plus DVB-S Freesat PCI TV tuner I got it cheap, it is supported in ubuntu and if it's to my liking I will then get a s2.
> 
> I didn't fancy splashing out too much wedge till I am sure I like it.
> 
> I have been reading that guys pages and intend to follow his instructions.
> 
> Does he not recommend installing ubuntu 10.10 and then myth on top.?
> 
> Alek


agreed, good plan, I'm doing likewise, tho figuring I can sell the pc-card pretty easily if I dont like..

yes, he does, but I'd already downloaded the mythbuntu distro and installed it before finding his pages... its pretty much the same thing anyway 

I had a few teething problems with an internal 'pinnacle' pc-tv card, that doesnt seem to be supported, but once I'd realised and dug my usb tuner out of the parts bin, it was pretty straightforward.

I did give win7 media centre a go to, but its much more resource hungry ( was only just useable on a P4..) and I already prefer mythtv.

It seems the only thing it cant do is the 'learn' my habits like tivo.. everything else is there... at least according to this old... comparison

At the moment, I'm hoping to be able to use tivo with the new epg source to record sd programs, and myth to get my hd freesat content and serve my music and other videos 

best of both worlds...


----------



## TCM2007

If you get the automated commercial skipping working I'd be interested to hear.

Can be done in theory in MC7 too, but whenever I tried I've been unable to come up with settings which work.


----------



## alek

According to that comparison Myth has more going for it than tivo except the learning bit.

I was going to buy a third Tivo to use for testing the "homebrew epg" when available.

But I have decided to have a play with Myth instead. Firstly because I believe that the epg will be successful and I have nothing that I can add to its development. So I reckon it will be a matter of either downloading software or replacing the HDD to get it to work.

Secondly, in the worst case scenario of an epg not being available I will have something up and running to tide me over or replace tivo.

I hope to start the myth project this weekend. Is there anything in particular I need to be wary of.

Alek


----------



## steford

Nimbus said:


> have you thought about mythtv ?
> 
> ( or mythbuntu )
> 
> I installed this on an old P4 desktop at the weekend, with a usb tuner stick, and it seems to perform pretty well... certainly as good as a 'straight' PVR, I'm still trying to access its 'Tivolike' performance.
> 
> It wasnt 'easy' to get running, but most of that was down to me 'diving in' rather than reading up on it properly.
> 
> I put the P4 running the desktop in the garage acting as the backend, ( as its noisy ), and hid an old laptop around the back of the TV as a frontend for now.
> Seems a nice solution, as I can add as many tuners etc as I want..
> 
> I'm going to run it in parallel to tivo and see how it performs for a bit.
> 
> Best of all tho, it was made out of old hardware, so hasnt cost me anything


Thanks for the tip. I hadn't looked at it as I'm reluctant to set up another machine if I don't have to. The HTPC under my TV replaced a loft server and original XBOX frontend some years ago. It's always an option though. For now I'm going to try Media Portal on my XP box alongside XBMC (just installed on Win7 without TV server and it was a doddle) to see how it goes with the Nova-T stick. Have an Apple TV2 on the way for XBMC in the bedroom (replacing an original XBOX there also) so I won't be ditching XBMC altogether - although Tivo I will :-(

I'm treading carefully like most. I like the idea of the Humax but neither the Freesat nor the Freeview do quite what I need so the DIY HTPC route looks like a good one especially as I have most of the hardware already sitting there.


----------



## Jolltax

When the bad news was announced about TiVo I bought a WinTV Nova TD 500 twin tuner freeview card and a Compro s350 DVB-S satellite card to play with as I expect to move to an HTPC. The Compro card was only £24 and seems to work very well.

I plugged both the cards into my kids PC and set it up temporarily under the TV to play around with. I tried MediaPortal, NPVR and Mythtv (under Ubuntu) but don't have a copy of Windows 7 for MCE. I haven't tried XBMC but am led to believe that it is more of a 'front-end' and less competent at handling live TV directly.

I think I liked Mythtv the best, slightly more difficult to set up than the Windows alternatives but not rocket science. None of them look as robust and well laid out as TiVo but they do all have significantly more potential (server / network capability, plugins, access to web based services).

Overall I was encouraged, I think I will be able to replace my TiVo relatively inexpensively with a mixture of old IT hardware and Ubuntu built into a HTPC case that will look at home under my TV. I found the AVforums 'Home entertainment PC's' section pretty helpful :

http://www.avforums.com/

We will be ready with a new box on 1st June, I am confident and will say a sad goodbye to TiVo.

Jolltax


----------



## Nimbus

Jolltax said:


> a Compro s350 DVB-S satellite card to play with as I expect to move to an HTPC. The Compro card was only £24 and seems to work very well.


How did you get along installing the compro under mythtv ?

I decided not to buy one of these in end, as all the stuff I could find on google seemed to point towards 'problems' get it recognised and configured ? ANd I didn fancy the extra 'hassle'..

It certainly is a good price, compared to the ~£80 for the nova card I've bought......


----------



## steford

Jolltax said:


> When the bad news was announced about TiVo I bought a WinTV Nova TD 500 twin tuner freeview card and a Compro s350 DVB-S satellite card to play with as I expect to move to an HTPC. The Compro card was only £24 and seems to work very well.
> 
> I plugged both the cards into my kids PC and set it up temporarily under the TV to play around with. I tried MediaPortal, NPVR and Mythtv (under Ubuntu) but don't have a copy of Windows 7 for MCE. I haven't tried XBMC but am led to believe that it is more of a 'front-end' and less competent at handling live TV directly.
> 
> I think I liked Mythtv the best, slightly more difficult to set up than the Windows alternatives but not rocket science. None of them look as robust and well laid out as TiVo but they do all have significantly more potential (server / network capability, plugins, access to web based services).
> 
> Overall I was encouraged, I think I will be able to replace my TiVo relatively inexpensively with a mixture of old IT hardware and Ubuntu built into a HTPC case that will look at home under my TV. I found the AVforums 'Home entertainment PC's' section pretty helpful :
> 
> http://www.avforums.com/
> 
> We will be ready with a new box on 1st June, I am confident and will say a sad goodbye to TiVo.
> 
> Jolltax


Re XBMC - indeed it is really just a front end although very slick, fast and multi platform. PVR functionality is on the way but will probably still need a TV recording backend hence my intention to ditch it entirely.

Are we sure old hardware can handle multiple encoding of streams? As I understand it all the grunt work is done by the main CPU on cheap cards. Add to that rendering of streams for playback and there's quite a bit going on.


----------



## Nimbus

steford said:


> Are we sure old hardware can handle multiple encoding of streams? As I understand it all the grunt work is done by the main CPU on cheap cards. Add to that rendering of streams for playback and there's quite a bit going on.


no, not sure at all, hence the tests 

I think it can cope with straight recording /playback, but probably not streaming live tv to a remote frontend..

With the usb tv stick, which I image offloads all the work to the cpu...

When I was running the frontend on the same box as backend, it could stream live tv pretty ok..

When I tried streaming live to a different frontend it was struggling big time..

Watching stuff I'd recorded was fine on both frontends..

Hopefully the freesat card I've bought will do a bit more of the work itself, but we'll see


----------



## TCM2007

Recording from a DVB-S or DVB-T card takes virtually no processor - it just pipes the digital stream from the card onto the hard disk. Similarly playback decoding is handled by the GPU. Which is why my pretty feeble Atom based PC can record 2 SD and 1 HD streams while playing back 1 HD and 1 SD without melting.


----------



## Nimbus

ahh, but how much more powerful is your atom compared to my old 2.8Ghz P4


----------



## Sneals2000

steford said:


> Are we sure old hardware can handle multiple encoding of streams? As I understand it all the grunt work is done by the main CPU on cheap cards. Add to that rendering of streams for playback and there's quite a bit going on.


If you are sourcing your TV from a digital TV card (DVB-T, DVB-S etc.) then there is no encoding for the hardware to do - the broadcaster has already done it for you.

Most digital TV solutions for PCs simply tune and demodulate the mux or transponder, optionally split out the streams carrying video and audio data for a specific channel, and pipe these streams to the PC. These streams are exactly as broadcast by the broadcaster - in the form that they encoded them. Unlike analogue TV capture devices (like Tivo) there is no need to encode in the PC.

The PC can then either record these streams to hard drive or decode them for live viewing. The bitrates of SD TV are around the <6Mb/s (often a lot let less) - so less than 1MB/s - which shouldn't tax too much. HDTV streams are less than <20Mbs (some <10Mbs) which is still less than 3MB/s. So you can see that recording 2 HD streams and replaying a third is still less than 10MB/s of disk bandwith - which isn't that taxing. (Most USB external drives can deliver >20MB/s)

Decoding the streams can take a bit more processing power - even to do decent SD de-interlacing and scaling, and HD decoding takes even more. However this is something you only need to do to a single stream at any time (you're only watching a single stream) - but it does need a decent CPU OR a GPU capable of off-loading some of the workload.

Atoms on their own are pretty useless - however Atoms with ION GPUs are a very good fit. (The Ion is an nVidia 9400 IGP - which was favoured by many HTPC builders for use with Intel Core/Core2 CPUs until the nVidia/Intel spat meant it became almost impossible to find)


----------



## TCM2007

Probably less - it's a mobile chip at 1.6GHz, similar in power to a Celeron.


----------



## Sneals2000

I guess the issue is more the GPU capabilities when you're talking about Atom-level CPUs.


