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I use Sage TV (http://www.sage.tv/) on XP (If you're going to end up going that route anyways). It's been pretty reliable and I like the interface.

I've also considered moving to Windows 7. I hear the media center functionality built in is pretty robust.

I use Media Center for Windows 7 and I absolutely love it. I use an extender for another TV and works with no problems. I have a dual QAM tuner and also dual analog and it handles drivers and also great signal and recording. I would highly recommend getting Windows 7 for this functionality. Just remember if you do, that you don't need Ultimate to get this Media Center.

I use Sage TV (http://www.sage.tv/) on XP (If you're going to end up going that route anyways). It's been pretty reliable and I like the interface. I've also considered moving to Windows 7. I hear the media center functionality built in is pretty robust.

Perhaps if the XBOX gets its blu-ray finally I can not only rent Blu-ray films, play games on my HD tv, but I could also stream it, all for a lower monthly than any Cable/Satellite company and only have my equipment in the loop

I've been doing my research for a couple of weeks now. While I've been using SageTV for the past 4 or 5 years after dumping Tivo, it is looking more and more like Windows Media Center might be the best option for alot of folks. Not because it is the best at anything that it does, but simple because of the leverage power Microsoft has to tying other option into their system. I was reading today about thisATI TV Wonder product. It is just looking more and more like you either chose a million devices that hang off your TV, or something with the might behind it to tie in all the various components so you can make a simple, nice media server and extend that to the various displays around the house with an Xbox360 or similar other device.

But after just getting off the phone with my local cable company, they want $4.50/mo per CableCard, and that I just feel is ridiculously high. Why does the FCC always seem to be half-assed with everything they do, always leaving some loophole for the consumer to get screwed over.

I've had most of these features with SageTV for well over a year, infact I ditched Tivo for Sage over 4 years ago.

I would add SageTV http://sage.tv/ along side with BeyondTV. Very nice interface, stable, easy to use. The extras (Movies, YouTube, GoogleVideo, Pictures, etc.) are all work much nicer than on the Tivo. Threw a cheap tuner card (dual analog/ATSC for $69) into a P4 2.8GHz box that wasn't being utilized, random 250GB FireWire HDD -- completely rocks the socks off of ComcastDVR/Tivo, with no monthly cost.

Apparently it already is. I use SageTV and it appears they use Zap2It. I assume I paid for it when I bought the app. But I guess they don't have the infrastructure or desire for direct payment, rather than B2B.

It makes more sense to buy a separate tuner card if you're any sort of serious gamer. The life cycle of a capture board is much longer than your graphics chipset. Since we're talking ATI here, I would recommend one of the boards based on the Theater 550 chipset which can be had for less than $100. A review and comparison of three of these boards can be found here.
Personally, I own a Sapphire Theatrix Theatre 550 and I have to say this card is great for ripping home movies from the video camera and I also use it as a PVR with SageTV. What I really like about it is I can upgrade my main video card independently, and it doesn't matter if I decide to go with ATI or Nvidia.

Commercial Products and Services:

ReplayTV: TiVo's ancient nemesis, it also 'just works'. I can't say whether it is more user friendly than TiVo, but it is far more customer friendly.

Windows XP Media Center Edition: Yes, them. Choose from multiple manufacturers but expect to face Microsoft Corp's version of the 'personal' computing experience.

Hardware vendors are now pushing DVD/HD Recording devices quite a bit. RCA, Motorola and Panasonic have products available.

Service Providers like Comcast and DishTV are now providing time shifting hardware and tv-on-demand solutions. Check with your choice of cable or satellite service provider.

Hobbyist Solutions:

MythTV: The Open Source, Do-It-Yourself DVR. Expect to build your own machine and play around a bit before it works the way you want. (Linux)

Freevo: MythTV, but not. (Linux)

MediaPortal: Who ever said Open Source was limited to Linux software? (Windows)

Meedio: It was a community based freeware product (myHTPC) that morphed into a commercial product without warning. Still a reasonable alternative to Microsoft for PVR function on the Windows platform. (Windows)

eyeTV: This Mac product has me seriously considering picking up a Mini-Mac to use as a media center. (Apple)

SnapStream (Windows)

SageTV (Windows)

Chris-TV (Windows)

ShowShifter (Windows)

On a personal note, I purchased the ReplayTV when it was first released and am entirely satisfied with it. Plus, by purchasing early I have never had to pay a subscription fee for data that is freely available elsewhere. If there had been a subscription fee I would not have purchased it.

