G+_Dan Stephenson Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 Hello Know How Community, I am moving into a new house and while I love to watch cable TV, I would rather not buy or rent a PVR from my TV provider if I can avoid it. I was thinking I could create a PVR using either a Windows PC or a Raspberry Pi. I know this used to be pretty simple on Windows using Windows Media Centre - but WMC is done, so I am not sure what to do. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to where to get started, or what to look out for if I do this?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Eddie Foy Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 Don't think a RasPi has enough 'oomph' for the record end of things (seems just play back is taxing enough) Been a while since I did this. (went TiVo and loved it) now just a cable cutter/streamer/Plex) But looking into a tuner that does hardware encoding. (I still say buy a TiVo, it works, it self updates, its not finicky/problematic) (and didn't Windows dump their loved by all Media Centre?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Dan Stephenson Posted July 25, 2015 Author Share Posted July 25, 2015 They did. That is why I was inquiring if there is a better third party solution for Windows. Eddie Foy what TiVo product do you use? I am in Canada so want to make sure I can it up here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Donald Burr Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 Raspberry PI does not have enough power for this. Ideally you'd want a fairly powerful desktop PC - doesn't have to be uber gamer-level, a Core i3 or i5 with 4 GB of RAM and a middle of the road graphics card (under $100) would do nicely. You're gonna want a big disk in there to store recordings - at least 1 or 2 TB. As for the software, you COULD run Windows Media Center on Win7 or 8 - it works pretty well - but Microsoft is killing it in windows 10, so it's kind of a dead end product. If I were putting together a new media center today, I would seriously look at Myth TV. It is an excellent and really powerful Linux-based media center. In the past, it's been kind of difficult to set up, but that's gotten a lot easier lately. There is a little one click install distribution called Mythbuntu which will in one fell swoop install a complete Linux OS as well as all the Myth TV software. You also need a video capture device of some sort. You could get a cable card from your cable company and use a cable card adapter such as the Ceton InfiniTV; that would let you plug your media center PC directly into the cable coming out of the wall. However the problem I found with that is that many cable companies Mark most, if not all, of their channels as copy prohibited, which means you won't be able to record them. The better option is to get a device such as the Hauppauge WinTV HVR. These devices plug into the HD component signals (red, green, blue) output of your cable box, and since they are using the analog hi DEF signals, they work around the digital copy restriction (the "analog hole") . Of course this requires that you have to rent a cable box from your cable provider, which is a normal monthly fee, but it can be just one of those "dumb" boxes and not a full-blown DVR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_PVR_software_packages I've tried this same thing over the last few years. I understand there are some things you may need to pay for (like a subscription to tv listing), but there should be no reason you can't spin your own recording hardware for your own consumption. Unfortunately, that's becoming harder and harder. Media Portal, MythTV, NextPVR are a few of the alternatives you can try. I never tried Windows Media Center, but it sounds like the best solution since it will also work with cable subscriptions and others don't work so well. For just over the air, any of the others should work fine and some will also plug into KODI (I was able to stream live TV to my Raspberry Pi from my PC). Honestly, media providers has made this difficult to own your DVR/PVR hardware subscription free. The easiest solution for that is probably TiVo ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Stephen Rusboldt Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1275320038/hdhomerun-dvr-the-dvr-re-imagined Looks promising to me. I didn't participate in the Kickstarter. But the DVR should be available to general public this fall. It is suppose to handle cable companies drm. I presently use a Windows 7 Media Center. Microsoft just changed sources of the guide data. Many people are having troubles with the conversion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fabian Gurrola Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 I use an i5 nuc with an external tuner with wmc win 7, it works beautifully and it's quiet. I know its end of life for the wmc product but it's ease of use has me hanging on till its dead. I guess ill be looking at Kodi with pvr functionality once I feel its more up to snuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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