----------



## steford

Sneals2000 said:


> If you are sourcing your TV from a digital TV card (DVB-T, DVB-S etc.) then there is no encoding for the hardware to do - the broadcaster has already done it for you.
> 
> Most digital TV solutions for PCs simply tune and demodulate the mux or transponder, optionally split out the streams carrying video and audio data for a specific channel, and pipe these streams to the PC. These streams are exactly as broadcast by the broadcaster - in the form that they encoded them. Unlike analogue TV capture devices (like Tivo) there is no need to encode in the PC.
> 
> The PC can then either record these streams to hard drive or decode them for live viewing. The bitrates of SD TV are around the <6Mb/s (often a lot let less) - so less than 1MB/s - which shouldn't tax too much. HDTV streams are less than <20Mbs (some <10Mbs) which is still less than 3MB/s. So you can see that recording 2 HD streams and replaying a third is still less than 10MB/s of disk bandwith - which isn't that taxing. (Most USB external drives can deliver >20MB/s)
> 
> Decoding the streams can take a bit more processing power - even to do decent SD de-interlacing and scaling, and HD decoding takes even more. However this is something you only need to do to a single stream at any time (you're only watching a single stream) - but it does need a decent CPU OR a GPU capable of off-loading some of the workload.
> 
> Atoms on their own are pretty useless - however Atoms with ION GPUs are a very good fit. (The Ion is an nVidia 9400 IGP - which was favoured by many HTPC builders for use with Intel Core/Core2 CPUs until the nVidia/Intel spat meant it became almost impossible to find)


Thanks for that. Hadn't thought that no processing was going on between receiving signal and getting it onto the HDD - too much Tivo! I like it.


----------



## Jo.Cassady

hawkida said:


> My issue is that nothing offers the same deal I get by hooking Tivo up to the Sky box. I want something that will do what Tivo does - learn and explore and record stuff from a wishlist. (I've blogged about it but can't post the link as I'm too new to this forum - if you're interested google for "geekeration").
> 
> The only alternative for me is user-supplied data to keep the same service running. Downloading torrents and other PVRs don't do what Tivo does. I can't get Virgin cable, so that's it come June, bye bye, nice knowing you.


I would be loathed to get Virgin Media TiVo, who's to say when they'll move the goal posts/brick your box.

iPlayer is being continually improved

TVCatchup.com is also good.


----------



## TCM2007

Jo.Cassady said:


> I would be loathed


A Freudian spelling mistake if you keep this up...


----------



## spitfires

^   

i


----------



## Fizz

Fred Smith said:


> Sky has been digital since 1998.


NO FREEVIEW digital service as I have no aerial.


----------



## Jo.Cassady

TCM2007 said:


> A Freudian spelling mistake if you keep this up...


I don't get it?


----------



## TCM2007

The phrase is "I would be loath" not "I would be loathed".


----------



## spitfires

^ aw don't spoil it by telling him/her/it the joke 


.


----------



## Jo.Cassady

TCM2007 said:


> The phrase is "I would be loath" not "I would be loathed".


Okay, lol. Phonetically, it sounds very similar. Ah, the nuances of the English language.


----------



## drjan

I'm seriously considering building a MythTV box - it's a Linux PC based solution which was initially designed as a replacement for TiVo. Google Myth TV for details.


----------



## steford

I've got Mediaportal front and back end running on my main PC for testing. Added a USB Hauppauge Freeview DVB-T card today and after a bit of messing getting EPG data from broadcast it's up and running fine. Very nice indeed. Easily set to record every ep of The Simpsons and am currently recording 4 programmes concurrently on a single BBC transponder - CPU at about 20% with other apps running. Can't see there being too many clashes with a DVB-S2, DVB-T2 and the DVB-T tuner in the HTPC box. Very happy with all I've seen so far and am really only scratching the surface.

Next up is to test Wishlist and web interface for scheduling and then order some parts.

EDIT: My regular Tivo wishlist for "Japan*" has worked nicely in the TvWishList plugin in MP, picking up more than usual in Tivo and scheduling it all. Very impressive.


----------



## gary cheshire

steford said:


> I've got Mediaportal front and back end running on my main PC for testing. Added a USB Hauppauge Freeview DVB-T card today and after a bit of messing getting EPG data from broadcast it's up and running fine. Very nice indeed. Easily set to record every ep of The Simpsons and am currently recording 4 programmes concurrently on a single BBC transponder - CPU at about 20% with other apps running. Can't see there being too many clashes with a DVB-S2, DVB-T2 and the DVB-T tuner in the HTPC box. Very happy with all I've seen so far and am really only scratching the surface.
> 
> Next up is to test Wishlist and web interface for scheduling and then order some parts.
> 
> EDIT: My regular Tivo wishlist for "Japan*" has worked nicely in the TvWishList plugin in MP, picking up more than usual in Tivo and scheduling it all. Very impressive.


could i just ask what hardware you are running and OS?


----------



## steford

gary cheshire said:


> could i just ask what hardware you are running and OS?


2GB RAM, Win7 32bit, Shuttle SN78SH7, AMD Athlon X2 5050e 2.6GHz (I think)

My HTPC setup is similar hardware except it's running TinyXP and has 4GB RAM. I'm hoping for a similarly easy setup when I move things over. Decided to use the USB DVB-T card for now alongside a DVB-S PCI card and add a 1TB hard drive just for TV. Total cost about £80. Will add DVB-S2 and/or T2 should I need to at a later date.

Final costs:-

1TB WD Green £41 (eBuyer)
Compro S350 DVB-S £26.22 (eBuyer - cheaper at Dabs)
WinTV Nova-T DVB-T £17.99 (Amazon)

Just under £85 which, if it works, is not bad at all.


----------



## CouchPotato

steford said:


> 2GB RAM, Win7 32bit, Shuttle SN78SH7, AMD Athlon X2 5050e 2.6GHz (I think)
> 
> My HTPC setup is similar hardware except it's running TinyXP and has 4GB RAM. I'm hoping for a similarly easy setup when I move things over. Decided to use the USB DVB-T card for now alongside a DVB-S PCI card and add a 1TB hard drive just for TV. Total cost about £80. Will add DVB-S2 and/or T2 should I need to at a later date.
> 
> Final costs:-
> 
> 1TB WD Green £41 (eBuyer)
> Compro S350 DVB-S £26.22 (eBuyer - cheaper at Dabs)
> WinTV Nova-T DVB-T £17.99 (Amazon)
> 
> Just under £85 which, if it works, is not bad at all.


I am sorely tempted to do something like this - for me, it's either this or BT Vision after June.

However, I'd want a MediaPortal client in the living room with the TV, which means buying components and building a new machine. My guess is this is going to end up costing between £300 and £500 depending on what i go for.

Decisions, decisions...


----------



## AMc

For those who want FreeviewHD x 2 and a few other bits this is with a look.
http://www.3view.com/Home.aspx

Getting some positive reviews over at Play.com who have it for sale - more so the later ones indicating better firmware. 
There's a thread with more detail in the the chit chat forum.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=442022


----------



## crossdynamite

Not a bad set top, but its not Tivo, as in, you wont be able to hook up another se top box, nor can it learn what you like to watch.....


----------



## gary cheshire

steford said:


> I've got Mediaportal front and back end running on my main PC for testing. Added a USB Hauppauge Freeview DVB-T card today and after a bit of messing getting EPG data from broadcast it's up and running fine. Very nice indeed. Easily set to record every ep of The Simpsons and am currently recording 4 programmes concurrently on a single BBC transponder - CPU at about 20% with other apps running. Can't see there being too many clashes with a DVB-S2, DVB-T2 and the DVB-T tuner in the HTPC box. Very happy with all I've seen so far and am really only scratching the surface.
> 
> Next up is to test Wishlist and web interface for scheduling and then order some parts.
> 
> EDIT: My regular Tivo wishlist for "Japan*" has worked nicely in the TvWishList plugin in MP, picking up more than usual in Tivo and scheduling it all. Very impressive.


How have you found the stability of mediaportal, crashes etc? and have you tried playing dvd vob files, getting sound but black screen?


----------



## steford

gary cheshire said:


> How have you found the stability of mediaportal, crashes etc? and have you tried playing dvd vob files, getting sound but black screen?


My testing so far has consisted of hooking it up to my network shares for music, video and pics to work as I have XBMC working now - that's all fine. Adding a NOVA-T SD card - fine. Using EPG to record - fine. Using Wishlists plugin to schedule recordings - fine. Searching EPG manually - fine. Assessed it for kid/wife friendliness - fine (they are used to XBMC and my satellite box). No crashes. Played everything so far. Doesn't pick up DVD ISOs like XBMC can. Some minor delays whilst it reads folders/media etc - nothing we're not used to with Tivo and nothing like the wait.

This is all on Win7 and I haven't in any way pushed it with multiple cards or attempted to install troublesome hardware - I'm prepared to put in a bit of work (like we did with Tivo hacks) but not to let it take over my life. I fully expect to hit snags along the way though. If it's unstable in any way then I'll sell the cards, keep the 1TB drive for files, get a twin LNB and 2nd cable in and add a FOXSAT-HDR.


----------



## TCM2007

If you're using Win7, why not just use Media Center instead of adding all that stuff?


----------



## steford

TCM2007 said:


> If you're using Win7, why not just use Media Center instead of adding all that stuff?


I'm on XP (Win7 for testing). Not convinced any Windows product is as flexible and hackable as an open source counterpart.


----------



## TCM2007

MC7 is surprisingly extensible. If you're testing options I'd give it a try. Add MyMovies plug in for iso support.


