Windows Media Center & XBOX as an OTA DVR in Canada

[blueroomelectro]

Just posting my trials and tribulations on setting up a DVR as more or less a direct replacement for a typical cable TV DVR. We've switched of cable TV over two years ago and found an OTA DVR + AppleTV2 combo effectively replaced our cable TV habits. We're not into sports so that helps, sports fans will probably need to stick with cable TV, exception MLB (1)

I was using SageTV and it worked well enough but alas is no longer available so I started tinkering with Windows 7 and its built in WMC. After some tinkering I'm quite happy with the result albeit a quibble or two.

The XBOX 360 slim 4G $200 is an excellent WMC extender, WiFi 802.11 works but can be temperamental. Wired Ethernet is flawless (typically OTA HD is approx 10GB per hour) You can pretty much do anything on the XBOX that you can do on the Media Center PC. Plus the XBOX has an IR sensor. The XBOX can be controlled completely via an IR WMC compatible remote including power on/off.

The PC currently is an AMD 5050e & HD4550 with a couple of Hauppauge ATSC tuners and an IR receiver. Windows 7 Home Premium x86 setup to boot directly into WMC. Logitech Harmony remotes work very well with it (and the XBOX).

Cavets
* Netflix is the US version only in WMC, the XBOX Netflix works for Canada though
* TV guide data in Canada is officially unsupported but there is a simple patch that fixes it
* WMC supports multiple TV tuners, officially four but more are apparently possible with a software patch...
** But they have a very tedious setup and require tweaking and third party software and you still might be pulling your hair out.

I'll post more details and observations as I iron out the bugs. I'm also building a more economical DVR for a couple of friends (AMD F1 A6 setup)

Comments? Suggestions?

(1) Major League Baseball can be watched live in HD with a $100 - $120 yearly subscription on an AppleTV2. It's actually an impressive interface offering stats too.

[Tikker]

been using Media Center and XBOX as extenders for many years now, and I'm happy with the setup



do yourself a huge favour and check out Media Browser

it completely changes the experience for your stored media, and for the 15 minutes it takes to get it going, is a must have (works on xbox as well)

[romstah]

you dont even need to spend that much on the xbox, just scour kijiji for ones with broken dvd, i found a couple of them around $30-40 range.

[pnear]

Glad you're finding your way through, I wish Microsoft made things easier for us.

- On tuners, the app you're looking for is called TunerSalad
- One of my new favourite addons is simple.tv, podcast your TV series for iPhone playback
- I tried a few different routers and found varying levels of flakiness for streaming TV. The Apple Airport Extreme on the 5GHz band performs most consistently in my home.

[blueroomelectro]

I just put together a small system built around an A6-3500 (AMD triple core APU with HD6530D GPU) and Gigabyte F1 A75 motherboard and a previous generation Seagate 2TB LP Green drive. Initial results are very positive on this cheap and cheerful build.

I bought 2x2GB DDR3-1600 RAM but am currently running at 1333, although the BIOS supports some very high memory speeds the video shimmers at 1600 (might be a patch available from AMD)

Not sure why I overlooked Windows Media Center 7 in the past, but so far it's superior to SageTV 6 for my use. WMC is also less demanding on the video requirements than Sage 6 was and using an XBOX 360 as a full featured extender is awesome and you get a game center & DVD player for about the price of a Sage extender (also much more available than the Sage extender). Just add a ~$30 i300 Harmony remote and you're good to go.

On the subject of remotes I love the simple no LCD i300 remote. I've never been a fan of LCD menu driven remotes and my media setup is flexible yet Spartan. BUT I do think the iPad with its excellent display, WiFi and touch screen would make for an excellent remote especially for guide data and scheduling.

As for the tuner app TunaSalad, it seems to be only for enabling more than the 4 tuner limit. I did find one that turns off the embedded channel & guide data PSIP (this can really screw up WMC7 if the broadcaster engineer is a yutz)

I haven't tried too many plug ins yet, but the weather one is really nice.

[Wayne]

Where Sage excelled is in support of other tuners, especially the HD-PVR, for recording HD cable or satellite. The other advantage of Sage was the cheap and excellent extenders - I thought that the Xbox had some limitations as an extender, especially when it came to playing H.264 content in extender (rather than dashboard) mode but that may have been fixed. Third advantage of Sage is that you can use a PC as an extender aka softsled.

I am sticking with Sage as it still works great but I could be in trouble if my hardware dies.

