Advice for a setup

[treads6464]

You all can read my stats below on what i currently have running in my home. I recently invited over a coworker who had some computer questions about networking and such. I showed him my pvrs and he was amazed. I also showed him the wiki for gbpvr and after much talking, he has come to want to build a system for his house. While I have quite a setup, this guy wants to go all out. However, there are some roadblocks that I need help and advice with from the awesome users and developers here.

Here are the roadblocks:
-He has one machine that he can upgrade/change to a server. He has 4 tvs he wants to connect as clients. What does he need hardware wise to support 4 clients and 6 tuners.

-His house is completely finished and all 4 clients need to be wireless if possible. What is the best option to accomplish this? Is live TV even an option doing this? I am not sure for wireless what would be viable/better an MVP or the new Popcorn hour?

-He will be using Dish network, I currently use cable, aside from the guide, is there anything else different he needs to be aware of?

-If he does get HD boxes from the dish company, what tuner cards will I need to accept the signals?

Any other advice users and/or sub can provide would be excellent. Just to note, the first thing I told him when I started talking about gbpvr was how excellent the people are on this forum and how patient both the forum members and Sub are when helping to fix issues. I appreciate any advice you people can offer, i want to give my friend the best setup he can get.

[Deusxmachina]

-His house is completely finished and all 4 clients need to be wireless if possible. What is the best option to accomplish this? Is live TV even an option doing this? I am not sure for wireless what would be viable/better an MVP or the new Popcorn hour?

I thought it was established that no GBPVR client can do live TV, even if they're PCs.

[flyswatta]

Watch out on the dish network dual tuners - the second tuner can only work with a UHF remote - in other words, no IR blasting. About all you can do with 'TV2' is to manually set timers - this works well if you are doing series recordings, but pretty useless for live tv over GBPVR.

I have an MVP doing SD live TV but it is wired. Not sure if wireless would work, especially with 4 clients.

[treads6464]

ok, keep the advice coming peoples!

My friend likes HD, not just the OTA of course, so let's assume he gets a STB for each of his 4 tvs from the dish company. If he were to use a second input on his tv for a wireless MVP would he:

1.be able to use the MVPs to schedule recordings on a centralized server with multiple tuners?

2.be able to watch live tv via the provided STB but switch inputs to view recorded media, view pics, and listen to music thru the wireless MVP client?

3.be able to record the HD channels on the server coming from an output off a STB?

If the answer to all these is a yes, this might be the way for him to go. If any of them are an outright no, please give me some ideas.

As always, i very much appreciate the help people provide here!

[flyswatta]

1. Yes

2. Maybe/yes/yes - can't view HD over MVP - it's SD only. You'd have to use the Popcorn Hour client for HD. (there are some threads around here regarding this device)

3. I could be wrong on this, but I believe there is only one device that will record HD from the STB - that's the Hauppauge HD-PVR (here's a discussion thread on it http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=34615).

Otherwise, you'd have SD (STB downconverts it and sends it out the composite/s-video port).

This is gonna be an expensive system, you might find out what his budget is first

[flyswatta]

Actually, now that you mention it, I had a friend that wanted something similar - he had 4 separate Dish receivers and wanted to be able to watch any of the receivers on any of his 4 tv's. (and of course be able to record). This was a couple of years ago, so it was SD only - we figured out the cost was going to be too much and he lost interest. I still think it would have been fun to do, though.

Your friends name wouldn't be "Dave", would it?

[treads6464]

No, it's not Dave. Dish will give him 4 STB for free with his monthly package, the spendy part will be upgrading the server, the tuner cards, and the client hardware. I plan on looking immediately after I post this....but I am guessing that the popcord hour doesn't come in a wireless flavor? Tanks for the advice Flyswatta! If you have anymore it is much appreciated.

[mvallevand]

The Popcorn hour firmware now supports 802.11n USB wireless. They aren't selling the branded part yet, but some users have had luck with generic models based on the same chipset.

That being said, I believe many people are going to be disappointed with HD over wireless even at 802.11n.

Martin

[martint123]

That being said, I believe many people are going to be disappointed with HD over wireless even at 802.11n.

Martin

I don't think there would be a cat in hells chance of it working with four wireless clients, especially if the clients can't hear each other to know when the channel is clear to send.

[stustunz]

changing channels on four set top boxes will be interesting
i know you can do 2 with a mce blaster but im not sure you can get 2 times mce blasters to give you 4
have a look at server suite similar to HIP

wireless and HD in the same sentence you are asking for trouble but worth a try i guess if you have no choice
does he have a phone line in each room
or you could try those power network things that plug into a power point