FTA and Media Center / HTPC

[mkygod]

High, I'm very new to FTA (getting my first FTA receiver soon, Viewsat Platinum) and I've also been building up my HTPC w/ Media center.

Media Center is great and I'm able to use it for lots of things, however one thing I never got to do was record video from broadcasts and use the media center guide. Since my house did not have satallite or even cable, I never bothered buying PVR card. I figure once we get satellite or digital cable, then I will dive into that.

So my question is how or if the FTA receiver works together with an HTPC and what limitations are there. Will i be able to record programs? schedule when to record? Access the EPG via my PC? Control the FTA receiver with media center? things like that.

Does anyone here have an FTA receiver integerated in their HTPC home theater?

 

[Larry1]

I do not have a Media Center PC, but do have one friend who uses it to record his directv. The PC has an infra red control unit to change the channels on his directv box. The video is connected through the s-video jack and the audio through the pair of left/right rca's. Works very well, and the guide that is downloaded through the Media center (through his internet connection, he is on dialup and updates the guide manually) is very good. As for FTA, there should/may be some way of entering the stations in Media Centre to get the guide to work. If Media Centre can properly read your remote for your FTA, you should be able to program your channels in for it can switch the channels automatically.
I use a DVB card and MyTheatre to record programs off of G10R, but have not ventured into having it turn the motor for other satellites or controll switches for multiple dishes. I do not have any guides, but just setup tasks in schedular to record the weekly shows I want. I do not have a Medis Centre PC, but this works very well for my situation, as I am recording the same shows each day.

 

[Katrinasucks]

You can also take a wheelbarrow and attach 2 extra wheels in the back to make it a trike... Then you can take the sprocket from a 10 speed bike and use it to drive the front wheel of the wheelbarrow.

Then you can use that to get to work during the winter. GREAT MILAGE!

What I'm rying to tell you in other words is...

Quit messing around and just get a TiVo. ;-)

 

[pappapump]

Tivo is no where near as flexible as PC recording.
They use a hard drive, we use a hard drive.
The similarity ends there.
Tivo was developed on a PC and the software is still available on the net.
What you DON'T get with Tivo is the editing software that usually comes bundled with any decent PCI TV/Cable etc card.
The PC almost always has a larger hard drive and better everything when it comes to recording. This doesnt apply with Nividia based stuff but is common with all the ATI cards.
With your editing tools, you can easily slice out all commercials with the active display In Power Director for instance.
This is especially useful when you are compiling a full season of your favorite show.
With my TUL 550 Pro theater, I can pause live TV and Begin recording easily at any time.
Your media PC is an active component and updates easily.
The Software and all hardware components are designed to work together.
Adding a Sat card may be a challenge because as far as I know the extra software hasn't been written into the player for FTA yet, Though the Divx codecs have.
There are tools and third party software programs being written to edit some of the functions in media center, but there are still a lot of Microshaft flaws left to overcome before they will be offered on anything except a beta test basis.
Tivo may be fine if your'e not into tech stuff, but it won't take long for you to see it's limitations.
Especially if your'e one of those people who have been recording Tivo style for many years like I have.

 

[Tron]

One of the great things about using a PC instead of the Tivo for satellite is that you can use a PCI card or USB box to send the digital stream directly to your hard drive. From there you can burn a DVD (all the while staying completely in the digital domain) from that stream. There are no restricting codecs (as with Tivo) that make things hard to move your files to the PC for burning to DVD, and the signal is never converted to analog then back to digital along the way.

 

[mkygod]

Ya, also you can record and go right into burning on dvd right away without even having to leave Media Center.

Do you think it would be better for me to get a FTA DVB PCI card for the PC? Or is getting a standalone box like the Viewsat better?

 

[PSB]

I think a Blind Scan is a must have feature!

 

[Katrinasucks]

>Tivo is no where near as flexible as PC recording.

Yeah, but they work.

>Tivo may be fine if your'e not into tech stuff,

PP the first compter I used was a PDP-11. I've been a full time professional geek over 15 year. My first paying programming job was over 20 years ago now.

I've worked on more computer platforms than most people can name... I have a little internet service company with probably about 10 servers running 24/7. Not that I'm bragging, it is just what I do for a living. I'm about as far from a "non tech" person as you can get.

In fact, I'm so intenched in thechnology I've come to mostly ignore the flash and worry only about the solution. At the end of the day, a humble TiVo will Kick a media PC in the hindquarter 10 times over.

I've had customers go buy them and they've spent days loadng the latest driver or the newest patch. Getting the newest card and the right drive... Meanwhile I hit the blue button on the top of my remote and I get my "Now Playing" list.

Hammers are great tools. Until you need to turn a screw.

If you look at it as a hobby OK then have fun. If you want a solution, get a TiVo.

I tell you what I tell my customers. They ask me if they can do a certain task and I tell them, "You could do that. And you could WALK to California too. But we don't."

If you like spending more time working on your PVR than watching it, then a media PC is just the widget for you. If you want to use the darn thing just get a Tivo.

My 2 cents. - Which adjusted for inflation ain't worth much.

 

[Shawn95GT]

I just wanted to add to KS's remarks as Tivo seem to have some kind of a bad rap.

Yes the monthly fee sucks. $300 for a lifetime sub solves that problem. The hardware is next to free (I paid less than $5 for the last one I bought a couple months ago, after rebate). I have all of $305 invested for a lifetime of Tivo. If and when I decide I need more space, IDE hard drives are cheap. I have a 120 Gig drive chomping at the bit to go in my 40 hour Tivo.

As far as the .tivo format is concerned - it's not a codec, it's DRM on MPG2. Tivo would like you to use the Sonic software who they've partnered with for .tivo --> DVD conversion. The Sonic software won't even install on my machine .

