wihogfan
Due to recently dumping TWC, I'm back to using my old RePlayTV unit as a DVR. It's got some feature that I absolutely love (no monthly fees and the ability to automatically skip commercials and to copy shows from the hard drive to my PC's hard drive or to a DVD-R), but the picture quality isn't that great (it will not record in HD).
So, I picked up a cheap USB HDTV tuner for my PC the other day so that I can at least record HD OTA programming. But I'm not very impressed with the software that came with it though.
I'm running XP Pro still (have no use for the bells and whistles in Vista and despite having a dual core PC that could handle Vista I likely won't upgrade until support for XP ends), so I don't have access to Windows Media Center.
Anyone have any recommendations for a good HTPC software package? I'm reluctant to buy anything because they can get kind of pricey and I'm intending to give MediaPortal a try this weekend because it's fee and open sourced, but if anyone in a similar situation has anything they use and like, I'd love to hear about it.
I'm also considering giving MythTV a try, but that would require that I set my PC up so that I can dual boot into XP or Linux and while I love the speed and stability of Linux, I don't have much patience anymore when it comes to some of the compiling that it required the last time I gave Linux a whirl.
Posted September 19, 2008 1:44pm in
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If you're not into Linux, I
If you're not into Linux, I think that limits your options. I'd love to try something other than Media Center, but I rely on my Xbox 360 as a MC extender in another room. Sucks because MC doesn't yet support DTV subchannels and it's a pain in the butt to get them working in this market because Time Warner is really the only one carrying all of them and their listings are screwed up.
Originally when I was building my PC, I was looking at SageTV but it looks expensive now. MediaPortal looks interesting. I think MythTV (Linux) is the best non-Windows solution from everything I've heard.
Mythbuntu may be an option
Mythbuntu may be an option for you then. It's Ubuntu Linux, obviously, but has Mythtv preinstalled and there's no compiling to be done.
Also if you wanted to avoid dual-booting, I found a HowTo for running Linux/MythTV in a virtual machine. I read through it quickly and it didn't seem too difficult. This option may be a bit pricey, but it's worth a look.
http://www.techwandering.com/2007/01/03/how-to-run-mythtv-on-windows/
Thank Brad. Will give it a
Thank Brad. Will give it a read.