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Front-end is Kodi on OpenElec running on a CuBox-i. Back-ends are several VMs. One VM is running a MythTV Back-end server recording from a roof antenna connected to a couple of HDHomeRun boxes saving to a mounted NFS QNAP 12 TB array. Other VMs run Sonarr, Sabnzbd and Sickbeard. Sorarr is also using a Transmission back-end, while Sabnzbd is using a Usenet subscription. Occasionally I also use Netflix and Vudu on a Roku stick which I turn on only when I need it. I white list every device and every port individually, and all things that could be considered borderline legal go through a permanent VPN link on my pfSense VM. Rock solid setup.

Well. You could get a Networked tuner card like those from SiliconDust.

Or you could do away with them. Rather than fiddling with tuning cards and editing of commercials it's much easier to just use SickBeard/SickRage

My FreeNAS server downloads them in the background and they just show up. As much fun as fiddling with TV Tuner cards sounds I'd just get the 720p rip from a group that does this all the time.

HTPC

The primary purpose of a Home Theater Personal Computer is to run a home theater.

I've got a Dell T410 I bought second hand. I've got 6x1TB WD Black SATA drives attached to a PERC5 in RAID 6. It's got 48GB of RAM and dual Xeon E5504s. It's running Hyper-V 2012R2, and hosts my MS home lab for testing, licensed through the now defunct Technet program. The MS lab is all 2012R2 and consists of an Exchange 2013 server, 2 DCs, and a CA. I use this mostly for testing stuff I'm going to do at work, as well as learning Windows garbage I wouldn't normally get to.

I've also got 8 Linux VMs running on it. 6 are running Ubuntu 14.04, one is running Debian Wheezy and one is running Debian Sid. The 6 Ubuntu boxes run my internet based PVR so that I don't have to deal with building a proper PVR to record my totally current active cable service; internet based Blu-Ray ripper so that I don't have to actually rip the discs I buy all the time; Plex Media Server to connect the aforementioned backups to my Chromecast/mobile devices/whatever; SABNzb to actually perform the backups; a custom WordPress installation running SupportPress so that my wife and roommate can submit tickets to remind me to fix the Roomba; a BitTorrent Sync box so that I don't need to deal with Dropbox. The Wheezy box is a Sendmail server for sending mail and the Sid box is one that I use to mess around with and test Linux compatibility with some Python stuff I have.

I've got a file server which has been running OpenIndiana, but I had to move that back to Ubuntu because OI doesn't currently support my motherboard. It's got an 80GB Intel 520 SSD as the OS drive, and a janky ZFS setup which works well enough for home use. The zpools are setup across 3 RAIDZ pools, each cnsists of a 4x1TB, 4x2TB or 4x3TB RAIDZ array. Each array also has a 20GB slice of a 120GB Vertex 3 as cache drives, with the last slice going to the smallest zpool as a slog. The smallest zpool gets the slog since it's running dedup as it houses backups for the Hyper-V box, my desktop and laptop and my wife and roommate's computers. It's got an i3 and 32GB of ECC RAM.

I'm currently in the process of waiting for a server to configure off-site replication of all my important/irreplaceable data to a hosted server through So You Start, formerly OVH. $42 a month for 2TB of off-site storage seems like a pretty great deal to me. It'll be running FreeBSD I suppose, since they don't offer Solaris.

http://sickbeard.com/

I *want* to pay for a service like that. I'm eager to pay to watch what I like when I want it. But with decisions like that, they leave people like me NO choice but using "alternative" methods like Sickbeard + SABnzbd, forcing me into the underground. These guys are so far behind the times it's like watching a 1950s movie. Term limits!

So if my computer just happens to download your copyrighted files by algorithm, it's okay because it was all done by a computer.

Sounds reasonable to me.

There's an app for that: http://sickbeard.com/

Sickbeard is the "DVR" app that cable companies should have released. I would have even paid for it. Web accessable. I log in. I type in a show. Say I want it. Tada. Shows magically appear on my hard drive.

I can put them on my phone, my tablet my laptop. XBMC indexes them they're available on my TV and projector.

Sweet, i got usenet, i will try it out. someone mod this nice person up.

Sickbeard is the "DVR" app that cable companies should have released. I would have even paid for it. Web accessable. I log in. I type in a show. Say I want it. Tada. Shows magically appear on my hard drive.

I can put them on my phone, my tablet my laptop. XBMC indexes them they're available on my TV and projector.

Violate the first rule of Usenet before its too late to get your regurgitated 'high definition' content of movies and series concepts already produced.

With nzbmatrix and several other nzb indexes being taken down lately, it looks like the various *AAs are taking an active interest in usenet as well. I look for a lot more of these to go private.

You have to go to a website? How quaint. I just have SickBeard sit and watch RSS feeds and grab stuff the second it's available.