Dan

http://www.sage.tv/ All of the features of tivo for a one time price. It uses windows so you don't have to spend alot of time tinkering with linux to get it working.

To that end: My iPod has replaced my radio, my homebrew PVR automatically strips out all commercials from my few favorite TV programs, and when web-browsing at home, I block all internet ads using Firefox and Adblock.

So you say that will lead to the end of "free" content on the internet? Good, I say. I would rather pay outright for information and entertainment I consider valuable, rather than rely on some dodgy click-for-profit advertising scheme that is quickly proving itself intractable anyway.

And to Doubleclick and all those who make a living from advertising: I won't go as far as Bill Hicks, who semi-seriously suggested such people shoot themselves, but I will urge you to reconsider your career choice. Make something or do something that contributes to society, rather than trying to sell us crap we don't need, can't afford, or probably aren't interested in anyway.

One thing that always pisses me off about the plethora of MythTV how-to's out there, are %99 do not cover Digital Cable box's or Dish Box's. Satellite and Digital Cable is becoming more and more popular and many times a STB is handling the channel changing NOT the internal tuner built into the PVR-250. LIRC does a fine job when receiving IR signals, but blows when dealing with the transmitting of IR signals to a STB (like Dish). No one ever touch's on this subject.

If anyone out there wants some PVR software that has close to the stability of MythTv i would give SageTV a try. You can have a really good PVR up and running in about 15min. Thats INCLUDING IR transmission to a STB. I have been running Sage for about a year now and have had about %95 up time. They have an excellent support community and have several plugins that provide additional functionality. (webserver, comercial skip, etc)

FWIW besides Windows MCE 2005 the other windows PVR/HTPC solutions don't have any DRM (just mpeg2 goodness)

i.e. the free as in beer gbpvr, the not so free (except for the trial) BeyondTV, SageTV, and Meedio (there's more but i'm tired of typing in URL's already =) )

e.

I have the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 running on an Athlon 2200+ w/ 512 MB RAM, 16G OS/software hard drive, 250 GB video hard drive (both IDE). The machine also supports a DVD burner, and a USB-UIRT for remote controlling my cable box. The PVR portion of it comes from Sage TV. Oh, and the wireless. Mustn't forget the wireless.

This setup gives me a PVR package that has superior capabilities to my old DirecTiVo, but slightly (SLIGHTLY!) inferior quality. It records MPEG video that I can easily work with in many video players, video editors, and DVD authoring/burning packages. I can watch videos either streamed over wireless from the SageTV box's hard drive, or I can use the SageTV Client software.

The only weakness is slow channel change times (2 seconds or so). The computer has to control the cable box through IR, and in order to guarantee precision it "punches the remote control buttons" slowly. However, channel surfing is something I don't miss -- now the machine just records what I want, I watch it when I'm damn good and ready, and skipping commercials requires only a few taps on a key on the wireless keyboard I use to control the computer. (I could use a regular remote through the USB-UIRT but the keyboard is faster (though bulkier)).

I don't use Myth tv, although I've heard that it's pretty good. I built my own system with a 200GB PATA HDD and a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 TV tuner, which is not shown. Using Myth instead of MCE probably wouldn't make much difference in the quality of the encoded video, if any at all, because all encoding is done on the card itself or with software encoders that are not part of the GUI. Myth is just the front end, and is used because it's open source, not for its superior quality. Although I don't use it, Myth has some pretty nifty features like a webserver for setting up recordings remotely, as well as commercial skip and other nice features.
As far as front ends not provided by MS or linux based, I definitely think that SageTV is the best Windows tv software. It has a great network client app which lets users access the full server remotely, either via a network or over the internet. It's nice to look at and is remote-control friendly. On the other hand, it's current version, 2.2.8, lacks commercial skips and a webserver (although plugins for both are available). Besides that, it's definitly one of, if not the, best front end available for windows, that's not a damn OS. Both missing features listed above are expected to be included in version 3.0, which is scheduled to be released some time this summer, I believe.
One piece of advice that everyone who has ever bought a Hauppauge TV Tuner knows is that do not use the bundled recording software. Hauppauge did a great job on its hardware design but seems to have outsourced its software design to a bunch of monkeys on typewriters currently residing in the Congo.

