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[quote=SpacemanSpiff2000]

1) re-record my favorite shows from the now-full FIOS DVR into the HTPC[/quote]

HD-PVR, however you will still need to manually play back each recording and manually record each show, it won’t be automatic.

Your best bet would be to either netflix the shows, or re-record them off of FIOS with a cable card tuner like the Ceton infinitv or the new upcoming silicon dust cable card tuner.

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2) digitize my kids’ 14yr old videos from VHS[/quote]

Any analog capture card can accomplish this. Again might be better off purchaing the DVD’s for those VHS’s and then digitizing, you will get much better quality as a DVD is already getting you the digital format.

Going from Analog to digital is time consuming and the quality is extremely poor.

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3) record new shows into the HTPC (bypassing the Verizon DVR)[/quote]

Cable card tuner, Ceton Infinitv or Silicon dust cable card tuners.

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4) have the HTPC be the DVR … this could be with non-DVR Set Top Box or with no STB[/quote]

again Cable card tuner, much much easier to setup, plus you get 4 tuners, or 3 depending on which route you go.

 

[quote]Is a Hauppauge Colossus 1414 the best internal answer? It sounds like it would handle 1 & 2, but what about 3 & 4? But with a STB, would it only record the channel I’m watching, or can it record something I’m not watching?[/quote]

The colosus will capture off of a STB or VHS player yes, but honestly is it worth your time? it will take you hours upon hours to capture all that DVR’d content off of your fios DVR. Again same goes for your kids VHS tapes.

Not trying to be a downer here but there are much easier ways. Get netflix streaming account and stream all of your kids movies, you will get much better quality over a VHS capture.

And again for #3/#4 cable card tuner all the way, you then no longer need a STB at all, and you get more tuners, more space, a better interface and can do multi room with xbox 360’s.

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I’ve also read some about the different types of signals from channels (NTSC, ATSC, QAM) but I don’t know how to tell which channels are which or how that might limit the 1414.[/quote]

the 1414 is capture only, it is NOT a tuner. the Ceton Infinitv4 is a tuner and will tune/record all your fios content.

BTW Fios is 100% digital QAM. NTSC = Analog for traditional cable tv (ie comcast, time warner, ect..) ATSC = over the air digital tv (ie antenna “rabbit ear” tv).

the 1414 you will ALWAYS need the fios STB to capture and record tv off of fios.

So you pay all that money for the 1414 and still need to have a STB which then limits you to only recording one show at a time. Cable card tuners like the Ceton or Silicon Dust allows you to record or watch multiple shows/channels at once.

you would need multiple 1414’s and multiple set top boxes to record more than one show at a time.

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Then there are similar cards with tuners, but not cablecards (e.g., Hauppauge 1129 WinTV-HVR-1850). How do they figure into my intended design? Is the “tuner” part necessary? Is there a difference between this and the 1414? What should I be looking for?[/quote]

They don’t. the 1850 is a ATSC over the air, or un-encrypted QAM tuner. Last I heard Fios tv is 100% encrypted QAM so you would need a cable card tuner to accomplish the task of recording tv off of Fios.

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If I went as far as a Ceton card, would that eliminate the need for a PVR card because the Ceton would do it all? Or would I need a Ceton + a PVR card to do all 4 things above?[/quote]

Yes it would. All you would need to get from Verizon is a cable card, looks like a pcmcia wifi card but what it does, is un-encrypts the fios signal so you can record it.

The Ceton card wouldn’t accomplish #1 or #2 though. the Ceton card is a tuner only, it doesn’t capture analog signals which is what you are trying to accomplish in task #1 and #2.

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Or do I even need a Ceton at all if I have no premium channels and my family (who would kill me if this all makes TV harder) only watches the HD versions of Disney, Nick, NickJr (no HD), Cartoon Network, Univision/Telemundo, and the basic network stations? Would it be better to get what I can over the air? I’m try to cut Verizon costs as much as possible.[/quote]

My wife and kids use my htpc to watch tv every day with a ceton card setup. The only difference is you will have a different interface, which IMHO is much better than the fios interface.

Basically you will have a pc running windows 7, a ceton card, and that is it. Media Center is your DVR then, has the guide, the gui, everything. You won’t get Disney, Nick, NickJR, ect… via over the air.