But I do still run Win7 MC on an older HTPC in my HT room and I am building a new no-moving parts PC that I may also use for some Win7 MC stuff. Win7 MC is also a very good solution for Netflix and other online content as long as you set it up as a US based system.

For an OTA only PVR I think what you have is excellent.
I would stay away from older Xboxes as extenders due to the noise issue.

[markf]

I've got a new Xbox 250GB (was on sale for $197 at FS a few weeks ago) as a WMC extender. It works very well for OTA TV, but my DVD rips were a bit of a challenge to get working. Now that everything is up and running I think it makes a great extender.

I also use Kinect for gaming, but the Kijji idea sounds good if you're not going to use it for DVDs or games.

[pollusb]

"
* TV guide data in Canada is officially unsupported but there is a simple patch that fixes it
* WMC supports multiple TV tuners, officially four but more are apparently possible with a software patch...
"
Can you share yor source? I am looking for these patches as well !

Thanks

[pnear]

Guide hacks:
http://experts.windows.com/w/experts_wiki/133.aspx
http://experts.windows.com/w/experts...ia-center.aspx

Tuner hack:
http://mychannellogos.com/tunersalad.aspx

[mrmemario]

Hey all,
I'm a little out of my comfort zone here at the HTPC forum, but I think the setup you guys are playing with is exactly what I am looking for. I am a bit of a gamer and love to tinker with OTA so to see these to loves come together is very intriguing to me.
A few questions. Is there a loss of quality in video when you go from the files on the PC through the xbox to the tv? Have you set this up wirelessly on a home network or is everything wired? I only have dial-up internet so I might be limited as far as networks go?

Here's what I have: A Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2220 @ 2.4Ghz, 3G Ram and 32-bit OS. I am running Vista Home Premium which has windows media centre.
I am looking at purchasing a Hauppauge 1201 WinTV HVR-1250.
Once that is installed would I be able to run an ethernet cord to the 360 and watch files on the PC through the 360?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Cheers

One more thing, would this be possible through the PS3? I know it doesn't have a media player like the 360, but it does read .wma?

[stern_howie]

I use my PS3 as an extender from my PC that captures via a silicondust HDHomerun. DVRMSToolbox edits out the commercials and I use Tversity to stream to the PS3. Works perfectly. I also have an XBox but never use it as an extender...it's just too noisey.

[audacity]

The PS3 doesn't have the same level of integration that the XBOX 360 does with Windows Media Center. So, you can't view a program guide and setup recordings via a PS3. What stern_howie is proposing is a live TV only solution.

Oh, and if you're getting a current XBOX 360 model, they aren't noisy at all, especially when you're just using them as an extender.

The problem with the WMC + XBOX 360 configuration is that the codec in the 360 that is used when using it as a WMC extender just isn't fast enough to decode high bitrate 1080p MKV (h.264) files, if you have a lot of those.

My understanding of the PS3 though is that you'd need to transcode those files before the PS3 would be able to play them, which is pretty inconvenient, so overall I'd say a 360 is a better choice for what you want to do.

[mrmemario]

Yeah, I would like to be able to save the tv shows onto the hard drive and then watch them later. I used to have a Pioneer DVD recorder with a built-in 160 gb harddrive that I used as a dvr prior to the digital conversion. I got used to not watching commercials! The pioneer didn't have a ATSC tuner and could only record in 720i (i'm pretty sure that was the highest resolution). I looked at the Channel Master and Bright-view, but they seem pretty expensive, so here I am.
So if I run an ethernet from my pc to 360, setting the 360 up as an extender isn't too difficult?

As far as the noise, compared to a ps3, any version on the 360 is noisy. yes the newer model is not near as noisy as the old ones, but compared to the ps3, it is still noisy.

Using a Hauppauge 1250, how are the files saved?

[j0dest3r]

I've just been using the PS3 to play the .wtv files off the 7MC downstairs, by just sharing them via WPM11. its a pain to navigate the menu structure, but it does work. I need to try the xbox media center extender stuff more. My PS3 is hooked up wirelessly btw using a netgear WNDR3700. There is a media streaming option on the configuration page of the netgear that is supposed to help with media streaming. From what I can tell, it helps.

[TorontoColin]

Setting up the extender is dead simple. If you're likely to have problems it'll be with WMC on the PC. However, if you're just using OTA it should be pretty straightforward.

I've never noticed a quality drop going from the PC to the 360, though if your network is under stress while trying to watch TV it can lag a little. If you're using a wired ethernet setup that would only be an issue if you're moving large files on the network at the same time.

Your internet shouldn't affect the TV, though it will need to connect to an online server to download guide listings periodically.