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Anyone build one? I'm in the process and was wondering what hardware/software you guys chose? I'm looking to make a pvr (Tivo copy) machine that can play my music and video archive. I figure I can rip my DVDs and place them all in one hard drive. I also want to be able to stream internet radio and video.
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I reject your reality and substitute my own. -
I have many TB of content on an Unraid array (ripped copies of my DVDs, HD-DVD, BluRay, and some TV. I like to keep it in its native format (ISO or full disc rips) but I did end up remuxing the first several BluRay's I purchased into single files as there wasn't a lot that liked the BDMV structure back then.
I watch the content on my regular PCs, a Popcorn Hour NMT standalone device and a linux machine running XBMC (the most family friendly interface).
TV content comes from DVD (mostly) or off two patched, networked, DirecTivo's, but those are only SD quality. If I were trying to integrate tuners on the XBMC box itself I'd probably look at a MythTV setup to start as I've heard it mentioned quite frequently, but I admit that I haven't looked into it seriously. Playing non-ripped BluRay is not an easy option on Linux, so if that's in the mix for the moment you're stuck with using a commercial OS and player software.Comment
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How do you like Beyond? Have you tried GB?
What did you use to Mux your DVDs? Does that mean you combined the commentaries with the main movie? What do you see when view that file?
Does Beyond recognize an iso and/or TS folder?
Not too familiar with unraid. Why did you use it?
I have a Haupp pvr 150 right now but am disappointed with the quality. Kristofor what capture cards do you have? Bill how do you like the MCE150? Any of you used the HVR 2250?Last edited by jussi; 06-06-2009, 01:09 AM.I reject your reality and substitute my own.Comment
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SageTv with Hauppauge WinTV 885, Windows XP. I put the whole thing together for about $600, and the biggest single expense was the fancy case I got for it. It works pretty good, only complaint I have is that the "favorites" keyword management keeps picking up stuff I don't want like soaps because the keyword is in one of the eps. description. Video quality is very good, and can be customized. Lots of addons and plugins for SageTV, fwiw.Comment
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Are the plug ins free?I reject your reality and substitute my own.Comment
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I might as well add MythTV or KnoppMyth to the mix. I've been running it for years. It's all free except the TV Guide information. That part costs about $20 a year. Knoppmyth is an ISO ready to format a drive and go. Eats commercials and all that good stuff.
Bill"Why are there Braille codes on drive-up ATM machines?"Comment
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I don't have the integrated DVD plugin for Beyond (4.9), so I can't answer the DVD questions.
I used ShowShifter for a long time, but their interface was clunky and they did not have a guide for Canada. Beyond has come a long way since I first tried it and they seem fairly responsive to customer needs. I really like the streaming to my laptop as I can watch TV/recordings out on the deck.
UnRaid lets you mix disks of varying capacites but still provides parity in the event of a single disk failure. It also does not stripe the data so you can recover data on any individual drive in the event of multiple failures. I was using one of the NAS (Network Attached Storage) boxes, but it was cooking the drives. So I built the UnRaid server out of mostly spare parts and warranty exchanged drives. It's missing some basic features like email notification, but their are a number of user enhancements for the Linux geeks.
The MCE150 is OK; my cable company encrypts all the channels so HD is problematic. I haven't investigated any component video recording options.Comment
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About 90% of all the previous posts is Etruscan to me. I just want to find a way to watch Comcast digital channels with my old PCTV card.Comment
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Install your PCTV card into a Windows XP machine, hook your tv cable to it, install whatever software came with the card and you should be good to go. At one point I had a separate monitor hooked to an ATI All In Wonder Radeon and used that monitor to watch TV in my home office.
As for unraid, I looked hard at using it but decided to go with a full Linux server install on mirrored drives instead. I needed the functionality of Linux for web, ftp and a Samba server.David
The chief cause of failure in this life is giving up what you want most for what you want at the moment.Comment
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Yah. I have an analog card right now and am doing the same thing. Quality is reduced if you have to watch in a big screen but in a computer monitor it should look fine.
Just pop the card in, hook the coax, composite, svideo, etc to the card and scan for channels. Set input to fixed channel, external tuner (might be worded differently depending on the configuration software). Run what ever program your card comes with to view your stb and set channel of the program to 3 (or 4).Last edited by jussi; 06-06-2009, 11:44 PM.I reject your reality and substitute my own.Comment
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I didn't remux the DVDs, just the BluRays. Normally BluRay content is split between several transport stream files. By remuxing you can combine them in the right order (if they use branching) and also potentially eliminate unwanted tracks (languages, etc). This is no longer quite as required as several systems will parse the playlists and do the seamless branching on their own now, but that wasn't an option a couple years ago. They can be viewed by most any player than can handle a TS or M2TS file and the video and audio formats inside the file. (I use VLC on Windows)
This will capture the analog channels only. If you use the STB to tune and output you'd still be capturing a low-res output. There is currently a method that allows the use of an ATI cablecard reader with any PC to capture digital/encrypted content though this is not the intended behavior. It involves loading a fake bios to trick the card into thinking you are using one of the certified PCs that are blessed to use these cards.
Unraid can be run on a full slackware install. Alternatively, those specific modules are available as part of the install or as fairly easy plugins (I have all of those functions enabled on my box and use it for running a screened off session of Bitc*X IRC client... That said performance (particularly write performance) lends itself well to storing large amounts of multimedia content, but not as well for general network attached storage, your mirrored drives will be LOTS faster...Comment
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Kristofor. Are you using a universal remote to control XBMC. I just installed it for the first time and can't get my old Haup remote to work. It's the remote that came with my pvr 150. As far as I can gather I need to add some code to the xml file in XBMC and in the ini file of the irremote. Is that what you did. Guys at XBMC forum don't seem to want to help noobs very much.I reject your reality and substitute my own.Comment
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