It's pretty much a DVR minus the commercials.

Why bother with a VPN? That of which we do not speak is $50 for 1TB. That's lasted me over an entire year of just my TV shows. I max out my home cable connection. I don't have to deal with seeding.

Just use Sickbeard and XBMC.

Or do like I do. Pay them for service and download most everything anyway. I'm paying for it. How I choose delivery is my business.

SABnzbd + SickBeard + AstraWeb = FU and your silly games

Stop copying me!!! That combo is for MY enjoyment. Well, other than using Astraweb.
SO:
sabnzbd + sickbeard + ( giganews OR astraweb ) = JOY!!!!

Try using NZBs in combination with Sick Beard and CouchPotato.

Automated downloads of TV episodes and movies, much faster speeds, better privacy (your IP is not broadcast to a bunch of random people) and you don't have to worry about upload ratios.

Especially being in Australia where many TV shows are either not available at all or are shown months after they are aired in the US and UK.

http://sickbeard.com/

SickBeard + SABnzbd. With a 'pay as you go' setup from Astraweb.

Right, but what about those of us who aren't willing to set up an industrial copyright violation machine just to watch our media? What about those of us who are currently paying for your "free" ride?

So I have completely gotten rid of cable/satellite by going the Pirate way (arrr...). I've got a subscription to Usenet, coupled with sabnzbd, Sick Beard, Couch Potato and Media Browser on Windows Media Center. It takes a while to setup and get working, but it's really the best solution I've found. A nice bonus is that there are no commercials...

Yeah, well my family had an ALL streaming home entertainment since I was born in 1982. I even used it all the way up through when I went to college. Shocking, I know. You'd even think we were in the future. Now with HDTV each of the main 5 channels I grew up with now has 2-3 "side stations". I would have killed for that amount of PBS growing up.
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Actually, right now I use: XBMC + SickBeard + SABnzbd. With a 'pay as you go' setup from Astraweb. 180GB lasts me 4-5 months of regular programming and all summer. (An costs as much as 2.5 months of 'all you can eat'.).

My apartment sits across the street from a Laundromat that advertises 'free internet' (I didn't see any mention of customers only), DD-WRT in client mode feeds my OpenWRT router.

Having everything I want locally saves me time searching the internet for it

Agreed.

Perhaps I'm the odd man out, but I do like going over my media collection (which is automatically sorted) and just trimming the fluff everyone once in a while. Making sure files are named right, getting all the movie trailers, filling in a gap where I'm missing a season, and so on.

It's not really that it's a compulsion, but more of a hobby. I like having a movie and TV show collection, and the fact that I can have a digital one sitting on a RAID array increases the usability and coolness factors.

Organize TV Shows with Sickbeard. Organize movies with either Media Center Master or MyMovies. Better stuff for movies undoubtedly exists, but I'm not too sure what it would be.

Also, if you want your computer to surprise you with new content and you're not afraid of complex config files, give FlexGet a try.

Finding time to watch all of it.... that's the real kicker :D

TV Shows in HD should cost 99 cents to own, 50 cents to stream...

No. The artificial distinction between "streaming" and "downloading" is another driver of piracy. Let me download the damn file and not have to deal with bandwidth issues and sucky Flash players. I'm probably only going to watch it once anyway.

I should be able to tell my computer, "Here's $5/month. Each night around 4am -- when I'm asleep and thus using no bandwidth -- download the latest Daily Show and have it waiting for me over breakfast." I could just about do this now for free with torrents and RSS.

O you could do it for free with Sick Beard right now.

Can XBMC index a TV show that is available for streaming online, by episode, with episode summaries? Is there a repository of information on available TV shows?

I don't know about the streaming part (prefer to download and watch), but Sick Beard will manage metadata for TV shows in an XBMC-compatible way.

What's this "hunting" of which you speak?
SickBeard

Does Torrents & NZB files. I've NEVER had it miss a show. It aggregates like 6 different search providers so there is a lot of overlap.

Astraweb $10/month.
SickBeard

Hour long TV shows are done in under 10 minutes. So they're usually available to watch in XBMC in $endtime + 15.

No commercials, no lawsuits, no hunting sites, I guess sickbeard does technically count as a rss downloader, but setup is near trivial.

Did you forget about the first rule of usenet? It has already been declared dead and is good thing but thanks to you now the MPAA will know still alive :)

$10/month will get you unlimited Astraweb. Or a 180GB chunk for $25 should last you at least a year if all you want it for is TV shows.

SickBeard +
SABnzbd +
XBMC

Is damn near the best DVR solution I've ever seen or used. Only downside is you can't watch stuff "live" or catch up like you can with current DVRs.

And depending on your ethics and federal law you can:
feel bad about it, even though it's legal.
not feel bad about it because it's legal.
feel bad about it, because it's illegal.
not feel bad about it, even though it's illegal.

