Bye bye Dish. Hello Internet

[dslate69]

Holy crap that is an awesome guide. I'm gonna set it up right now. Thanks. Have to do it for BSG as Hulu would make me wait 8 days. Yeah, I'm not waiting that long.

Sorry for the double reply, but...
I do have utorrent setup with rss feeds, just don't have the whole setup done yet. Anyway heres theHD BSG feed for utorrent. When you first put it in you will need to manually kill the episodes you already have watched so it doesn't dl them all.
Battlestar Galactica (2003) - FeedMyTorrents.com

 

[ohioankev]

I get the same message with McAfee with Surf the channel but I never ran into any problems that Spy Bot has found on my computer. I've been using STC for what seems over a year now... not so much since the new design though. Another place like STC is allUC but last time I was there I was getting served with more popup advertising than usual. :/

 

[foghorn2]

I've been gone for months now. I've been playing around with the Apple TV and Boxee lately. With a wrt54g-tm, dd-wrt, a UK VPN service and the BBC Iplayer.........

There is no need for FORCED TV in the new century.

 

[Gorbash]

I've had RSS feeds set up in uTorrent for a while, Best way to get a hold of TV shows. I have it set up to manually DL. I have to fiddle with the DVRms Toolbox, either I messed something up, or something. My test run didn't convert the file, and trying to read the log file was confusing. Or it's a Vista thing, but from what little I've read, what the program is doing should still work.

Just needs some fiddling. And I'm pretty sure once Win7 becomes more mainstream the program will change.

 

[dslate69]

I've had RSS feeds set up in uTorrent for a while, Best way to get a hold of TV shows. I have it set up to manually DL. I have to fiddle with the DVRms Toolbox, either I messed something up, or something. My test run didn't convert the file, and trying to read the log file was confusing. Or it's a Vista thing, but from what little I've read, what the program is doing should still work.

Just needs some fiddling. And I'm pretty sure once Win7 becomes more mainstream the program will change.

I won't actually read thru until I get win7 installed but from my understanding you DO need win7 instead of vista because of the update to the MCE. Win7 can decode 264x natively. A 3rd party codec on the vista box won't allow the extender to receive it.
I may install win7 on an external sata drive this weekend so I can play with it. If it turns out I get anywhere with it I will let you know.

 

[Stargazer]

The good thing about IPTV is that it allows anyone to get content to you making the cost a lot cheaper than broadcasting over cable / satellite. This will give more opportunities for competition. I'll bet there will be a lot of ad supported content in the future online and even more stations that become available and a lot more content.

 

[Gorbash]

Got it working. Mistyped a couple of the lines of code. Now takes files from a folder converts them and puts them in my RecordedTV folder with no reduction in video and full 5.1 sound. Going to need some bigger HDDs. Maybe a Terabyte or two. :

 

[SpaethCo]

The good thing about IPTV is that it allows anyone to get content to you making the cost a lot cheaper than broadcasting over cable / satellite.

Not by a longshot. Broadcast TV (be it OTA, cable, or SAT) has unparalleled efficiency with a single feed to satisfy all downstream viewers.

Let's say Dish network has 14 million subs that all want to watch a highly compressed 6mbps HD feed. To get that done on the Internet would require aggregate capacity of 84,000,000mpbs (84 terabit!) to feed a unique stream to every end viewer, not including the IP overhead of moving the data.

The US broadband industry is based around a statistical model similar to insurance; everybody pays a modest monthly fee for the promise of a huge amount of coverage. This model works as long as average bandwidth usage remains low -- if there were a mass conversion to higher usage the cost increase of broadband access would exceed the cost you are paying for broadcast TV services today simply because of the massive loss of efficiency.

Internet video has a play to augment broadcast TV, but as a replacement it's simply not going to work en mass. The system will fold in on itself before you even reach a 5% conversion rate of existing broadcast TV viewers.

 

[dslate69]

Got it working. Mistyped a couple of the lines of code. Now takes files from a folder converts them and puts them in my RecordedTV folder with no reduction in video and full 5.1 sound. Going to need some bigger HDDs. Maybe a Terabyte or two. :

Alright chief share.
You have to use win7?
Any words of wisdom for anyone else tackling this project?
btw: congrats, I hope this helps your choice a little easier

 

[dslate69]

Not by a longshot. Broadcast TV (be it OTA, cable, or SAT) has unparalleled efficiency with a single feed to satisfy all downstream viewers.

