Yesterday I purchased a Home Theatre PC to supplement my existing DirectTV hardware—although I hope to ditch cable TV/satellite providers all together sometime in the future. What I’m interested in knowing is what kind of setup you guys prefer.
I like the ps3 for media streaming (or playing it off the internal drive which can be upgraded with any laptop drive, think u can get a 500gig one?) and watching dvds and blurays. I just watch tv using the tuner in my tv, there really isn’t anything so interesting that I would want to record it, I download most of the tv shows from overseas I watch.
I have a dual HD tuner in my PC in my study running Windows Media Centre linked to the Xbox 360 in the lounge. Hardly watch any live TV any more. Havn’t bought any Bluray disks as they are way too expensive but I have about 20 of the now defunct HD DVD (mostly bought during the clearances) which I can play via the Xbox. It’s been a while since I watched something off a physical disk.
As is write this i’m watching the Simpsons on a win 7 RC HTPC with dual tuners which is linked to the Xbox 360, But i cannot use it on 360 properly it forces the xbox to 480p. Hopefully they fix that.
I use a WDTV running the WDLXTV unofficial firmware and have NFS shares setup on both my windows and mac pc’s sharing media on the network.
The WDTV supports a wide variety of formats, turns on/off quite quickly and and with a very small amount of configuring can have usb to ethernet support to access my NFS/CIFS/SAMBA shares on the network.
I find its user interface mediocre but I like it best so far. It’s basic and simple and that’s all I need. I’ve tried WMP11 sharing to my PS3 and Xbox360 and disliked both.
I’ve used Vista MC and XP MC and found that they looked nice but weren’t that great. I then went down the path of Xbox Media Center on both Windows/Ubuntu….not bad loved the data scraping but time consuming setting up over 500 plus movies if the naming of the files isn’t quite right.
Mythbuntu which is a Ubuntu+MythTV distro was really good for my TVTuner but I get bad reception where I live so a set top box will have to suffice.
It was an intersting journey…definitely a lot of wasted time but ended up settling with something simple in the end.
I have no PVR capability only viewing and my WDLXTV makes downloading and watching tv episodes etc a 2 sec job with no crash/remote/sleepWake issues you’d get with a PC….and it sure as hell isn’t as noisy as a PC or Xbox360…infact it’s passively cooled.
If you’re a a unix/linux fan you can go to town with the WDLXTV and ssh/telnet to it’s OS and install a Torrent downloader/AMP stack and a torrent management site on your HTTP server.
Essentially you can put a USB hdd to your WDTV and download all your movies with the WDLXTV torrent browser….anywhere there’s internet. Quite handy but I will admit it DOES require some basic level of unix knowledge.
Once it’s set up and running it’s REALLY cool but a bit overkill…I tested out the torrent downloading on the WDLXTV but I found getting nfs shares were enough for my needs. Look up “b-rad wdlxtv” for downloads and guides on this.
I have an apple TV with boxee that handles my avi files on my pc (i could of gotten a mac mini, but i already have a 360), the 360 for any files burnt onto a disc, a set top box for the ocasional times i watch normal tv (thinking of hooking up a slingbox when they hit our shores) and a cheapo player for thr r1 discs i have. only thing im missing is bluray, and its not essential for the time being…
A Set-Top box is the way to go. I love my Original Xbox with the XBMC. Add things like PlayOn and Hulu (which there is a plugin for) then you have the ultimate box. Just need to have HDMI built in and it would do it all. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are great but they are just so restricted. Someone just needs to build a hardware platform that is cheap that will load XBMC and have HDMI out and is really small for a media cabinet and life will be complete.
HTPC is the go once you setup your guide and a commercial skipping program there is nothing better. Record your shows then play them back it automatically skips the ads. Love it!
Yesterday I purchased a Home Theatre PC to supplement my existing DirectTV hardware—although I hope to ditch cable TV/satellite providers all together sometime in the future. What I’m interested in knowing is what kind of setup you guys prefer.
matt
May 28, 2009 at 9:29 AM
I like the ps3 for media streaming (or playing it off the internal drive which can be upgraded with any laptop drive, think u can get a 500gig one?) and watching dvds and blurays. I just watch tv using the tuner in my tv, there really isn’t anything so interesting that I would want to record it, I download most of the tv shows from overseas I watch.
