VIP211 & Windows Media Center?

[matt314159]

Hi Folks, you probably groaned when you read the title, but I'm not totally new to this. I've had a VIP211 with R5000-HD mod for quite some time and it works well for recording programs. But I'd like to get to the point where I can integrate everything onto one media center PC. R5000, years ago, supported media center, but when I got in touch with them today, JD, their tech guy among other things, basically mocked me for even asking, despite the fact that they still host a complete user's manual on MCE support on their site. So I ran into a brick wall there.

Has there ever been a workaround that you know of, to allow MCE to talk to the R5000 as if it were a tv tuner?

Or, barring that, has anything come of any other options to make a Dish Receiver work as a media center tuner? i seem to remember a sort of Dish DVB "Cablecard" that MCE could handle just fine, but it died in proof-of-concept mode, and then later I thought I read about another way that used the ethernet port on a VIP211K to become a PC tuner...anything like that work?

Considering I already have an excellent way to recrod bit-perfect HD streams, I'll be really disappointed if my only option is to get a Hauppauge HD PVR (1212).

Is anybody else in the same boat, or can you provide any further direction? I suppose SageTV would be a viable alternative, though after the way the R5000 crew acted today, the thought of giving them another $50 for the Sage TV drivers makes me sick. Like $500 of my money last year wasn't enough?

Thanks in advance, and if you need any more information from me just let me know, I'll be subscribing to this thread with instant email notification, so I'll be able to really stay on top of things.

-matt

 

[cditty]

I wish I had answers, but I will say I am interested to see what others say. I use media center for every video/music function in my house with the exception of Dish.

 

[LASooner]

I have a VIP211 with the R5000HD modification, the R5000HD is useless in mediacenter now. There was hope when DVB link was looking to add R5000 support, but they dropped any sign of it from their website now.

So, I'm currently just using a Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR to integrate my Dish programing into media center using the DVBLink software and it works great. Hauppauge now has native driver support, but my DVBlink setup has been working so well, I don't want to mess with it to see how they work. I've read that you can only have one PVR tuner with the native drivers, but 4 with the DVB link drivers. And DVBlink also have a network tuner package that lets you distribute the tuners to any networked mediacenter in your house eliminating the need for extenders.

There's also a AverMedia HD DVR which is a card and not a USB tuner, but I have no experience with that.

swing on over to DVBLogic - provider of digital streaming connectivity solutions to see what options work best for you.

 

[matt314159]

Excellent, thanks! I hate that I spent so much money on the R5k to get native trnasport streams, and then my only MCE solution is to go analog and back again, while re-encoding in the middle. kind of a crummy solution, but might still be better off in the end. If I may ask, how well is the Hauppauge working with media Center as far as reliability goes? Ultimately I also want something nearly as rock-solid as my native dish box. I have plenty of non-tech-savvy people here, which is why I thought it would be great to integrate everything into WMC, but if they end up having to troubleshoot, reboot and power-cycle boxes, etc, all the time, then that really defeats the purpose.

Anyway I'm going to head over to the site you suggested, and I thank you for your help!

 

[LASooner]

It is reliable if you do a couple things.. put a power timer on your Hauppauge HD PVR, I set it to power down at the same time the 211 does. Also set an auto tune timer on your 211 to get the box out of screensaver mode when it does reboot. So my HD PVR and 211 both reboot at 5am, then the 211 tunes to channel 2 at 5:30am just in case there is an update to the 211 that takes a little time. Otherwise you may end up recording the screensaver.

THe HD looks as good as what comes out of your component jacks. Unless DRACO is resurrected from the dead, this is our best option for MCE as Dish customers.

 

[matt314159]

I emailed the DVBLogic people just to check on the status of R5000 MCE Development, and received an interesting reply:

Hello,

Unfortunately the R5000HD development is postponed.
However as far as I know NextComWireless offers their own MediaCenter
integration tools. Don't they work for you?

Regards,
DVBLogic support team

So that tells me that maybe they think they don't NEED to develop a solution for the R5000, because they think it's a bit on the redundant side and there's not a market for it. I emailed him back explaining that the development was halted quite a while back, and that there is currently NO solution at all. That if they provided the software solution, we R5000 owners---who are quite heavily invested in our hardware already--would mow him over trying to be first in line to pay for their software, if they added R5000 support.

I wonder if more people were to email them and show them that there is a genuine need for this software, maybe they'd step up to the plate to meet that demand. I can only speak for myself, but I would pay handsomly for software that makes my R5k integrate seamless with MCE as a tuner.

 

[cditty]

I emailed the DVBLogic people just to check on the status of R5000 MCE Development, and received an interesting reply:



So that tells me that maybe they think they don't NEED to develop a solution for the R5000, because they think it's a bit on the redundant side and there's not a market for it. I emailed him back explaining that the development was halted quite a while back, and that there is currently NO solution at all. That if they provided the software solution, we R5000 owners---who are quite heavily invested in our hardware already--would mow him over trying to be first in line to pay for their software, if they added R5000 support.

I wonder if more people were to email them and show them that there is a genuine need for this software, maybe they'd step up to the plate to meet that demand. I can only speak for myself, but I would pay handsomly for software that makes my R5k integrate seamless with MCE as a tuner.

You definitely took the right approach. I would actually buy an R5000 if they did this. The reason I didn't do it was because it was not a media center device.