Total Noob Question re: Capabilities of WMC

[MZmuda]

Hi,

I'm totally new to Windows Media Center; haven't done anything with it yet. (Actually planning on changing cable carriers because the bill has become so high.)

Here's what I'm wondering:

I'd like to set up a system where I have the cable come in to the house in one room (the basement) where it's attached to a CETON card and goes into WMC. I'd then like to be able to live stream four different channels to four different TVs. (I'm looking to have five TVs on the network, but only 4 would be watched at any given time.)

Questions:
1: Is this sort of setup even possible?
2: Am I overtaxing any of the components? (ie: will I need a supercharged, water-cooled i7 2600 processor to serve as the server, or will a Celeron chip do the job? [not that I'm thinking about using a Celeron... just asking for power requirements here.])
3: How many TVs (extenders) can WMC support? (Both in total and at any given time?) [ie: is there a limit to the number of TVs I can register on the network? Also, how many can be active at any one time?]
4: Other than an XBOX 360, can someone give me a clue as to who else makes extenders? (Ideally, I'm looking for something that turns on VERY quickly, so using a computer is out of the question, since it needs to boot [unless it can sleep, etc...] I'm actually looking to replace my "cable boxes" with the extender, fyi.)
5: With WMC, can it act as a DVR (ie: can I be watching live TV, pause it, and rewind it? Also, what is the rewind time?)
6: Last question: How long does it take to change channels using a WMC network as I've described? (ie: right now, my TIVO takes about 3-5 seconds to change the channel, buffer the video, and display it. How well does WMC fare?)

I guess if I had any other question, it would be "how integral is WMC in everyone's media setup?" Is it just a thing in your video rig (like, maybe a Laser-Disc player? [remember those?]) or is it the thing that you watch TV and movies from EVERY DAY [6 days a week?]

Sorry for all the basic questions, but I'm really hoping to set up something nice and good to avoid a $200 a month cable bill [it's all those damn DVR boxes!!!]

Whew!

Thanks in advance for the answers!

- Mike Z

[holidayboy]

Hi, welcome to TGB.tv!

No need to worry about asking too many questions, you're exactly the sort of person that we hope to help out.

I'm in the UK and don't use extenders but if nobody else jumps in (I'm sure they will ) then I'll post back tomorrow with some answers to the bits that I'm familiar with.

[SilverRubicon]

Well, extenders are no longer manufactured or sold. You can buy them on sites such as ebay, but at the moment, the xbox 360 is the only way to go. I have an HP that I purchased off of ebay that works well. You should not have any issues streaming to 4 different extenders provided you have the network bandwidth. I don't believe the CPU comes into play, so a Celeron should be fine. I am using an AMD Sempron but only stream to a single extender. I have recorded 4 shows at once while watching a 5th pre-recorded show on the extender. Not a problem.

I love my media center, but it's not as trouble free as a DVR. It requires the odd reboot. Can be flaky with HDMI handshakes, and you can get in to the habit of overtweaking instead of watching TV. Once I arrived at the "I'm finished messing about' stage, it's been a relative joy to use. Usually trouble free but not Tivo like in it's stability. Most of my problems arise after patch Tuesday.

[richard1980]

That first sentence in SilverRubicon's post makes it sound like the Xbox 360 is no longer being manufactured or sold. To clarify, the Xbox 360 is an extender, and it is the only extender currently being manufactured and sold.

[spanner]

1. yes
2. You should be fine, my system is a few years old and purrs like a kitten (adding bluray support can be more taxing on hardware)
3.I run my main HTPC media center and 5 extenders. 2 xboxes and three linksys 2100s I have tested 3 live channels and one recording at the same time without issue( Ethernet wired network)
4. you can still find linksys extenders on ebay. The new xbox 360 is quiet and if you buy the 4g model without a hard drive they are a decent price. a xbox can be setup to boot directly into media center
5. total DVR functionality, i can start a recorded show downstairs on the projector and finish it in the bedroom or kitchen
6. channel changes are quick faster than your tivo

My media center and extenders is the only tv system in the house, It is used daily be me my wife, daughter and grandkids. The journey setting it up has not always been easy, but I think with Win 7 media center and ceton tunner it has improved a lot and has been trouble free for quit some time

If you wanted to get away from cable completely, I had my system running with 4 Over the Air tuners for a lot less cost than a ceton

[MZmuda]

Wow, Guys!

