Are you happy with your PC PVR?

[stanger89]

There's a thread going over on AVS, that's basically become a "discussion" (argument) about whether it's worthwhile to build a PC PVR vs buying a Tivo.

One thing thing that long time forum readers will be well aware of is that forums are places that focus, almost exclusively, on problems. Things often look much, much worse on forums than they are in reality.

Knowing this, and also knowing the limitations/flaws of polls, I'm curious how many people are happy with their PC PVRs.

[blade]

When I decided to build a PC PVR I saw it as nothing more than a fancy vcr to record a couple of shows I enjoyed watching. It only took a couple of days to realize how wrong I was. It has completely changed the way I watch TV and I never want to be without one again. It has been by far the best money I have ever spent on any piece of home theater or PC equipment.

[Fluffdaddy]

Many hardware related bumps and a lot of reading to get my system up and running to be where I am now........but overall I'm happy

[millers_35]

I have been hooked for the past 5/6 months so I'd say you'll have to pry it from me. There were a very few bumps but nothing major.

Miller

[IVB]

I used to be happy. Then my wife put every dang reality show on. And, now with the great HD support in Sage, I can watch reality shows in HD. Ugh. I have 42 favorites, and 1TB allocated to SageTV.

At least I can easily record my Stargate episodes, so I can watch them when she's asleep.

[jbarr]

Coming from the ReplayTV & Moxi DVR world, my SageTV-based PC PVR has been a great experience. There have been some issues with picture quality and such, but the fact that its feature set is so complete and user-extendable, I have to say I'm very happy with it.

SageTV's core features match up with, and in many ways exceed standalone DVR's, and features like storing recordings as standard, non-DRM'd MPG files is a huge win. Add-ons like DVD Burning, IMDB Integration, user-customizable menus, and remote Web access all add up to a user experience that is top-notch. And the fact that a simple add-on lets SageTV control my DCT-2000 STB via a serial cable truly sealed the deal.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: SageTV is what ReplayTV could have been had they listened to their customers and provided those features we so desperately wanted.

[dbfresh23]

I am completely happy with SageTV's performace with SD stuff. My only point of dissatisfaction has absolutely nothing to do with SageTV. I would love an easy / inexpensive way of recording DirecTV's HD content, not SageTV's fault that there's no hardware to do thing(not counting R5K or 169time). I just ordered one of DirecTV's new HD DVRs for this purpose, but will probably use SageTV for my SD viewing still.

I just hope that whatever solution DirecTV winds up putting out there for MCE can somehow be tweaked to work for SageTV.

[Polypro]

...Cold dead hands

I had a TiVo...their ok, but HTPCs are amazing. Do they make a 6 tuner TiVo?

P

[farscapesg1]

I love mine. I don't think the wife and I could live without it. In fact, I'm planning on building a SageTV server with more storage (only 400 Gb recording space now) and will hopefully add HDTV recording (since the HdHomeRun seems to support QAM).

[teknubic]

The way that we do it is definitely not the easy way. When non-technical people ask me if they could do this at their place, I tell them flat-out "no". If you want to time-shift TV, get a TiVo. If you want expandability, client-server architecture, customizability, etc et al -- read, read, read. Then make your decision. I think this way is not for the faint of heart and it really takes a while for it to start paying off comparatively.
Other than that, SageTV roxorz my boxorz.

[Menehune]

I agree. If you want something that will work out of the box, you probably don't want a PC PVR. If you don't mind to tinker a little and open your computer to install hardware, you should have no problem.

After a year and a half, you wouldn't be able to pry my HTPC out of my cold, dead hands.

[ChePazzo]

I started about 3 years ago with a Prismiq Media Player to stream video over my wired network to my TV from my 250GB drive.

About a year later, I added a WinTV recorder to the PC. That lasted about a month or so using the WinTV software before I *had* to buy SageTV.

At this point, I still couldn't watch 'live' TV, but SageTV opened my eyes to the possibilities. No longer did we have to push the children off to bed to avoid their seeing Jack Bauer tortured at the hands of terrorists! We could take our time and read stories and tuck them in and ... well be parents. Then, remove the commercials and spend the next 42min glued to the TV.

About a year later, I bought a dual tuner and an MVP.
Now, I have almost 1TB of harddrive space and it's still not enough space (lots of Clifford and Beakman's World).

All I need is 2 more MVPs and 2TB of HDD and I'm set!

The Prismiq is in another room waiting to be replaced. I tried to install the Sage Client on it (fun to try, right?), but the flash memory wasn't big enough (DUH!). Maybe I'll find something to do with it.

