PVR Wire

1. Would recommend giving everything a try. Things keep getting better with Vista, SageTV and BeyondTV. I preferred SageTV for it's better integrated MediaMVP support and access to Google video.

Posted at 10:46AM on Jan 19th 2007 by Mike

2. Yeah, what I'd really like to have is a test rig in the house, so that I could play with new software without missing any upcoming recordings. But seeing as how I just dropped a bunch of money on my main computer, I can't really justify it at the moment.

Posted at 11:16AM on Jan 19th 2007 by Brad Linder

3.

I've got vista ultimate running on two systems in my house and I love the MC interface and functionality. I haven't found ANYTHING that doesn't work as I would expect it to work and with a little tweaking here and there I've extended that functionality exponentially over what is included by default.

One of my systems is a dedicated MC box in my kitchen, connected to a 22" wide lcd. The TV works, the PVR works, all the addons I want work, it connects to all of my stored content on my servers and I've had no problems. The other is my main work PC in my office that I use to stream content to my xbox 360 in the theater room. Again, music, movies (any format I choose thanks to transcode360), pictures, yougle and various other add-ons, all work just fine. I also have this system connected to an LCD monitor AND an HD set and haven't experienced any issues with it.

As others suggested, you should try it and decide if you like it better. Don't just take the word of people here that you won't like it.

Posted at 12:42PM on Jan 19th 2007 by jsn

4. I run into that issue all the time with trying new software/hardware for my site. It's best to have a "test" PC and not risk your precious "favorites"/"season passes" schedule with tinkering :)

With that said, I'd think you'd want to try Vista's Media Center functionality when it becomes available...

Posted at 2:00PM on Jan 19th 2007 by rampy

5. Jonathon, I have a better idea. Can I just move into your house? :)

Posted at 2:35PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Brad Linder

6. Doesn't MCE make ((((Shudder)))) .ms-dvr files. It seems like that is what ORB.com used to save their files as and I took it to mean they were using MCE to record the files. And I could do NOTHING with them except play them, that's what keeps me away from MCE.

Posted at 2:52PM on Jan 19th 2007 by 4x4van

7. I agree that you should try everything but my point was that there will be limitation from MCE. Now if you are like others here that have xbox360 then MCE is your best bet as ti would be a cool extender but if you have no xbox or other M$ extenders then beyondtv is way better.
As for my point on Vista, the problem is that Areo does not allow video overlay as we know it so if you are used to playing videos full screen on a tv while still being able to use your pc while the movie plays Vista will not do it. There is a ultimate extra that does a overlay to your desktop like VLC does but that is not as useful as full screen to tv like you get in XP with Nvidia or ATI control panel.

Posted at 3:04PM on Jan 19th 2007 by ColdRacerX

8. I have two machines, one with MCE 2005 and the other with Beyond tv. Both are dedicated video servers with no screen. I use pc anywhere and a laptop to connect to both machines which are put in a closet with multiple tuners, external hard drives etc.

MCE is the better and easier interface. It has a feature to watch movies that shows the movie casings (like dvd covers) to display which shows are available which makes it exstreamly easy for the whole family to use. I have 3 xbox 360's which stream the MCE content throughout the house. There is a section to watch video, which I use to watch tv recorded with Beyond TV. I have nearly 300 dvd's ripped in Divx format, which the 360 can be configured to stream. This keeps my entire video library throughout the house.

Beyond tv is much more configurable and a great program in and of itself. The problem is that it has a software, but not hardware extender. It also does not show programs recorded in native MCE format. I do use beyond tv link to stream content and setup shows to my laptop. If Beyondtv had an affordable, easy hardward extender like the xbox 360 it would be my favorite.

MCE is full of DRM and limited to two analog and two digital (over the air) tuners. Although there are registry hacks to extend this you still can't mix program guide info from different sources like you can in Beyond TV.

You should definately play with MCE is it is a more polished, albiet limited system.

Posted at 3:20PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Jonathan Burge

9. Jonathan Burge: I would note that your "full of DRM" statement isn't exactly. Media Center respects CGMS-A protection, which means recordings from HBO, Starz, etc will be protected. They can only be played on the PC you recorded them on and on other Media Center Extenders (such as the Xbox 360).

While this might be a deal killer, it can be seen as the first step to new features that are coming with Vista Media Center, notably CableCARD support which no other PC PVR supports.

Chris

Posted at 3:36PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Chris Lanier

10. The fact that you run a PVR blog means that you should be quite familiar with most, if not all, PVR software out there. You may want to take this opportunity to test MCE, and then write about it later on.

Posted at 3:44PM on Jan 19th 2007 by airpolgas

11. 4x4van: What do you want to do with them? Edit them? Convert them? VideoReDo supports DVR-MS. Windows Movie Maker on Vista supports it (and can do the same on Windows XP). You can use DVRMSToolbox to auto-remove commercials, and strip the MPEG-2 out of the DVR-MS wrapper. You can also use it to auto-convert to other formats (WMV, DivX, XviD, etc).

Chris

Posted at 4:01PM on Jan 19th 2007 by Chris Lanier

12. I say use beyond tv. I was testing Vista and the Media Center on there sucks so just keep beyondtv cause it works. Oh but do not rush into vista as it has a ton of issue that they never saw fit to work out mostly in the video overlay area. As in it has none just plane old drag app to tv screen. Well except for media center which when launch on a system with a tv out enable will automatically jump to the tv. When on the tv you can't do much in the other screen like surf the net. It tries to keep the mouse hidden and only on the tv screen. I use Beyondtv 4.6 on vista and it works great even for a beta.

