(Almost on topic): recommendations for integrated freeview receiver, PVR and DVD player?

[The Natural Philosopher]

actually linux is *once built* the nice easy one box solution, Its building it that is less easy

[Max Demian]

Panasonic Freeview DVD recorder with 500 MB HDD. (I have this one.)

Panasonic Freeview DVD/Blu-ray recorder with 1 TB HDD. I don't think either will do streaming. You would need an extra dongle for that, plugged into the TV.

[nothanks]

Thanks, but both get rather mixed reviews. I need to find some time to dedicate to the search, but other things keep claiming that they're more urgent.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My view is combining a PVR and DVD would simply make the remote control even more complicated. Even more so for one that gets confused by such things. You can often set up the TV so just switching on a peripheral selects its input.

[bert]

I was looking a little while ago and that was the only one I could find. Toshiba used to do them ( I still have one) and they were better but they have their own problems now. Not much demand for them now with streaming catch ups.

[bert]

There is nothing in the regulations about "essential" purchases.

[Max Demian]

What do they say is wrong with them (specifically the DVD recorder)?

About the only things wrong I can see is that the UI is confusing and inconsistent in some places and response to start and stop playback is slow.

[nothanks]

I only looked at a few reviews: the points you make plus the lack of inputs for the recorder

[T i m]

Plus, most people don't have 'a desk' to stick it under or a 'house network' as such (just WiFi where it works).

Nor do they have 'an old PC', the skills to find a Linux Compatible TV card, let alone set it all up. And even if all that was done for them, no one to maintain the Linux nor use the apps.

Ironically, we are closer to that than most as the Mrs watches the output of her Topfield box on her PC (via a video capture card), I have a TV card in my other PC here, we do have a house LAN (16p Gb switch + 2 x 8p Gb switches, all ports occupied), a fair spattering of PC hardware and some experience of Linux ... and even I would rather buy a ready-made solution than assume I could get something user friendly going myself.

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

You can buy the hardware and linux setup already done in the form of pretty much any NAS these days. Most will run plex server, and most smart TVs and other clients have plex client's (although you can use a web browser if you prefer). Add a network TV tuner, and you are ready to go.

[NY]

It's a shame that the world is going over to the likes of Plex server and Plex client, which imposes a fairly heavy load on the "server" computer as it transcodes the file into a form that Plex can send to the client. It would be much better to have a simple SMB server which shares the folders, and navigate to the correct folder on the client which runs VLC or some similar video player.

I find that I can play HD videos over SMB onto another computer, with very little CPU usage on the server, but doing the same over Plex makes the CPU shoot up to about 80% and put the CPU fan into (very noisy) turbo mode.

I'm not sure what transcoding is performed by Plex. I've have thought that MPEG (SD) or H264 (HD) would be sufficiently good compression that nothing further would be needed to stream them over the LAN, and suitable decoders would be built into any player. But no matter whether the file container is MPG, DVR-MS (Windows Vista Media Centre), WTV (Windows 7 Media Centre), or TS (most modern PVR software such as NextPVR and TVHeadend), Plex always has to transcode it.

[T i m]

<snip>

But then aren't you are talking about a WAN appliance John, not a straight d-i-y replacement for a DVR?

Which for most people would be a step too far in itself. ;-)

For me, it's the investment in the individual components without actually knowing if I would ever get it going and if I did, how easy it would be to use (like, could my Mrs use it) and how well it would work (for my preferred level of input) over the 'risk' of not being able to upgrade / fix a commercial solution (that I could probably get a demo / trial of somewhere).

I have actually looked at this very thing (with your input) as my Toppy will eventually be useless and in fact, isn't being used now because I think the PSU or HDD might be dying and I haven't even got round to swapping it out with the spare one I have ready! ;-(

I'm guessing that any low volume semi d-i-y / turn-key DVR type box would be much more expensive than a ready made solution because the former would be made out of discrete modules and so cost more than one integrated board / solution (even if it had the same tuners soldered directly to the main board, rather on a PCI board etc).

Maybe it needs someone like HP to come out with a pre-loaded DVR / tuner chassis in the same way they did the microserver? There is a list of 'approved' tuners (Sat / Freeview / FVHD / Cable etc) and the system would just accept them without the need for any CLI gobbledygook?

Plug and play DVR?

Cheers, T i m

[The Natural Philosopher]

TVbackend works better for live TV and will record to any SMB exported folder you care to name..

Bitch to set up tho. I still don't know how to do it but random monkey approach worked

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail], T i m [e-mail]> writes

Toppies suffer from electrolytic capacitor failure. Repair kits are available.

[NY]

Yes, I save my recordings to an SMB-shared folder. I actually go through another step: after recording on the Raspberry Pi, I use VideoRedo on my Windows "server" to edit out the continuity announcements and adverts (accessing by SMB) and save the recordings to a shared folder structure that Plex uses. For watching on a PC, I don't use Plex - I just use VLC on a PC - but for watching on the big TV I use Plex client running on a Roku box.

