Cancelled Sky HD

[DR]

That's it - enough is enough.

I've cancelled it - all of it - Sky HD is no longer welcome in my home - neither is Sky! I don't need it for HD because it frankly sucks, I love(d) Sky+ but thats just a Digital PVR.

I am going to be building a Media Centre box which can do all of this for me - infact it will do all my recording for the entire house.

This will route through to either Media Centre Extenders - or Media Centres in:

- Master Bedroom
- Casual Lounge
- Main Lounge
- My Office (easy!)

Possible:
- Kitchen
- Guest Bedroom

and have the ability to extend further.

I want to see what I can get from Freeview - I only watch Sport on Sky so worse case I need to find a solution to that - but with RugbyMOTD coming out online this could be a solution there.

So - got to start thinking - trying to work out if to build a 'Media Server' and put this in the cellar and have this going to my Thecus which is then shared to multiple systems - or what.

I want to be able to record *2* things and watch one at a minimum same time. I want to be able to series link this....

If I can extend it to as many rooms as I want that would rock.

Also having all my movies ripped to it and using MyMovies plugin would kick ass too

Suggestions? What route would you take? Hardware wise - I suspect I can build systems like they are going out of fashion - every room has CAT5e going to it so thats again not an issue.

TV Tuners? Which ones?

Or is it easier to go for something like - BigPockets.co.uk: Mp3 AIGO Media Centre VX800 500 GB £164.99 - Blank Media - Gadgets - Ink Cartridges - Free Delivery

Or a few of these: BigPockets.co.uk: DigiHome PVR160 FreeView Recorder £59.99 - Blank Media - Gadgets - Ink Cartridges - Free Delivery

Issue is - I want all the content available to pull to all systems.

I could get directhex to build me a Linux beast to do it... that's an idea.. (!)

[dave87]

What made you finally decide SkyHD wasn't for you?

I found the technical service not to bad, but their customer service was diabolical...

[directhex]

i read an article on how to do something like this somewhere...

[DR]

Originally Posted by dave87

What made you finally decide SkyHD wasn't for you?

I found the technical service not to bad, but their customer service was diabolical...

The £55 for all the content - it was nuts - I didn't watch it that much - I had the odd thing on BBC series linked.

Also it is the end of the sports season for Rugby and football so no point having it over the summer.

The cheapest Sky would get it down to for me was £34 for just sport but this is like £400 a year for TV a lot of cash + TV license.

Freeview is pretty compelling - at the moment this is all I use in my bedroom so a PVR would make the world of difference.

The main thing I also want is the ability to have content on multiple boxes rather than always having to watch Sky in one place!

I also spend a LOT of time traveling so I resent it when I spend weeks away and get back to Sky with no time to watch it *or* it has crashed...(!)

I also want to be able to get to my content remotely - I tried to use a Slingbox but it was never perfect and I want to download the content

Content could be lifted using this - Vadim Computers : Gadgets - Netgear EVA800 HD Digital Wireless Music Player However it doesn't plugin to Media Centre so it wouldn't work as an extender.

I want the best of all worlds the software and applications are there and it should be worth it.

[DR]

Originally Posted by directhex

i read an article on how to do something like this somewhere...

I know a man who can do this.. (!)

[dave87]

That is the problem - I'm shelling out £46/month for the package I'm on, and as its just mine, no-one else is going to help me with that lol.

It is expensive, but then I quite like having the movies which was the main draw for me, though whether that will be the same in a years time, I have no idea

[SiM]

For movies its cheaper getting love film rental than paying for sky movies. You can rent blu ray too

[dave87]

Yup, the draw was the lazyness factor - I haven't got to think about the movies I want for the next x months, or organise returning them.

That'll probably be the service I get if I cancel Sky though...

[menthel]

Pinnacle 3010IX from Play is only £17.99 with dual tuners.

Its a cracker! I have just put one in my vista media centre and it works like a charm. However the signal passthrough is almost non existent.

[DR]

I am thinking the MythTV and Mac Minis for the front end sounds good to me....

[dave87]

Mac Minis would struggle with High Def would they not?

For the same amount of money you could build a cheap dual core HTPC - e2160, mobo with HDMI, 320gb HDD?

[directhex]

Originally Posted by dave87

Mac Minis would struggle with High Def would they not?

i think ATI are to blame for this rumour. it's entirely false.

1) the hardest HD codec to play is H264 (the others are MPEG2 and VC-1)

2) without accelerated decoding (i.e. entirely in CPU), using a 'slow' decoder (ffmpeg), the most demanding HD content in the world (BBC HD) requires, according to my benchmarks, two 1.8ghz core2 cores to play smoothly. disc content requires less.

3) add about 50% to the MHz requirement for AMD. remove most of it if you use a 'faster' software codec (e.g. CoreAVC) or enable potentially quality-lowering codec features like loop filter skipping.

4) a mac mini is just as fast as any other core2duo machine

[SiM]

My 1.86GHz C2D laptop can't play back 1080p...

[directhex]

Originally Posted by SiM

My 1.86GHz C2D laptop can't play back 1080p...

what content? what codec?

[SiM]

1080p h.264 in VLC

[directhex]

Originally Posted by SiM

1080p h.264 in VLC

see, the first half isn't a very useful description.

MUCH more important than the resolution is: encoder settings (e.g. whether the source content was written with slices), the bitrate, other encoder settings. for the player, the exact h264 library revision in use makes a big difference (and vlc's decoder is slow). try going into preferences, input/codecs, other codecs, ffmpeg, tick the "advanced options" box, then set "skip the loop filter" to "all"

and i can't find any confirmation as to whether vlc's ffmpeg decoder is built with multithreading support