Need lots of help with a HTPC.

[notposting]

Bit of a slow post and I might cut it short typing left-handed had surgery on the smart hand.

What we use (wife and I):

7MC (pro edition). Used VMC for about 2 years maybe? Started off with dual Hauppage tuners on cable, then switched to OTA using digital converter boxes for awhile (control via IR blaster). Was originally on a socket-754 Sempron 2600, then Sempron 3400. Converted to a dual core AM2 system, and transitioned to an HDHomerun. Also went from SDTV to HDTV.

Current setup is an AMD 4450e (2.3GHz, 45W TDP), some cheapo Via AM2 board I got off ebay (had to replace caps by main power in when I got it, just replaced the VRM caps as well), Radeon 4350, WD 640GB Blue, 2GB DDR2-800, sata-DVD, Antec NeoHE 430 (if I remember right) housed in an NZXT Duet.

I have an HDHomerun for tuning (currently clear-QAM from Comcast) and a WHS in the loop as well, using MyMovies + AnyDVD on the WHS to rip DVD collection. Have a Linksys Extender (DMA 2200) and XBox 360 tied in as well.

Use a MS Media Center Keyboard and remote with the IR receiver (which handles IR blasting if needed) for control (as well as my new nerd-boner, myRemote on Android).

I do love the decentralized benefit that network tuners and a server give you *shuffles to find post to copy and paste* here it is, I posted this at thegreenbutton:

Couple weekends ago, wife and I were watching a DVD...when it disappeared. Odd. Couple reboots, reseating SATA cable, mumbled curses, it came back but pretty bad....regular TV and later DVD's seemed okay. Forgot all about it (thought it might have been the older motherboard and flaky SATA controllers).

This weekend we had company over (and by over, I mean they drove 600 miles)...sister and my wife wanted to watch a movie, and sure enough, the DVD drive disappeared again. Open the case up and take a better look inside (read: pulled it partway out of shelf unit) and sure enough, some bad capacitors by the CPU. I had replaced a couple near the main power input/memory a year ago when I first got the board (for $20 off ebay) and looks like the rest were hell-bent on dying too.

Early the next morning, I slid the laptop in place, a sub-$400 Acer I had picked up last fall. Plugged the MS IR receiver in, power brick, ethernet cable, and HDMI cable. Plopped it right on top of the HTPC. Already had the HDHomerun software on it, downloaded MCL, latest ATI package for proper screen sizing, disabled the wireless, changed to the normally unused High Performance power setting, and after some fiddling of channel locations it was an invisible change over the weekend and a couple days this week while they were here.

Having an HDHomerun and a WHS to make any machine the living room 7MC box was just so sweet. Recapped the board Wednesday when my replacement caps came in (actually I changed to polymer capacitors in the CPU VRM area now) and it stepped right back into action. My sister-in-laws fiancee is an Apple-using-guy but very much likes 7MC.

It was a real nice proof of concept of sorts for me.

Also, BTRY, I guess some people are converting the wtv files to dvr-ms to keep using Lifextender. Pretty easy since it's just a wrapper change versus re-encoding...

Hope this helps a bit on some ideas of what is possible, definitely I'm sure the one thing all HTPC owners (especially the married ones :awe would say is try to think it through as much as possible ahead of time.

 

[bobdole369]

TiVO fits your requirements and adds quite a bit for about the same price as an HTPC. MOnthly cost though. Totally worth it.

 

[Binky]

Also, BTRY, I guess some people are converting the wtv files to dvr-ms to keep using Lifextender. Pretty easy since it's just a wrapper change versus re-encoding...

DVRMStoolbox can handle the commercial skipping duties without conversion, but you do need to purchase showanalyzer since comskip and lifextender still don't work with WTV files (to my knowledge).

My setup is similar to noposting's, with a WHS box and an extra extender thrown in. I love the centrallized recording that I can play on any TV in the house. It's definitly more work than a tivo, but much more powerful.