Nice post, couldn't have said it better.

 

[Gorbash]

Alright chief share.
You have to use win7?
Any words of wisdom for anyone else tackling this project?
btw: congrats, I hope this helps your choice a little easier

No I'm using Windows Vista, and followed the instructions in the writeup. I have uTorrent pull down the HD feeds of shows (both mkv and avi). After completing the download, uTorrent moves the file to another folder where DTB picks it up and starts the conversion process. Takes 10-20 minutes depending on file size and what else my computer is doing.

DTB then calls up the meta data site (it's in the write up), and places the now .dvr-ms file into the recorded TV folder where Media Center see's it as being recorded on the air date. My test with Scrubs and BSG showed up on their respective dates.

The auto commercial skip for shows I record is kinda wonky, sometimes it starts too soon, and finishes 30 seconds later. But it is a cool feature. Could this be what is broken with Vista?

Words of advice? Follow the directions. Then read through the comments, the author responds to most of the questions/problems. The 360 has a weird flaw in the way it reads converted files, it squashes them into 4:3 instead of the 16:9, but the 360 can stretch the file back out with no loss via the zoom mode.

 

[Rey]

Congratulations. :up
You are the first person to post they are leaving DISH without everyone telling you to LET THE DOOR hit you in the @$$ on the way out.

The xbox live membership combined with the netflix client should keep you busy if not, here's a link you may find of use.
How to automatically download and import HD to Windows Media Center - Engadget HD

I was about to say the same thing. and it's usually the same 4 or 5 that can't resist not posting some sort of sarcasm or negativity.
I tried this a few days ago and it's really good. can't maximize the screen without getting the video hiccups. i wonder where the deficiency is in my set up?

 

[dslate69]

I was under the impressing that win7 supported 264x natively so no real transcode is done (more or less mce just needs a different wrapper). I am setting up win7 now, don't know how much time I will put into it today though. Sounds like what hickups there are will be ironed out.
My setup at the moment is pretty bullet proof as I have utorrent dl the shows, move to a different directory that is shared out to my popcorn hour (which plays everything). But I always like to play with my setup so I'll eventually give this a go.

 

[Gorbash]

Also just found that the Meta Data site is kind of picky about file naming. Just finished converting a CSI New York episode. It was named "CSI NY S05E16.mkv" Every time I'd run the conversion it wouldn't get to the dvr-ms file, and the program would return an error of "File not found in database." Found that it needed '.' in place of spaces so the file would be "CSI.NY.S05E16.mkv" It always bugged me that files were full of '.' now I know why.

 

[Islandguy43]

Netflix ($9 a month) plus a Roku bo$100) works very well also. Tons of stuff to watch! Plus you still get the 1 DVD in the mail at a time.

Works great with my xbox live too.

 

[mjrusso45]

Works great with my xbox live too.

..and my Tivo HD

 

[foghorn2]

They'd say I'll be back to dish, WRONG!

With this I'll never look back:

My new Boxee Box:

Rosewill HTPC Case
Asus HTPC MB
AMD Energy Savings Processor 45w
DVICO Fusion 5 Gold

 

[empiretc]

It may be to not have to pay the monthly dish bill. But, I know that for convenience sake I will probably never cancel (maybe only downgrade) my Dish. I have to make sure that the children, wife and mother-in-law can all watch TV easily and conveniently. I may have no problem using the internet to watch TV, but the other not so technical and set in their way persons in my household would probably revolt if we went that route.

That is for sure right there. We were setup pretty good on amc4 & G10r + OTA along with the internet. It provided everything we liked to watch, but my daughter was upset there was no NICK and my wife was upset there was NO GUIDE. She did like the HD though, but felt it was always too much of a hassle just to watch tv.

I still think it was a conspiracy that we got a vip722 for xmas. Down came my 36" dishes and we now sub once again. I can live w/ $60/mo if it keeps the peace, LOL.

 

[ncted]

We considered going without Sat/Cable service while my wife goes back to school. I just couldn't convince the wife the savings were worth it.

Ted

 

[Stargazer]

You got to spend some of that extra money on something.