Posted at 4:09PM on Jan 19th 2007 by ColdRacerX

13. Yes, Edit them, Auto-removal of commercials sounds awesome! I tried some editing software to convert to MPEG maybe 6 or 7 months ago and it seemed like it took 2 hours to convert a 1 hour show. Love the quality for the size of the file, just didn't like commercials. And it's too hard to fast forward or skip commercials when you're driving to work.

Posted at 4:15PM on Jan 19th 2007 by 4x4van

14. Gooday

I'm running 3 PVR's in my house, one is a Vista RC2 Beta, one a TiVo with the PC add-ons to watch from multiple locations and the third a MCE 05 system, the very one I'm typing on. I've used BeyondTV and SageTV within the past 2 years; I’d say out of all that I’ve tried the best one would have to be MCE 05. I have the same skeptical view of the dvr-ms files as everyone else, but I have found a program that converts the dvr-ms into avi or wmv format within the media center interface. After you convert the files, if you wanted to that is, you can remove the commercials and save with smaller sizes to take up less HD space. That is why I choose to stay away from the BeyondTV and Sage, with the media center interface it's a much easier time for the other members of the family who aren't as computer inclined.
With the MCE 05 you can even watch the recordings from the TiVo in the other room if you set it up right. The drawback of media center is the lack of digital recording options. I have DirecTV with set top boxes with optical out and 5.1 sound, sometime I wish I could take advantage of these features through media center, but I only have the RCA recoding inputs from my Hauppauge cards. This problem should be addressed in Vista, but with vista comes the DRM monster which is why I did not pick it as my fave. It just has too many problems, at this moment because I had sound blaster issues on the Vista machine I can no longer watch HBO or any other channel with the higher level of DRM, it thinks I’m watching them on another machine, however I am not, I’m just trying to watch on the PC that recorded them in the first place, this problem is on a few channels and that list is bound to grow with time. I can however watch those HBO programs on the 360 connected on the network.
As an overall I would say if you’re going to get a PVR go with a Media Center 05 PC with the free Vista upgrade, because then you can hold off till the Vista DRM hassles resolve themselves. The Media Center 2005 system works great (except the 5.1 recording) and you can use the Xbox 360 to watch everything from any PC or TiVo in the house.

Topmoo

Posted at 4:41PM on Jan 19th 2007 by topmoo

15. Can you strip out the mpeg from ms-dvr files from within the MCE interface? Or even better have it done automatically once the recording is done (or at some preset time) like showsqueeze in BTV?

I currently use BTV on my server with multiple tuners which record to my NAS. Around the house I have a hodge podge of DMAs/HTPCs. These devices, like the Dlink DSM 520 and XBMC, all can play the BTV recordings from the NAS since they are done in standard mpeg2. And if I get concerned about space I can showsqueeze to Divx, which almost all DMAs can play as well.
However, no DMAs can play ms-dvr files (cept extenders). So my MCE HTPC basically does not participate in my home media network (well it does act as a client, but since it cannot FF/RW mpeg4, and it does not cache thumbnails, its does not get much use for this purpose).

Basically I feel like MCE enforces vendor lock-in, and we know how that always turns out (like my extender being useless if I upgrade to Vista). It may look nice (tho IMO not that much better than BTV) and be easy to use (at the expense of customizations). Until it can play nice and be standards based, I have no desire to make it a part of my home media network.

Posted at 7:59PM on Jan 19th 2007 by DarrylS

16. Over the past 3 weeks, I have taken the HTPC plunge. I tried SageTV, 3 different attempts at MythTV, and MCE 2005. I tried MCE 2005 expecting to chuck it, but I wanted to give it a shot after I saw a post on Lifehacker about a bunch of cool plugins.

Well, now I'm addicted. I've formatted by SageTV drive (that was a quick $80 wasted) and my Linux drive holding my sorta-working MythTV install. I would rate Sage about on par with Myth as far as difficult in setting it up. I'm still going back and forth with Sage over the many bugs and problems their software has (at this point just in hopes my struggles might benefit other users).

If you're just doing SDTV and stereo sound is fine for you, then probably any of the software will be fine for you. But I've got a 720p TV and I intend to use it.

I recommend you give MCE a try. Its interface is very nice, and about any limitations MS put in are very easily overcome with plugins. I got automatic commercial skipping working in 5 minutes. If I wanted to, I could install a plugin easily that would convert the dvrms files to mpeg or compress them to wmv or divx... but I haven't done that because with TV I usually just watch it then delete it. But I have a large fileserver with lots of movies, downloaded videos, etc... and MCE makes browsing them and playing them a breeze. It'll let you rip your DVDs to your HD with the MyMovies plugin... it plays HD content just fine... it really does everything I throw at it.

Posted at 10:04AM on Jan 21st 2007 by otakucode

17. Wow, I've just recently in the last 2 months bought Sage 6 and have all the same bugs and problems of which you speak. What a turd... Agree, $80 down the toilet. Now I'm thinking maybe I should give MCE a whirl since the computer I bought to run sage came with MCE. Agree completely as I also have a 720p TV I intend to use.

Posted at 6:34PM on Jan 24th 2007 by Sage User