Report PermalinkRed T-Rex
May 28, 2009 at 2:58 PM
I have a dual HD tuner in my PC in my study running Windows Media Centre linked to the Xbox 360 in the lounge. Hardly watch any live TV any more. Havn’t bought any Bluray disks as they are way too expensive but I have about 20 of the now defunct HD DVD (mostly bought during the clearances) which I can play via the Xbox. It’s been a while since I watched something off a physical disk.
Report PermalinkJames
May 28, 2009 at 3:31 PM
As is write this i’m watching the Simpsons on a win 7 RC HTPC with dual tuners which is linked to the Xbox 360, But i cannot use it on 360 properly it forces the xbox to 480p. Hopefully they fix that.
Report PermalinkStephen
May 28, 2009 at 5:07 PM
I use a WDTV running the WDLXTV unofficial firmware and have NFS shares setup on both my windows and mac pc’s sharing media on the network.
The WDTV supports a wide variety of formats, turns on/off quite quickly and and with a very small amount of configuring can have usb to ethernet support to access my NFS/CIFS/SAMBA shares on the network.
I find its user interface mediocre but I like it best so far. It’s basic and simple and that’s all I need. I’ve tried WMP11 sharing to my PS3 and Xbox360 and disliked both.
I’ve used Vista MC and XP MC and found that they looked nice but weren’t that great. I then went down the path of Xbox Media Center on both Windows/Ubuntu….not bad loved the data scraping but time consuming setting up over 500 plus movies if the naming of the files isn’t quite right.
Mythbuntu which is a Ubuntu+MythTV distro was really good for my TVTuner but I get bad reception where I live so a set top box will have to suffice.
It was an intersting journey…definitely a lot of wasted time but ended up settling with something simple in the end.
I have no PVR capability only viewing and my WDLXTV makes downloading and watching tv episodes etc a 2 sec job with no crash/remote/sleepWake issues you’d get with a PC….and it sure as hell isn’t as noisy as a PC or Xbox360…infact it’s passively cooled.
If you’re a a unix/linux fan you can go to town with the WDLXTV and ssh/telnet to it’s OS and install a Torrent downloader/AMP stack and a torrent management site on your HTTP server.
Essentially you can put a USB hdd to your WDTV and download all your movies with the WDLXTV torrent browser….anywhere there’s internet. Quite handy but I will admit it DOES require some basic level of unix knowledge.
Once it’s set up and running it’s REALLY cool but a bit overkill…I tested out the torrent downloading on the WDLXTV but I found getting nfs shares were enough for my needs. Look up “b-rad wdlxtv” for downloads and guides on this.
Regards,
Steve.
Report PermalinkShane
May 28, 2009 at 5:24 PM
Apple TV, using XBMC running off a dedicated wired NAS drive.
Apple Mini for TV recording (and some play back using XBMC)
Like to see how the new mini’s hold up though as the ATV is a little limited over the network.
Report PermalinkTerry OFee
May 28, 2009 at 6:34 PM
I have an apple TV with boxee that handles my avi files on my pc (i could of gotten a mac mini, but i already have a 360), the 360 for any files burnt onto a disc, a set top box for the ocasional times i watch normal tv (thinking of hooking up a slingbox when they hit our shores) and a cheapo player for thr r1 discs i have. only thing im missing is bluray, and its not essential for the time being…
Report PermalinkThe Fuzz
May 28, 2009 at 11:05 PM
A Set-Top box is the way to go. I love my Original Xbox with the XBMC. Add things like PlayOn and Hulu (which there is a plugin for) then you have the ultimate box. Just need to have HDMI built in and it would do it all. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are great but they are just so restricted. Someone just needs to build a hardware platform that is cheap that will load XBMC and have HDMI out and is really small for a media cabinet and life will be complete.
The Fuzz
Report Permalinkhttp://www.thefuzznetwork.com
Ryan
May 29, 2009 at 7:55 AM
HTPC is the go once you setup your guide and a commercial skipping program there is nothing better. Record your shows then play them back it automatically skips the ads. Love it!
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