Spouse approval/client setup

[bisonfan]

ok, so I am looking at getting cable but buidling my own whole house DVR. Spouse is all for cable as we have had 2+ years of OTA but she won't approve of the DIY whole house DVR, I refuse to pay cable company $30 month for equipment lease. Biggest complaint with spouse is not 100% foolproof like a cable system would be. I admit my htpc has been down quite a bit in the last few months... upgrading to windows 10 was the biggest mistake I made...

So my question is:
a) How did you get your spouse to approve
b) how did you setup your system to be as reliable as can be (shooting for 99.99% reliable)
c) what did you use for equipment?
d) what is the best software (kodi, npvr,etc...) to use as the frontend?

I know it is a loaded question but just looking for thoughts...

I currently run an HDHR Dual with a PC that runs NPVR backend. I have a wdmycloud for nas. running windows 8.1 on current "server" pc...

Two PI's and a prime and I am set or am I?

[mikeh49]

I have found a Pi2 with OSMC/Kodi using Simple IPTV as a pretty good cable box replacer with the Prime tuner for live TV. However, it has not been spouse qualified, but seems pretty solid. I have trouble with the Kodi interface (non-intuitive for me) compared to NPVR although some time spent "tuning" the skin might solve this. Obviously this not a very useful response. The useful part, I guess, is the capability of the Pi2 with the hardware MPEG2 license and Kodi decoders to handle the TS stream from the Prime tuner.

If money was less of an object, and NPVR had all the features I needed (as opposed to Kodi which has all the features I don't need), I'd explore small, lower power boxes that would run Windows 7 with NPVR as clients. I think Dell has something about the size of a Mac mini, for example.

Tough requirement there with 99.99%. I see a cable box in your future with on demand, but commercials. We can't stand them anymore.

[cbgifford]

a) How did you get your spouse to approve?

Same issue, Tivo for cable or DIY, I gave her the option of paying for the Tivo setup, didn't want to do it, so out the goes Tivo. I do also have 99% reliabilty but it costs in new equipment and a UPS

[mikeh49]

Now if sub could "port" a NPVR client to something running on the Pi2 you'd have something.

[sub]

On RPi2 you should be able to use the XNEWA webclient, which will give you the normal/familiar NextPVR UI.

[mikeh49]

Good point, I'll give that a try sometime. I've never caught on to exactly how XNEWA really works with/integrates into Kodi. I need to do some studying.

[BrettB]

On RPi2 you should be able to use the XNEWA webclient, which will give you the normal/familiar NextPVR UI.

Yes, this is the setup that I use 99% of time.

[johnsonx42]

anyone seen this yet? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product
complete windows PC in a stick for $120. it has a second usb port so you can add an ethernet adapter if WiFi won't do. the only thing I don't get is why the included mini keyboard uses up a usb port for the wireless dongle when it could have been bluetooth.

[bisonfan]

anyone seen this yet? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product
complete windows PC in a stick for $120. it has a second usb port so you can add an ethernet adapter if WiFi won't do. the only thing I don't get is why the included mini keyboard uses up a usb port for the wireless dongle when it could have been bluetooth.

I have not seen that but I have see the wintel that runs windows 8.1 that is the size of a Roku box http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...29G2KT5892. Was thinking you should be able to port the npvr.db3 file from your server and run the NPVR client mode. The NPVR client is intuitive to me vs the kodi (though I haven't figured out to setup some of the "program" options in NPVR yet)

[johnsonx42]

oh, that one's nice, same hardware as the intel pc stick, but also has an ethernet port and more usb's. it should be listed with the "Mini PC Systems", not HTiB. the only downside I see is that it comes by slow boat from china...

I had previously been interested in the ECS Liva X pc, but they now seem way overpriced to get them with free Windows w/Bing, $210: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product