----------



## steford

TCM2007 said:


> MC7 is surprisingly extensible. If you're testing options I'd give it a try. Add MyMovies plug in for iso support.


Would mean trashing my XP install though unfortunately. Way too much stuff on that box to consider ditching it. Will take a look at it though. Thanks.


----------



## Nimbus

Nimbus said:


> no, not sure at all, hence the tests
> 
> I think it can cope with straight recording /playback, but probably not streaming live tv to a remote frontend..
> 
> With the usb tv stick, which I image offloads all the work to the cpu...
> 
> When I was running the frontend on the same box as backend, it could stream live tv pretty ok..
> 
> When I tried streaming live to a different frontend it was struggling big time..
> 
> Watching stuff I'd recorded was fine on both frontends..
> 
> Hopefully the freesat card I've bought will do a bit more of the work itself, but we'll see


update on the testing of my mythtv solution, its going well here..

the DVB-S card installed easily, and I've been happily recording programs in both SD and HD...

The P4 seems to cope fine, and I can watch live tv without an issue now.

P4 is living in the garage, so no noise 

Installation was ok, not the easiest, and you certainly need to be able to use google and have some patience, but bearable.

the mythtv web interface is excellent, dare I say, even better than tivoweb, so at the moment, the only thing I can find missing is the 'learning' function that tivo managed. ie it doest record stuff that it thinks I might like.

Guess I'll have to live without that tho, since only Tivos do this.. and there's no way I am paying Virgin £600+/year for the privelege.

still hopefull I'll be able to keep my tivo going with the new software post 31st May, and it can then carry on providing this function.

I did give wmc7 a trial, but it ( and win7 ), was way to intensive for my aging p4 ( with only 1 gig ram ! ).. looked an improvement over the old media center tho.

Just goes to show.. tivo is still the best...


----------



## alek

Nimbus said:


> update on the testing of my mythtv solution, its going well here..
> 
> the DVB-S card installed easily, and I've been happily recording programs in both SD and HD...


Mine is not going so well.

I have installed the card + ubuntu 10.10 + mythtv.

I have gone through the set up umpteen times but it won't find any channels.

The dish and connection are fine and the card is working cause I can view sat channels with mplayer.

Alek


----------



## Nimbus

alek said:


> Mine is not going so well.
> 
> I have installed the card + ubuntu 10.10 + mythtv.
> 
> I have gone through the set up umpteen times but it won't find any channels.
> 
> The dish and connection are fine and the card is working cause I can view sat channels with mplayer.
> 
> Alek


oh, that sounds very familiar...

have you 'proactively' set the Diseqc section to LNB in the capture card section ?

like here

you literally have to select the Diseqc button, this opens another menu page, then select it again in that sub menu, its the top option..

It will then bring up a new menu that includes options for LNB and some other stuff.

Its really not very obvious, and it 'looks' like its already setup, but you literally have to set it to LNB manually.. ( you will know if you've done it..)

until you've done that, it wont actually pick up the channels in myth..
( had me confused/swearing for an hour or two...  )



otherwebsite said:


> Hit the DiSEqC button and set it to LNB, or one of the other options, depending on your hardware setup (see http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/DVB-S). The button was a bit flaky for me on 0.22. Hit the cursor keys a few times and it should work. You MUST set this or the channel scan will fail!


added a 2Tb disk for recordings to my setup last night.. storage is so cheap now !!


----------



## alek

Nimbus said:


> oh, that sounds very familiar...
> 
> have you 'proactively' set the Diseqc section to LNB in the capture card section ?


That was the exact problem.

Unfortunately I almost wore out google before I discovered it last night.

I have now got the channels down and recorded my first progs this morning.

It seems very good, setting the recordings was simple.

I think I will get a dvb-t card to experiment with and put the sat back into Tivo.

Is a geforce 5200 good enough to output to a 42" plasma.

Alek


----------



## Nimbus

alek said:


> That was the exact problem.
> 
> Unfortunately I almost wore out google before I discovered it last night.


ahh.. if only I'd seen the post earlier  sorry..



alek said:


> Is a geforce 5200 good enough to output to a 42" plasma.
> Alek


without this turning into a mythtv howto/appreciation thread, ( apologies to those I am boring by now..)

I imagine that would be good enough for SD, not sure about HD tho. How much ram has it got ?

My backend is running an old 128Mb ATI 4250 card, which I bought for MCE about 4 years ago, and was absolute minimum spec back then.. 
I had it plugged into my plasma when doing the initial config/testing of myth and it seemed fine for DVB-T SD content.
Having said that, it could displayed wmc7 no problem too.

My setup is very much a 'proof' of concept, before I make my final decision as to which way I am going.. but I am very much in the mythtv camp now, ( I use linux mint for my home pc/laptop so it fits well with that..)

My idea is to have the backend in the garage recording and serving content, and a silent frontend in the lounge, or on laptop etc.

To that end, I've bought hardware that I think I can sell on with little loss, ( eg the DVB-S2 card ), or use elsewhere, ( the 2Tb HD will fit in the foxsat HDR if end up with one instead..), and reused what I had lying around/ retired.

So the backend is running a 2.8Ghz pentium 4, 1Gig Ram (!) the ATI 128Mb graphics card, originally an old 80Gb HD, ( now added the 2Tb for storage only, 80Gb still running the OS ), and a haupauge DVB-S2 tuner card.

It all seems to be working very well, and now I've got the extra storage space, I shall start scheduling lots more programs to 'stress' it a bit more.

For the frontend, I havent decided, I want to be sure I am sticking with it first , but the acer revos seem to be well regarded, and 'up to' the job, and that or some intel atom/ion solution, as long as its quiet...

In the meantime, I've been testing it with my laptop, plugged into the plasma, and it works great !

I think if you can get output to your normal monitor, then theres no reason why it shouldnt be fine on the plasma ?


----------



## TIVO_YORK99

Inspired by this thread, I've installed Myth TV on my Acer Revo, replacing Media Centre.

It was easier than I thought to do, and is working fine using freeview with 2 x Nova-t USB sticks.

I agree that the web interface is excellent - very well put together.


I've also got it streaming to the XBMC (including Live TV and the ability to change channels etc.) This was the hardest bit!

Only problem at the moment is that it doesn't show 50hz properly in XBMC, I remember TCM007 mentioning before that XBMC doesn't cope well with UK TV broadcasts.
Don't suppose you know of a fix do you Stuart?, I've tried playing with the advancedsettings.xml but no joy yet.

Peter


----------



## TCM2007

I've never used XBMC, you may have been thinking of the Xbox360 as an Extender which in certain modes locked to 60Hz. I think that's been fixed.


----------



## steford

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> Inspired by this thread, I've installed Myth TV on my Acer Revo, replacing Media Centre.
> 
> It was easier than I thought to do, and is working fine using freeview with 2 x Nova-t USB sticks.
> 
> I agree that the web interface is excellent - very well put together.
> 
> I've also got it streaming to the XBMC (including Live TV and the ability to change channels etc.) This was the hardest bit!
> 
> Only problem at the moment is that it doesn't show 50hz properly in XBMC, I remember TCM007 mentioning before that XBMC doesn't cope well with UK TV broadcasts.
> Don't suppose you know of a fix do you Stuart?, I've tried playing with the advancedsettings.xml but no joy yet.
> 
> Peter


I've been using XBMC for years on XBOX and PC and haven't had a problem with Tivo or satellite recordings on it. XBMC on ATV2 currently can't handle Tivo streams but that's one of the only limitations (and only on the new platform) I've personally encountered.


----------



## mikerr

A good alternative to the Revo is this:









Asus EeeBox EB1501P Small Form Factor PC 
Intel Atom D525 1.8GHz, 2Gb, 250Gb, DVDRW, Win 7 Home Premium

£249 @ amazon

Over and above the Revo deals, you get an internal DVD drive, USB3, Windows 7 Home Premium (inc media center),
pretty good for £249.


----------



## TIVO_YORK99

steford said:


> I've been using XBMC for years on XBOX and PC and haven't had a problem with Tivo or satellite recordings on it. XBMC on ATV2 currently can't handle Tivo streams but that's one of the only limitations (and only on the new platform) I've personally encountered.


Thanks for the reply.

I think I've realised what the problem is - I'm using it in the bedroom and its connected to a 32inch Goodmans from 2005. It only has DVI so I have it connected to XBMC with a HDMI to DVI converter. It transpires that the TV will not support 50hz through DVI - but it will over component. Its a shame as it is a good TV, but I think its time to upgrade to possibly a refurb from somewhere (the TV originally cost £899!).

MythTV is great though - really impressed.