It took about 2 seconds on google to find the software to get the files into .MPG. It's REALLY fast too.

Tivo's software is what makes it such a benefit. It's hard to explain why it's better than the normal run of the mill DVR. It just is. Using Tivo provided software (no hacks) I can:

Record shows by name having no idea when they actually are on.
I can search for shows and schedule recordings from anywhere via the web (Tivo.com).
Transfer shows between the Tivos and play them back in real time (or darn close to it)
Transfer shows from any of the Tivos to any of my PCs
I can access shows stored on any of my PCs from any of the Tivos

I've almost forgot what the guide on my cable box looks like - I never use it.

After having bought my first Tivo, I had to have another. The one thing the stand alone Tivos can't do is record more than one thing at once. I have all but quit watching live TV aside from FTA / 4DTV.

If and when a standalone HD Tivo comes to be, I'll be first in line for one.

What kills Tivo for FTA is that you can't do up a custom guide - at least not that I know of. This means no guide, and when you do record a program manually, the program description will be wrong. So you record the Space Shuttle launch feed and the description says whatever show is on the channel you told the Tivo it was tuning to. This also means that the Tivo will not be changing the channels on yout FTA box which kills all the automation which makes Tivo usage painless / seamless.

So in short, I love Tivo. In the case of FTA though, a well-setup HTPC seems to be the way to go. I might give MythTV a whirl if I ever get a PCI / USB DVB box. The big advantages I see with a HTPC vs a Tivo are being able to record full rez HD / play it back and being able to build a custom guide.

 

[pappapump]

Thats pretty much what I was saying earlier.
If youre not into tech stuff, always go with easy.
But if you want complete control over your video, recording etc then PC is the only way to go.
Having already spent the money on the media center box, buying a Tivo is pretty much a slap in the face, since your talking what? An extra $300?
I take all that back though if Tivo can work well with FTA which I know basically bupkiss about.
And from what you wrote at the top I assume you WANT to play?
My opinion is pretty pat though.Want easy? Get a Tivo to start with.
Want complete control? Use a PC.
When you think it through, all that specialized stuff is just a spinoff of a PC in 1 form or another.
The software running the Tivo was made on a Computer, the instructions embedded into DVD's and VCR's were created on a PC. Basically, whatever has a program had to get it from a software engineer, who used a PC to make it.
So, I tend to go to the source for the newest stuff. Thats pretty much what I did with Divx and Ogg Vorbis.
I mean, I used to be a hippie, but the world didn't stop and wait while I stayed high till i croaked.
So I evolved with it and learned as I grew.
The wheelbarrow analogy doesn't work simply because it was never designed to transport people to begin with.
But the PC was designed to do anything your little heart desires that software and hardware, working side by side can do.
Microsoft had digital Video before We had DVD.

I just realized that none of this really addressed your earlier question.

So my question is how or if the FTA receiver works together with an HTPC and what limitations are there. Will i be able to record programs? schedule when to record? Access the EPG via my PC? Control the FTA receiver with media center? things like that.

Does anyone here have an FTA receiver integerated in their HTPC home theater?

The Media Center Software is just too limited for FTA, I don't know how or if tivo is set up for it, but at this point and time MC is designed mainly for TV,Radio, Internet Broadcast,DVD and most Media Codecs, as well as HDTV ready video cards.
Try this, It may point you in the right direction.
http://www.htpcnews.com/

 

[Tron]

I think a Blind Scan is a must have feature!

This is a good point as well. I would never want my ONLY satellite receiver to be a PCI card or USB box. These cannot do blind scan, so you can't find new transponders and channels. So, in the ideal world, you'd want both a set-top box and the computer-based solution. You'd use the STB to find transponders and channels and the PCI card or USB box to record them to your PC.

Or you could use the STB and a Tivo, but as Shawn pointed out, some of the Tivo guide functionality would be lost with FTA.

 

[mkygod]

You guys have some real good points. But since my computer is already an HTPC and running Media Center, I might as well by a PVR card for it and make into a fully featured HTPC to use w/ the Viewsat fta.

I don't really feel like paying 300 bux for a TIVO subscription, and I feel it is much more convenient to have the recordings on my comptuer where I can easily access it, edit it, convert it to whatever format i want, and copy it to dvd on a whim. Copying it to dvd can be done easily w/o leaving the MediaCenter environment and just using the MCE remote.

It's just having everything integrated inside MediaCenter is less of a hassle than dealing with 2 interfaces (MCE and TIVO) and switching between them. OFC, that is what Microsoft would have you believe, but I do like the idea of the home theater migrating towards one main peripheral or interface.

Only thing that bothers me a bit is how the MediaCenter guide (as good as it is) will be virtually useless, since you can't use it with FTA receivers. Same goes for TIVO's guide with a FTA receiver. This means I can't schedule programs to automatically record, is that correct?

 

[Tron]

Only thing that bothers me a bit is how the MediaCenter guide (as good as it is) will be virtually useless, since you can't use it with FTA receivers. Same goes for TIVO's guide with a FTA receiver. This means I can't schedule programs to automatically record, is that correct?

Well, I think that you could possibly use something like TitanTV (somebody correct me if I'm wrong) to schedule recording from certain channels like the Equity network affiliates on G-10R, for example. But I doubt that would work for other channels such as the foreign broadcasters on IA-5...

Most of my recording is attended (i.e., I am there and controlling the interface in real time). I never have been much of a time-shifter, or someone who would find a service such as Tivo's "Season Pass" recording feature very useful. This is probably why I personally prefer to use a PC with a tuner card such as the Twinhan or the Hauppauge.