/me points to his sage tv box, and shakes his head no.
http://sage.tv/

yes... it's currently a windows program, but version SageTV/Media Center 3 is going to be also available on linux. (not OSS though commercial product -- linux media cener announcement)

I use sagetv 2.x on my windoze based PVR (currently, it's in a constant state of flux).

I'm sure there's plugins to do similiar functionality for other PC PVR software solutions (on both windows and linux)

e.

yes... it's currently a windows program, but version SageTV/Media Center 3 is going to be also available on linux. (not OSS though commercial product -- linux media cener announcement)

I use sagetv 2.x on my windoze based PVR (currently, it's in a constant state of flux).

I'm sure there's plugins to do similiar functionality for other PC PVR software solutions (on both windows and linux)

e.

Sage TV anyone?

This might be offtopic but i see these dvr discussions all the time and always notice mythtv and others popping up in the discussion, but never sage tv.

I am really surprised that noone has ever mentioned sage tv http://www.sage.tv/ .

Its very customizable through plug-ins, works out of the box with windows, and has a developers community that is always adding features, tweaking it and such. (Developing program is by invitation only although it appears anyone that shows interest in developing is given the program). Soon, they'll also have a media extender for $99. I'm going to use my computer as a dvr with my large harddrive and just use extenders throughout my house....

Any other users out there?

" I still think Beyond TV snapstream is the only logical option on windows XP due to price and the fact that it runs on virtually all cards. MythTV and other open source projects seem so raw still"

plug I just posted a review of BeyondTV 3.5 on my site. There's also SageTV on windoze that's good. (sage tv review)

GBPVR is free as in beer and although an independent project hangs pretty well with the commercial apps in most respects, from what I understand.

Also commercial is Meedio HTPC which used to be myHTPC which has a beta PVR plugin that should be not beta pretty soon.

GotTV (no link handy sorry) recently spun into something else, and is also windows and "free" (not sure if it's FOSS or not...)

Have you used mythTV lately? I'm not sure you are giving it a fair shake. I think the issue is more the complexity of the install/linux learning curve than usability/look and feel issues... (hopefuly efforts like knoppmyth mitigate that a little bit)

*shrug* that said, I do like the polish and all the features of BTV, but there's a lot of options out there, and i'm glad to see media portal's (and xmbc's) progressing nicely)

e.

I'd rather have an encoder card that does it in hardware. For regular cable, I'm using Hauppauge PVR-250's and getting fantastic results. I could hardly watch a VCR-recorded show the other day -- much poorer quality (home VCR resolution is about 1/2 that of the normal TV's capability).

My wife complained about the time and noise of fast-scanning through commercials. Much easier to just click on a "progress bar" in SageTV.

She said that she was "spoiled." Must be time for a new computer toy.

Banner ads while fast-forwarding - what will they think of next?

After hearing about and drooling over the TiVo boxes. I'm glad I built my own HTPC using SageTV and Hauppauge PVR-250 cards. I can record and encode three shows simultaneously while playing a fourth. I can also stream to a client version of the software on my notebook. RealVNC lets me have in-depth control of the HTPC via my notebook to take advantage of my 1680x1050 notebook resolution.

I've got a writeup and pictures of my Home Theater PC setup on my website.

Terry

love that Sage TV

I think there is a category error here. ReplayTV or Tivo are not direct competitors to MCE - different setup, different price points. People buy something like a ReplayTV precisely because they want to deal with as little PC-like cruft as possible. Which, of course, MCE offers in droves. MCE still requires too much sit-up effort rather than a more comfortable TV-like sit-back groove. It's possible it may always be burdened by this because of its full-scale Windows nature.

