Brand new installation - critique my plan please?

[siredgar]

I am currently using BeyondTV 4 with a Hauppauge HVR-1600, s-video/analog audio connection. For various obvious reasons it's time to upgrade.

My needs are simple. I just want to capture programming from my Dish Network satellite receiver, in as high a quality as I can get. I want to use the EPG to schedule recordings. I am located in Atlanta, Georgia USA.

I have a fairly beefy Windows 7 64-bit server with multiple terabytes of drive space. I have ordered a Hauppauge Colossus 2 video capture card and an HDMI splitter that will purportedly strip HDCP. I will purchase a membership with Schedules Direct for my EPG source. My Dish receiver has both HDMI and component out, should my HDMI plans fall through.

Any holes in my plan? Any alternative recommendations? I considered the Rocket but was leery that recent firmware updates might break the HDCP stripping and would prefer an internal solution anyway. Suggestions/advice gratefully accepted, particularly from anyone with prior experience with Beyond TV.

Thank you!

[live4ever]

You'll need to decide on how to change channels. IR blaster I find unreliable sometimes - there is a UPNP way to do it (developed for MythTV) that you could maybe work with to adapt it for Windows.

https://github.com/jheizer/UPnPChannelChanger

[siredgar]

Thanks! I am using the IR blaster with the 1600/BeyondTV, and also find it to be somewhat unreliable at times.

[ejb]

I made the move over from BTV4 several months ago and have enjoyed NPVR greatly. I have 2 HVR-1600s that I use for OTA and they work flawlessly. I use a HDPVR2 connected to a Comcast box for my cable stations (through the component interface). I use the Hauppauge IR blaster to tune the STB and it works about 99.99% of the time. It was very easy to configure in NPVR - and the stability of the HDPVR2 with NPVR is outstanding. I use Schedules Direct for my EPG (well worth the small expense) and it works very well.

The only thing I feel that is slightly lacking from BTV4 is the search capabilities - if I need to do a filtered search I keep a copy of BTV4 running just to do searches. Then I just schedule them in NPVR. Works for me since most of my filtered searches are just looking for movies on cable.

ejb

[JavaWiz]

The only thing I feel that is slightly lacking from BTV4 is the search capabilities - if I need to do a filtered search I keep a copy of BTV4 running just to do searches. Then I just schedule them in NPVR. Works for me since most of my filtered searches are just looking for movies on cable.

ejb

Have you looked at the SearchLite plugin? It's more robust than the built-in search. I think the most current install can be found here.

[cbgifford]

Have you looked at the SearchLite plugin? It's more robust than the built-in search.

Speaking as an old BTV user, search lite far out does BTV, especially with it's genre support

[ejb]

You are all correct about SearchLite. Thanks for the recommendation - it works great, especially like the genre support. Now I have completely closed the BTV4 shop with NPVR.