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TiVo vs. Windows Media Center Edition
The Importance of writes "Two reviewers make head-to-head comparisons of TiVo and Windows Media Center Edition (here and here). TiVo still comes out ahead, but MCE is improving. Of course, some tout the flexibility of PC-based DVRs, while others question what this flexibility means when you have things like the broadcast flag and the INDUCE Act."
I was reading a magazine article a couple of weeks ago that made the claim that Windows Media Center is the emerging standard for component interconnect and control. IE, in the future you aren't going to have a different remote control for each component in your home theater system, but instead everything is going to be simply controlled through a Windows Media Center PC-like device. The magazine claimed ~250 vendors had already signed on (including many big names).
I found this rather disheartening: Microsoft taking over yet another market. Sigh...
FWIW, I don't remember the name of the magazine, but it was some god-awful Home Theater magazine that is really just an excuse for advertising.
No, not Linux. No, not even ease of use. Picture quality with DirecTV. DirecTV with Tivo is the only solution I've seen that captures the satellite's MPEG stream perfectly, while still providing a usable interface (hear me, Dish Network?)
I'd seriously consider building my own set, but there is no solution out there that doesn't have some analog to digital conversion at some point. And yes, it matters. Particularly if you have a 40" HDTV. Digital cable/satellite compression is pretty visible as it is; adding an analog conversion makes it look hideous.
In my idea world, I'd have a media PC that played DVDs, stored CDs, streamed direct digital television (like my Tivo) and (as a luxury) was wirelessly connected to the internet. All of these features exist as different pieces in other machines, but no one has them all together.
Well they are hackable, just not fully supported by Tivo Inc.
He took a duck to the face at 250 knots.
Not really. Back in the days when you had to manually enter the start and end time of a programme and set the clock by hand it was common for people to set the video to start 5 minutes before and let it run up to 15 minutes after.
This was to ensure that if your clock was slow, you didn't miss the first minute or so and if it overran, you didn't miss the crucial last scenes.
Even software such as Gemstars Video+ system puts 5 minutes before and 10 minutes after by default.
Of course in this day and age of self correcting clocks, on screen programming and the special tag that tells you when a programme finishes this buffer probably makes less and less sense.
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- and the remote was pretty sexy (anyone wanna help me write a driver for Linux?)
Take a look at the LIRC 0.7.0 snapshots. The Microsoft remote has been in there for quite some time and works well. In fact, you can use the IR receiver that comes with it and quite a few compatible IR remotes.
I have MythTV set up with a PVR-250 and it's the best thing ever.
Hear hear! I have a Myth server running two Hauppauge PVR 250s and it is smooth. The guide is smart enough that I just select two shows to record and it handles the rest. The best part is that I have a Myth client running in the main TV room that is a stripped down Dell 4600c which I got refurbished for $360that fits perfectly into the entertainment center. All the advantages of the two tuners, but the quiet-ness of a small form factor PC. Awesome stuff AND two TVs can use the same recording repository!
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
There is a reason Microsoft does not sell MCE over the counter, it's to avoid experiences such as yours. In order to provide a good experience, Microsoft provides minimum requirements to the OEM's in order to have a very optimized machine.
If you were truly interested in giving MCE a try, you would have found that some of the bigger sites dedicated to this OS have articles/posts telling you how to disable this movie preview and how to deal with some of the other issues. Since you had this problem, I assume you downloaded a copy yourself, and didn't actually buy/test an OEM machine with MCE preconfigured.
Last time I checked (few months ago), MythTV didn't support the FM tuner in the PVR series cards, Linux didn't support the RCA output on my Radeon 7000 series card (plenty of people use these cards in windows machines, including myself, without any problems), the remote was really hard to configure due to the lack of drivers, and the machine could not run 24/7 for more than a few days without running into some sort of problems.
MythTV is a great application (I will be building another MythTV machine once I have more hardware), but unlike MCE, it isn't meant for the average consumer (which obviously you aren't, as you like to tinker), who in the end will determine which DVR/PVR 'OS' will become the dominant platform.
Yeah, it's a shame there's nothing like that...
If $6 a month is even an issue to you, again, take a magnifying lens to your life.
Don't forget that a PC will consume a lot more electricity than a Tivo. I haven't figured it out but I wouldn't be surprised if it cost around $10 a month more to keep a PC running 24/7 compared to a Tivo.