Surely the closest competitor to MCE is the equivalent PC PVR software such as SageTV or BeyondTV (or even the crappy pack-in software from ATI or Hauppauge). I know MS wants to imagine this is otherwise by not easily unbundling the MCE software from the hardware base, but it's a fact.

More stuff about (mostly) PC PVR software.

You mean, BTV will get what SageTV has had for years..

SageTV is a pretty good alternative to MCE if you want a non-linux, easy-to-configure PVR:

http://www.sage.tv/

When coupled with a Hauppauge PVR250/350 (that has integrated MPEG2 en/decode) you get a decent PVR system with good performance.

" "Offer a software package for sale that will run on any Windows-based PC. TiVo should leverage their name brand recognition and become a powerful software player."

If TiVo were to offer their software separately, why would I buy it, when I can go and get something like MythTV for free?"

besides the work in progress windows based mythTV client, myth isn't really available for windows...

Of course there is GBPVR which is windows and free as in beer.

Sage TV IMHO ( review ) is pretty close to usability as Tivo... and there's also SnapStream's Beyond TV ... both are windows based commercial software PVR solutions which there ARE a market for.

So, in short even though YOU'd download knoppmyth or mythtv for free... others would be interested in TiVo on teh windoze platform... (or on linux for that matter).

Regardless of platform (win/linux) if tivo created a software package that installed as easily as the settop box... and was as easy to use it would be of interest to people on BOTH platforms... (even with knoppmyth/etc I don't think it's *quite* easy enough for "anyone" to install and configure... but it's certainly getting there)

E.

for real flexibility:
tivo-alike software
mpeg2 encoding tuner
yeilding a highly customizable tivo-alike system and fully portable files. I liked my first one so much, im now putting together a third box

Don't they know it is not the casual user of tivo they need to be worried about but the hacker type, who has the utmost capability of circumventing any protection and if necessary, building their or building their own Tivo-like system and do what they are trying to circumvent and dump the recordings on to p2p networks for widespread sharing ? When will they learn not to fight the system ?

Check out SageTV. It's pretty much a Tivo wanna-be, but it has both a client and server. I have the server running with two Hauppage WinTV 250s and clients running on various computers at home. I'm able to watch both any channel/program either on live TV or recorded. Connecting to the server from outside isn't a problem. When I'm bored at work I'll set up recording schedules or check on what shows have been recorded for the day.

The hard part is going to be bandwidth. At "good" quality the stream is 2 gigs per hour, which isn't too bad but I sometimes have problems watching TV on my laptop when the signal gets degraded. I'm unable to watch shows from the office, however -- my DSL line isn't brawny enough.

The shows are written to the hard drive as standard mpeg2 files, however. I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard to run some sort of script to re-encode them at lower quality and bitrate and stream to the outside world. I'm too lazy to tinker with that, and prefer copying shows from the last few nights to my laptop. That way I get full quality, despite the 24-48 hour "latency".

"it occurs to me that trying to use one of these alternatives will work great until the automated TV listing parser stops working due to a moved web page or some other problem.
"

Fair point... except most of the major homebrew PVR software applications no longer use screenscraping. IIRC the latest XMLTV uses a direct connection to get the guide data (from zaptoit i *think*)... the guide data is starting to find ways to partner with the diff software out there...

Also although it's not free (either as in beer or speech) software like SageTV (which i'm in love with for it's pvr 350 support) and snapstream's beyondTV include the listing service, if i'm not mistaken...

*shrug*

e.
--> hey /. crowd take it easy on my site please it's had a rough day =)

All that we use to control our HTPC is a Logitech MX 700 wireless mouse. With the HTPC app that we use, SageTV, everything is accessible from a mouse-driven interface. We don't use that computer for email or games requiring a keyboard. My only complaint about the mouse is that its range is only about 10 feet.

