Building out a new Media Center system, need recommendations..

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Building out a new Media Center system, need recommendations..

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300 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1852335 25-Aug-2017 09:44

You are going a show, nice. See how it works in NZ.

TV mounts might be cheaper at PB tech dude, I buy loads for work through them.

Otherwise seems good, android tv is definitely the way if you as me

loryda

29 posts

Geek

#1854606 29-Aug-2017 10:16

xyf:

You are going a show, nice. See how it works in NZ.

TV mounts might be cheaper at PB tech dude, I buy loads for work through them.

Otherwise seems good, android tv is definitely the way if you as me

Cheers, yeah im hoping will be good for reading receipes etc.. The only downside is i cant send content via DLNA to it so cant watch TV off it, which a basic tablet could do.. but not as cool haha. Plus i want to see how this voice recognition tech is coming along and get some basic things connected to it (lights, aircon, htpc etc).

I am kinda hoping the vendor will be leaving his existing mounts, but if not will def check out PB Tech.

loryda

29 posts

Geek

#1855207 30-Aug-2017 11:51

Well there goes that idea, the house has no Terrestrial Signal and only a Sky Dish.

Benoire

2798 posts

Uber Geek

#1855214 30-Aug-2017 12:08

loryda:

Well there goes that idea, the house has no Terrestrial Signal and only a Sky Dish.

You can run a Sat>IP converter instead which can feed a tvheadend instance (either virtual or on NUC) that can then feed kodi interfaces around your house.

davidcole

6034 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1855230 30-Aug-2017 12:21

loryda:

Well there goes that idea, the house has no Terrestrial Signal and only a Sky Dish.

That makes it a little harder. You can get DVB-S products, but not network ones like the hdhomerun I don't think.

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Benoire

2798 posts

Uber Geek

#1855232 30-Aug-2017 12:28

davidcole:

loryda:

Well there goes that idea, the house has no Terrestrial Signal and only a Sky Dish.

That makes it a little harder. You can get DVB-S products, but not network ones like the hdhomerun I don't think.

Sat>IP units are effectively similar to a homerun, they take x satellite inputs and convert to DVBS over IP basically.

I've got a Triax TSS400 MKII Sat>IP on route to replace my tuner cards and should be able to report back maybe at the end of the week on its performance... Basically it just feeds TVH (or another tvengine) with signals based on the tv servers requests... The Triax also has a DLNA so should be able to serve any tv directly with DLNA connections but you won't get the EPG or know what is on.

Rikkitic

Awrrr
18660 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1855257 30-Aug-2017 13:21

davidcole: (Can't quote as mobile)

How do you control your HTPC though? Do you get a remote going (for higher WAF) or get everyone to mouse and keyboard?

I find these to be factors.

Browser streams can be a hassle because you have to keep adjusting things. Over time I kept gradually adding controls to my HTPC. First is the Harmony, which does everything via a cheap IR dongle that converts the button inputs to Auto Hotkey scripts. This gives me control menus that can easily be scrolled through and single-press commands, along with a lot of other stuff. But the Harmony can still be a hassle when trying to move the mouse cursor (why does all software, without exception, insist on having you swish the mouse back and forth from one side of the screen to the other?), so I added Anydesk to allow remote control from my notebook, which sits next to the viewing position. I like Anydesk better than Team Viewer and it works perfectly. One keypress and I am connected to the HTPC and anything I do on the notebook is echoed there. Much better than 10 foot interfaces but sometimes it is too difficult to reach for the notebook so I also added an air mouse. This is a mini-keyboard/mouse combo that only costs about $10 on AliExpress. All three together give pretty good control.

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xyf

300 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1855277 30-Aug-2017 13:44

What was the internet situation? iptv is working great for us, just not all the channels. You could use dvbs as the backend for channels you dont have or i guess you have to get sky

loryda

29 posts

Geek

#1855286 30-Aug-2017 14:09

xyf:

What was the internet situation? iptv is working great for us, just not all the channels. You could use dvbs as the backend for channels you dont have or i guess you have to get sky

VDSL best option at this stage, fiber not for awhile yet.

How does your IPTV solution look/work? Is it just apps for different providers? Only care about Channel 1, 2, 3, BBC & CNN really.. Shortland Street, MasterChef, The Block (tragic, i know) etc.

Rikkitic

Awrrr
18660 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1855288 30-Aug-2017 14:11

TV for us has been an evolutionary process. It started with Sky. Then when FTA went digital, I experimented with DVB-T and discovered I could get good UHF reception with a ridiculously high mast. I bought a cheap (non-approved) STB and started recording films in HD, until I discovered that most were still being broadcast with stereo sound by our cheapskate media companies. Next we went to satellite. I replaced the Sky LNB with a dual-throat one, then added two more. A recent upgrade of the STB means we could get HD if anyone was broadcasting anything interesting (they're not). I don't expect much from this in the future (it is now mainly the domain of religious broadcasters) but we can still get D1, D2 and Intelsat 19.