----------



## steford

Nimbus said:


> ahh.. if only I'd seen the post earlier  sorry..
> 
> without this turning into a mythtv howto/appreciation thread, ( apologies to those I am boring by now..)
> 
> I imagine that would be good enough for SD, not sure about HD tho. How much ram has it got ?
> 
> My backend is running an old 128Mb ATI 4250 card, which I bought for MCE about 4 years ago, and was absolute minimum spec back then..
> I had it plugged into my plasma when doing the initial config/testing of myth and it seemed fine for DVB-T SD content.
> Having said that, it could displayed wmc7 no problem too.
> 
> My setup is very much a 'proof' of concept, before I make my final decision as to which way I am going.. but I am very much in the mythtv camp now, ( I use linux mint for my home pc/laptop so it fits well with that..)
> 
> My idea is to have the backend in the garage recording and serving content, and a silent frontend in the lounge, or on laptop etc.
> 
> To that end, I've bought hardware that I think I can sell on with little loss, ( eg the DVB-S2 card ), or use elsewhere, ( the 2Tb HD will fit in the foxsat HDR if end up with one instead..), and reused what I had lying around/ retired.
> 
> So the backend is running a 2.8Ghz pentium 4, 1Gig Ram (!) the ATI 128Mb graphics card, originally an old 80Gb HD, ( now added the 2Tb for storage only, 80Gb still running the OS ), and a haupauge DVB-S2 tuner card.
> 
> It all seems to be working very well, and now I've got the extra storage space, I shall start scheduling lots more programs to 'stress' it a bit more.
> 
> For the frontend, I havent decided, I want to be sure I am sticking with it first , but the acer revos seem to be well regarded, and 'up to' the job, and that or some intel atom/ion solution, as long as its quiet...
> 
> In the meantime, I've been testing it with my laptop, plugged into the plasma, and it works great !
> 
> I think if you can get output to your normal monitor, then theres no reason why it shouldnt be fine on the plasma ?


Very similar project to my own except XP/Media Portal and on the 1 box and will jump to a FOXSAT-HDR if it all goes wrong. Was hoping to put it all together this weekend but the HDD and DVB-S card haven't turned up so it'll be the DVB-T card in the front of the HTPC and a Media Portal install for Phase 2 testing. Good fun but no Tivo :-(


----------



## Haggis440

Ok, so what did the standard tivo offer us......HD....no....A one box system....no....recording from more than one chanel at the same time....no....a good UI....yes....ease of use....yes.

I belive that most tivo owners probably did not susbscribe to sky and just recieved the free to air channels otherwise they would probably have a sky+ box. hence the 2 box solution. And the world of TV tech has moved on a lot since the last new tivo s1 was sold in the Uk. I think we have all had our money worth out of our units, especialy if you had a Lifesub and a reliable unit.

I know that I have only touched on the tivo with the above but what did I go for to replace it.....A Humax PVR200t bought from Humaxdirect.co.uk for £111.98 inc delivery. and they have upgraded the HD to 320Gb that gives 200hrs of recording time and a 1 year on site warranty.

Ok now I am recieving freeview rather than sky freesat, however I can now record 2 chanels at once and watch a third. It allows me to rewind the program I am watching and has a serice link (ok, not as good as tivo season pass, but better than nothing). I loved the peanut control for the tivo and it makes the one for the Humax look flimsy by comparison. 

One thing that I have noticed straight away is that the picture quality is a lot better.

My next thought goes to what can I do with my 2 tivo units, one with a upgraded HD and network card or will they only be any good to fill the skip at the local recycling centre......I will however be glad of the space in my HiFi stack.


----------



## irrelevant

Haggis440 said:


> My next thought goes to what can I do with my 2 tivo units, one with a upgraded HD and network card or will they only be any good to fill the skip at the local recycling centre......I will however be glad of the space in my HiFi stack.


Save them for use on second tellys, using the Alternate EPG? Or donate them to people developing it? (I know I'll be looking for a fully working box eventually.)


----------



## davisa

Haggis440 said:


> I belive that most tivo owners probably did not susbscribe to sky and just recieved the free to air channels otherwise they would probably have a sky+ box.


Of all the TiVo owners I know, 5 used it with Sky, 2 with Virgin and 1 with Freeview. I don't think your assumption stands.


----------



## Trinitron

The only advantage of Sky+ were the twin tuners. The extra cost and clunky UI were not an incentive for me to move away from TiVo. Even when HD appeared I still ran TiVo for the improved search and scheduling. 

The alternative EPG is a Good Thing but I am still debating whether it's worth it on what will be a 9 year old box by the time it starts.


----------



## steford

My homebrew solution has got off to a bad start. WinTV card not detected by MediaPortal with lots of errors. Tried TVSchedulerPro which detects the card but scans no channels with my main aerial attached (works fine on TV).

Fairly close to ditching the whole idea and going for the FOXSAT-HDR


----------



## alek

I have got mythtv up and running for a total outlay of 26 quid + an old pc from the spare room.














O yes one other thing, countless hours on google and various forums as well as pestering people with pms 


Alek


----------



## Haggis440

Ok, so it is an asumption, but it is based on what I have read and personal experience......In all the time that I have had tivo I have only known one other person who has owned one and they only used it for free to air....and they got rid of it when they susbscribed to a sky package and got sky+. I have friends who knew of its existance but never went for it because sky+ was the easy option. I know I heard of it first and did not consider it until my friend showed it to me without the sales patter. 

Ask yourself, 1) How much effort will it take to provide a replacement EPG service? 2) what will the cost be? 3) What will be the cost of converting a individual tivo to acess the the new EPG? (including time, money and effort) 4)what about the folks out there without the techniacal inclination or knowledge to make changes to their tivo 5) by the time a replacement EPG has been sorted, how many will have migrated away to other options and how many will be left looking to keep their tivo running? and finaly 6) how long will the replacement EPG last for?

(I use the term EPG for whatever is used to keep tivo running)

I am not knocking the tivo s1, It has been great, however, mabey it has had its day and should be laid to rest gracefully. I know I would not be saying this had tivo not pulled the plug on the service but that is life these days.....

Good luck to those that are looking to keep a pulse in their s1 I wish you well in your efforts.


----------



## spitfires

alek said:


> I have got mythtv up and running for a total outlay of 26 quid + an old pc from the spare room.


Cool. :up:
I for one would appreciate a comparative review (Myth vs S1) once you've had a chance to play with it a bit, and if you have the time, please.

.


----------



## alek

I will give you a comparison of what I've seen up to now. And add more as I experience it.

Used S1 tivos are £ 6 -70 on ebay, used TV cards sat or freeview are £25- 75 on ebay.

Old pcs are pretty much worthless and if you don't have one somebody will give you one. 

I should say that I have some basic knowledge about computers, how to install hardware, software etc and a very basic knowledge of Linux. 

Set up. Tivo 

Well I expect everyone here knows how to set up Tivo, connect your chosen program source, connect to your tv, hook it up to the mains, start guided set up. have tea, coffee and a biscuit.

Mythtv

Set up large ugly old pc and monitor on living room floor within reach of chosen program source, in my case free to air sky channels. 

Insert capture card into pc.

Install ubuntu 10.10. To keep it simple I wiped the disk and installed only ubuntu. It is possible to install alongside windows and have a choice which to run at boot up. In hindsight I should have done this.

Ubuntu will, hopefully, see the card and load necessary software.

Install Mythtv

This is the fun part. There are numerous pages of settings which I had no clue what they meant or what they were for.

Fortunately most are defaults and can be left alone. Obvious ones like NTSC/Pal I got.

There are tutorials, lots of them but not a complete one, that I could find.

So google is your friend, a bit here and another bit somewhere else. but eventually the set up gets done.

It took me days to get it set up and actually find channels.

Of course I was only working at it in spare time but I am sure it took 10 hours at least to get it to the point where It was set up and ready to record.

More able people will of course do this quicker.

So now we have about 350 channels scanned most of which are not identified , a lot are vacant, quite a lot I just wouldn't want to watch. 

As far as I see you need to go through them one by one and make the ones you don't want invisible. A tedious process, but maybe there is a better way, I didn't waste time there I wanted to see it record.

Maybe someone will tell me a better way to edit the channels I won't get back to looking at that for a few days.

So that is the back end set up.

Now move to the front end and if you have the passwords set up correctly the front end will connect to the back end. 

I didn't but it wasn't hard to fix.

Enough for now

Alek


----------



## JanSzafranski

I've set up an old laptop with a twin tuner and win7 media center. It works great (almost as good as Tivo) but a quick question... my tivo currently (but not for long) controls/records from my Sky box which my PC can't. Any ideas?

I know there's a card from Hauppage (HVR-2200) http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_hvr2200mc.html which seems ideal... but I'm using a laptop so don't have the space. Is there an alternative exterior model that does the same thing (7MC compatible, connects to sky box, IR balaster to drive sky box, etc.)?



TCM2007 said:


> Re: 6 there is a lengthy thread in Chit Chat, but broadly speaking any Windows 7 PC has most TiVo features (and a bunch of extra ones) built in. Cheap PCs are available with HDMI outputs now; you just need to add TV tuners, a remote control & IR receiver.
> 
> Getting it working "just so" can take some fiddling, but getting a basic system working is easy for anyone with basic PC skills.


----------



## TIVO_YORK99

I used a site that gives you a .iso to install from which automatically installs ubuntu and myth tv called www.mythbuntu.org. This site uses version 0.23 which is one below the latest version 0.24 - but apparantly 0.24 doesn't allow live TV to be viewed in XBMC so it was perfect for me.

1. I used a Acer Revo 3600 PC (very low powered atom PC) with two Hauppague USB Nova-T DVB sticks.

2. I then download pendrive linux to create a bootable USB stick (www.pendrivelinux.com). This was very easy as you choose mythbuntu from a drop down menu, and it automatically found the .iso I'd downloaded.

3. I booted up the PC from the USB stick and choose to make it a frontend and a backend server.

4. I planned to remote control the PC as its in a study so I installed TightVNCViewer and putty on my laptop to remote control the PC and get a SSH prompt.

5. I followed the guide at http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php to setup the tuner cards ( I started reading from MYTHTV SETUP as the initial part of the guide tells you how to install MythTV but that was already part of my .ISO) The guide is UK based, so it deals with using Freeview - exactly what I wanted it for.

