Is the HTPC dead for the guy who wants to record/watch OTA?

[SaurusX]

NextPVR plug-in into XBMC is where I'm going after I decide to ditch the Vista Media Center setup I've been working with since 2008. Wow, it really has been a long time and I've only had to replace the HDD once.

 

[marmasatt]

Not sure if this is still supported but I use to use Beyond TV. http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/

 

[nForce2]

WMC center is long in the tooth. Mediaportal seemed promising but getting the TV guide to work is so maddening I gave up. Is nobody really using HTPC's? Am I resigned to pay for cable or satellite?

Nope! There are more of us using HTPCs than ever before. We're just not using WMC.

XBMC Clients, MythTV Linux Server, and whatever tuner you want(HDHR is the easiest)

Problem solved.

Bingo. For OTA usage, MythTV works great as the frontend too (instead of XBMC), and MythWeb is fantastic for general scheduling, program browsing, etc, from your tablet.

The key to all this software is the guide data. Where does non-WMC get this data from?

MythTV can work "without" guide data, using the free EIT data that is broadcast as part of the OTA data streams. The scheduler can't see as far into the future using EIT as it could with purchased guide data, so it can't make quite as efficient of scheduling decisions (such as deferring a recording to mitigate a conflict), but otherwise it works pretty well unless your local stations don't broadcast accurate data. I ran an OTA DVR for ~6 months without an internet connection at all, using EIT data exclusively for the program scheduling.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/EIT

Otherwise, Schedules Direct is fantastic for purchased guide data.
http://www.schedulesdirect.org/

 

[GTaudiophile]

I don't get it. HDHomeRun Prime + JRiver on Win7/WMC = OTA/ClearQAM on HTPC, yes? With DVR functionality too!

 

[tential]

Ceton and NextPVR doesn't work together before anyone tries to waste their time on it lik eI did. Reinstalled Windows to get NextPVR to install (dunno why it wouldn't but there was a SERIOUS issue) only to find out that it wasn't even compatible....

 

[ccbadd]

Ceton cablecard tuners only work with Windows DRM. Only WMC supports this DRM, so that is your only option.

 

[Zorba]

I know with media portal if you live in the US you have to either hack it together or pay for a subscription to some service which ironically prides itself on being open source and "promoting open source software". That's when I rolled my eyes and gave up on media portal. Too bad because if the guide data *just worked* it would have actually been very cool (albeit a bit slow compared to wmc).

From what I've seen media browser 3 is nothing but a plugin for wmc and is still 10x worse than xbmc. I've historically always used xbmc for local stuff and wmc for dvr/ota stuff.

If microsoft truly wants to kill the market or force somebody new to step up all they have to do is kill the guide data.

I've been using Mediaportal for years. Originally I hacked together the xml file to get my guide off Yahoo, big pain in the butt, but once done it worked fine.

Now I use Mc2xml to pull the data off Microsoft's servers, completely free. Mc2xml is very easy to setup (at least if you are able to setup media-portal in general). Once in a while MS will change the name of a station and I'll have to remap it, but no big deal. There are other solutions too, but I haven't messed with them.