Thinking of switching from Topfield 5800 to HTPC running NextPVR

[HydeTheDarkerSide]

Sorry, really will get around to this project one day. Life is just getting in the way ATM ;-)

Hmm, PCTV stuff looks interesting. I'm assuming this works with Next PVR? and you don't necessarily need to run the software that comes with it?

At only £50 from a couple of outlets this looks like a good cheap way of trialling Next PVR on my laptop before going the HTPC route.

[HydeTheDarkerSide]

Bought a PCTV DVB-T2 292e. Currently just running the included software and Microsoft Media Centre on my laptop with it connected to it's own aerial. Have to say reception is a little flaky given I'm just 11 miles line of sight away from the Tx.

Have also installed it's software to my Windows Home Server but have yet to plug in the USB tuner, so don't know if I'll get any hardware performance issues from the server but there I can at least connect the USB tuner to a roof aerial.

More testing to go ;-)

[ACTCMS]

I've got one of these - works fine in NPVR with a roof aerial.

ISTR it can be a it power hungry - some folks reported that they needed to attach it to a powered USB hub to get good performance. It works fine for me running through a standard USB port on my tower NPVR server though...

Alex

[HydeTheDarkerSide]

Sorry, mislead you on the performance bit. The server is fine with powdered USB ports. It's the processor and ram for HD recording. The specs for the USB tuner are a little higher than those of my server. The server has 1gb ram and an Atom 230 CPU.

[martint123]

I have one connected to one of the HP microservers that were available with HP cashback (got mine for £75).
For me it definitely needs powering via a powered hub when receiving T2 channels - they are power-hungry beasts. Before that I got intermittent lockups of the tuner and pixelated video.

[HydeTheDarkerSide]

Will post back soon with how it's going. Last night I also installed NPVR on the server. Tonight, if I have time I'll perform the channel search. I'm pretty confident I'll not have USB power issues as I used to power an 8 port mobile Ethernet hub off it on one port whilst collecting another to an external USB hard drive and the Toppy.

[Graham]

It's the processor and ram for HD recording. The specs for the USB tuner are a little higher than those of my server.

Is the system specified for the tuner a system that can handle playback as well as recording? Recording with NextPVR requires negligible system resources. Playback requires a little more oomph, mostly in the graphics adapter and especially for HD. That said, almost any machine made in the last five years or more should have enough performance even for HD.

If you are using a machine just for recording and another for playback then you could probably get by using just about anything as the recording server.

[HydeTheDarkerSide]

The server *might* get used for playback. I say might because it only has a basic vga board and no sound card. But, if my connected Sony Bravia TV can play the native .ts recording then it'll just be a case of streaming it off the server. So I'll only be using NPVR for epg and series record, not the actual playback.

When funds permit, then I'll go the full blown htpc route. This setup just allows me to play on the cheap.

[Graham]

, if my connected Sony Bravia TV can play the native .ts recording then it'll just be a case of streaming it off the server.

I don't know of any NextPVR client software for the Sony TV. I am guessing that all of the playback processing will be done on the computer with the TV acting purely as a monitor. I am not sure how you will get audio in this setup. How is the TV connected to the computer?

[HydeTheDarkerSide]

Don't need a client for the TV. It's connected via Ethernet and DLNA. So the TV itself can play back standard media file formats. I'm hoping that .ts when renamed to say .mpg or .mpeg then the TV will just allow me to navigate to the server share and play the recording.

I do also have a PS3 connected to the same server and the TV, both Ethernet and HDMI.