How is your home mediacenter setup?

[jpete1019]

Here is my scenario. I'm currently operating two computers, one for my main computing and what not, and then I have another one that is for the GBPVR Server/Home Server system. I have been thinking lately that I may get rid of my home server system, and put the two cards in the main computer and have everything slinged via MVP's or Popcorn or whatever to my bedroom and the basement home theater. I'm not looking for this to replace the basement home theater setup, but just another easy way for me to access media on my home theater.

My question is how does everyone here have they're home media center setup? Do you think I would be making a regretable mistake getting rid of the home server computer, and having only one computer doing all the work? (It has more than enough power with some big upgrades recently...) What do you all think?

[jpete1019]

btw...whole house has wired and wireless running around it.

[HarryH3]

I do all recording and feed video to 2 MVP's from the PC in my sig. It's also my main PC for web browsing, email, etc. All hardwired, 100Mbit Ethernet. It's been working great for over a year.

[stu8080]

Just from personal preference i would keep two separate set-up's. Media Centres are a bit sensitive, lots of things automated and i dont want it rebooting very often, if at all.
The main PC gets used by my girlfriend and she may install things that clog up the system or cause conflicts. Having a separate setup means i can set it up just as i like it and keep it that way, i dont worry about the main PC, at worst i might need a reinstal of Windows and MS office and a handful of other things.

[Deusxmachina]

Depends how much you use the main computer. If you use it for heavy-duty things like games or fairly serious video encoding or editing or something, no way would I rely on it to record and play all my TV, too. Plus, never hurts to have another computer around for if the other one breaks.

You'd need an MVP to replace the computer anyway, and MVPs currently don't do HD, so if you want to try it I'd say put the one computer in the basement in place of an MVP for now.

My HTPC needs an occasional reboot for various reasons, and I'd get annoyed real quick if I had to reboot my main computer that much. I get annoyed any time I have to reboot the main one, actually.

[martint123]

I used to run it all on my main machine with MVP's for the TV's and the odd PC client.

When I upgraded, I decided to retire my old machine to be a dedicated gbpvr server.
It seem to run a lot better now that it doesn't get all sorts of odd software installed, uninstalled, garbage left behind etc.

[agh!]

I favour keeping a dedicated media/GBPVR and file server and using other PC's and MediaMVP/PCH as clients.
I would not want to not reboot my main workstation PC just because GB-PVR is in the middle of a recording.

[jpete1019]

Yea, here's the deal... My wife doesn't use my main PC, I never reboot my main PC, I don't play any games on my PC and I feel like a d*ck wasting all this energy on another PC that I may or may not need to keep. I really haven't had time to tinker around with GBPVR lately due to work, and I feel once I get my basement done (I'm working on it currently) I may change my mind....

I'm going to sit on it for awhile just to think about it. I don't want to make any big decisions without thinking about it first. I would say that my machine could easily take two Tuner cards running on the main PC that I built.

[Anthony]

I have one computer in my home office with two Hauppauge HVR-1600 tuner cards. I can record two digital stations (SD or HD) and two analog stations at the same time (a total of four shows recording at once). The shows get saved to my hard drive, and recording actually uses a very small percentage of the processor time.

I have a TViX M-4000P in my living room that connects to my main office computer via a wired home network. Though the M-4000P supports a hard drive, I do not have one installed. I simply use it to stream media from the hard drive in my computer.

The TViX takes care of all the playback processing, so watching a show takes very little effort for my computer either. The TViX netshare utility runs in the background on the PC, serving material to the M-4000P in my livingroom.

I can be recording four shows, while watching a prerecorded show in the livingroom, and my wife can be using the computer at the same time. It all works very smoothly.

Having a single computer has several advantages.

1. Any upgrades (processor, RAM, hard drive, etc.) benefits both computing and TV operations.

2. I only have one computer system to maintain!

3. I don't have a computer taking up space, making noise, and using power in the living room.

4. I don't have to fiddle with awkward setups to get a remote control working.

The only real disadvantage is if I need to reboot my computer while a show is recording. In practice, this is rarely a problem. I don't record many shows during the day when I'm computing, so I can reboot easily. At night I'm usually not computing, or am just doing basic stuff, so there's usually no need to reboot.

I use GBPVR to record my TV shows, then have a batch file that runs each evening at 11pm to call Comskip and VideoRedo to cut the commercials out of the shows I have recorded that day. That way it doesn't interupt my daytime computing or evening TV viewing/recording. I have PerfectDisk defragment my hard drives every night between 2am and 6am.

Of course, the one advantage of multiple PC's is if one fails. Right now if my main PC goes down, I lose computing and TV abilities at the same time. But that has only happened once or twice in the last couple of years.

Anthony

[zehd]

Yea, here's the deal... My wife doesn't use my main PC, I never reboot my main PC, I don't play any games on my PC and I feel like a d*ck wasting all this energy on another PC that I may or may not need to keep. I really haven't had time to tinker around with GBPVR lately due to work, and I feel once I get my basement done (I'm working on it currently) I may change my mind....

I'm going to sit on it for awhile just to think about it. I don't want to make any big decisions without thinking about it first. I would say that my machine could easily take two Tuner cards running on the main PC that I built.

I had two going for a long time. A slightly weaker machine running as a server and a better one for Developement. Then I had to consolidate. I put my tuners in my better machine and triued not to mess with the computer when Shows were recording...

Recently I rebuilt my server, and it's very basic windows, GB-PVR and two analog tuners. When I wathc my TV I use either MVP or PC Client from the dev machine. Always had a bit of stutter on the PC client until I discovered 'Full Screen Exclusive' Now it's working great, and I don't miss shows because the server isn't bothered my my playing.

Just wanted to say that it can go both ways. If you really don't distrurb the computer very much (processor intensive stuff, or rebooting) you should be fine with using it as a server...