6. When I went into Capture Cards, it had automaticlly found and installed drivers for my two USB sticks. For some reason it called them DiBComm 7000PC and not hauppauge, but they still worked fine. I used EIT for the guide data so it just takes the 7 day guide available over the air through freeview.

7. Mythweb comes as part of MythTV, have to say its very very good - lots and lots of info. You access it through http://HOSTNAME OF PC or IP address/mythweb/. I have called my PC MYTHTVREVO and therefore I access it using http://mythtvrevo/mythweb/.

8. I used the guide at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythWeb to setup a password to access mythweb as I want to make it available on the internet. Very easy to setup if you follow the instructions closely. I used Putty.exe to connect to the box via SSH to run the commands.

Everything is done (I don't think I've missed anything out).

I can now schedule everything through Mythweb (I like the way it tells you what each individual tuner is currently doing). Its very intelligent with conflicts - automatically recording on the +1 channels if there is a conflict.

I connect to it through XBMC and this allows live tv to be viewed (changing channels and everything) and obviously the recorded TV. You can even watch something its currently recording which I've not seen done successfully in XBMC before. It was a bit of a git to get working, and in fact took longer than the install of Mythbuntu itself.

If anyone is interested I'll post a guide on what I had to do to make it work in XBMC.

Hope this helps someone.


----------



## Sneals2000

Trinitron said:


> The only advantage of Sky+ were the twin tuners. The extra cost and clunky UI were not an incentive for me to move away from TiVo. Even when HD appeared I still ran TiVo for the improved search and scheduling.
> 
> The alternative EPG is a Good Thing but I am still debating whether it's worth it on what will be a 9 year old box by the time it starts.


You have missed out one benefit that Sky+ (and Freeview+ and Freesat+ - and MythTV and ISTR Win 7 MC - but not XP or non-TV pack Vista MC) had over Tivo. Broadcaster triggered recording start/stop.

The BBC (and Sky, and I think increasingly other broadcasters) use the EIT or similar facilities in the DVB spec to allow recordings to be scheduled to record when the programmes actually start and stop - dynamically updating this from the same system that is actually playing out the programmes - rather than based on a clock timer set from the billing time issued days/weeks earlier. For me that was a huge improvement over Tivo (even with padding)

It's not perfect - and doesn't always cope in extreme situations (mainly because the EPG isn't always properly updated in major re-scheduling situations) - but it is a huge improvement over a system that just starts recording based on clock time.

In my experience using the EIT triggers with no padding almost always means your recordings of BBC channels start just as the channel ident and voice over into the programme starts.


----------



## steford

TCM2007 said:


> If you're using Win7, why not just use Media Center instead of adding all that stuff?


After the failed install on XP I started thinking, as you suggested, about installing Win7 and MCE. Had a quick play on my main machine and it's very slick doing pretty much everything I need. Added iPlayer and it looks like it can handle MKV and AVI with a bit of fiddling.

A couple of questions that I couldn't find answers to if you don't mind:-

1) Can it record multiple streams from the same mux? Recording BBC1 on DVB-T then trying to view/record BBC2 gives a "lack of tuners" message. MP happily recorded as many channels as it could. 1 seems odd.
EDIT: It seems it can't do this which is a major annoyance already. Any hacks? (Also see 4)
2) Is the format the progs are recorded in encoded in any way? I assume I can watch these on other PCs/XBMC
3) It looks like MC is running as a single process. What is stability like? If the front end crashes presumably recordings stop also under this system.
4) Can it handle guide data for 1 DVB-T card and 1 DVB-S card?

Thanks for any help.


----------



## MikeC34

Haggis440 said:


> Ok, so it is an asumption, but it is based on what I have read and personal experience......In all the time that I have had tivo I have only known one other person who has owned one and they only used it for free to air....and they got rid of it when they susbscribed to a sky package and got sky+. I have friends who knew of its existance but never went for it because sky+ was the easy option. I know I heard of it first and did not consider it until my friend showed it to me without the sales patter.
> 
> Ask yourself, 1) How much effort will it take to provide a replacement EPG service? 2) what will the cost be? 3) What will be the cost of converting a individual tivo to acess the the new EPG? (including time, money and effort) 4)what about the folks out there without the techniacal inclination or knowledge to make changes to their tivo 5) by the time a replacement EPG has been sorted, how many will have migrated away to other options and how many will be left looking to keep their tivo running? and finaly 6) how long will the replacement EPG last for?
> 
> (I use the term EPG for whatever is used to keep tivo running)
> 
> I am not knocking the tivo s1, It has been great, however, mabey it has had its day and should be laid to rest gracefully. I know I would not be saying this had tivo not pulled the plug on the service but that is life these days.....
> 
> Good luck to those that are looking to keep a pulse in their s1 I wish you well in your efforts.


Despite the limitations of the S1 hardware most of the TiVo software options cannot be met by other systems. My Tivo keeps me informed about upcoming programs with artists I do not want to miss, returning series etc. I often then add them to my Sky+HD box or my freeview recorder schedules. Sky+ is rubbish with its 7 day schedule window. I will willingly support any option that will keep my S1 software running alongside my other equipment, despite its single program record restriction, because of its forward planning data.


----------



## TCM2007

1) Can it record multiple streams from the same mux? Recording BBC1 on DVB-T then trying to view/record BBC2 gives a "lack of tuners" message. MP happily recorded as many channels as it could. 1 seems odd.
EDIT: It seems it can't do this which is a major annoyance already. Any hacks? (Also see 4)

No, but as you can just stick another tuner in for £20 it doesn't really matter?


2) Is the format the progs are recorded in encoded in any way? I assume I can watch these on other PCs/XBMC

It's in its own unique 7MC wrapper format, but it's not encrypted and many bits of editing software read it directly. You can convert to the older dvr-ms format that Vista and XP Media Center uses from in Windows Explorer. Don't know about XBMC.

3) It looks like MC is running as a single process. What is stability like? If the front end crashes presumably recordings stop also under this system.

No, it runs as a bunch of processes. Recording is entirely separate to the user interface, and happend sin the background if the UI is not running.

4) Can it handle guide data for 1 DVB-T card and 1 DVB-S card?

Yes.


----------



## steford

TCM2007 said:


> 1) Can it record multiple streams from the same mux? Recording BBC1 on DVB-T then trying to view/record BBC2 gives a "lack of tuners" message. MP happily recorded as many channels as it could. 1 seems odd.
> EDIT: It seems it can't do this which is a major annoyance already. Any hacks? (Also see 4)
> 
> No, but as you can just stick another tuner in for £20 it doesn't really matter?
> 
> 
> 2) Is the format the progs are recorded in encoded in any way? I assume I can watch these on other PCs/XBMC
> 
> It's in its own unique 7MC wrapper format, but it's not encrypted and many bits of editing software read it directly. You can convert to the older dvr-ms format that Vista and XP Media Center uses from in Windows Explorer. Don't know about XBMC.
> 
> 3) It looks like MC is running as a single process. What is stability like? If the front end crashes presumably recordings stop also under this system.
> 
> No, it runs as a bunch of processes. Recording is entirely separate to the user interface, and happend sin the background if the UI is not running.
> 
> 4) Can it handle guide data for 1 DVB-T card and 1 DVB-S card?
> 
> Yes.


Thanks mate. The lack of multi channel recording on a single mux is a bit annoying but an extra tuner, as you say, is no big problem. I also have a twin tuner satellite and Freeview on my TV so live viewing, when needed, is not a problem.

The file format could be a problem. I'd really like to be able to watch recordings in the bedroom via XBMC like I can do with Tivo and my network shares. Looks like there is a .wtv patch for FFMpeg which XBMC uses so it may be on its way.

So - WMC definitely impressive, love the wishlists, movie guide and iPlayer plugin, BUT not perfect - which is becoming a common theme.

My plan, I think:-

1) Rebuild HTPC with Win7 - I have ATI driver/resolution issues anyway so it's no bad thing but will take some planning and work.
2) Install XBMC for now
3) Install MP for testing - may have better luck with cards
4) Test WMC

Right now MP seems like it's more functional but also more fiddly and less slick than WMC.

Thanks again for the help.


----------



## Nimbus

I have a feeling this thread is starting to go off topic a bit now, as originally it was to identify what options there were, rather than the detail of implenting them..

But still, just a comment on mythtv and to a lesser extent wmc7..

MythTV is not 'easy' to setup, but it does work very well if you stick with it.

This is not meant to be disparaging to anyone, just that some people get satisfaction from getting something to work, others just want it to work out the box,( eg satisfaction of servicing your own car rather than taking it to a garage..)

With that in mind...

I think if you managed to do some basic hacking/reconfiguring on the S1 tivo, eg added a cache card, or tivoweb, end pad etc.. or you formatted and added your own bigger disks following Hinsdale's guide, then I think you'll get on ok with Mythtv, but go in with the expectation that it might take a few evenings, and a fair bit of googling in order to get it working how you want. 

On the other hand, if you havent got the patience, time, or the desire, ( eg you bought a preformatted new HD because it would work straight away ), then you are probably better off getting a 'commercial' PVR, eg Foxsat. 
It will save you a lot of head scratching, and you'll probably be happier 

My mythtv installation is working well, still a few niggles, and bits I need to fiddle with, but in general I'm happy with it 

Last night, while setting a few recordings over the web interface from my android phone, I discovered it automatically has a 'mobile friendly' webpage, for when you access via your phone... cool !


