HTPC, need advice for tuner/DVR functionality.

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wjogert

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So, I've had my HTPC for many years. I had satellite TV in an area where nothing is available OTA, so never did any tuning or DVR functions.

Now I'm in the city, with Comcast cable, and I'm already tired of the equipment rental fees and the limitations of said hardware.

Current setup is Windows8, Windows MCE, MyMovies Database, TMT3 (used only for my HD-DVD collection). I am not opposed to going XBMC, although I do use the MyMovies backdrops for my screensaver.
I would like to tune HD cable channels, DVR multiple programs, pause live, and skip commercials. I wouldn't mind testing OTA HD signal reception.

I'd like some advice from those who are already experienced in this.
What are the best choices of tuner cards?
Which additional software will I need?
Am I better to subscribe to a streaming website for live TV?
Issues that I should expect to encounter?
etc...

Thanks!
 
I'm starting to think I want an HDHomeRun for my house. The idea of giving TV to any networked PC is awesome to me.
 
valve1138 said:
HdHomerun Prime.

Skip Ceton.

I have both btw.
Click to expand...

Any particular reason?

You can't get more than 3 tuners with HD Homerun and Plus with 4 is not available yet. Ceton is up to 6.

According to the site, the HD Homerun ETH lets you watch TV using front ends like XBMC and MythTV. I assume, only non encrypted or copy protected?

wjogert said:
I'd like some advice from those who are already experienced in this.
What are the best choices of tuner cards?
Which additional software will I need?
Am I better to subscribe to a streaming website for live TV?
Issues that I should expect to encounter?
etc...

Thanks!
Click to expand...

You need windows media center + MCEBuddy.

I used to use Media Center for movies, TV shows and music but experienced huge memory and performance issues when the MC movie library approached 200 movies. Now I use XBMC with the MC integration plugin. Watch TV and DVR in media center, everything else in XBMC. Plex server streams to mobile devices. B E A utiful.

You should not encounter any issues if your system is setup right.

Word of advice, dont use Media Center Studio to theme your MC. Its flaky as shit. If you must theme then use Patchous media center themer. You can make it use media center studio themes and the best part is it does not modify any MC system files unlike MCS.
 
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The Lurker said:
Any particular reason?

You can't get more than 3 tuners with HD Homerun and Plus with 4 is not available yet. Ceton is up to 6.

According to the site, the HD Homerun ETH lets you watch TV using front ends like XBMC and MythTV. I assume, only non encrypted or copy protected?
Click to expand...

I agree with his statement as well. I have a PCIe InfiniTV4 for my living room HTPC, and an HD Homerun Prime for my bedroom. The HD Homerun Prime is much more stable in my experience.

With the Ceton system, I regularly get video/playback errors in WMC, slower channel changing, and other minor glitches. The system has to be rebooted at least 1-2 times a week. The HTPC in the bedroom with the HDHRP has absolutely zero issues, and is usually only rebooted for Windows updates. I'd really only recommend the InfiniTV 6 units if you must have the additional tuners.

The HDHRP also supports DLNA, which I don't care about, but it is a perk for some. The ceton and silicon dust units should both work with other front end interfaces to my knowledge, but WMC is the only solution that allows HTPC copy-once playback and recording (for most providers these are premium channels like HBO/Cinemax). If your provider uses copy-once for more channels than this, you're only real option is WMC (or XBMC with the WMC plugin).

You can use the Silicon Dust HDHRP with DLNA to playback copy-once channels with certain Smart TV's and products that support DCTP-IP, but you cannot record with this method.
 
I have two HDHomerun primes for nearly two years now and have been satisfied. I started with the ceton infinitv4 and after about 4 or 5 months I got fed up with it and started using HDHomerun prime.

With the ceton I had to reboot my HTPC several times a week. It got to the point where I had to make a task to where it would auto reboot everyday. I also found that the HDHomerun prime tunes channels significantly faster. The ceton would take almost 8-10 seconds to tune where the HDHomerun prime takes like 3 seconds.
 
i too had a ceton right when it came out and it was great, 6 years ago or whatever it was. The HDHomerun Prime is a much better.....

i enjoy being able to use my laptop as portable "TV" and having 2 HDHR's in a closet with my 3 HTPCs in the house being able to access them is fantastic.

it just works better

My HDHRs have been going strong for 4+ years

as well as my original HDHR dual ATSC that I used 8+ years ago
 
The HD Homerun Prime replacement will likely run H.264 compression on the tuner. Something that should give different options for streaming. If you want to send signal to multiple places your network will affect that. If you're all ethernet'ed up you don't need to worry, but if you're doing wireless you can maybe support one stream of MPEG2 give or take. The new Compression approach will probably allow more streams simultaneously on wireless but not sure what clients will take advantage of that.
 
