Premiere for OTA DVR and media access only?

[scooterdog]

First a bit of history - was a Tivo fan in 2000 with the Series 1, and then switched over to DirecTivo in 2005. Now I am seriously contemplating cutting out the satellite/cable service altogether and going OTA - as I notice the kinds of programming we are accessing are OTA broadcasts anyway.

I was seriously looking at the TivoHD and then learned about the Premiere. After doing a bit of research on HTPC's (recently there are a few more options hardware-wise), I have a few questions...

- How well would the Premiere handle pictures and home-movie video from an external drive? From a home network?
- At $300 for the box and $400 for lifetime service, doesn't a $500 investment in a Mac mini setup for HTPC be a comparable offering? (I've also read about an Acer Aspire Revo nettop unit at $200 and another offering from Dell.) This may be the wrong place to ask, but in the HTPC world how does one get guide data?

That's about it - we're moving in a few months (and plan to switch to FiOS for broadband), and I'm looking forward to losing that $80/month bill...

[innocentfreak]

On HTPCs you get guide data from the various software options like SageTV, MythTV, and Windows 7 Media Center also includes this. Soem have a small fee if I remember correctly, but Windows 7 includes it as part of Media Center.

Did you check your TiVo.com account to see if you still qualify for any of the upgrade offers? You may not qualify since you don't have an active Tivo.

Probably one of the best areas to go for HTPC's is AVSforums (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/search.php?searchid=15082024).

[SoBayJake]

- At $300 for the box and $400 for lifetime service, doesn't a $500 investment in a Mac mini setup for HTPC be a comparable offering? (I've also read about an Acer Aspire Revo nettop unit at $200 and another offering from Dell.) This may be the wrong place to ask, but in the HTPC world how does one get guide data?

That's about it - we're moving in a few months (and plan to switch to FiOS for broadband), and I'm looking forward to losing that $80/month bill...
The base Mac Mini is $599 (somewhat less from Amazon, etc., used on eBay can be cheaper) An EyeTV One from Elgato is another $100. So you are already at $700, which is the same price as TiVo. EyeTV is $20/year after the first year for guide data, I believe.

The Mac Mini will be far more flexible, still allow you Netflix, Amazon, etc. Add iTunes, Hulu, Pandora.

I actually have a Mac Mini and a S3 in my setup. The Mini is an iTunes server and encoding workhorse. The S3 records everything for me, including cable HD channels. Anything I might want to save gets offloaded to the Mini, re-encoded, and stored on my network drive.

If you are going purely OTA, the Mac Mini might well be a better choice, given a few caveats. Certainly more flexible, but the interface from across the room isn't the same. You'll need a keyboard/mouse (or remote desktop viewing) to control it, and the text will be small!

[vman41]

The base Mac Mini is $599 (somewhat less from Amazon, etc., used on eBay can be cheaper) An EyeTV One from Elgato is another $100. So you are already at $700, which is the same price as TiVo. EyeTV is $20/year after the first year for guide data, I believe.


That's just 1 tuner isn't it? TiVo Premieres have 2.

[ewilts]

- How well would the Premiere handle pictures and home-movie video from an external drive? From a home network?

In general, the TiVo makes a GREAT DVR but a lousy Internet/media player.

Also in general, HTPCs make much better Internet/media devices, but are not as good as DVRs as the TiVos.

I have both - a Series 3 with Lifetime and a Dell Zino that I picked up for $240. I don't use the TiVo for Internet and I don't use the Zino for recording live TV (although I want to do that eventually). I'm in the process of setting the Zino up for watching my pictures and streaming the music.

[scooterdog]

Interesting comments all - I'm intrigued with the dual setup (using a Tivo plus an HTPC).

Would it be possible to have both driving one HDTV? Does anyone have this kind of setup and can comment on how well it works?

On another note is networking - I've been frankly 'out of it' for many years regarding all things Tivo, does offloading Tivo HD content to the HTPC take a lot of time? What file conversions need to take place and is the process take a lot of computing overhead?

Thanks all for the contributions - very useful stuff...

[aaronwt]

What about media players? I use a Popcorn hour C200 and A200. And an Xtreamer for portability.
I can view my BD ISOs anytime over my network instead of having to stick a disc in the player. They also work with DVD ISOs if you still watch DVDs. Plus they play music pictures etc.

