Technical > Audio/Video Chat > Homemade whole house dvr

Homemade whole house dvr

If you are running Windows Media Center then you can use xBox 360 as extenders. I think you can have up to four connected to a computer. Interface is the same on the extenders as it is on a TV connected directly to the Media Center computer.

reply to sancraig
The answer used to be SageTV but unfortunately, having been bought out by Google, you can no longer purchase their software licenses (legally) or extenders (without paying via eBay 2x-3x what they used to sell for).

Keep an eye on the other PVR solutions that may be moving to the server/client model or some that already have (»www.nextpvr.com/ maybe? haven't looked at it in a few years) and see what options there are.

reply to sancraig
NextPVR is free but not open source. »www.team-mediaportal.com/ is another option that is free and open source.

reply to sancraig
We've been using the previous version of NextPVR for years (The previous version was called GBPVR). We have 3 old-school Hauppauge analog tuners and 4 networked Hauppauge MediaMVP's that act as extenders and bring the GBPVR interface to each TV in the house.

NextPVR is the current version and is focused on digital HDTV. I'm not up on all of the current specs, but it does support the Popcorn Hour devices (A-100 and A-110?) as extenders. Read through the forums and the wiki to get a better idea of what it can do. It's pretty amazing, especially considering that it's the work of ONE guy in New Zealand. Many companies only wish they could support their products as good as he does his. He has also included API's that let other developers write plugins that add stuff like Netflix access, extended EPG info, internet radio, etc.

reply to sancraig
Those are interesting solutions. I'll have to read further into them. Xbox way sounds pricey but easy.

From what I read seems like I have some more reading to do. Theres more to this than I thought.

xBox way is a little pricy but don't forget that they now sell a 4 Gb xBox for $200. Also, while I haven't tried it yet, the new xBox 360 software update allows voice control with the Kinect device. This may get interesting as Apple is supposedly working on TVs which will combine their Siri for searches so the xBox and Kinect will be Microsoft's version (which made it to the market before the Siri enhanced iTVs). I think we will see much more integration of voice control in the future and for Microsoft it starts with the xBox. WMC is also the only way to receive cable channels with a cable card tuner if you now, or in the future have an interest in doing that.

"“With this update, Xbox 360 system owners will experience Kinect voice control integrated with Bing search, making your TV and entertainment experiences more social and personal than ever.”

»www.tmcnet.com/topics/articles/2···tion.htm

Now that does make things more interesting.

reply to robbin
If I were to move my Htpc to a "server" room away from the main tv and use Xboxes as extenders is there away to change tv channels through the extenders? So that each tv could be watching seperate channels?

If so how powerful would the htpc have to be to serve up 4 tv's at once live tv? Could you record from each of the extenders on the htpc? I know lots of questions just trying to figure this all out.

You change channels pretty much the same as you do with the setup you have now. You have the same guide and live TV screens as you do in WMC. In fact, the screen looks just the same. There are a couple of remotes (an older white one) and a new black one made specifically for the xBox or (while it is a little clunky) you can use the game controller to control pretty much everything also.

I'm going to pass right now on how powerful the HTPC would have to be but my understanding is that the computer itself doesn't use very much computing power at all. The TV part is basically handled by the tuner card (in my case a Ceton InfiniTv at home and a OTA card for my office system) and the playback is all done with the extender. Basically what this means is that all the pc is really doing is recording to hard drive and accessing data currently on the hard drive and sending it across the network to the xBox.

I think I made an error when I stated the limit was 4 extenders -- the actual limit is 5.

Yes, you can set recordings from any extender. The extenders do not actually do any recording -- that is done by the HTPC and WMC but everything can be controlled by the extenders. You can also start watching a recorded program on one extender, stop it on that one and later resume watching on another (start a show in living room and finish it in bed, etc).

reply to sancraig
Since you're looking at the WMC/Xbox option, there's this thread about WMC with some good posts in it too: »[MCE] Windows 7 - Media Center Questions

reply to sancraig
One thing to consider when using a 360, or any 'extender' for WMC... it really is best to have everything fully wired from PC to 360.

Used 360's can be had cheaply these days, esp. if you find one that may have a flaky/dead DVD drive. If you don't care about having that part working perfectly, you could probably save a little money there.

Using the 360 at your main TV would be fine unless you want the full functionality of the PC. If all you're doing is basic TV watching / recording, they work well.

As long as the PC has a wired connection to all extenders (even 100Mbps would do), you should have a pretty smooth experience. If you have 4 tuners, and 4 extenders, each one can watch one thing - if you want to record something, at least one will only be able to watch that channel.
The extender(s) will warn you of tuner conflicts in such cases, so be careful about what's going on there, but yes, 4 tuners = 4 extenders watching different things. If you really wanted to go "all out" - a 2nd quad-tuner card could be used (though you'd have to change some registry settings to get that working)

If your media center is stable, and starts WMC at startup, it should be easy to show others how to power it off/on if anything wacky happens.

reply to robbin
Great info there Thanks everybody. So it seems that this would turm my Htpc into a basic dvr/server/tuner for the extenders then. That sure sounds simple.

Thanks.

Another thing just popped in my head do the WD live sereis give the same expierence as an xbox? That would save a bit of cash for other upgrades in my plan

I can't answer that question, but you cannot use WMC with it so all of that functionality goes away.

A good forum site for learning more about using WMC, extender, etc is

»www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/

reply to robbin
Thank you that site is a wealth of knowledge!

reply to sancraig
Nope, the WD TV boxes will not do what you're trying to do. They can do a lot of the same things that Media Center can do, but they cannot be an extender.
--
Rule #62: Don't take yourself so damn seriously!

reply to sancraig
Not sure if you've seen these, and it wouldn't use your current setup, and you'd still need to the Xbox's or extenders, but I think this may be the way I go with....thought I would at least throw it out there for ya:

»www.silicondust.com/products/hdh···n/prime/

Why? The Ceton products have 4 tuners instead of three.