How do I get Live TV for my HTPC

silvine

I've a HTPC running XBMC. I'm slightly confused about how to get live TV on my HTPC. I've an Acer Revo 3610 and I know I need to get an external TV tuner card.

That said, what kind of tuner card do I need to buy to set up a DVR?

Does this need to connect to my old satellite dish or is there someway I can integrate it with my UPC box? My goal would be to use my HTPC as my main machine for watching TV but it would have to be capable of replicating the functionality of the UPC box. I tested out a satellite box earlier this year but it was a lot of hassle trying to record AND watch tv.

As an addendum, anyone here use an SSD for their XBMC installation? Is it much faster?

Knasher

There isn't a whole lot you can do with UPC, unfortunately they don't let you use your own equipment. I guess if you had a box with analogue output you could use that along with an IR dongle to switch channels, but that would be a poor solution at best and would only allow you to watch/record one channel at a time.

You next option is FTA transmissions. If you want to record and watch channels at the same time, you need multiple tuners (with exceptions, with terrestrial all the channels are broadcast currently in the same multiplex, so you could record all of them at once with a single tuner, but that will change. There are similar things with satellite, but obviously a lot more channels.) Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any dual tuners that are USB based so you are going to have to buy multiple single tuners in whatever combination you want.

You could then run MythTV as a backend to handle the DVB streams and XBMC as the frontend (the newer versions have really nice interfaces for it). I'm making the assumption that you are running XBMC on Linux at the moment, if so you should go to LinuxTV to see some of the tested devices.

If you have multiple TVs or laptops and want it working across them you could also run the mythtv backend on an old machine and then set it up as a kind of multi-room DVR. I'm considering setting up something like this at the moment and am hoping to use the Raspberry-PI computer as front ends.

Another thing to keep in mind is if you want both RTE and Freesat channels then it would be cheeper to go entirely with satellite. Saorsat is in testing at the moment, so not all the channels are on it, but it would be cheeper to get a multi-LNB setup than getting extra tuners for terrestrial broadcasts.

Carter P Fly

XBMC doesnt do TV to any useable degree.

Boxee has a DVBlink plugin so if you have a windows PC and some tuner cards you can do network streaming TV to your boxee, Android, Apple IOS devices and to anything with a web browser.

To be honest though unles syour ditching subscrittion TV your UPC box is going to be just as good as getting TV on your htpc (can you call a box with xbmc a HTPC really?)

Knasher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gA7YpbyxNM

Admittedly it looks a little slow switching at times, though that might just be his setup as I've seen others that have faster switching. But I think it looks very promising.

Carter P Fly

That looks pretty excellent, Still in development I see. Last time I looked It didnt exist!!!

I may have to revisit XBMC again if this is any good.

PogMoThoin

http://www.yavdr.org/

I'm considering this. The only drawback is the forum is in German, but has an English section. If you post in English they will answer you though.

silvine

I guess if I'm paying for UPC there's much point investing in more gear for my HTPC. Anyone here got RTE, BBC etc up and running on there XBMC installation?

Carter P Fly

I have RTE BBC etc on boxee on a test system But I absolutly HATE the boxee interface. Going to setup a MythTV backend with XBMC over teh weekned hopefully.

Antigrav

silvine wrote: »

Anyone here got RTE, BBC etc up and running on there XBMC installation?

Yes. I'm running a backend with tvheadend on linux and silent frontend (ATOM/ION, SSD) with the xbmc-pvr builds (now Eden version). Gets all RTE-NL channels and Freesat ones (too many )

The backend has a dual DVB-S2 pci-e card for Freesat and DVB-T USB dongle for Saorview. RTE2, BBC HD, BBC One HD, ITV1 HD are all high definition and look really good on the TV.

Recording is a bit messy. It's easy enough from EPG on XBMC, but I only have two days currently. You can also program recordings from tvheadend web interface which is pretty easy.

I've been building these HTPCs for about six years and have gone through WinTV, MythTV, Boxee and XBMC. The open source stuff is just getting to the stage where it is reasonable easy to set up and use. The PVR work on XBMC is much better than it was.

Don't underestimate the amount of time this takes! If you want plug and play, buy a box

Carter P Fly

Antigrav, whicgh is teh fastest backend on linux when it comes to channel change times? Is Tvheadend faster then MythTV all HW being equel?

BionicRasher

Antigrav wrote: »

Yes. I'm running a backend with tvheadend on linux and silent frontend (ATOM/ION, SSD) with the xbmc-pvr builds (now Eden version). Gets all RTE-NL channels and Freesat ones (too many )

The backend has a dual DVB-S2 pci-e card for Freesat and DVB-T USB dongle for Saorview. RTE2, BBC HD, BBC One HD, ITV1 HD are all high definition and look really good on the TV.

Recording is a bit messy. It's easy enough from EPG on XBMC, but I only have two days currently. You can also program recordings from tvheadend web interface which is pretty easy.

I've been building these HTPCs for about six years and have gone through WinTV, MythTV, Boxee and XBMC. The open source stuff is just getting to the stage where it is reasonable easy to set up and use. The PVR work on XBMC is much better than it was.

Don't underestimate the amount of time this takes! If you want plug and play, buy a box

Which usb DVB- t are you using? Need to get one to plug into my Asus Eeebox running Windows 7 WMC and looking for recommended ones

Antigrav

Carter P Fly wrote: »

Antigrav, whicgh is teh fastest backend on linux when it comes to channel change times? Is Tvheadend faster then MythTV all HW being equel?

They both are about the same. It's a while since I was running Myth, but both are slow in comparison to Sky, etc.

I like the TV Channel view in XBMC that @Knasher showed above where you can see the EPG and flip through the channels. It is only about 1 sec to change channel.

tui0hcg wrote: »

Which usb DVB- t are you using? Need to get one to plug into my Asus Eeebox running Windows 7 WMC and looking for recommended ones

There are loads that work with Windows 7. I got a Hauppauge Nova-T because Linux drivers are mature/reliable. There are far cheaper ones.

My DVB-S2 card is the TBS-6981 which involves building drivers each time you upgrade your kernel. This was a lot cheaper than the Hauppauge equivalent.