----------



## alek

Nimbus 

Did you get my pm


Alek


----------



## steford

Nimbus said:


> I have a feeling this thread is starting to go off topic a bit now, as originally it was to identify what options there were, rather than the detail of implenting them..
> 
> But still, just a comment on mythtv and to a lesser extent wmc7..
> 
> MythTV is not 'easy' to setup, but it does work very well if you stick with it.
> 
> This is not meant to be disparaging to anyone, just that some people get satisfaction from getting something to work, others just want it to work out the box,( eg satisfaction of servicing your own car rather than taking it to a garage..)
> 
> With that in mind...
> 
> I think if you managed to do some basic hacking/reconfiguring on the S1 tivo, eg added a cache card, or tivoweb, end pad etc.. or you formatted and added your own bigger disks following Hinsdale's guide, then I think you'll get on ok with Mythtv, but go in with the expectation that it might take a few evenings, and a fair bit of googling in order to get it working how you want.
> 
> On the other hand, if you havent got the patience, time, or the desire, ( eg you bought a preformatted new HD because it would work straight away ), then you are probably better off getting a 'commercial' PVR, eg Foxsat.
> It will save you a lot of head scratching, and you'll probably be happier
> 
> My mythtv installation is working well, still a few niggles, and bits I need to fiddle with, but in general I'm happy with it
> 
> Last night, while setting a few recordings over the web interface from my android phone, I discovered it automatically has a 'mobile friendly' webpage, for when you access via your phone... cool !


I think everyone is after Tivo functionality with the least amount of hassle - we all added functionality to our Tivos to make them even better so I guess we're all up for a bit of that and technology has moved on - so what was innovative eg networking is now commonplace. I just want something that, after a bit of effort, runs nicely like Tivo. Looks like we are getting down to the actual options and getting some idea of the amount of setup and maintenance involved. The thread has been really helpful yet I'm still torn :-|


----------



## Nimbus

alek said:


> Nimbus
> 
> Did you get my pm
> 
> Alek


Now I've looked... 

I did


----------



## Nimbus

steford said:


> I think everyone is after Tivo functionality with the least amount of hassle - we all added functionality to our Tivos to make them even better so I guess we're all up for a bit of that and technology has moved on - so what was innovative eg networking is now commonplace. I just want something that, after a bit of effort, runs nicely like Tivo. Looks like we are getting down to the actual options and getting some idea of the amount of setup and maintenance involved. The thread has been really helpful yet I'm still torn :-|


I think you are right... but nothing does Tivo, like a Tivo..

my opinion is..

wmc7 is good, and is fairly easy/quick to set up.. but it costs... and it needs modern hardware to run.

mythtv is free, can use very old hardware, but needs more setting up.

commercial pvrs... very quick to set up, pretty cheap, all seem to have limitations/annoyances in the UI

What all of this does show tho, is just how good our S1 tivo's really are 

fingers crossed for the new epg, so my tivo can live on !


----------



## Nimbus

Jolltax said:


> When the bad news was announced about TiVo I bought a WinTV Nova TD 500 twin tuner freeview card and a Compro s350 DVB-S satellite card to play with as I expect to move to an HTPC. The Compro card was only £24 and seems to work very well.


Hi Jolltax, you arent recieving PMs, so...

Did you actually get the compro DVB-S card working with mythtv, and if so, how ?

All the research I've done pointed towards them being difficult or incompatible ?


----------



## cp33

I have been using my TiVo with a Humax freesat box for over a year but once the announcements were made felt it was time to move on.

Spent the weekend replacing the old Sky dish with one that had 4 lnb's. Was going to wait for a couple of months but ended up buying the Humax Foxsat HDR on Sunday. I wanted to run both systems so when TiVo dies I will be already up and running.

Unfortunately both the Humax HD and the HDR use the same IR code so whilst setting up the new PVR I was confusing TiVo by changing channels!  I managed to find a way to re-configure the remote but made the mistake of changing the non-pvr one so now TiVo cannot change channels.Doh!


----------



## steford

cp33 said:


> I have been using my TiVo with a Humax freesat box for over a year but once the announcements were made felt it was time to move on.
> 
> Spent the weekend replacing the old Sky dish with one that had 4 lnb's. Was going to wait for a couple of months but ended up buying the Humax Foxsat HDR on Sunday. I wanted to run both systems so when TiVo dies I will be already up and running.
> 
> Unfortunately both the Humax HD and the HDR use the same IR code so whilst setting up the new PVR I was confusing TiVo by changing channels!  I managed to find a way to re-configure the remote but made the mistake of changing the non-pvr one so now TiVo cannot change channels.Doh!


And your impressions of the FOXSAT?


----------



## gary cheshire

Nimbus said:


> I have a feeling this thread is starting to go off topic a bit now, as originally it was to identify what options there were, rather than the detail of implenting them..
> 
> But still, just a comment on mythtv and to a lesser extent wmc7..
> 
> MythTV is not 'easy' to setup, but it does work very well if you stick with it.
> 
> This is not meant to be disparaging to anyone, just that some people get satisfaction from getting something to work, others just want it to work out the box,( eg satisfaction of servicing your own car rather than taking it to a garage..)
> 
> With that in mind...
> 
> I think if you managed to do some basic hacking/reconfiguring on the S1 tivo, eg added a cache card, or tivoweb, end pad etc.. or you formatted and added your own bigger disks following Hinsdale's guide, then I think you'll get on ok with Mythtv, but go in with the expectation that it might take a few evenings, and a fair bit of googling in order to get it working how you want.
> 
> On the other hand, if you havent got the patience, time, or the desire, ( eg you bought a preformatted new HD because it would work straight away ), then you are probably better off getting a 'commercial' PVR, eg Foxsat.
> It will save you a lot of head scratching, and you'll probably be happier
> 
> My mythtv installation is working well, still a few niggles, and bits I need to fiddle with, but in general I'm happy with it
> 
> Last night, while setting a few recordings over the web interface from my android phone, I discovered it automatically has a 'mobile friendly' webpage, for when you access via your phone... cool !


Hi,

Have you tried media portal, interested in how it compares to mythtv?

whats the best guide for installing mythtv with someone with no linux experience (did do HD tivo upgrades in the past)

cheers Gary


----------



## cp33

steford said:


> And your impressions of the FOXSAT?


Its not TiVo 

However, the picture quality from scart to HDMI on SD is better and HD is excellant.

Programming is simple but prefer TiVo's, never been a fan of the EPG listing. Only 7 days worth as well which is disappointing. Series recording works but only shows the next one to be recorded. Need to get used to folders/files way of viewing the recordings.

To be honest when I purchased my latest plasma I was tempted to move from scart to HDMI but I liked TiVo too much. The announcement has forced my hand, hopefully I will enjoy it nearly as much as TiVo. I intend to keep TiVo running for as long as possible but the Humax will be my primary device from now on.


----------



## steford

cp33 said:


> Its not TiVo
> 
> However, the picture quality from scart to HDMI on SD is better and HD is excellant.
> 
> Programming is simple but prefer TiVo's, never been a fan of the EPG listing. Only 7 days worth as well which is disappointing. Series recording works but only shows the next one to be recorded. Need to get used to folders/files way of viewing the recordings.
> 
> To be honest when I purchased my latest plasma I was tempted to move from scart to HDMI but I liked TiVo too much. The announcement has forced my hand, hopefully I will enjoy it nearly as much as TiVo. I intend to keep TiVo running for as long as possible but the Humax will be my primary device from now on.


Likewise. And I assume wishlist is non-existent? I like the idea of "no-frills, just works" setup but I really like wishlists. Can live without most of the other stuff Tivo does if I'm honest eg suggestions but wishlists is a must really.


----------



## mikerr

Wishlists aren't on many consumer PVRs (topfield does with hacks/taps installed).

PC based ones like MCE and mythTV do have them though.


----------



## Nimbus

gary cheshire said:


> Hi,
> 
> Have you tried media portal, interested in how it compares to mythtv?
> 
> whats the best guide for installing mythtv with someone with no linux experience (did do HD tivo upgrades in the past)
> 
> cheers Gary


I havent tried media portal as I think that needs Win7 (?) as its underlying OS, and my hardware isnt really upto running it happily...

As for Myth, well, there isnt really a single 'good' setup guide, ( thats half its problem ), so you have to draw the information from all over the place. 
Its certainly do-able, but just don't expect it to 'just work' out of the box, you will need to do some configuring, depending on the hardware you are using.

The best sources/guides I've found are

UK based guide, probably the best

I also found this guide helpful

the 'official' guide

the 'easy' distro, runs as a live cd so you can check it out, and see if it likes your hardware etc..

the main mythtv forum

its certainly not as easy as buying a new pvr, but... if you have the hardware spare, I'd certainly recommend you give it a go, its free after all !


----------



## AMc

Nimbus said:


> I havent tried media portal as I think that needs Win7 (?) as its underlying OS, and my hardware isnt really upto running it happily...


I recently picked up a second hand Media PC which is running XP Pro and Media Portal is installed in there. The previous owner wasn't using it to timeshift TV.

I've just added a Peak dual tuner DVB-T card which works OK in XP using its own software but was invisible to the Media Portal interface. 
That may be because it needed to be set up but as I have W7 and a new drive to put in it I haven't spent any time on it.


----------



## Nimbus

ahh, now I do have a legit copy of winxp.. some more experimentation needed I think.

Thanks for the heads up 

I see the mediaportal website says that it can..

_Watch, schedule and record live TV - like a TiVo, but more, and for free! _

So we shall see 

My gut feeling is that a linux based system would be more stable than a windows based one. But I'm prepared to be surprised 

It also seems to do a frontend/backend config, which is very much what I want.


