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When you rerun TV signal setup, Media Center essentially wipes the slate clean and starts over from scratch.  It will only list the tuners it finds when it rescans your PC.

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You’ll have to rerun the HDHR setup and let it scan the newly discovered tuners.  You’ll then need to rerun Media Center setup for the TV signal to let it find the new tuners and add them to your configuration.  I’m not sure if it retains any favorite channel lineups so you may have to set them up again from scratch.

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That only works if the two shows air at the same time every week.  The networks have a habit of moving things around that messes up your recording schedule.  Set up your default record settings so it records 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after the show.  You may have to set up the stop time for any individual recordings but it’s got to be at least 10 minutes or it will cut off back-to-back recordings.

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That about sums it up.  Just re-run the TV setup and pick the FIOS channel lineup for your provider and it will repopulate the guide with the updated channel listings.  Don’t forget to ask the installer for the low pass filter if you have the ActionTek router installed.

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[quote=Devil’s Advocate]

So let me make sure I understand this. It’s OK to pay for cable or satellite @ $60 per month for 200+ channels– movies and TV and music now. Add a DVR, VCR or DVD-R or two in the mix. Record everything that you want to watch no matter what time, day or night and have it whenever you wish to watch it for however long you wish. Once you finish watching the episode/movie/music video/whatever, you delete it from your DVR/erase the VHS tape with the next episode, etc. How is this different from the Sick Beard setup? Oh. Right. We’re not paying the satellite or cable company to use their equipment but using ours that we already paid for. Hmmmm… DA out.

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It all boils down to copyright infringement.  The studios don’t have a problem with you recording shows that air live on cable or satellite as long as you record the commercials along with them.  They actually prefer that you watch TV live but DVRs have become so commonplace in most households that they realize there’s not much they can do about it.  Even Nielson has finally recognized that shows are being recorded for later viewing and now take those numbers into account when rating market shares for any given show. 

Getting shows via usenet or torrent sites tend to have the commercials stripped out of them.  Downloading shows from either source opens you up to a lawsuit for sharing copyrighted material in direct violation of the DMCA.  FYI – usenet and torrent sites are closely monitored by the networks and they can see who’s sharing what over the internet.  If they see a trend from a particular IP address they’ll contact your ISP and ask that they send you a cease and desist notice.  Chances are that’s all you’ll get unless you decide to ignore the order and continue with your wicked ways.  Then, all bets are off because you’ve painted a bullseye on your back for a network lawyer.

The equipment you use to record the show has nothing to do with it.  Shows aired by cable or premium channels like FX or USA Network or HBO are only available through a paid provider.  If you get them through other means you’re essentially stealing from the network since you’re not paying to receive the channel.  OTA network channels are available without a paid provider, but the sharing scenario still holds true.

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Wired is the definitely the way to go.  Wireless is fine for surfing the net or checking your e-mail but hardwired is by far the best way to go for transmitting data and streaming video.

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I can already access all of my recordings located on the primary HTPC from any other PC on my network.  Moving them to a server wouldn’t change a thing.  My provider (Verizon FIOS) doesn’t flag any channels so I can share them freely without having to resort to using extenders.

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I’ve been running a Kingston SSD in my main PC for a couple of years now and I’ve had zero problems.  My last personal HTPC build included a Crucial 64GB SSD, which is working great.  I’m somewhat dismayed to hear the latest horror stories with the OCZ SSDs because they’ve been on sale a lot lately and I was thinking about getting one.  They used to be very highly regarded.

As an afterthought I should mention that my 60 GB SSD in my main computer was at 59.5 GB capacity at the time I wrote this post (it actually showed only about 2.71 GB of available space left).  I see absolutely no difference in performance with it being this full.  A standard hard drive would have slowed to a crawl at this capacity.

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I’d be curious to know whether your wife will still like this setup once she realizes all those movies and shows she’s watching were obtained illegally.  I don’t mind using bittorrents once in a while to pick up a TV show I missed, but I draw the line at downloading Hollywood movies.  That’s what I have NetFlix for (disc rental, no streaming). Getting TV shows might get you a cease and desist warning, but copyrighted movies will attract sleazebag lawyers like flies on fesces.

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For Blu-Rays, I use AnyDVD HD to rip to iso and then strip out the extras using Clown_BD.  This does, indeed, save a lot of space if the movie has multiple versions or lots of extras.  Lately, it seems like I’m only saving 2-3 GB per rip as many titles aren’t being bogged down with extras.  I store all of my ripped BD’s on a 20 TB unRAID server.  I rip DVDs in folder format and then run them through DVDFab Decrypter to strip out the extras.

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I see the same thing occur on occasion, but the program always seems to record with no problem.  I don’t have tuning adapters and it happens on my Hauppauge 2250’s as well as my Cetons.  I’m thinking that if WMC can’t get a lock on a channel using one tuner it rotates between available tuners until the channel comes in.  It’s not unusual to get several failure messages in a row for a given program. 

I think that WMC just has too tight of a window between the time it looks for a channel and the time it declares a fault.  Perhaps there’s a registry hack to extend the time window before the fault is declared.  Either that or maybe the selected tuner can be checked X number of times for a signal lock before the fault is declared.

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[quote=Mike Garcen]

there’s no app i know of that will just play a movie over and over again, your best bet here is just to use window media player and create a playlist with the same movie several times.[/quote]

I’ve got all of my Blu-Ray movies ripped to iso’s and stored on an unRAID server.  When I play the movie in TMT5, it will loop back to the beginning and start again unless I stop it at the end of the movie. I use Media Browser as my catalog app.

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I’ve used many different types of USB tuners over the years and this was a very common problem with just about all of them.  Sometimes the problem stemmed from a flaky USB hub, a bad connection, or bad cable.  If you’re connected directly to a USB port on the PC, try a different port.  If that doesn’t work, try a different cable.

I’ve got two internal InfiniTV4 tuners but never tried the USB version.  If it does not have an external power supply and only uses the USB port to provide power you may want to try using an external powered hub.  It’s possible the tuner is putting too much of a load on the internal USB port.  You might also want to try some contact cleaner on the USB connection.  Dirty contacts make for a bad or intermittent connection which could be causing your tuners to drop off line.

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Best use for a series 1 Tivo I’ve seen in a long time.

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Whenever I see a driver update for any hardware posted in WU I always hide the update and download the driver straight from the manufacturer’s site.  I don’t mind it if Microsoft wants to update their own software, but I’d rather take driver updates right from the source.

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