After RBI came to our rural location, I built an HTPC and have recently been experimenting with IPTV on Android. However, we are back to an old problem with the content technology outstripping our Internet capabilities. Our RBI should be good for at least 30 Mbps but the tower we depend on is overburdened so our streams go up and down like a yo-yo. This makes it hard to live stream anything. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, often it starts out fine then goes to crap. Even with adaptive streaming we sometimes get buffering or freezing, and the lowest resolution is unwatchable anyway. In spite of anal-retentive content providers, I can download almost anything I want to so often get around it that way.

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davidcole

6034 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1855340 30-Aug-2017 15:51

loryda:

xyf:

What was the internet situation? iptv is working great for us, just not all the channels. You could use dvbs as the backend for channels you dont have or i guess you have to get sky

VDSL best option at this stage, fiber not for awhile yet.

How does your IPTV solution look/work? Is it just apps for different providers? Only care about Channel 1, 2, 3, BBC & CNN really.. Shortland Street, MasterChef, The Block (tragic, i know) etc.

No it's a bit better than that now. IPTV can work like a tuner. There's a long Freeview on kodi thread: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=151&topicid=198716 But buried in there, the NextPVR author pops up and adds support for iptv, including recording capabilities. Unsure if the other PVR software have this capability as well, but I'd assume so.

xyf

300 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1855702 31-Aug-2017 09:43

davidcole:

loryda:

xyf:

What was the internet situation? iptv is working great for us, just not all the channels. You could use dvbs as the backend for channels you dont have or i guess you have to get sky

VDSL best option at this stage, fiber not for awhile yet.

How does your IPTV solution look/work? Is it just apps for different providers? Only care about Channel 1, 2, 3, BBC & CNN really.. Shortland Street, MasterChef, The Block (tragic, i know) etc.

No it's a bit better than that now. IPTV can work like a tuner. There's a long Freeview on kodi thread: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=151&topicid=198716 But buried in there, the NextPVR author pops up and adds support for iptv, including recording capabilities. Unsure if the other PVR software have this capability as well, but I'd assume so.

Exactly like that, it just thinks its a tuner and works like one too. You just add someone like Matt's playlist and epg

I dont know how it handles on less capable internet connections but its rock solid on our 100/20 fibre. Im sure it would be fine on even a half speed vdsl connection, depends how hard you use it. Hopefully the other channels come online that are missing (prime, choice, hgtv mainly). Im sure you can track down some bbc/cnn streams, unsure how reliable though. As i have said before we use emby as the pvr as it has m3u support built in, you could use basically any software: nextpvr, mediaportal, kodi, presumably plex. Im using sonarr to auto download a lot of shows anyway and then theres ondemand. Wife is almost trained now on android tv. Taken about 1 month for the change over from using a windows based htpc, she does forget to chromecast the ondemand apps though

DMCM

78 posts

Master Geek

#1870794 22-Sep-2017 10:03

Hi All,

I've been hovering around on the Tivo thread but it's time for action! It's looking like the ole Tivo won't get hacked to it's going to die a natural death come the end of October. It's been a good little box.

So.... now I'm looking at replacing it with a HTPC. I have access to a Win 10 1TB small factor desktop with 8GB ram, i7 etc, should be fine I think. I'll need to get hold of a super quiet fan and a dual terrestrial tuner, and I already have a harmony remote, so I think this part is easy. What I'm really struggling with is sorting out the software. Now, I want to basically put the new box where the Tivo was. I'm not going to have multiple TV's or PCs networked together. I have an LG smart TV.

Can someone please suggest the simplest Windows software that will work for recording, scheduling, and possibly stripping ads from recordings? We are not really using on-demand as, to be honest, it's kind of a pain in the backside. Ads can't be fast-forwarded, you need to use several different apps - you can't Chromecast or even cast natively with some channels - Prime has nothing whatsoever. Hence the HTPC and the need to record DVB-T.

Help!

gcorgnet

1078 posts

Uber Geek

#1870796 22-Sep-2017 10:05

Check out Emby. It should do what you need, controllable from Harmony.

Run the server and a client on your HTPC

Benoire

2798 posts

Uber Geek

#1870801 22-Sep-2017 10:07

Mediaportal or NextPVR are probably your two best bets for live tv in windows; you can either use the native EPG Grabbers or use EPGC to get a full collection of the MHEG5 (unless the EIT has a 14 day guide now)...

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