SageTV, MythTV, Slingbox, Hava, HDHomeRun.... Help me out of the woods here...

[spotdog14]

Alright, Ill start off by saying that I don't really know what I want, and because of that I have basically done nothing.

I use to have an WinXP MCE machine setup with dual NTSC tuners. It was nice, but I didn't really like having a compute running 24/7 even though it was a celeron.

Initially what I wanted was a Slingbox so I could watch tv at work (don't tell my boss) and other places I go (like the in-laws... I don't know why the 5 year old gets to control every tv in the house). Slingbox would work great but my phone is not compatible (Nokia E71) and the phone I am going to get is not either (HTC Hero). Wife has an iPhone, but she does not like to share. Its really not that big of a problem because I usually have my laptop with me anyways. (BTW Hava is compatible with the Nokia e71)

Then I started thinking about building another HTPC, and I got to thinking well I don't really want a computer running 24/7 again, so I started looking at low power consumption machines and usually they don't play HD very well. Though I did notice that they came out with a new Asus Eee Box with a Radeon HD 4530 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220014) which should be able to view HD content well. But then I would have to get another cable box to get most of the channels and thats another $9 a month unless I just wanted ATSC channels. BTW I already have a cable company DVR.

Then I noticed the HDHomeRun and thats pretty interesting but I am just not sure about it.

I 90% of the time run Ubuntu, but I dual boot Vista Home Premium on my Laptop (Dell Studio XPS 13) so if it works with Linux that would be great, and if I went the route of HTPC it would have to be able to play video files from .ISO's since I have started converting my collection to that format.

So, after all my rambling, tell me what I want........ I guess here are my goals
1) Location shifting (want to be able to watch outside the house
2) Linux support (Slingbox player works under Wine)
3) Being able to view/play HD and or ISO files
4) DVR options.

 

[th3 godfather]

I'll chime in as an HD Homerun user. It should work in linux (see the review here: http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/61518 ) and I know it definitely works in VLC. You also don't have to have your computer on all day if you use the newer versions of windows media center. You can have your computer sleep/hibernate and it's smart enough to wake up to record and then go back to sleep. In regards to the HDHomerun in general, according to an anandtech article it appears that clearqam is going the way of the dodo so you may be better off getting something else if you are interested in recording cable. If you have an antenna for local HD channels then you're in the clear.