The goal is to get a home system set up so that I can ditch the Tivo unit.
Problem is Tivo is very easy to use plus I can get all my cable channels and record anything I want off of cable. My currect Tivo contract is coming up for renewal in Nov. 2010. And I would like to ditch it because I don't want to pay around $12 a month or pay the lifetime of $300.00 (heard tell that if I wait until the month before they may offer lifetime upgrade for only $99). Downside of Tivo only two tuners. Wife and I like a lot of the shows available between the broadcast channels and cable channels we can easily tie up 4 tuners.
I could purchase another Tivo but then consider the expense, cost of another unit plus the monthly expense of another cable card rental in addition to the monthly or lifetime expense for tivo service.
So I purchased the parts to build a HTPC which will allow me to record qam off of cable for the broadcast channels and I can use Tivo for the encrypted cable channels until there is readily available a cable card tuner that handles multiple tuners.
So here are some pic's of what I have put together so far
I'm using a Zotac H55 ITX board so far no problems but I never tried to flash the bios to the current ones. My moto if it works leave it alone (well not always) I have installed Windows 7 professional. In addition I installed a HDhomerun.
Setting up the HDhomerun was easy and the HTPC started up great no problem getting it to start up in media center and it works great getting the broadcast channels to show up in 7MC plus recording is just great some features of 7MC is much easier to use than Tivo.
1st problem I ran into, windows explorer's window will not fit on the screen. Nothing that I do seems to work. Finally after messing with it for day found the setting on my TV to just scan my god it worked finally.
Now I don't now about all of the rest of you but my wife just doesn't have the patience to mess with something, I admit sometimes I feel the same way I just want the damn thing to work.
So we sat down in the Living room here I have the HTPC set up to watch a show, Tivo was tied up recording and we had nothing saved to watch but I had some shows on the HTPC saved plus I had downloaded a season of Fringe in HD from Amazon. so I turned on the tv. Went to watch Fringe and 7MC wouldn't play it, Now I had tried it on 15 episodes and it had worked fine. But of course the ones we wanted to see wouldn't play. Now I'm up a creek because of 1st impressions was, this thing is a piece crap. I was able to start the show in media player but I was already screwed.
Next night we sat down again to watch some TV on the HTPC, Tivo again tied up. This time both tuners on the HTPC was being used, no problem I thought I would just play something recorded. Nope not going to happen. 7MC just wouldn't respond. I could navigate to recorded tv and play the file in WMP but i would not play in 7MC. Strike 2 wife is really thinking this HTPC stuff is crap.
I know I can get this working but my lord why does it have to be it works one time but not the next. My goal is to add a server to store recorded programs plus to save my purchased movies and watch anytime I want with ease. But at this rate I will never be able to get rid of that Tivo unit.
Next is to get the server going plus continue tweaking the HTPC to get it working with out problems. Also need to get my Ipad to control the HTPC to make it all easy to control.
Stay tuned as we travel this rocky road in getting the HTPC to pass the wife acceptance. It may just end up being something that only I can enjoy and we just keep the Tivo.
Problem is Tivo is very easy to use plus I can get all my cable channels and record anything I want off of cable. My currect Tivo contract is coming up for renewal in Nov. 2010. And I would like to ditch it because I don't want to pay around $12 a month or pay the lifetime of $300.00 (heard tell that if I wait until the month before they may offer lifetime upgrade for only $99). Downside of Tivo only two tuners. Wife and I like a lot of the shows available between the broadcast channels and cable channels we can easily tie up 4 tuners.
I could purchase another Tivo but then consider the expense, cost of another unit plus the monthly expense of another cable card rental in addition to the monthly or lifetime expense for tivo service.
So I purchased the parts to build a HTPC which will allow me to record qam off of cable for the broadcast channels and I can use Tivo for the encrypted cable channels until there is readily available a cable card tuner that handles multiple tuners.
So here are some pic's of what I have put together so far
I'm using a Zotac H55 ITX board so far no problems but I never tried to flash the bios to the current ones. My moto if it works leave it alone (well not always) I have installed Windows 7 professional. In addition I installed a HDhomerun.
Setting up the HDhomerun was easy and the HTPC started up great no problem getting it to start up in media center and it works great getting the broadcast channels to show up in 7MC plus recording is just great some features of 7MC is much easier to use than Tivo.
1st problem I ran into, windows explorer's window will not fit on the screen. Nothing that I do seems to work. Finally after messing with it for day found the setting on my TV to just scan my god it worked finally.
Now I don't now about all of the rest of you but my wife just doesn't have the patience to mess with something, I admit sometimes I feel the same way I just want the damn thing to work.
So we sat down in the Living room here I have the HTPC set up to watch a show, Tivo was tied up recording and we had nothing saved to watch but I had some shows on the HTPC saved plus I had downloaded a season of Fringe in HD from Amazon. so I turned on the tv. Went to watch Fringe and 7MC wouldn't play it, Now I had tried it on 15 episodes and it had worked fine. But of course the ones we wanted to see wouldn't play. Now I'm up a creek because of 1st impressions was, this thing is a piece crap. I was able to start the show in media player but I was already screwed.
Next night we sat down again to watch some TV on the HTPC, Tivo again tied up. This time both tuners on the HTPC was being used, no problem I thought I would just play something recorded. Nope not going to happen. 7MC just wouldn't respond. I could navigate to recorded tv and play the file in WMP but i would not play in 7MC. Strike 2 wife is really thinking this HTPC stuff is crap.
I know I can get this working but my lord why does it have to be it works one time but not the next. My goal is to add a server to store recorded programs plus to save my purchased movies and watch anytime I want with ease. But at this rate I will never be able to get rid of that Tivo unit.
Next is to get the server going plus continue tweaking the HTPC to get it working with out problems. Also need to get my Ipad to control the HTPC to make it all easy to control.
Stay tuned as we travel this rocky road in getting the HTPC to pass the wife acceptance. It may just end up being something that only I can enjoy and we just keep the Tivo.