[jptaz]

I started this whole venture 4 years with a single Hauppauge PVR 250 and quickly added 3 more just to provide I could. At the time I had fun with freeware and had a dedicated 80 GB HD to each. A year ago I built my beefed up RAID 5 Server with 1.3 TB of Available Disk space...I am waiting for the Perpendicular disk technology to get cheaper and I will probably fill the 4 last drive bays with 750GB or 1TB Hard drives once they are out...an additional 2.1 to 3 TB would be nice I am a junky and I have been on lots business trips and a 2 week vacation since september and with rare exception everything has recorded great....and I have have 70+ favorites.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

Many hardware related bumps and a lot of reading to get my system up and running to be where I am now........but overall I'm happy

Case in point.
Over the past 2 days my server has been crashing. At first thought I was thinking it was beta 6.15 because I just upgraded to it. But when I found the time to upon the case, it was another "hardware related bump". My video card fan stopped running an was overheating and crashing my system. Over the past 3 years this is the 3rd time this has happen, twice in server once in client. Guess I will look into fanless cards, if I can find one that will do 1080i. I'm done with ATI 9800-PRO cards, the fans don't seem to hold up.
Not a happy htpc camper right about now

btw: I know it's in bad form to quote oneself in a thread

[blade]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

Case in point.
Over the past 2 days my server has been crashing. At first thought I was thinking it was beta 6.15 because I just upgraded to it. But when I found the time to upon the case, it was another "hardware related bump". My video card fan stopped running an was overheating and crashing my system. Over the past 3 years this is the 3rd time this has happen, twice in server once in client. Guess I will look into fanless cards, if I can find one that will do 1080i. I'm done with ATI 9800-PRO cards, the fans don't seem to hold up.
Not a happy htpc camper right about now

btw: I know it's in bad form to quote oneself in a thread

I had an old 10 gig drive start to die right after installing Sage. The drive had nothing to do with Sage except that it was on the same ide channel as one of my recording drives. When it would crap out I would lose both drives on the channel. I had all sorts of crazy problems and thought it had to be the beta. Basically Sage would try to scan the recording directory and cpu usage would peg out or Sage would freeze up all together. After pulling the drive out all the problems went away. I think it's pretty common for people to blame the software for hardware related problems.

[mightyt]

Never had Tivo. Love the PC PVR concept. Will never go back to doing without. That being said, bumps are inevitable when you are dealing with PC's rather than a closed system. In the end, the ultimate PVR would be clean looking, easily expandable and customizable, never failing commercial skipping, an MP3 Player that is feature rich and a slick Photo Library that rivals the best. I know I am easy to please and in touch with reality!

One day (soon) I hope to ditch my old analog TV and really take advantage of the PC side to surf the net and read my email ... Maybe even web cam!

Some day ... but for now I am enjoying my PC PVR as much as I can ...

T.

[flavius]

I gave my last TiVo away about 18 month ago - when I switched to Sage - and replaced it with a Motorola HD STB. Ui and handling of that thing sucks - but it has two tuners and does the trick.

Recently I saw the spec for the series3. Interesting. But $800? That's money I'd rather invest elsewhere, right now (in more MAC's, for example).

But, down the line - when there's a lot more HD content - and the price of the new TiVo models has come down, I can see myself getting one again.

Not so sure where Sage is going to be in two or three years.

[Ken C]

Wouldn't watch TV any other way, especially with ShowAnalyzer killing the commercials.

However, SageTV is definitely getting slower. The video playback is great but command response is slow, lots of spinning icon. Not sure why, let's hope it improves in version 6.

Ken C

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by Ken C

Wouldn't watch TV any other way, especially with ShowAnalyzer killing the commercials.

However, SageTV is definitely getting slower. The video playback is great but command response is slow, lots of spinning icon. Not sure why, let's hope it improves in version 6.

Ken C

Do you by any chance use the disk space bar?

[Mahoney]

I'm increasingly fed up with the PC PVR experience. When it's working, it's great - better than anything you can just buy by miles. However, every month or more frequently I sit down knackered, turn the TV on - and have to do 30 minutes trouble shooting to make the damn thing work.

Happened last night; got back from a long weekend away, turned on and found that Sage had become totally unstable and was using 100% CPU. Took about 15 minutes to kill the service, so slow had the box become (wasn;t responding to the mouse). And then when I tried to bring the service back up again - same thing happened. Had to reboot the whole box. My motherboard also has an instability with the SATA ports which means sometimes it doesn;t see them. That happened this time, so had to reboot again. Net result? 45 minutes of fidddling with the computer, a tired and irritated me and a consequently upset wife.

May not be Sage's fault, but the whole PC hardware/drivers/Windows/Sage contraption is just not particularly stable; there's always something to go wrong. And when it does go wrong it's a job to fix it - a job I can do without after a day at work.

Add on the sheer hassle factor of getting it working well to begin with, which must have consumed months of my time not to mention a lot of money, and there's a substantial bit of me that wishes I'd just bought Sky+. It wouldn't have been as good when it was working - but it'd have worked a damn sight more often and it would have cost me less money and pretty much no time.

And the picture quality would have been better.

And the EPG would have been better.

And I'd have been able to use the interactive stuff to choose which match at Wimbledon I want to watch.

And I'd have been able to record two encrypted channels at once.

Of course, on the other side:

I'd not have had the ability to do anything other than play back the resulting files

I couldn't run my photos through it

I couldn't run my music through it

I couldn't use it as a DVD player

I couldn't use it for games

I couldn't use it to store and play back any other video media (including ripped DVDs)

Swings and roundabouts.