Extenders -my opinion

[pcostanza]

I don't use it much but do have an Xbox as an extender but it's mostly used by my son for games. But, it is extremely easy and just works.
My concern lately for 'internet everything' is that my ISP will start to watch bandwidth. Cox has a 200GB cap which for me, has never gone about 50 in a month but with a Netflix account now, the wife is using it more. Add watching Youtube, or anything else regularly and the greedy ISP's will soon start to suck at that teet......you just know it. They are already griping at Netflix, Hulu and others for a piece of the pie.

[smajor]

Exactly. As the cable ISPs start losing traditional STB customers, they are going to jack-up their internet rates or go with tiered rates. Here in the US, they have a virtual molopoly in many, many areas. They can pretty much do whatever they want to those customers.

[cncb]

I found an interesting quote on the Boxee blog after they released their "last" PC version which seems pretty relevant.

I would agree with their position if these devices offered access to all local content including a "PVR system" which is still very important for many of us. The only devices that offer that are the SageTV extenders and the older NMTs for NPVR all of which are no longer being sold (well, there is the XBox 360 but it seems more like a very limited "PC" anyways).

[steeb]

I would agree with their position if these devices offered access to all local content including a "PVR system" which is still very important for many of us. The only devices that offer that are the SageTV extenders and the older NMTs for NPVR all of which are no longer being sold (well, there is the XBox 360 but it seems more like a very limited "PC" anyways).

If only the 360 was as hackable as the original xbox......

Microsoft learnt their lesson there!

Shame really.

I don't know anything about the Boxee being in UK but am in 2 minds to see how the progression of extender options really goes in the next few years.

hope everyone is well.

steeb

[rantzau]

Hello

Now that others are making apps for the xbox360, would it then be possible to make a npvr app for xbox360? I no nothing about coding, or which rules microsoft sets for making apps, but it would be cool to have NPVR in XBOX360.

Best regards Rantzau

[rantzau]

Another thing about extenders.
I have been working for some time on a setup with a windows 7"server" which has 4 DVB-T tuners, and 2tb disk space. At the moment I am using 4therecord as recording service, but I have both mediaportal and NPVR installed as well, and I test them from time to time, but for now 4therecord is the winner.
I have 2 clients running, they both use pulse-eight.net build, which is a speciel build of linux with XBMC. It's footprint is only around 200-250mb, so it runs from any USB stick, no hdd needed. Its really fast, everything runs smooth. Recordings is played easily, there are a ton of plugins to fit your needs, and the LIVETV part is getting better and better, even though this is still the weak part. 4therecord is close to deliver a stable solution to livetv. Then this gets completely stable this is a perfect setup in my world.
I only need one windows license to my "Server". The linux clients are fast, easy to update and easy to get up and running, no licenses needed.
Hardware specs are small, I use ion boards, but there are builds for the atv-box, and there are a project starting to make xbmc run from the new raspberry PI board. This could in my opinion be the future.
In other words get NPVR running in XBMC ;-)

[steeb]

Hello

Now that others are making apps for the xbox360, would it then be possible to make a npvr app for xbox360? I no nothing about coding, or which rules microsoft sets for making apps, but it would be cool to have NPVR in XBOX360.

Best regards Rantzau

Hi Rantzau,

I am not familiar with the Xbox360 but only the good old and humble original Xbox. So how are these apps for the 360 working? All licensed by Microsoft? Or has the 360 finally been modded? If the latter that is still no solution for a majority of users who would not want to mod their box. If the former then have Microsoft released a development platform, SDK, for people to play with?

cheers

steeb

[rantzau]

Hey Steeb

Well I don't know how this works, and it might still be very closed down and only for special invited by Microsoft. But here are a list of apps released (unfortunately very few of them are available in denmark): http://majornelson.com/2011/12/13/new-ap...-xbox-360/

Best regards
Rantzau

[KS4UA]

Just jumping in here to stir the pot. I have a decent older NPVR gbpvr server setup (see my sig profile). For years I used a MVP and was happy. When I bought an HDTV (55' plasma) I wanted an HDMI output client.
Two years ago I bought an Acer Revo 1600 for $200 (newegg). It came with Win XP home, single core Atom, Ion video.

Using it with Win XP, it was a very poor PC client. Acer came out with a dual core Atom/Ion Revo bundled with Win 7.

I should have waited and bought that.

Anyway, I bumped the memory on my Revo to 2gb, bought a Win 7 license, and it's a decent Netflix / NPVR /Gbpvr client and nearly as quiet as my old MVP.