DireTV HD TiVo dead! Switching to MCE

That's great. It's fantastic that you found a solution you're happy with.

Edited: How about I take that dead boat anchor HR10-250 off your hands?

 

It will always compete because the number of people who are willing to go through all these steps to do this are very low. Most people can't figure all that out and would rather just get a box, plug it in, and go.

 

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Well, good luck with that part. My understanding is that only Cable Labs approved systems will be able to use PC cable cards. Not systems we build ourselves.

I've thought about doing something similar. Have fun!

 

That's a nice setup, can you comment on what HDTV decoder cards your using? Also are you able to pause live tv?

Thanks!

 

I thought MCE only supported a maximum of one HD tuner. And, in order for that one tuner to work, you had to have an analog tuner. Is that no longer the case?

 

MCE supports:

1) 0 tuners
2) 1 analog tuner
3) 2 analog tuners
4) 1 analog tuner and 1 ATSC tuner
5) 2 analog tuners and 1 ATSC tuner
6) 2 analog tuners and 2 ATSC tuners

Additionally the analog tuners can be set up for cable while the ATSC tuners are set up for ATSC, but I don't think it will handle 1 cable analog and 1 OTA analog at the same time: it confuses the programming since it essentially deals with the system as 2 tuners recording two programs at a time.

 

That's silly. Most people don't have all that stuff laying around and they don't want to mess with a PC to record their programs.

What has any of this got to do with DirecTV? Am I missing something or are you now unable to record DirecTV or Digital cable. And that's your "TiVo killer?"

 

The number of
people with PC skills and former high end gaming hardware that is being retired (rolled over) but is still worthy of becoming a capable Media Center. If OTA is your goal, and your signal is multipath free, dual AverA180 tuner cards are a nice solution. That solution is working for me on three systems and two others with only single A180 tuners. WAF is high although not having suggestions and the TiVo guide are limiting factors.

If you want ESPN-HD or HBO-HD you are going to need a sattellite or cable receiver until the coming "Vista" generation hardware. Rolling your own Media Center was not possible early on, but the market will always find a way to sell consumers what they want. If you have the most recent MCE update the analog tuner requirement is no longer...

 

I did some quick and dirty research on the AverA180, but it looks like it's for OTA only? I have several in-the-clear QAM HD channels from Cablevision - I'm guessing this card wouldn't be able to work with QAM?

Can anyone recommend a good HD QAM card under $200, or does such a beast not even exist? If itdoes exist, based on the secon quote above, will MCE recognize it?

 

I'm far from an expert in terms of the quality. But, these DVICO cards support clear QAM http://www.pcalchemy.com/index.php/cName/hdtv-tuner-cards?osCsid=9c88d876453d9c0717f341045aafaf44

 

MCE
does not have drivers for QAM on a A180. MythTV (Knoppix) has QAM drivers if you choose the LINUX path...

 

What version is that?

 

Thanks. I checked these out and may look into the USB HD tuner... this will work on my MCE PC, which currently has an analog tuner, and if I ever add a tuner to my MCE laptop, I could use the USB HD tuner to the laptop...

 

According to folks
at AVSforum and TheGreenButton having all the latest updates will allow ATSC use without a qualifying NTSC tuner installed. Since I have stable systems and no specific need for change, I am simply leaving the cards in. If I needed the PCI slot or was having problems I would be temped to remove the NTSC cards. I just bought some cheap M150D cards from Ebay to fill the MCE2005 requirement and while the FM option is potentially useful, I'm not using it right at the moment...