[ewilts]

Interesting comments all - I'm intrigued with the dual setup (using a Tivo plus an HTPC).

Would it be possible to have both driving one HDTV? Does anyone have this kind of setup and can comment on how well it works?
I do this - my Onkyo receiver has 2 HDMI inputs and I simply switch between those. Other people use HDMI switchers.

[SoBayJake]

That's just 1 tuner isn't it? TiVo Premieres have 2.
Oops...correct. So you'd need 2 EyeTV's (if it can even handle more than one).

[Virgil]

Scooterdog:

I'm in a similar situation. We're finding that we just don't watch all those channels we're paying for every month, and we have a Netflix queue a mile long. We decided that our only real requirements these days are: HD and recording ability. So, in an effort to go "off the (cable/sat) grid" I bought a System76 Meerkat Ion nettop box and an HDHomerun Dual HD tuner. I configured the Meerkat as the MythTV frontend, an older spare PC as a dedicated MythTV backend, and the HDHomerun to my OTA antenna and network. The system worked surprisingly well, and I think has great potential, but there were two dealbreakers for me. One, my Sony SXRD TV doesn't want to display the Meerkat's 1080p output over HDMI correctly. It actually slightly skews the image, while my Samsung plasma displays it perfectly. Two, the picture quality of live TV is good, but not as a good as other DVR's I had.

If I had more time I might try a pcHDTV tuner card in the backend box, which may provide a better picture. The ideal stab at a viable HTPC/MythTV solution would probably be the Meerkat frontend, a new backend box and the pcHDTV, which would come in a little over $1000. A pricey investment up front, but no more monthly fees to cable/satellite, and an ROI in about a year. But, again, this won't work for me because my main Sony TV won't play nice with the frontend.

So, Tivo might be looking like our best bet for simple OTA recording and media access, although I'm a little discouraged by the Premiere's reviews. I may even consider looking for a Tivo HD box in hopes that Tivo will iron out the performance issues. Sorry for the rant, but thought it might help.

By the way, MythTV uses Schedules Direct for listings at $20/year.

[trip1eX]

Get a Mac Mini if you want a hobby and absolute flexibility. Get a Tivo if you just want to watch TV and/or have a wife and kids.

[Virgil]

Get a Mac Mini if you want a hobby and absolute flexibility. Get a Tivo if you just want to watch TV and/or have a wife and kids.
LOL! I think that may be precisely why my focus is shifting from MythTV to Tivo. I love playing with this stuff, but I have a wife and three kids, and I just need a simple way to watch HD TV on my own schedule. I have other demands on my time at the moment. ;)

[wmcbrine]

- How well would the Premiere handle pictures and home-movie video from an external drive? From a home network?It won't handle it at all from an external drive (it needs a server). Over a home network, eh, it's OK. (I may be biased since I've put a lot of work into this functionality.) The built-in (HMO-based) players on the S3/HD aren't great; I don't know yet if they've improved on the Premiere. HME-based players can be better -- on the music side, there are Harmonium, AudioFaucet, and others. For pictures, you can use the HD Photo app that comes with TiVo Desktop.

It does beat the built-in picture/MP3 functions I've seen in DVD and Blu-Ray players.

[zob]

I dropped my satellite/cable service 3yrs ago & bought a Series 3 for OTA, best move I ever made.

[scooterdog]

Get a Mac Mini if you want a hobby and absolute flexibility. Get a Tivo if you just want to watch TV and/or have a wife and kids.

What great advice! It's so good that I'd consider getting rid of the wife and kids to get back into having a hobby. Err, strike that... just kidding... :D

In an ideal world perhaps, I would setup the Mac Mini to a 'stable' configuration (DVR with a dual tuner for OTA, picture and media access) and then (somehow) get ahold of a 'spare' Mac Mini to play around/develop the platform on. How quickly I see that as a hobby it will consume untold amount of hours/dollars. I'm afraid if I don't have a development platform to experiment on I'd be playing with fire - having the main house entertainment at the mercy of whatever I happen to slap on it...

[innocentfreak]

Personally I am enjoying my TiVo setup alongside my 360 extender. I am currently using a SD set and with the Ceton InfiniTV 4 not out yet I have held off on building a true HTPC.

The big benefit for me over the TiVo...more Tuners. I wouldn't even be looking at HTPCs if TiVo offered 4 tuners.