----------



## mikerr

Mediaportal has a plug-in for WHS,

http://tv4home.codeplex.com/

useful if you already have a WHS box chugging away.


----------



## Nimbus

Has anyone tried gbpvr

or its successor NextPVR

both windows based, and look roughly winmce or mediaportal clones ?


----------



## gary cheshire

With regards to mythtv, its my uderstanding that it just a pvr and you need to use xmbc to access any downloaded material, pics etc. is this easily done or do you need to come out of each programme?

what are you guys using for a remote?

cheers Gary


----------



## TIVO_YORK99

gary cheshire said:


> With regards to mythtv, its my uderstanding that it just a pvr and you need to use xmbc to access any downloaded material, pics etc. is this easily done or do you need to come out of each programme?
> 
> what are you guys using for a remote?
> 
> cheers Gary


No, Mythtv allows you to listen to music, view pictures and watch videos as well as being a PVR.

I'm using a windows media centre remote control with it.

Peter


----------



## cp33

steford said:


> Likewise. And I assume wishlist is non-existent? I like the idea of "no-frills, just works" setup but I really like wishlists. Can live without most of the other stuff Tivo does if I'm honest eg suggestions but wishlists is a must really.


No wishlists. There are some features I like, record a show on BBC1 and it advise if its in HD and suggest that option. If you select something that clashes it will then advise of the repeat for you to select.


----------



## AMc

A bit of information for those considering Windows Media Centre on Windows 7...
If you are a student or have one in your house you can get substantially reduced rates on Windows7 upgrades from http://www.software4students.co.uk/ 
I paid £41.73 which seemed too good to be true but isn't DVD arrived in 3 days.
It's an upgrade - I installed it on a brand new drive in a machine with a valid XP licence (but the XP drive was not attached). 
It only needed the product key on the new DVD I got to fully activate.

"Qualifying students" includes primary and secondary school children, their parents, grandparents and their guardians http://www.software4students.co.uk/FAQ.aspx#q1
You can buy one OS upgrade per student.

This machine will sit in a living room and will be the easiest PC for me to supervise my daughters internet use so this kills two birds with one stone for our family.

---------------

Having got W7 MCE installed and a Peak dual tuner TV card up and running on a 42" 1080p plasma I'm already pretty impressed. 
I need to sort out a remote config that works and get the system to resume properly from sleeping between recordings (currently getting a DVI>HDMI adapter warning and the screen rescales but I'm hopeful to get that dealt with).
I used Tivoweb to list my 340 season passes and then updated everything I could that's currently available on Freeview.
I'll run the two in parallel for a bit and see what to do next.


----------



## spitfires

Hmmm, it's actually supposed to be for the student to _use_ not just whether there is one 'in the house' or not 

(Thinks: Yet more discrimination against those of us who have chosen not to overpopulate the planet any further.  )

.


----------



## AMc

As I said *This machine will sit in a living room and will be the easiest PC for me to supervise my daughters internet use * as I can keep an eye on it. 
It doesn't have to be for her exclusive use and she doesn't have a computer of her own.
She also watches at least as much telly as I do and there is no stipulation the machine can only be used for educational program(mes).


----------



## spitfires

okay calm down! I wasn't having a pop at you. Your first paragraph says that anyone can get cheap Windows 7 if there is a student 'in the house'. That is plainly unfair, as I'm sure you'll agree.


(You then go on to justify your own personal purchase which is fine (although perhaps not strictly within the spirit of the Software4Students programme) and wasn't the subject of my post which nevertheless seems to have touched a nerve.)


----------



## johala_reewi

Got the Windows 7 Pro student upgrade for £30 when it first came out. Was able to build a bootable install DVD from the downloaded image AND it isn't an upgrade package. You can just go ahead and install it on a blank HDD (no need to already have Windows XP or whatever). Very handy if you are a qualifying student.

I also have an old PC or 2 lying around, some biggish HDDs and a DVB-T USB stick so will have a look at MythTV.


----------



## AMc

My kid at 7, in primary school is expected to access a learning portal for her homework.
I need to be able to supervise her access & I'll want to lock down some things to make that computer safe. Putting a computer in the living room wasn't something I wanted to do, but in this case it can serve two jobs at once which I figured would be of interest to some people reading this thread.

I think it's a discount that Microsoft are offering our family and I'm very comfortable that I'm within the letter and the spirit of the offer.


----------



## RichardJH

AMc said:


> I think it's a discount that Microsoft are offering our family and I'm very comfortable that I'm within the letter and the spirit of the offer.


I agree and it is exactly what I did to get Win 7 and Office 2007.
No children at home but my Grandson stays at times and likes to have the computer to use, so it seemed the right thing to have the same software available that he uses at home and school.

BTW there is another source for the software http://www.pugh.co.uk/


----------



## TCM2007

Office costs £35 and You can get the full Adobe CS5 suite for a couple of hundred - saving over a grand.

They are trying to get kids hooked on their products from an early age; I'm very happy to offer up my young ones to the cause!


----------



## AMc

Of course, it's a gateway install - it'll lead to harder stuff in future 

I can imagine that an undergraduate might need Photoshop, illustrator etc. and by putting it within their reach you deter them from the cracked/hacked or  OPEN SOURCE  route  Harder to justify for a primary school kid, though I was programming computers at that age so perhaps not...


----------



## TCM2007

When I was at primary school computers looked like wardrobes with flashing lights and reel to reel tapes...


----------



## AMc

It belonged to my older brother...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81

10 print "Hello World"
20 goto 10


----------



## Nimbus

AMc said:


> It belonged to my older brother...
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81
> 
> 10 print "Hello World"
> 20 goto 10


Ahh, I bought one of those little fellas new, for my 12th birthday... saved up all year for it... think it was £60 !

happy days.. and I still have it in its original box, with loads of tapes of programs, tucked away in the wardrobe... one day it will be worth something... hehe, or at least that's what I keep telling the wife


----------



## TCM2007

I still have the printer - with its original roll of silver paper. was so expensive I never used it!


----------



## martink0646

Nimbus said:


> Ahh, I bought one of those little fellas new, for my 12th birthday... saved up all year for it... think it was £60 !
> 
> happy days.. and I still have it in its original box, with loads of tapes of programs, tucked away in the wardrobe... one day it will be worth something... hehe, or at least that's what I keep telling the wife


I got a second hand one for xmas in 1980 (I was 10) & spent many happy hours with it. I found that with the 16K (!!!!) RamPack that had velcro as the factory fix & the 48k Spectrum that replaced it in my parents loft last year. I was chuffed & grabbed them to show my 6 year old. The ZX81 was dead but the Spectrum worked with one problem. I don't own a tape deck to load any of the large number of cassetes that was with it.

Martin


----------



## djqster

Fancy a brand new ZX81 Kit anyone?
I built one a couple of years ago when the price wasn't so high!


----------



## TCM2007

martink0646 said:


> I got a second hand one for xmas in 1980


No you didn't. The clue is in the name!


----------



## martink0646

I was sure I was 10. Must have been 11 then It looked strange when I was typing it but I thought it must have been one of those marketing led 'get the future, NOW'. I should have just gone with the logical answer!!

Thanks for putting me right.

Martin


----------



## mikerr

http://www.zxspectrum.net/ - loading games is a bit quicker than I remember


----------



## AMc

I've started a Chit Chat UK thread for this and I apologise for sending this thread off at a significant tangent...
Old computers were great...discuss


----------



## telajayra

I am with VM only paying £27 for TV-M, Broadband 10mb & unlimited phone.
I was offered the VM Tivo for £149 & then £63 per month for TV-XL, Broadband 10mb & unlimited phone. That's £36 extra per month & £581 for the 1st year & for a load of channels I didn't want. They upset that much with their ludicrous offer I wanted to cancell the lot. When I went through to cancellations the guy offered me their V+ box for £30 per month on the same package that I was on & only £3 extra a month, but now includes HD & also can record 2 different programmes while you watch a third. So I accepted & have given it a go. Now it's no Tivo but I'm getting used to it & all in all I think it's the cheapest & best option that's available (if you're in a VM area). Best of all my Tivo operates the box fine so I can record the third channel on tivo if I need to.


----------



## steford

An update to my build. Installed Win 7 in place of my perfectly good XP install just to get Win 7 Media Center (sic). Very nice it is and all up and running with the Nova-T stick so far. Only downside was the Compro S350 PCI card I got was full height and therefore didn't fit my case. Have ordered a PCI DVB-T and a PCI-e DVB-S2 at more cost but hopefully will be all I need until DVB-T2 are a bit cheaper. Some slight pixelation on the Nova-T via USB. In terms of functionality it's really good - wishlists set up, season passes in (still working out best default settings), iPlayer working beautifully, Codecs all in. Now trying to figure out how to get Sky Player and MSN Player to activate.

It really does integrate nicely as you'd expect - stays on top and isn't affected by Desktop notifications. Early days but I would say the interface, in general, is better than Tivo's - lovely use of images eg for films, simple - although some buttons could be bigger and options could be presented in a more logical order. What it can't do is more than made up for by what it can really. So far, so good.

EDIT: Added the new tuners. PCI and PCIe working better than the USB without pixelation so that's good. HD over DVB-S does show signs of breakup so I need to investigate that. Channel merging was relatively painless but time consuming just because DVB-S scans in so much rubbish - I may look into adding specific transponders just to grab Freesat and a few other channels. Attempted to merge BBC1HD (S) and BBC1 (T) and setting Sat as priority to give me default HD on BBC1 but I don't think I managed it - another to check.

