Antec Veris Max

The case arrived and I moved the motherboard and other bits from my P4 PC over. Even though it has been designed for clean installation, I still managed to have wires and cables going everywhere. I must try harder and get some longer and neater cables for the job. Here is a picture of the TiVo sitting on top of the beast of the case:



I have not powered on the PC yet, and have not played with the remote.

BTW way, the price for this box on Play.com has now gone up - to £155! The case can be found at the old price at Lambdatek @ £140 plus delivery. I problem with Play.com was the delivery - they have to delivery it to your Credit card address, but can't tell you when (even a date, let alone an afternoon or morning time!)

The next generation PVR

The main reason for building a Freesat and Freeview PVR is to combine both sets of broadcast channels onto one box. Of course I would rather purchase a CE box to do this, but at the moment there is none on the market.

This has lead me to think about the next generation PVR, and its features. Hopefully, this HTPC will turn out to be able to fulfill all of the specification, but to see and produce some kind of checklist, I am going to put down some below.

Specification for next generation PVR
1. Quad tuner (two DVB-S2 and two DVB-T2).
2. HDMI, optical, CI, DiSEqC, and low power consumption.
3. At least 1Tb of internal storage. Blu-ray recordable media.
4. Networking, wireless, and USB connections.
5. Unified EPG; data from Freesat+, Freeview+, and internet.
6. Enhanced autopadding functions (works with AR/AT).
7. Enhanced and smart viewing and recording confict resolutions (using +1 and regional channels across both Freeview + Freesat channels).
8. EPG browsing and timer scheduling from the internet.
9. TV/Radio streaming over LAN and wireless.
10. Recording and archiving to Blu-ray discs.
11. Full editing, transcoding functions.
12. Smart storage management, with auto-deletion rules, and space saving channel choices (part of 7).
13. Video on demand facilities, such as iPlayer, and other paid services.
14. TiVo suggestions and of course Series recording, etc.

Any others?

A good case

Well, it is not as though I've made major progress on this project, but just small ones that will affect it.

Firstly, I have been upgrading my P4 PC with working memory, and a CPU fan to make it quieter. I've also being installing and re-installing MediaPortal and having a play with that - finding out about how it handles aspect ratios, etc.

Secondly, I've been trying to get the TiVo box going. After finding out about what it can do (for me), I finally had time to plug it in for a mess about. Unfortunately, first thing that happened was an error screen! (See this screenshot.) Apparenty, this error is due to an old TiVo OS, so it means I have to get the latest image and install it to get the TiVo box working. I will keep on at this, although, I think it might be a waste of time since the box does not have a lifetime EPG subscription and I'm not going to pay £10 a month to get the EPG data.

Finally, I've ordered my HTPC case: the Antec Veris Max case. I had been waiting for the right time, and was going to order from eBuyer, but the price had gone up. It was £140, but now it eBuyer is retailing it at £175! Fortunately, I found Play.com stocks this case, and it was still at £140. It is ordered now and should be on its way. I hope it turns out to be a good investment...

TiVo: an alternative?

Well, I just got a Series 1 UK TiVo box off a colleague. After having an idea that a TiVo might fullfil my Freesat and Freeview recording combo needs, I began looking more into this.

The idea is to connect a Freeview and a Freesat STB to the TiVo and by upgrading the hard disk to something a bit bigger, say 1TB, then it might just be able to satisfy my needs. First of all, I needed some questions answered:

1. Does TiVo provide a Freesat EPG as well as a Freeview EPG?
2. Can TiVo use a mixture of EPGs?
3. Can it control more than one STB? Can it control specific STB for specific programme/series recording?
4. Can the HDD be upgraded to one with a 1TB in size?
5. Can I use the EPG facilities if I don't have a life-time subscription? Can I use an alternative EPG source, if not?

Some questions were posted here on AVForums, and I am about to post on the TiVo forums to ask for more help. You can read this thread here. Or maybe I ought to go ahead, build my HTPC and wait for Nero 9 LiquidTV | TiVo PC media center software to come out in the UK?

What do you all think..? Is it possible to use 9 year old TiVo box to solve a 2009 problem? I can see the immediate downside already - that is, recordings will be analogue. But the immediate upside, is the great TiVo facilities that I'll be gaining...

