j said:
built their own DVR's with dual tuners, they are happy, but the
software is buggy at times.
What software are you talkng about exactly? I currently run 3 DVB-T tuners,
and I've heard of people running 4 or more sucessfully using Linux, with
multiple clients throughout the house. There's no real reason why 2
identical tuners will pose more of a problem than two completley different
chipsets, though, as ever with computers it's best to research which tuners
work well and which sink like a brick.
Unless you live in one of those Microsoftian Utopias that often play a part
of MCE's advertising (you know, where everyone is unoffensive, wears pastels
and windows just works) - I would strongly advuse against using MS Windows
as your PVR server. Having your main Windoze desktop running your TV
software is going to cause a lot of problems when you want to play games,
perform any sort of intensive disk operation (anyone defragging?), restart
your computer because of security updates, or jsut because "it needs a
restart". Using GNU/Linux software on affordable hardware can result in very
competent setups, that are headless, easy to shove in a cupboard and offer
24 hour uptime. All the server does is move around the MPEG2 video, you can
run VDR on 500Mhz processors and with a few hundred megabytes of ram an a
100Mbps LAN.
Another feature of some of the many Linux based software is the ability to
record more than one channel per tuner. As digital TV is multiplexed onto
one carrier wave, the tuner can pull as many channels from the signal as
your hardware will allow. So with 3 tuners I never have to worry about
recording too many programs at once, while wanting to watch live TV.
Linux based software will encourage and assist you in the removal of adverts
from recordings, burning to DVD, transcoding to a stronger compression
format for archving, all the time integrating well with Windows networks.
Microsoft will forever stoop to the demands of DRM, until the world realises
what a shit deal it all is. iPod not so useful anymore oncce you realise how
crap iTunes is?
If you can't receive a digital signal then you should look at MythTV. This
software was built around using the Hauppage PVR Hardware MPEG2 line of
cards and is competent if fairly complicated to setup. Fortunatly there are
booting CD's that will turn your old Win98 machine into a MythTV setup
within a few minutes.
If you CAN get digital, then I'd have a look at VDR - german based software
built around DVB-S receivers but which works very well with DVB-T. A simple
interface and fantastic reliabaility are what convinced me to use this
program. You can use VDR as your recording server and then connect with
prettier clients if you prefer. After using this software for months now, I
can testify that my time spent in front of the TV is now well spent and
fairly light, rather than hours of flicking though the detritus and
gobshites that are everywhere on UK Freeview. Plus no adverts!
If you are fairly techy then you might already have a Linux based file
server in your house, it's easy to turn this into a PVR server. Needless to
say, if most of this sounds gibberish, then perhaps Windows MCE is for you,
however I'd avoid it like the plague.
The people who use Microsoft Media Center
PC's seem much happier. I have a single tuner HP MCE PC that I've
been using since they first came out and it's performed flawlessly.
Consider yourself lucky - I've not head many good things about Media Centre
Edition, except from people with the budget to buy high spec computers and
well known branded digital receivers.
I
also have 2 Linksys Media Center Extenders that are wired in, so I
don't have to listen to a noisy PC over my TV. They work fairly
well, I have to reboot them every now and then (turn them ON/OFF) but
your mileage may vary.
These are supported by some Linux based PVR software. VDR is one of them
though the interface is polled from the server, meaning it's a little
sluggish.