 

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And what do things like Sage and Boxee even do with respect to all this? Same stuff? Different?/How?[/quote]

SageTV is a PVR/DVR interface/front end just like Media Center for windows 7. IT does DVRing, ect.. but it doesn’t have native, out of the box support for a ceton cable card tuner. It can be accomplished but it harder to setup, Also with the purchase of SageTV by google, if you don’t already have a license for SageTV there is no way to purchase one right now.

Boxee is a media front end, great if all you do is online streaming of content and have all of your movies and videos ripped to a network storage device. Boxee doesn’t have any DVR/PVR capabilities.

I hope this was helpful.

-Josh

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[quote=babgvant]

[quote=umdivx]

Win7DSFilterTweaker

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I’m not familiar with how that works exactly (it might just rename the DS wrapper MF source), but it doesn’t really disable MF.

[/quote]

 

Interesting to know. Thanks.

-Josh

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[quote=babgvant]

[quote=umdivx]

I don’t find that to be the case on my end as I have disabled Media Foundation on my system.

[/quote]

How did you disable MF?

[/quote]

Win7DSFilterTweaker

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[quote=mikinho]

I don’t believe this to be technically correct.  They are not being natively played.  They are being transcoded by the Media Foundation framework[/quote]

I don’t find that to be the case on my end as I have disabled Media Foundation on my system.

-Josh

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[quote=topperdude]By extenders, are you referring to the Xbox360 as being able to play M2TS files natively (streamed from an MCE server or from a NAS)?[/quote]

Correct. I can play back M2TS files on my xbox 360 through the media center interface.

 

[quote]Is this specific to a specific operating system or can an extender do this with any version of MCE (WinXP, 7MC).[/quote]

It very well could be. I am using Windows 7.

-Josh

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[quote=fstrydom]If I go with xboxes then all my DVD rips are unplayable. [/quote]

Not true at all. Yes they won’t play back Video_TS folder rips, but if you re-container them to M2TS or .wtv they will play back just fine.

I was doing .wtv for dvd rips for my kids but lately i’ve been doing M2TS as I can convert a dvd or BD to .mkv via http://www.makemkv.com then I use mkv2vob http://www.videohelp.com/tools/mkv2vob to convert the mkv’s to M2TS files. Once they are in M2TS they play natively on my xbox’s.

 

[quote]But I also want to move recordings to a tablet. Sounds like this is a no-no with cable copy protection?

[/quote]

You won’t get premium channels like HBO, but for the most part everything else is playable. I still have to use DVRMSToolbox to convert the .wtv’s to a tablet friendly format though.

-Josh

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[quote=farscapesg1]Sorry if I didn’t make the customizing options for SageTV clear.  I was just saying that it was possible.  I didn’t realize that they had brought additinal options to Media Center now.  SageTV still requires you to install the Plugins for those features (HA is possible with various plugins, but not familiar enough with it to say which ones).[/quote]

Understandable, most of the “customizations” I run are third party plugins for tools for HA and whole home audio. Don’t really run much beyond that.

but yes you can’t really “customize” media center to the extent layout, nested folders for recorded tv or things of that nature.

[quote]Does DVRMSToolbox handle automatic commercial detection and skipping as the files are being recorded, or do you have to wait until it finishes recording for it to be processed?[/quote]

Yes it does. DVRMStoolbox + Show Analyzer does real time life detection and skipping.

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All I really want is something that allows me to watch anything I record on any TV or device that I own, as well as the media collection I have built up.[/quote]

TV part is easy with extenders, even copy protected stuff plays on extenders. It is when you try and offload the content (when copy protected like HBO shows) when you can’t watch them, but yes extenders playback copy protected content.

The media collection is a little bit tough, but still doable. Extenders play back M2TS files natively now, and i’ve been using a PS3 tool, MKV2VOB to convert my MKV’s to M2TS which works really slick and doesn’t re-encode, just re-containers the video files.

-Josh

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http://remotepotatoforums.fatattitude.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51

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[quote=farscapesg1]

I’m sure others can provide more detailed information but I thought I would chime in 😉

1) With previous versions (v6 and before) the metadata was contained in the wiz.bin file I believe.  So the key was to backup your config files on a regular basis.  I haven’t made the move to v7 yet, but my understanding (which could be wrong) is that they changed this to incorporate the metadata into the recording files themselves.[/quote]

Interesting would be curious on how that happens since most video file containers don’t support that, other than data and time stamps.