+1 for the prime. Mines been rock solid so far. It replaced a Ceton that was nothing but issues.

I use WMC for my DVR but the HTPC also runs XBMC and I use the WMC.pvr plugin for XBMC to pull the recorded TV and live TV from WMC so Ihave 1 interface for everything

I also run mediabrowser3 on another server that uses the wmc.pvr plugin to grab TV streams from the prime and send them to the mediabrowser roku channel or my tablet
 
I dunno guys, I have no stability issues with the Ceton...NOW. But ill be honest. When I first got it, everything was rock solid. Then I went to a new HTPC and I had problems. I had a bunch of issues before because I either had the ports setup incorrectly in my router, then the firewall not setup right in windows and in the end my WMC install turned out to be hosed. Losing tuners and crashing WMC were the two most common problems.

After starting fresh on the same HTPC its been rock solid. Basically you gotta follow the instructions they provide to the letter and ensure everything is 100% correct or else it does have stability issues. Channel changes could be faster, but 1 - 2 seconds aint bad. I also can't upgrade to the latest firmware because apparently the batch of cards I got developed a problem with accepting new firmware after a certain version. That's really disappointing because I am out of warranty and Ceton doesnt want to fess up they had a bad batch of cards.

Ceton also makes a 6 tuner ETH version and it should work as good as the HDHR, but I wouldn't know. But if you can make due with 3 tuners the HDHR is a no brainer.

Still, I am surprised how many people prefer the HDHR.
 
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I have a Ceton, with 2 Echos. My 'HTPC' is basically a server in the basement.
 
HDHomerun is the way to go. It is what I want to do but, since our wonderful House of Reps voted to remove the requirement that cable companies have to provide cablecards it could be dead.

I am not sure yet if this passes does it mean they can just say that you cannot use your own device (like a HDHomerun or Ceton).
 
I switched my parents from the HDHomerune Prime to the Ceton 6 tuner PCIe.

For the most part, it's been a stable enough switch, though I'm not at their place using it all the time. I haven't really heard many problems from them about the system since the switch, I have a Logitech Harmony programmed with ALT+F4 and re-launch buttons to restart WMC if things go awry.

The big reason I switched was because the Ceton allows me to disable EAS forwarding since my local Time Warner handles these messages TERRIBLY. Unlike most systems where the EAS warning goes away after it is displayed, WMC kept these up for hours on end... and I literally mean hours of having that message on the screen.
 
If you want to record anything that is copy once make sure you have the htpc that you want to keep for a while. I made the mistake of using an old pc for an htpc and being old it was slow. I upgraded my htpc and lost all the copy once recordings since they can only be played back on the pc that recorded them or an extender.
 
I'm one of the few I suppose who have good things to say about Ceton. I have been using the Ceton InfiniTV4 since 2/4/13 in 2 different HTPCs (upgraded the board recently, sadly my U2711 can't do 1.4a hdmi :/), had a few issues here and there but I fixed them eventually (the recent Mobo switch was easy peasy). Been using WMC since then as well and so far things have been fine with over 2,900 recordings, my movies I've accumulated and music as well. I expect the 6 to be as good, but better in the fact since it has 2 more tuners available. I've run into times where I had to pick and choose what to record, but with the way modern cable is it's usually repeated on a later date anyways.

MCEBuddy is also a nice thing to use to remove the commercials, I leave it WTV unprocessed until I need to alter it for a mobile device or something. You won't be able to do this real time (only recordings) but you can pause live TV.

I have Comcast/Xfinity or whatever crap they call themselves as well. Anyways with the Ceton all you need is the Mcard you request from them (which is free) and call the # on the paper they give you and you should be good to go. The process takes no longer then calling in to setup a regular cable box.

I do have Windows 7 64 bit though. I would like to hope Windows 8 doesn't change much in the experience.

munkle said:
If you want to record anything that is copy once make sure you have the htpc that you want to keep for a while. I made the mistake of using an old pc for an htpc and being old it was slow. I upgraded my htpc and lost all the copy once recordings since they can only be played back on the pc that recorded them or an extender.
Click to expand...

What do you mean exactly?

I've changed HTPC's and stored most if not all my TV recordings on external drives. So long as you properly store your files, on multiple drives, you will be covered in a situation like that.
 
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