The only thing that we can't do with the mouse is turn on the TV and the stereo. I am planning on programming one of the extra buttons on the mouse to do this. I'm planning on using it to launch a macro via the software program Girder that will send all of the appropriate IR commands out of the USB-UIRT IR blaster/receiver to turn on all the devices and switch their inputs accordingly. That should solve the only problem we have, which is explaining to babysitters how to use the TV.

I used to use TiVo, and now I use a homebrew system built around SageTV. The thing continuously records TV from my cable box. Whenever possible it grabs shows off my "favorites" list. Over time it builds up a library, because not only does it go after first runs of my preferred shows, but it gets reruns as well.

Because you can fast-forward through commercials, over time I've gotten in the habit of never bothering to watch TV "live". Instead, I just let it record and whenever I feel in the mood I go catch up on some of my TV watching. While this is not TV "on demand" is is definitely the next best thing. I always have a huge selection of things in the library to watch. It's more like "on demand with limited selection based on configurable preferences".

All that being said, I can place a dollar value on on-demand television, based on what I pay per month for my cable service and how many shows I watch per month. I would happily pay $1 per hour of standard network/cable network TV if I could have it on demand and commerical-free, $2 per episode of premium-channel series shows (like Dead Like Me or Deadwood or Carnivale), $3 for a movie, and $4 for a new release movie.

Since I have built my own DVR (four tuners, hardware decoder, using this software, I would really like to be able to upgrade to HDTV tuner cards and keep my DVR.

Are you listening Hauppauge?

I just got through building a really nice home media system with WiFi.

The centerpiece is a PC running SageTV. It uses a hardware mpeg encoder to capture video from my digital cable box and save it on a 250 GB hard drive. Encoding at the "DVD Standard Play" quality uses about 3 GB per hour of video and the quality is definitely acceptable. Also stored on the monster hard drive is my entire CD collection ripped to very high bitrate MP3. The hardware media card also includes a built-in radio tuner. The machine has a DVD burner in it as well, and SageTV glues it all together.

Now, the really cool part of it is, I can access the mpeg video files and MP3s over my home network. With an mpeg video codec, I can use any of a variety of players to play my recorded television anywhere in my house on a laptop. SageTV also offers a separate piece of client software that allows you to remote-control the PVR from any networked computer and play any of its recorded media -- so, if I'm in the garage with my laptop, I can call up the current TV guide and select a program to record right there without having to directly interact with the media PC.

The only thing I haven't messed around with yet is the radio part of it. Mainly, because radio sucks, and because I do have access to all of the music-only channels through the cable TV (and therefore the PVR) anyway.

Interesting though, its "Shareware". Always thought it was free.

See Here

I no longer use my old Series 1 tivo. The hacks are nice, but with something based on a PC, the sky's the limit.

Currently, I'm using SageTV It's a PC based DVR software package. With it, I can currently;

- Record two standard def stations, and a high def station at the same time while watching a fourth video of any type. (Obviously, this requires having two tuners and an HDTV tuner.)
- Record standard TV to MPEG-2, MPEG-1, or just about any other format. This makes it easier to make VCDs, DVDs, or just play the program back on a standard PC.
- Playback using Dscalar to deinterlace the video.
- Play DVDs
- Play DivX
- Record shows as favorites (just like season passes) or let SageTV record things based on my past viewing habits (much like tivo's suggestions only I don't have to bother with thumbs up and down buttons)
- Do all of the above with an integrated schedule, which is free. No need to pay a monthly fee.
- Play and manage my MP3 library (I think you can do ogg, ape, etc. with some tweaks to the config)
- Stream video and audio to another PC over my LAN.

I'm sure I'm missing much more. This thing does way more than any tivo, even a hacked tivo, and it's constantly being expanded. It surpasses TiVo and ReplyTV in every way. I've even found it to be more flexible than MythTV and Showstopper (though they do have a few benefits in some areas.)

With a 300 Mhz, you won't be able to do software encoding in real time; the processor just won't be able to handle it. So you're going to need to blow ~$150 or so on a tuner card that can also do hardware encoding. Hauppage is the name I hear most in this area; take a look at their WinTV 250 or 350 cards.

