Oh hi! You haven't seen one of these before have you ... seriously I'm in a bit of a bind. I have some pretty specific HTPC needs that I don't seem to be able to pin down.

Help me QGL, you're my only hope.

For the past year or so I have been very happy with XBMC, that is until I dug out my USB TV tuner thing the other day and plugged it into my Windows7 MC for a lark. zomgwtfbbq now I know what real HTPCing is about.

So now I need want from my HT softwares:

• Auto-lookup in IMDB of TV episodes and backed-up movie medias.


• TV Tuner / recorder


• Mount network media storage (Thecus NAS)


• Windows binaries. See below.


• Ideally a "TV Server" so I don't need to buy TV Tuner hardware for bedroom PC. House is hardwired with Gigabit ethernet.

Mythbuntu looked like the goods, I even went so far to install it. Unfortunately my very generic USB Tuner hardware is a Linux atheist - yet again my forays into the forbidden fruit are blocked by driver support.

Any ideas? Is this Windows MythTV port any good? How about add-ons to win7 MCE that add better library management / imdb lookup? Is that MediaPortal thing still lolcakes?

mediaportal is awesome

Win7 MCE + Shark007 codecs + Media Browser plugin for your ISOs. You can use extenders (Xbox 360, Linksys unit, etc) to connect to your MCE box and stream TV or ISOs.

mythtv / mythbuntu

http://www.mythbuntu.org/

Using windows 7, and I will post up mythtv and mythbuntu later when I have time. I won't bother with a xbmc one since your running it

# Auto-lookup in IMDB of TV episodes and backed-up movie medias.

Not differcult but its been a while, since I looked at the my movies but http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/10/popular-my-movies-plugin-comes-to-windows-7-media-center.html

# TV Tuner / recorder

For the love of god get a decent tunner its the make or break of your htpc build if you value your hair then buy another one that works. Its been a 4-5 years since being in aus and I can't remeber what is the be all and end all of tunner, last I looked it was devico from memory

# Mount network media storage (Thecus NAS)

Easy you would have built the smb shares up you can either use the net use command in a batch file that runs on start-up and add the username and password syntax this will mean that you have to have the nas turned on first this assumes you turn your htpc off

Or

To add a non-indexed UNC as a library to Windows 7:

Quote:
1. Create a folder on your hard drive
for shares. i.e. c:\share
2. Create another folder in the above share. i.e. c:\share\music
2. Link the Library to this folder.
3. Delete the folder.
4. Use the mklink in an elevated command prompt to make a symbolic link. Name the link the same as the folder you created above.
i.e - mklink /d c:\share\music \\server\music
5. Done. Now you have non-indexed UNC path as a library.

Dunno what else you need I have win7 picking up my smb shares from both clark connect and my ns4300 nas

# Windows binaries. See below.

# Ideally a "TV Server"

so I don't need to buy TV Tuner hardware for bedroom PC. House is hardwired with Gigabit ethernet.

This is going to be a f***ery, what I assume you want is to have pre-recorded pre stored shows stream to various rooms in the house, if this is the case I would build another box that's soul purpose in life is recording s***. Personally I don't use a tv turner and haven't for years however I have build my fair share of pvr-servers which are painful.

Firstly you would want a box with multiple turners then pick an os that supports the cards what I would do is vnc//whatever flavour of Remote you want into it, setup the weeks recording from an epg set up each to cut the broadcast flag (ad removal) cut and crunch post record on completion have cron or eqvilant send that s*** to the nas using a mk dir target script based on the name of the file.


last edited by HerbalLizard at 11:52:32 22/Dec/09

last edited by HerbalLizard at 12:02:20 22/Dec/09

wtf where did the rest of my post go, f*** I am not typing all that s*** again for fun

mediaportal is awesome

Really? It locked up / crashed when accessing IMDB last time I played with it?

teq: Linux isn't an option at the moment due to hardware. I'm not interested in buying more s*** just now.

Could you post a detailed list of what you have inc chipset of the tuner. Also mediaportal is arse its slow its buggy as s*** and possibly the worst htpc software going

last edited by HerbalLizard at 13:05:07 22/Dec/09

last edited by HerbalLizard at 13:06:03 22/Dec/09

not sure what hardware you've got that wouldn't work with linux but ubuntu is a very mature O/S, at least hardware/driver wise?

Sure - thanks for your help mate!

I'm not home so I can't get the tuner chipset. It has "Excel" written on it and was massively hard to find drivers just on the model number, I had to dig out the driver CD. Its a very s***ty piece of hardware!

Lounge Room:

N5200 PRO NAS - About 1TB of storage, about half full of TV & movies.

Primary HTPC - at the moment Windows XP MCE & XBMC but happy to go 7 / ubuntu if it works better. Has latest Mythbuntu installed off dual-boot GRUB as of this weekend as well. I'm only using onboard sound & video, but it has enough grunt to playback HT stuff in XBMC. Contains a DVD player, digital audio outs, 5.1 etc.

