Thoughts on WMC 7 vs. NPVR

[tuckster]

Delete or ignore this post if it's blasphemous, but I have been spending some time with WMC 7 lately and there are some things I really like about it.

- Fast forward and rewind on recorded TV. It's nice to be able to fast forward as opposed to just skipping. This functioned well in GBPVR with the .dvr-ms format, but does not seem to work well with .ts recordings and is not part of the NMT extender experience.

- Movie finder. There's a Movies menu on WMC where it locates all the upcoming movies on the EPG. I'm sure there's a way to do this in NPVR or GBPVR, but I haven't figured it out yet. This feature seems really handy to me.

I would like to try the Xbox 360 as an extender to compare it to the PCH experience.

Unfortunately, the primary use of NPVR in our household is for watching recorded TV. We have had numerous issues with .ts file timelines, skipping, etc. that have just about ruined the WAF with GBPVR and NPVR. When the Mrs. saw how smoothly WMC moved through recordings she mentioned that would be nice...

To be fair, there are a number of things NPVR does better than WMC. For me, the major items are the following:

- Multi-stream recording on QAM. I would need two more tuners with WMC to be able to capture the same things that I record every Wednesday and Thursday night. This is the two-edged sword of .ts files. Cool multi-stream abilities saddled with unpredictable timelines and playback issues.

- Extender support. The PCH is a great addition to the entertainment center with its ability to play Blu-ray rips, DVD rips and interface with NPVR. From what I can gather the Xbox 360 is more limited in its abilities.

[pcostanza]

I have been using WMC since I started testing the cablecard tuner for MS in 2006. First with Vista (we worked hard on that and it still sucked) then with W7. There's alot to like but I, like many, don't like that it can't really be customized. It's great for cablecard and right now, that's the only reason I still use it. But, I record a great majority of programs still using NPVR and have had minor problems with it. I've had problems with WMC too.
I don't have an xbox (well, I bought it but now it's made it's way to my son's dorm) and I tested it as an extender for WMC and it was great. But, not great enough for me to buy one and use full time. My PCH works just fine for now.
When it comes down to it, I'm a believer that WMC will not be around forever but I'm feeling NPVR may.

[mvallevand]

- Fast forward and rewind on recorded TV. It's nice to be able to fast forward as opposed to just skipping. This functioned well in GBPVR with the .dvr-ms format, but does not seem to work well with .ts recordings and is not part of the NMT extender experience.

I had "normal" FF/RW on the NMT in SD but I didn't focus on it for HD because it didn't seem to fit the GBPVR or NPVR plans. I don't mind short skip now that I am used to it.

- Movie finder. There's a Movies menu on WMC where it locates all the upcoming movies on the EPG. I'm sure there's a way to do this in NPVR or GBPVR, but I haven't figured it out yet. This feature seems really handy to me.

My SearchLite plugin allows searching for movies if your EPG has star-ratings. You search by the number of rating stars, if you want them all search with just a . It's supposed to be on dot per star, but it looks broken right now 3 is the same as 4. You can also search with the number 1.0, 2.5, 4.0 as a filter (best with numeric keypad). After the search you can schedule it and download cover art if you want.

Martin

[tuckster]

Bringing this back from the dead. I have made some changes in my htpc life and I thought I would share here in case it helps someone else.

I bought a dell Zino (small form factor) that I have placed next to the TV. I ran only WMC 7 on it for the first couple of weeks just to see if the grass really was as green as it seemed. Is it? In a word, yes. My main beef with NPVR has been with .ts files. Some files seem to be corrupted or otherwise have problems which make skipping through files very difficult or sometimes impossible. WMC 7 so far hasn't had any problems even with larger files (NCAA basketball tournament coverage) and additionally can fast-forward while showing frames which is a nice feature (formerly availble on GBPVR, but not part of NPVR). In regards to time-shifting, WMC has been as good as hoped for. This scores major points in the WAF.

For a few weeks I was content with WMC 7. Then Thursday came with new episodes of TV shows on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox all at the same time. With NPVR I could have recorded NBC, ABC and CBS simultaneously with just one tuner and then picked up the Fox recording with a second tuner. With WMC I am forced to record the Fox programming and then choose one of the others. The two unrecorded shows would then be viewed online at a later date. For now it looks like this will be a tradeoff if I decide to stick with WMC 7.

[pcostanza]

When I first started testing MC Vista for Microsoft in 2006 (mostly with cablecards) this was actually on the MC teams radar but it seems to have fallen off the cart. I doubt you'll see multirecord as I believe, for the most part, the Media Center team has been eliminated.
If you still don't want to use NPVR (though I personally think you'd be missing out) you can grab a USB tuner pretty cheap.

[stustunz]

Why not figure out where the error is in your recordings
No multirecord would suck
As for fast forward and some search shit that you can't really use because now you don't have enough tuners I'm really scratching my head

[tuckster]

I am going to continue to play around with NPVR on the Zino. I was previously using NPVR on a XP machine backend with a NMT device as the front end. I want to see if the tv viewing experience is very different using a combined frontend/backend machine.

I'm sure there is more that I can do to try to fix bad .ts recordings in NPVR, but at the same time I am not interested in spending a lot of time on it if I can just use WMC 7 and be done with it. I am a tinkerer only to a point. 90% of our htpc use is for recorded TV. I'd also say that most of the recordings we watch are more than 30 minutes long (which in my experience is where the problems begin with timeline issues on .ts files).

[mvallevand]

I think 7MC is a great solution for people who have one machine and maybe an xbox and want more than WinTV or the software that comes with their capture cards. It is also perfect for those that don't want to do work to get EPG data or want to replace an STB with a Ceton styled CableCard. I would tell my father to use 7MC before NPVR (and try to support with Remote desktop). Rethinking these I'd probably just suggest the cable STB or TiVo, there is no real cost saving to 7MC solutions.

Several things can change the NPVR experience as it relates to GBPVR

- XP vs Win7, without any doubt Win7 is a better media centre platform
- GB-PVR vs NPVR New Timing.Info provides more accurate streaming especially on the NMT
- 2.0.3 vs NPVR betas many improvements in recording and skipping reliability on the NMT
- NMT's client ~$110 vs minimum $300 for the really basic Zino with two or three clients, it gets expensive.
- A low end Zino or Atom is not a great base for a server, you can get more power for less money with a traditional box, especially if you want TB's of storage.

Martin

[stustunz]

The skip thing has been fixed for longer recordings on the pc at least