As far as programs, there's MythTV, which is open source, and is supposed to work well under Mandrake, which means it should be able to work well under anything.

The other option would be Sage TV, which is not open source and costs money, and, so, I'm unfamiliar with it.

I no longer use my old Series 1 tivo. The hacks are nice, but with something based on a PC, the sky's the limit.

Currently, I'm using SageTV It's a PC based DVR software package. With it, I can currently;

- Record two standard def stations, and a high def station at the same time while watching a fourth video of any type. (Obviously, this requires having two tuners and an HDTV tuner.)
- Record standard TV to MPEG-2, MPEG-1, or just about any other format. This makes it easier to make VCDs, DVDs, or just play the program back on a standard PC.
- Playback using Dscalar to deinterlace the video.
- Play DVDs
- Play DivX
- Record shows as favorites (just like season passes) or let SageTV record things based on my past viewing habits (much like tivo's suggestions only I don't have to bother with thumbs up and down buttons)
- Do all of the above with an integrated schedule, which is free. No need to pay a monthly fee.
- Play and manage my MP3 library (I think you can do ogg, ape, etc. with some tweaks to the config)
- Stream video and audio to another PC over my LAN.

I'm sure I'm missing much more. This thing does way more than any tivo, even a hacked tivo, and it's constantly being expanded. It surpasses TiVo and ReplyTV in every way. I've even found it to be more flexible than MythTV and Showstopper (though they do have a few benefits in some areas.)

If you don't mind spending money, go an try out SageTV. I purhcased the software (about US$60) and have a dedicated PC with two Hauppauge PVR-250 encoder cards installed (and a third on the way). With this system you can have up to four PVR-250s in tha same box, and multiple PCs all slaved together in one big "recorder farm." They have a bundle where you can get the software with a PVR-250 for US$175. Not a bad deal.

It doesn't require a subscription-based service and works with XMLTV if you don't have coverage for your area (such as overseas or Iowa, as in my case).

The article mentions Snapstream, which allows recorded video to be streamed to remote machines. However, Snapstream isn't, in my opinion, the best solution.

Sage TV allows similar streaming to any PC on a LAN, including anything connected to a TV or HDTV. In addition, it's got most of Tivo's bells and whistles. Fast Forward, Instant Replay, Integrated Episode guide, etc. It'll even allow recording of as many channels as you'd like (limited only by how many capture cards you decide to cram into your PC.)

In a future version, it'll have HDTV recording, and will probably get there a while before Replay, TiVo, etc, and at a far lower price. Linux support is in the works, and I'm personally hoping for a Pocket PC version too, but we'll see. I'm pretty sure it'll run on Tablet PCs now..

The icing on the cake is that you can record into any MPEG format you want. Mpeg2 for easy DVD creation, Mpeg1 for VCD, etc..

All in all, it's a great product. And no, I don't work for them. I'm just a happy customer.

Check it out, download the free trial...

I'm noticing a lot of posts along the line of 'This is why you should use MythTV..'

Don't overlook SageTV!

While it's not free, nor open source, it's the most incredible PC-based PVR I've seen to date. At only $59.95, it's a bargain. Program guide data is FREE! Upgrades are FREE! And the pace of development has been outstanding.

In it's current build, it supports;
- Multi-tuner, multi-lineup recording (satellite on one card, cable on the other.. or two cable captures, or five.. whatever.)
- Recording to either Mpeg2 or Mpeg1 format (for easier portability to DVD-R or VCD.)
- Network streaming to other PCs
- Automatic recording of favorites, as well as suggestions based on your viewing history (which is easily disabled.)
- XMLTV listings import (if for some reason, free listings aren't good enough for you.)
- Dscaler support and plugins (much better quality than MythTV, Tivo, or Replay on my HDTV.)
- Audio library management..

Features they're saying will come 'soon' include;
- HDTV Support
- DVD Playback

It's not free, but it's definitely a value. The way the guys at Frey Technologies are adding features is just unbelievable. Sometimes, free solutions are not the best.