HTPC connects via HDMI to Sony 42" 720p LCD TV.

HTPC also connects to vaguely cheap Sony surround sound.

Nintendo Wii. Dust magnet mostly.

The above connects to a Gigabit switch, which goes to bedroom:

Windows 7 PC

Projector

TVs and monitors
Doubles as gaming computer and home office, so must be primarily Windows.

These days I watch most of my stuff in the bedroom with the projector.

There is an antenna plug in both rooms. At the moment I have the USB Tuner plugged into the Windows7 PC. Its not the best tuner, is a single tuner only an and only has Win32 drivers and doesn't work that well in XP MCE, which is why it was shelved for a couple years as I was disappointed in it.

f***ing around on the weekend I gave it shot in the Win7 MCE and was shocked at how well it worked, which prompted this whole thread :)

teq - its my USB TV tuner that's the problem - I was surprised at how well everything else 'just worked'. This isn't Ubuntu's fault, its a massively dodgy tuner and was I'd given up on it as a waste $, fortunately not much $. I just happened to try it on Win7 MCE and it worked flawlessly for some reason which caused an upheaval in my setup and spawned this thread :)

last edited by Hogfather at 13:20:10 22/Dec/09

last edited by Hogfather at 13:21:38 22/Dec/09

MediaPortal + Moving Picture (for Movies from IMDB), My TV Series (for tv eps from TheTVDB) and StreamedMP for the theme.

Runs pretty much perfect with the latest build, barely any bugs that I can see. I use the TV Server so I can run MP clients in other rooms and use the tuner on the server.

The only thing that MediaPortal doesn't like about the setup is when the amplifer/projector is turned off, when the pc comes back MP has come out of full screen and resized itself to 800x600. So I just close media portal when I turn the devices off. s*** still records cause its all on the server anyway!

I use the TV Server so I can run MP clients in other rooms and use the tuner on the server

This this this this!

Lounge Room:

# N5200 PRO NAS - About 1TB of storage, about half full of TV & movies.

Smb is runing what about dlna streaming can it use this

# Primary HTPC - at the moment Windows XP MCE & XBMC but happy to go 7 / ubuntu if it works better. Has latest Mythbuntu installed off dual-boot GRUB as of this weekend as well.

Don't bother with the turner in your main htpc, each of them has their own pros and cons. Tip for win7 is to turn off all the update from the internet s*** you can find as it will want to reindex s*** every now and again and take its time. I would look into adding the mysql module intot he thecus and have myth pull its back end from there. Adding the dlna streaming module then could open options to console playback

# Nintendo Wii. Dust magnet mostly.

Have a look at this http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/stream_multimedia_to_nintendo_wii_with_tversity.cfm

# Windows 7 PC

Add dual tuners to this then use crucnhy or sim to do the cutting and build a simple script to transfer it to the nas on completion



last edited by HerbalLizard at 13:30:24 22/Dec/09

last edited by HerbalLizard at 13:39:44 22/Dec/09

Windows 7 and a good digital tv tuner. Seriously, I've tried all the alternatives ... well really two, mythtv and mediaportal and they both just suck compared to the simplicity and ease of use of the windows 7 media centre. The only benefit these have is the plugins available.

I currently run a media centre with 2 x Hauppauge HVR-2200 tuners (in effect, 4 tuners) as well as a Twinhan SP400 satellite tuner hooked up to austar and it's friggin brilliant. Any other windows 7 pc in the house as well as the xbox instantly turns into a tv being able to use any tuner not in use, can access anything through the media centre or nas from the shared libraries and using an app called MCE Buddy ( http://mcebuddy.com/ ) all recorded tv gets automatically converted to xvid, commercials removed and stored on my nas without any intervention.

The only problem I had was the hard drive (was a cheapo 'green' drive, was fine otherwise) wasn't fast enough to record a few things at once so I ended up getting a wd velociraptor and everything has been great since.

On the hardware, it's a standard off the shelf microatx motherboard with an onboard video card good enough to do 1080p and have hdmi out in a slimline desktop case with a dvd writer and blu ray player. Looks like a slightly larger dvd player. Only complaint with it was the noise when the cd drives spun up, but some rubber mountings and rubber padding under the case killed most of it.

last edited by eXemplar at 15:04:55 22/Dec/09

Hmm good to know eXemplar - might give win7 in the lounge room a go, especially due to the tuner thingy.

It has the added benefit of not needing me to learn the Lunix. I don't hate on it but I only have no many hours to give this stuff!

Dlink are introducing an stb at CES '10 that runs Boxee in early January. I like the offset cube look of the thing.

a couple of relevant urls...

http://www.dlink.com/boxeebox
http://www.boxee.tv/box

Have a look at this http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/stream_multimedia_to_nintendo_wii_with_tversity.cfm

Installing MPlayer CE is better.