[quote]4) For the base installation, I can get SageTV set up within 10 minutes from the time I start the installation.  Customizing it might take a little longer, but that was one of the nice things about SageTV, it could be customized.  Want a different interface? check.  Want to include commercial detection/skipping? check.  Want to add checking email to the interface? check. Home automation? check.[/quote]

when you say check… you mean just a simple check box for setup? If so, I am assuming that is when you are running the WHS plugin/add-on.

Also curious on the home automation part. Does it tie into a control platform like mControl or Homeseer? Or is it completely different?

[quote]Don’t get me wrong.  I think Media Center appeals to the “mass market” much more than SageTV by themselves could ever hope for. [/quote]

That is like any other or ALL HTPC options combined. You’ll ALWAYS see more STB from {insert cable / sat provider name here} than you will ever see of HTPC’s, once we all get over that fact it isn’t about who’s is more widely used, or who’s more main stream, because frankly none of these solutions are, not even Media Center.

[quote]To me, Media Center has always felt like a “gadget” added to Windows, and in the past has been treated sort of like the illigitimate son.  Just look at the slow acceptance of Media Center into the common “living room”.  It’s getting better with the xBox as an extender, but Microsoft just doesn’t seem to be pushing it that much.  I know several people with xBox’s that didn’t even know they could stream media from another computer to their TV’s with it [/quote]

Again its not just Media Center, its the acceptance factor of having a computer control your TV or just the higher up front costs. I know my parents wouldn’t fork over the kind of money I did just to be able to watch and record tv like I do.

[quote]SageTV on the other hand has a “tool belt” feel in that you can add additional features/functions to it, which doing it’s primary job of recording TV.[/quote]

while Media Center is different, for me I still feel you can get that “tool belt” feel while still staying within the Media Center environment.

I am running Casa Tunes whole home audio system (see my review here) with full Media Center integration that I can also use my iPad and android phones to control it all. I am also running mControl home automation with full Media Center integration again with iPad and Android phone support.

I get media management with my Movies, commercial skipping with DVRMSToolbox. The ONLY thing I don’t get is ripped BD playback on my extenders.

But I get all the plugins, addons, and customization I want with full home integration that looks almost professional. I honestly just don’t get this “Media Center is sooo closed and not customizable” statement I hear as a reoccurring theme from folks.

-Josh

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I have that too but a little different. I offload all my tv recordings to WHS and keep them on WHS. I’ve got a bunch of shows (not all) showing the actual file name and not the TV meta data info. I’ve tried rebooting the HTPC and the WHS box and it still didn’t fix it.

My next step is to delete the recorded tv database that stores the caching and rebuild it to see if that will fix it.

-Josh

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I’ve got a pair of the Sure SE210’s http://www.amazon.com/Shure-SE210-Sound-Isolating-Earphone/dp/B0013JT3XC

not exactly in your price range but man on man are they great. High quality, great sound, and they come with a number of different sizes in the package so you can adjust them to your ears.

think about it this way, would you spend $50 on a pair of speakers for your home theater? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Audio quality to me is just as important as video. I spent over half my home theater budget (which was quite a bit) just on my speakers alone. So that should give you an idea of what my tastes are like.

-Josh

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if you have a Target card you can get an additional 5% off as well 😉

-Josh

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I did 6 HD recordings, (4 cable card, 2 ATSC) Not sure that 1 more HD stream would make a difference. If I recall correctly that I still had plenty of room to spare when 6 recordings at once.

-Josh

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If you are running my movies or any other movie collection management then you really don’t need to care what drive, folder, location your movies are in. My Movies takes care of that. It is if you don’t use a movie collection management tool is where you’d then have to worry about where stuff is.

But with home group you again don’t need to care where your stuff is. Home Group in WHS 2011 when paired with windows 7 you can have a bunch of folders all on different drives and still make it look like a single shared folder.

-Josh

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to fix the data base go to: C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataMicrosoftMedia Index

Delete the “wmplibrary….db” file here

Restart your pc, then go ahead and rebuild your library.

Just a side not with WHS 2011 and if you are running Windows 7 you can use your homegroup now to share music, videos, photos, ect…

So basically great a home group “movies” folder on your WHS 2011 box. That home group movies folder will point to all your different drives and make it look like a single folder share.

Then add your HTPC to your WHS 2001 home group and you won’t have to manually add the folder shares.

-Josh

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