Advantages of HTPC instead of Satellite/saorview box?

TheIrishGrover

Hi folks. Just a query. I currently have Freesat and Saorview on my tuners built into my Samsung tele. I get my EPG for both (Although I have to switch to terrestrial/satellite modes to go from go from one to the other) and I have a HDD connected to the TV to perform my PVR functions (Recording, pausing TV etc).

I also have an asrock mini ATX box with a decently specced setup functioning as an XBMC HTPC device streaming from a NAS.

I see many people have their satellite and/or digital terrestrial signals going to a HTPC rather than a dedicated box. I see on XBMC that there is a "Live TV" function.

My question is: What is the benefit of connecting to an HTPC rather than a dedicated box? Is it the handiness of having one less box under the TV? Does it give the ability to record to XBMC for archiving? Does it give a better/fancier EPG with more functionality? Better picture options? More stations/different geographies/national stations/satellites? (Mods, if that last one was against charter please delete, I'm not inquiring about illegally decrypting scrambled signals or anything)

I mean, I'm pretty happy with my setup but then I was also happy when I had an old WDTV connected to a local drive before I setup my PC/NAS. Is it worth moving to my HTPC?

One other thing though, my enclosure is tight so if I was to go down the line of Satellite to HTPC I'd need an external USB decoder, is this worth it?

Thanks for the opinions folks

Knasher

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

What is the benefit of connecting to an HTPC rather than a dedicated box?

A lot of the dedicated boxes require some sort of tradeoffs. So if you want one box to do dvb-t and dvb-s, most of the boxes don't support a full epg. If you go with two separate boxes, then it gets pretty pricey.

The main reason for me is flexibility, at the moment I'm setting up a system for my parents where I have an old computer with some storage and a couple dvb tuners running mythtv and then xbmc on two raspberry pi's connecting to it.

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Does it give the ability to record to XBMC for archiving?

Yup, plus as Irish DTV is only using a single mux atm, I can record multiple Irish channels at once. The sat uses tons of muxs so generally is it one channel per tuner.

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Does it give a better/fancier EPG with more functionality?

You can look up videos of the pvr branch of xbmc on youtube if you like.

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Better picture options?

Don't know what you mean.

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

More stations/different geographies/national stations/satellites?

You can set up a satellite to point at different satellites (either with multiple lnbs or a motor that physically repositions the dish). If your tv supports diseqc then it would be able to do this too. What you can get off this varies, Germany broadcasts a lot of its channels without encryption, whereas France encrypts pretty much everything.

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

One other thing though, my enclosure is tight so if I was to go down the line of Satellite to HTPC I'd need an external USB decoder, is this worth it?

Personal preference really. If you want to mess around with it you can get a usb dvb-t tuner for less than €10 on ebay. The dvb-s2 ones are more expensive and I haven't seen and dual usb ones, so you may need more than one tuner if you want the ability to watch and record.

TheIrishGrover

Thanks for that very detailed reply Knasher. I'll stick to my current setup so. The TV has built in Digital terrestrial and digital sat receivers so I've already tuned in all my Irish and UK Freesat stations. Handy as I was able to move my original combi box upstairs. The Samsung EPG on the tele is excellent: Get my detailed 7-day EPG/ability to schedule viewing/recording etc)

Was just wondering if there MythTV/XBMC gave more functionality than standard setup.

Cheers

PogMoThoin

I was considering a MythTV/XBMC setup (already have custom XBMC HTPC) but instead now have an Amiko Alien 2 with Enigma2 for terrestrial and satellite. With a little bit of work installing and setting up E2 it covers all bases with much less effort.