With the promise of over the air DTV (though I've yet to get a box) and the economy, I would like to explore how to best approximate or supersede my current home TV setup.
It's really simple; we currently rely entirely on DirecTV's old DirecTivo receivers along with DVD players.
If I were to cancel DirecTV, and I wanted to maintain simplicity at a low cost, what would be a good approach?
Desires:
1. Live TV available to all sets (3).
2. DVR functionality for pausing live TV.
3. Scheduled DVR recording.
4. On screen EPG(s) for Live TV and DVR
Non-essential Nice-To-Haves:
1. Internet streaming such as Hulu, NetFlix, Internet radio, et al.
2. Sharing media across multiple endpoints (watch a show recorded by device A at TV location B).
3. Single unified EPG covering live TV and DVR programs.
4. Non-video media, gaming, etc.
Materials On Hand:
My current DirecTivos won't do OTA, so they become paperweights as far as I know. I do not have a spare P4 or higher machine lying around to serve as a decent media server but could probably put something together. We've got a PS2 and Wii but those are irrelevant as far as I know. There is sufficient coax to run antenna signals to each TV location, and wired and wireless networking is available.
I have been considering getting a couple of refurb XBoxes for $50 and trying XBox Media Center, but for live TV they appear to have murky, streamed support at best (?).
I do not need a huge amount of recording capacity; 2 to 4 hours per set would be fine.
I know there are about a billion programs and devices that allow this, but I'm trying to figure out a very simple and usable design. Something like LinuxMCE or MythTV coupled with the XBoxes? Used laptops without a server? (I'd rather not rely on a single always-on server anyway.)
Anyway, thanks for reading and any suggestions are appreciated.
-- B