Yes. TVH is not the most user-friendly app. There are three improvements I'd make if I could:

- use a grid (time versus channel) for the EPG, as an alternative to the searchable list

- VERY IMPORTANT: get TVH to "rehearse" the recordings at the time they are added, to check that the recording that you want to add will not clash with an existing one and that you have enough tuners; waiting until the time of recording is far too late, because you may not be around to notice any "failed to record" error message and take any action such as adjusting padding so two consecutive programmes can be recorded on the same tuner (without any over-run insurance padding which may require two tuners). (*)

- improve the "tuning" process: a step-by-step process with a diagram of the relationship between entities would be useful: decoder, network, channels found, channels available (which is a merge of channels found across all platforms, with equivalences: BBC One is available on satellite "here" and on terrestrial "here").

I have the added complication that I have both satellite and terrestrial decoders, so I have a lot more satellite channels of which a small number will match terrestrial channels. I wimped out of doing an automatic match of channels, because I didn't trust it and because I'd spent ages renaming all the ITV regional versions (eg one instance of "ITV" becomes "ITV Yorkshire (West)", another becomes "ITV London" etc) for regional news, and I didn't want anything to wipe that out. I use satellite out of preference (highest priority) because the signal is better, but I use terrestrial as a fall-back when I need a second tuner for overlaps. I chose the manual approach: to edit each satellite channel that had a terrestrial equivalent and add the terrestrial as a second source - only for the channels I'd need, so I didn't do all the shopping and music channels.

I currently have three tuners: satellite (Freesat), terrestrial (T1 and T2 - HD and SD) and terrestrial (T1 - SD only). Just occasionally I have needed all three...

It works very well now, though it's a bit to complicate to explain to my wife so I always set up recordings, which takes us back to the OP's request for a non-technical PVR.

(*) I submitted this as an official enhancement request and was told to go away and play on a railway line (effectively!) - in other words, what I was asking for was technically impossible and would never be considered, so stop moaning. I pointed out that NextPVR manages to do it very nicely. I think the problem was that it is technically impossible for *some* configurations that use other sources such as IPTV, so they wouldn't do it at all, even for simpler configurations where it was possible. I'd offer it for the simple cases (the majority) and state its limitations, but maybe that's too helpful ;-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Why not use a dlna server? it's way less compute hungry - just spools the data. All smart TVs understand it

If you are running tvbackend you are running Linux so minidlna is a doddle to compile and install

<skip good stuff> >

[John Rumm]

In theory it only transcodes when it needs to. So if the client can play the native video/audio format, and you have not asked plex server to limit the quality, then it should play the native file.

I just checked on my NAS, and the CPU was staying around 9% utilisation while playing a HD video in a web browser.

It does depend on how you have your settings set in the plex server - you can choose what quality video you want in different circumstances, if you elect for less than "maximum", then it will need to transcode HD videos in many cases.

[John Rumm]

Possibly, but might not be as onerous as you expect.

These days can be as simple as "plug in the tuner" (power, network, aerial), go to plex settings -> Manage -> Live TV and DVR, click Add Device. It will then find the tuner, and do an auto tune, then download the relevant EPG.

(I probably "tweaked" the process a bit because I like to assign a static IP server devices - but it will work DHCP)

The main investment would be the tuner (about £100 IIRC) - you can then try out all the rest of it on any machine that can run plex server. Once you are happy its a goer, then go for a "nicer" setup with NAS etc if you want. (and if not I am sure ebay will dispose of the tuner for you!)

It does depend on where you are starting from. In my case I already had all the components bar the tuner. Initially I ran plex server on a desktop machine that is always on. Later when I upgraded my NAS I moved it to that.

That might be a bit too country specific for HP... but one of the microservers might be a reasonable "all in one" start with either an internal Haupauge (sp?) tuner or external network one.

Almost - I would be wary of leading someone with no technical background down that route, since fixing problems should they occur may not be as simple as switch it off and back on again, but in an environment where there is a tame geek available on the off chance, the worth going for IMHO.

The main driver from my point of view was that I wanted to be able to do what I could do with my (augmented[1] Toppy) - record easily, and get the files onto a shared drive without any DRM or limitations. Being able to do things like "series recordings" was a nice bonus (not something my old toppy could do)

[T i m]

<snip>

Or you can just buy the bits you need. I've done 3 so far. ;-)

That's why I was thinking it could be the hdd on my main one as it's had the PSU 'repair / upgrade (better quality caps)' done. Mind you, that was some time ago now.

I would *like* a replacement DVR and one that I could build / maintain / upgrade myself would be nice, it's just that I'm worried no d-i-y solution would be as 'nice' to use as the old Toppy. ;-(

The only thing I miss is to be able to stream stuff directly off the Toppy but it's connected by USB to my Windows Home Server, so I can remote console into that, copy the saved video off onto a share and I'm ok.

Cheers, T i m

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I too loved my Toppy. Still got it, but not being HD limits the usefulness. I got one for my brother and SIL, who are both a bit techniphobe, when their VCR finally failed. And Carol soon took to it. Replaced it with a Humax which gives their telly smart features - but she often says it's not so nice to use as the Toppy.

My Toppy has had a new HD too.