Noob trying to get this right the first time

[ConXtionS]

Hi Guys

Im Jim from Indiana....

I am very interested in this project so.....

I have wiped my computer...

Installed XP service pack 3

I have read and download all of the "system requirements" although some like media player 11 are newer versions....

I have downloaded every new driver for my current PC that I can think of...

I have the Haupp WinTV-HVR-1600 installed (but I have not installed any drivers for it yet because I didnt know if I should)...

Am I ready to load all of this up??? or is there something I am missing....

Also this is not really a GBP issue however since I have your attention I might as well ask.... Since I have my computer to this point.. Is there anyway I can back it up to a dvd or something so if I screw this up I wont spend hours getting everything back????

THanks in advance

Hope I can be helpful in this project some day...

Jim

[morser]

Hi Jim,
I also have a 1600 card. I successfully built our families main TV last year to record Over the Air HD and I'm currently working on building a new PC to take over the job. The previous one barely had the processing power to do it and was more like a proof of concept that grew into the production machine.I think it's in my signature (at the time of this writing)

If you want to see my growing pains search the username morser and you'll see all the obstacles I encountered.

This forum helped me greatly as there are a lot of smart people here. Let me offer you some help along the way as a payback to this forum for the help.

Install the 1600 drivers and get the Win TV application working just to verify it's working. Install the GBPVR application paying attention to it's prerequisites shown here: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=43362 .

I need to transfer my 1600 card to the new PC and get the remote working once again. I also have 3 other 950 USB Tuner sticks to record multiple channels. So basically I am starting over with a new machine.

Make sure you read the Wiki, the whole thing. even if it doesn't make sense now, you'll be referencing it later.

What type of computer do you have? Videocard type, processor, motherboard if possible etc.

[ConXtionS]

Hi Sir

I have been reading and reading and with help it is running now. I have not tested all the features yet, but the basic box shows tv for at least 20 minutes at a time.

My box is underpowered as well, doing the same proff of concept thing as you I suppose. Mine when complete will be put out at our camp ground and hooked up to an over the air antenna. I doubt I will use more than 2 1600 cards but I bet you didnt think you would need many cards either.

We live in RUAL Indiana and high speed internet is not exactly common yet. Our camp ground has NO internet (currently I am trying to get a couple wiresless companys to do some surveys) and our camp site has terrible tv reception.

The rest of how I got here is a long story... but to make is short, I need to build a box to down load the tv... then hopefully the same box will serve it back out WIRELESSLY to laptops and ipod touches.... Its not the perfect solution, but for those of us that actually want a few choices this will work.

Currently I am running an old gigabyte 7vm series mother board with an amd sempron 2800 Plus processor. 768 meg of ram, an old geforce 2 card and the 1600 card.

I have not had alot of time to play with this to tell you if it is slow or fast. So far it seems like I turn it on, the tv play, channels switch.... Over night I will record some things and work on getting those files changed in to different formats.

oh yeah.. I have 500 gig hard drive.

If there is more information I can give please just let me know..

Nice to meet you...

Jim

[srhutch]

I use Clonzilla which is a free app run from a bootable CD http://www.clonezilla.org/ to back my system up over the network to a windows based PC using the Samba option.

I only backup the application partition though not the recordings for obvious reasons

[ConXtionS]

Wow clone zilla looks neat.

Please understand that I dont want to go into a whole lot of depth in my personal life, so until I know you guys better can you please just accept that I am stupid and that sometimes I have difficulty picking up concepts .... So would you mind helping me a little more?

Currently on my network is this thrown together computer I am testing things on, and down stairs is my nice puter with the dvd burner, real ram and vista.

What clonezilla should I use? Should I send the CLONE to my vista machine and burn the back up dvd there???

Thanks in advance

Jim

[srhutch]

personally I just burn the image to my other PC over the network, no need to burn DVD as if you wish to restore you can pull it back from that PC over the network using the bootable Clonezilla CD.

It's worth making an image before you do any major changes as well just incase it goes wrong.

[ConXtionS]

Very cool

thank you sir

[morser]

regarding your ambition to stream the video to laptops and iPod Touches wirelessly, the video will probably be pretty large, but you could play with the compression tab in the config, or there is a plugin that will allow you to stream the video using VLC on both sides which allows you to reduce the quality of the stream to compensate for the bandwidth available. I got this to work once but don't use it now. That would be good for the laptops, not the Touches.