Wishlists and recordings are all fine. Default padding making the next show not record is now not an issue due to the 3 tuners.

SkyPlayer is set up with my dad's account but there is little to choose from there. MSN player is now visible for some old BBC stuff. Re-arranged the start menus using Media Center Studio to better group recorded and downloaded TV, the VoD players and the Guide.

Web access via Remote Potato is setup and used stunnel to replace the out of date Orenosp for SSL access.

Really impressed with it still.

IDEA: Dare I rip the insides out of my Tivo and mod it to be my HTPC case? Really can't bear not having it under my TV.


----------



## AMc

I'm cross posting this out of the Media Centre thread in UK chit chat  as I figured it was of interest to this thread too, more info in that post so as not to spam everything up.



> I didn't realise until yesterday that Windows Media Centre on Windows 7 (AND Windows Media Player 11 on my XP machine) can be configured to share music, video and music over DNLA!
> 
> That means that my Playstation 3 was a few clicks away from being able to replay the Freeview TV recorded by the new Windows 7 HTPC! .....


----------



## Nimbus

Just a sort of update, I do intend on writing a proper post on how I've got on running mythtv soon...( very successfully after some initial teething problems), but in the meantime..

One of the things 'missing' from every non-tivo pvr, is the ability for it to learn your viewing habits, and record programs that you might be interested in.

Seems there is an equivalent on mythtv, with this 'myth magic' plug in.

Looks good, but I havent had chance to test it yet, my myth installation is at 0.23, so looks like an upgrade to 0.24 is needed...

I'll report on it when I have it all working, but it looks hopefull !


----------



## TIVO_YORK99

MythTV is great isn't it.

I've not touched the PC its on since I installed it a few weeks ago and it hasn't failed a recording at all yet.

Its great been able to watch live TV on XBMC using Myth - its very impressive.

MythMagic sounds good - but I'm stuck on Myth 0.23 as Myth 0.24 breaks the connection with XBMC (the myth streaming protocol has been updated and XBMC doesn't support the new version).


Edit - As a matter of interest what are you using for the guide data?, I'm using EIT which is great but only has 7 days in advance.


----------



## Nimbus

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> MythTV is great isn't it.
> 
> I've not touched the PC its on since I installed it a few weeks ago and it hasn't failed a recording at all yet.
> 
> Its great been able to watch live TV on XBMC using Myth - its very impressive.
> 
> MythMagic sounds good - but I'm stuck on Myth 0.23 as Myth 0.24 breaks the connection with XBMC (the myth streaming protocol has been updated and XBMC doesn't support the new version).
> 
> Edit - As a matter of interest what are you using for the guide data?, I'm using EIT which is great but only has 7 days in advance.


yes, it really is excellent ! The HD recording quality is great, and even normal programs look as good as live.. something that cant be said for our old S1s.... When I had the old CRT tv, I didnt notice, but now I've got a 'big' modern tv, it is really noticeable.. even the OH has commented on the picture quality..., After some issues with my old pc's clock, ( the battery had gone and it was losing minutes per day, meaning recordings started late, but worse Myth checks times between front and backends, and wont let a remote frontend connect if the times are out... caused a lot of head scratching that did ! ), I've had it running untouched for a fortnight.

I'm using the EIT as well, so yes only 7 days, but it seems ok. 
I did toy with the idea of setting up the XMLT radio times source, but not got round to it yet...

Myth is definitely impressive, but there are so many options that it can be a bit overwhelming... well, what I mean is I need to RTFM..... 

Even choosing the recording option has about 10 choices !

My front end is an Atom based mini htpc, using myth frontend, but maybe I should have a go at installing a modern version of xbmc if that will stream the tv as well. 
I've always liked xbmc on my xbox, as its a very smooth interface...
I think I'd probably prefer to try that, before upgrading to myth 0.24..

I must take some pictures, and write my report !


----------



## TIVO_YORK99

Know what you mean about the recording options - its good to have a lot of choice though.

I too am using an Atom based machine, the Acer Revo R3600 with 3 Hauppauge USB tuners. I have actually recorded 6 things at the same time so far, and it didn't miss a beat!

I used to have windows 7 on this PC and view them on media center extenders. I used to have dropouts every now and then on certain channels (such as Dave) which I thought was down to a poor signal. However, on MythTV it never drops out at all.

I look forward to your report!


----------



## martink0646

Hi All,

I'm a bit confused about mythtv & the limited research I've done doesn't seem to answer the totally basic question that I have.

I have a PC that I now run XBMC 10.1(?) on. This PC is in a central cupboard & the display & sound are piped around the house using a CAT5 multiroom system. As such I don't have a back end & front end. As I understand it, normally Mythtv, XBMC etc are installed on a PC somewhere out of sight, the backend, & then there is another PC, connected, that handles the local display, the frontend. If I have no need for front & backend can I do it all on the one, central PC? If so, can someone post me a link so I can do some more reading. My other option as posted elsewhere is to upgrade to Win7 & use MC (As a trial I have got the TV working on Vista MC but I really like XBMC & TV with it would be perfect).

Thanks

Martin


----------



## TIVO_YORK99

Hi Martin,

I think I understand what you are asking.

The frontend and backend can be on the same PC and it works fine. You could then always have the frontend loaded on the PC (its just a program run from an icon and no doubt you can autorun it).

I have the frontend and backend on my Acer Revo, but don't actually use it at all (I use XBMC on Apple TV 1 to view the TV Myth has recorded). I then schedule all the recordings, deletions etc. through the web browser and never do anything on the Revo directly (it isn't even plugged into a monitor anyway).

I personally installed mythbuntu (see www.mythbuntu.org) and then followed the guide from here http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php which is a UK based guide.

Hope this helps.


----------



## martink0646

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> Hi Martin,
> 
> I think I understand what you are asking.
> 
> The frontend and backend can be on the same PC and it works fine. You could then always have the frontend loaded on the PC (its just a program run from an icon and no doubt you can autorun it).
> 
> I have the frontend and backend on my Acer Revo, but don't actually use it at all (I use XBMC on Apple TV 1 to view the TV Myth has recorded). I then schedule all the recordings, deletions etc. through the web browser and never do anything on the Revo directly (it isn't even plugged into a monitor anyway).
> 
> I personally installed mythbuntu (see www.mythbuntu.org) and then followed the guide from here http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php which is a UK based guide.
> 
> Hope this helps.


Yep, you have understood perfectly, with one caveat. I should have been more specific & said that I wanted to stay in the Windows environment as I have absolutely zero experience of linux & everything else on this PC (my only one not counting SWMBO's netbook) is in Windows. I'm sure I could setup dualboot but that wouldn't help me, would it? I looked around &n saw that Mythtv had a Windows executable but I'm not going to start fiddling until I know it's possible to do what I want. I'm still perfectly happy using PVR's, TiVo & a Freesat Humax I'm just pushing the boundaries at the moment.

Martin


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## Nimbus

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> Know what you mean about the recording options - its good to have a lot of choice though.
> 
> I too am using an Atom based machine, the Acer Revo R3600 with 3 Hauppauge USB tuners. I have actually recorded 6 things at the same time so far, and it didn't miss a beat!
> 
> I used to have windows 7 on this PC and view them on media center extenders. I used to have dropouts every now and then on certain channels (such as Dave) which I thought was down to a poor signal. However, on MythTV it never drops out at all.
> 
> I look forward to your report!


just an interim update..

Follwoing your comments, I installed xbmc on the frontend today... ( I was a long time xbox xbmc user already ), and wow !! What a difference !

works so much better than the vanilla mythtv front end, looks better, and far more WAF... with the exception of 'wishlists' I think I'm there


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## mutant_matt2

Nimbus,

Wishlists are there, they are just not as user friendly, being pretty standard (and therefore, not particularly user friendly) SQL statements. RIght!? (or did I miss something)?

I rarely create new wishlists (on TiVo), as I set most of them up years ago, so I don't see it as a big deal that they are not very friendly (on Myth), but I do use a lot of them (once they are right, you forget about them).

Matt


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## johala_reewi

@mythtv posters
Am trying out MythBuntu 10.10 and the bits that work are pretty good. I have 2 problems though. First is no sound. The soundcard is a SB Audigy 4 and has been recognised as a device but no sound comes out (either MythTV or VLC player). The other problem is how do i connect to a wireless network with mythbuntu? There doesn't appear to be any option to select a network. The network card is flashing away but because I can't provide a SSID and WPA key, it ain't getting far. Apart from that, MythTV is very stable. DVB stick picked up first time and using EIT data. Picture very stable (better than Win7 MC). Would like to test it a bit more!!


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## noelb

On What Hi Fi:

Virgin Media to launch smaller 500GB TiVo box in May

For those who baulked at the cost of Virgin's new 1TB TiVo set-top box, there's a new smaller 500GB model on the way in May for £49.95.

It will be available to Virgin customers with the 'L' or 'M+' TV subscription packages, unlike the 1TB box which is only available to those with the top 'XL' package.

The 500GB version can record up to 250 hours of standard-definition programmes and retains the three tuners and internal modem of its bigger brother.

Virgin also says anyone who has pre-registered for the larger 1TB TiVo box will get it at a discount price of £149.95 with free installation (normally £40).


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## tivofromdayone

just out of interest as we dont want virgin and couldnt get it even if we did want it, what are the costs for the L and M+ packages or whatever they were called.


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## TCM2007

M+ is £18 a month cheaper than XL.


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