TivoHD or BIY GBPVR-HD

[paulg]

I play with GBPVR on and off. Don't quite have the time to get my bag of bits hardware working correctly. Do all my recording on a Tivo Series two with a large disk. It works flawlessly for me. However, OTA HD is here and there is good content out there. I tried(minimal) to get GBPVR running HD. I can record but playback sucks. Anyway, I looked to getting the new TiVO HD. Would cost $300 plus $100/year or a lifetimer service for another $400.

So my question to this group is....

Where is the sticky that says "buy this server, this capture, this video and install this image and presto! you have a GBPVR based HD PVR. Is it possible to build a reliable (WAF) system for $400-$500? Can we get a cook book together for those of us that just want to build it, not engineer it? Or did I miss the post that has all the answers with no questions?

Thanks
Paul

[NumberFive]

I agree, I think this is something that would greatly enhance the usability of GB-PVR. Sub has developed an excellent software that works with just about anything, but there'd be a great advantage in having a piece of standard hardware for new builds.

I've been thinking of building a proper HTPC along these lines:

- Asus Motherboard with onboard Geforce 7 / HDMI (circa £55)
- AMD Dual-Core 2.2GHz (~£35)
- Nova-T 500 (~£50)
- 250GB HDD (~£40)
- 1GB RAM (~£20)
- DVD-RW (~£20)
- Silverlight case (~£80)
- Windows XP Home OEM (~£50)

I'm probably forgetting something really obvious there, but I reckon a really good, nice looking, Blu-Ray + HD-DVD ready HTPC can be made for as little as £350.

Is anyone here making GB-PVR based HTPCs and selling them? What do you recommend?

[martint123]

Where is the sticky that says "buy this server, this capture, this video and install this image and presto! you have a GBPVR based HD PVR.

It will never be as easy as that. Just look at the post after yours - a Nova-t-500 tuner won't be any good to you in the US.

My server is nothing special, but has plenty of tuners and big disks. The video is rubbish - but I use client PC's and MVP's for viewing. OK, it's not HD yet but I guess that will separate Europe and the US even more, with different broadcast compression methods.

[NumberFive]

Stuff the US and their non-adherence to world standards.

GSM 1900 says it all!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwg0QzWVXto

[flyswatta]

From what I've seen, there isn't a "standard" way that people use GBPVR, so coming up with a list of "standard" hardware is difficult. For instance, you have headless servers, clients, US HD, non-US HD, analog via STB, analog OTA/Cable, etc. Besides, the list would constantly be in flux - as new features are released, and new hardware is available the hardware footprint changes.
Case in point, GBPVR,exe is being replaced with PVRX2.exe, which has a higher hardware requirement.

Is it possible to build a reliable (WAF) system for $400-$500

I would say, probably. It depends on what you are attempting to accomplish, and what country you are in, and how much time/energy do you want to put into it.

Can I build a system that can do HD in the US for $500? Oh yeah, but I'm buying pieces/parts from all over the place and building it myself.

If you just want to buy a pre-built computer and just put GBPVR on it and have it work - well, I'm sure that if you post the specs then someone will give you an opinion based on their experiences. You'll also need to let us know how you are planning on using it, ie. Just one tuner, two tuners, OTA, QAM, etc.

[paulg]

I totally understand that many people have different usage scenarios. However, in the larger market space of users, there will be a lot of common ground especially amongst the less technical users. I propose that there would be two configurations that are kept up-to-date with the latest release of GBPVR. Choices of video/Capture cards can be listed along with special instructions or install scripts that customize GBPVR to match the selected cards.

The first would be for the basic setup of an HTPC/HD where a single system serves to a single TV/monitor with or without the PC monitor.

The second would be a client server setup where the server has a head and all TVs are connected to Popcorn Network Media Tank(A100) via wired ethernet.

Servers would run Windows Vista. A web page would be created that walks someone through loading of all support software and a tool created to verify that everything is in place in including codec, muxes, etc. All the items that cause discussion on the support forum.


I understand that the geeks would have many opinions on variations to the "fixed" configurations but the noobs would have GBPVR up and running a lot faster. Once running they can join the ranks of the GBPVR explorers and extend/customize their install.

Anyway, this is all just a thought based on how hard and expensive it is to buy a PVR from a commercial provider.

[Deusxmachina]

Where is the sticky that says "buy this server, this capture, this video and install this image and presto! you have a GBPVR based HD PVR. Is it possible to build a reliable (WAF) system for $400-$500? Can we get a cook book together for those of us that just want to build it, not engineer it? Or did I miss the post that has all the answers with no questions?

Since HD specs, at least in the U.S., are pretty much set for a long time, I'd would say a lifetime subscription to HD Tivo for $400 isn't too bad if that's all someone wants. The problems are things like only two tuners, it doesn't play ALL media files like GBPVR does, it can't double as a regular computer if needed, etc.

It's possible to build a WAF GBPVR, I would say IF you are good at fine-tuning it yourself. Little stuff can crop up, computers can have problems, the damn TV Guide info suddenly stops working like mine recently did (grrr! ).... Price doesn't have a whole lot to do with WAF. The most expensive machine can still have problems. On the flipside, my brother used GBPVR for years with a pentium 233mhz I think it was. No HD on that, obviously.

I'd caution against serious discussions of a standardized "cookbook" approach. Someone tried/is trying that on another popular audio/video forum, trying to standardize an HTPC setup, but once they got past "typical recommended hardware" it turned into a mess. They are trying to do more than just recommend hardware, but even that got all messed up.

It's pretty easy to find "typical recommended hardware" depending on what you want to do. For HD, 1gb ram, at least the slowest Core2Duo or better, a hard drive big enough to store however much you want to store when figuring at 10gb/hour, a 7600GT or newer video card, etc. Lesser specs can work decently too, of course, but that kind of list is guaranteed to work unless the person wants to do some serious PVR multitasking or apply filters to the video when playing.

Paulg, you already lost me by recommending Windows Vista.

I'd say the biggest problem with GBPVR is the how-to's. Most assume people are rather computer literate. I wrote a dummies' guide to using command prompts in one of the TV Guide scraper threads, but I think that's where it still sits. When someone writes a how-to, they need to be more step-by-step "do this, then this, then press this," instead of speaking in generalities and expecting people to be as smart with a computer as they are.

I had a Computer Science major friend who was a help desk person for the faculty on his campus. He literally got calls from professors such as what should they check when their monitor says the keyboard isn't plugged in.