Links to forums

Well, I just thought I'd post - just to say I'm not making any progress due to lack of 'play time', but I havent given up on this project yet. I've ordered a new CPU fan for my P4, however, and am waiting for that to arrive. The current fan is a little noisy and since the P4 PC is sitting on my desk next to my ear - something has to be done!

<- I would like to point out the side menu and especially the links to the forums. If you have any other suggestions of forums to add to the list, please leave a comment.

I'm going to link online component shops where you can buy parts for such a HTPC build.

Software: MediaPortal

As you know, after putting Mythbuntu to one side (because it couldn't install drivers for my Realtek NIC), I am using MediaPortal to test the P4 PC setup. So far this media software has performed very well with regards to detecting my devices (and especially the Pinnacle 7010iX TV tuner).

Have a read of this post on the MediaPortal forums, of one guy's experience with VMC and MediaPortal. Again MediaPortal wins on the grounds that the devices simply, are detected and work...

Software

Which HTPC or Media Center software? Candidates are:

• MythTV: website here
  
• MCE: website here
  
• VMC: website here
  
• MediaPortal: website here
  
• LinuxMCE: website here
  
• DVBViever: website here
  
• GB-PVR: website here
  
• Sage TV: website here
  

Can you suggest any other? Am I going to use just free software, or pay Micro$oft, et al? Which application will support my hardware? Which is best?

Take Three Cases

So my current P4 PC is in a crappy tower case and to get it looking like a HTPC, I need a good looking media case. This would help the PC perform better too ;)

So I have 3 options (jzee, of DS, has provided links to the reviews):

1. Cheap Aplus case @ £50: Aplus Black Media Center Case (no review but specs & pics)
2. Popular Antec Max case @ £130: Antec Fusion MAX VERIS Black Case (review here)
3. Premium Silverstone case @ £140: Silverstone LC16B-MR Black Case (review here)

Which one shall I get?

No thanks for the memory!

Well after much faffing about because of memory problems, I've managed to install MediaPortal and got some Freeview channels going...

As you can recall, I am just trying to get my old P4 PC setup for a quick and dirty test... I went out and stupidly bought a 2Gb memory upgrade from eBay which caused all the trouble. Read this post (and thread) I made on the computer section of the DS forums to see what I had to cope with!

So after downloading MemTest, and running it with one stick at a time in place, it identified that one of the 2Gb was faulty! This has taught me a lesson not to get RAM second hand off eBay, for sure! Well, I suppose the good thing is that 1Gb was OK and with that added to my existing 1Gb, the PC was in a better shape to run MediaPortal.

Another piece of good news was that I found my NVIDIA GeForce 6600LE GPU had not decided to give up the ghost on me after all - the faulty memory must have screwed up its function - as at one stage it died on me, and I thought it had gone for good!

So tonight, I managed to get the memory, GPU and a re-installed MediaPortal to work with the Pinnacle 7010iX tuner card, but only with Freeview channels. I could not get my newly cabled satellite feed to work (I could not perform a scan - no channels detected) and I suspect that the feed is borked (as it sits on the end of a DiSEqC switch). I will have to try the card on my currently working Freesat feeds tomorrow...

Pinnacle 7010iX card

Well, it's arrived, a second hand one off eBay for £23, installed into my old P4 PC with drivers downloaded from the Pinnacle site for 32-bit Windows XP. This bit seem to go well - the PC shows the device under the hardware section.

Another piece of good news is that, after messing around with match DIMM slots for my memory stick, the fresh install of XP seems to now show 3Gb of RAM.

I shall now have a go at getting a few TV channels (start with Freeview, as I need to cable the sat feed). Now what software shall I use to do this? Maybe Pinnacle's own that I got with the USB TV tuner...

Update: Well, I'm not having much luck with my old P4 PC at the moment! So after installing the Pinnacle TVCEnter software (v3.4A) and it didn't work - complains that it could not see a tuner... I attempted to update XP using Windows Update. Well during the process, the update kept rebooting my PC. After the third reboot, it didn't recover - complaining of a missing NTLDR file! Arrrrgggghhhh!!!! Does anyone know what is causing this?

I am now making a recovery install! :(