$10 one time payment to NZBMatrix has suited me well over a year. There are also other free providers. And if you're a risk taker (in the US) then you can also use it for torrents. But Torrents don't give me near the speed, plus you're technically uploading with them, so you could get nasty grams.

$10/month will get you unlimited Astraweb. Or a 180GB chunk for $25 should last you at least a year if all you want it for is TV shows.

SickBeard +
SABnzbd +
XBMC

Is damn near the best DVR solution I've ever seen or used. Only downside is you can't watch stuff "live" or catch up like you can with current DVRs.

And depending on your ethics and federal law you can:
feel bad about it, even though it's legal.
not feel bad about it because it's legal.
feel bad about it, because it's illegal.
not feel bad about it, even though it's illegal.

$10 one time payment to NZBMatrix has suited me well over a year. There are also other free providers. And if you're a risk taker (in the US) then you can also use it for torrents. But Torrents don't give me near the speed, plus you're technically uploading with them, so you could get nasty grams.

Sickbeard makes one hell of a DVR program. (When paired with sabnzbd or a torrent program).

$25 for a 180GB block from Astraweb ...

Since I never heard of Sickbeard, sabnzbd, or Astraweb, I figured I'd do a little research, and post my (Score: 5 Informative?) findings here. Please correct me if I made any mistakes....

Sickbeard is an open source, GPL licensed Python application (so runs on Windows and Linux and other platforms), that watches newsgroups, looking for announcements of TV shows whose torrents have been put on the web. In Sickbeard, the user can specify which shows he is interested in, and it keeps an eye out for those shows. Once it finds shows that the user has specified, it can queue up a retrieval program, but Sickbeard doesn't retrieve them itself.

Sickbeard will request the show from sabnzbd. Sabnzbd is also open source, Python. Its function is to go retrieve binaries from newsgroups. So it seems to me that the newsgroups have both the announcement of the availability of a TV program (like a torrent tracker), and the actual program. Sickbeard is watching the announcements, and Sabnzbd is grabbing the program.

Astraweb is a newsgroup website that apparently allows you to download newsgroup posts. This is a paid service, and the parent post signed up for a $25 service for 180GB of downloads. Based on my MythTV experience, I'm guessing this might be 180 half hours of TV (please correct this number if I am off!).

So for $25 plus 2 free open source programs, I can have almost 200 half-hour programs that I can watch anytime (starting a few minutes after they air). Interesting!

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I'm looking for a "to go" solution for watching TV at a cottage (where we have no cable, and no internet). We've been getting by with taking Netflix with us each time we go to the cottage (combined with a small DVD collection), but this might be an interesting supplement! (Other suggestions welcome!!)

Sickbeard makes one hell of a DVR program. (When paired with sabnzbd or a torrent program).

$25 for a 180GB block from Astraweb has lasted me since August and I haven't even burned through 1/2 of it yet. (I used to have the $10/month unlimited until I realized how much I really didn't use it). Programs available within a few minutes of the show ending. 30 minute TV shows take 2-3 minutes. Hour long never take longer than 10. (Heck when I saturate my cable I can have a movie in 8 minutes).

XBMC makes one hell of a nice front end. I come home from school or work and just browse to the 'latest episodes' and watch something.

SickBeard + SABnzbd + Server in the closet ... It's like having my own Awesome 12.5TB PVR. I'm so far behind on most shows I don't really care if I watch them the night they come out. The automation is amazing. Much better than the manual or RSS only feed I was doing earlier.

This is what I use as well. In fact, I just had to move files around to make room for the new seasons of shows starting.

I really need to invest in a dedicated server since I plan on setting xbmc+TV in the bed room once we get a new TV (our old tv doesn't have a pc or hdmi connection.) I have 4.5TB and am down to 500GB left and am out of room in my case for more hardrives (not to mention how hot it already is with the hardrives currently in there.)

I could free up some space by deleting shows as I buy the physical medium every summer, but that kills the beauty of my library.

WRONG. Downloading is NOT ILLEGAL. No one has ever been sued for downloading a single thing. You are not breaking copyright laws by downloading.

Uploading, such as in torrents, is illegal. You are the one breaking copyright because you don't have the right to distribute the work.

Semantics, yes. But there is a difference.

I can't wait for the Boxee Box just because it'll be a prepackaged XBMC box. I'm really hoping D-Link is good with releasing the drivers and such.

SickBeard + SABnzbd + Server in the closet ... It's like having my own Awesome 12.5TB PVR. I'm so far behind on most shows I don't really care if I watch them the night they come out. The automation is amazing. Much better than the manual or RSS only feed I was doing earlier.

SABnzbd + SickBeard + XBMC + $10/month to a server of your choice.

The whole process is nothing short of magic, plus you can get back episodes if available.