Thanks SO MUCH for those responses! It's a bit of a shame that nobody makes any extenders (ideally something fanless) anymore, but I may have to try it out with one of those 4G XBOX 360s you were mentioning.

I truly appreciate ALL of your answers, and, when I set up my network in about 2 months, I'll let you know how it all turned out.

Thanks again!!!

- Mike Z.

[Danno100]

I have a system with 7 TV tuners with a server in my basement. I have two XBOX 360's that act as extenders, and five DMA2100 extenders. You can use up to five extenders at one time, but can have more than that on one system. The XBOX is a better extender than the DMA 2100, but it does have a fan (albeit it is quite). You can default the XBOX to start up as an extender. The XBOX is big and ugly (in my opinion) but it works. Too bad MS doesn't produce an extender only box like the Apple TV. It could easily be that small, enough to paste on the back of any TV.

FYI, you can also get content (recorded TV/movies, music, and photo's) from your "server" to any other PC, you just can't view live TV from the server. If we had that capability it would be called softsled, something that was rumoured but never made available. Also note, that protected content (i.e. Recorded TV) can not be viewed on another PC unless an extender is used (someone may have to correct me on that) to a TV.

Finally, you can purchase an app for you iPod/Pad that will let you watch recorded TV/movies from you server. It is called Remote Potato. There are other products available that can do similar streaming.

So, there are plenty of ways to move your server content to different devices. The primary issue is Live TV, and that requires a XBOX acting as an extender.

To answer your last question, my media centre setup is used 7 days a week by the family. Typically I have 500 TV shows recorded. Everything is time shifted. We watch what we want when we want. TV is recorded from SD/HD cable as well as OTA digital. The built in TV Guide in Media Centre contains all channels.

All eight TV's in the house, pool house, and home theatre room have access to the Media Centre content, same as the iPad's/iPod. I rip all my purchased movies to disk, same with music. All home video and pictures are viewed through media centre. We stream music using mCShoutcast which gives access to thousands of radio stations. Security cams are viewable via Media Centre. I also have most of my home lighting automated, controllable though Media Centre. So overall, it is a very versatile device, one I have used for a long time and will continue to do so.

[Venom51]

I'm in the same boat as Danno. I have 8 TV's each with an Acer Revo,2 notebooks, 2 workstations, a Xoom and 2 Droid 3 handsets. All are used to watch TV. I only have a pool of 3 tuners but that covers the wife and I and all our recordings just fine. I am adding a fourth source as we now have her grandmother living with us and all she watches is TVLand 24/7.

We use Media Center exclusively for everything. TV,DVD's, Music and photos. I've never had an issue once the wife learned how to use it. She now loves it and we can never go back. Jump on in the water is fine. You can find info on the system in the "Show us your system" section of this site.

[MZmuda]

Wow! Cool! Great answers! Thanks, Guys!

A few more questions:

1 - Is there a limit to the number of SERVERS you can have?
2 - Can you limit media (music, movies, shows, pictures, etc...) to individuals (ie: can an extender ask you to log on to access certain content?)
3 - Does Media Center pass things like Closed Captions and V-Chip data (like for TVMA, etc...) and have ratings limits?
4 - How many tuners can you have on a server? (I heard 4 for Windows 7... can someone confirm?)
5 - Is there a limit to how many files WMC can handle or how big the drives can be that it can access? (I'll be using a 64 bit version of Windows on a UEFI BIOS machine, so I'm unaffected by the 2.5TB drive limit.) (For example, could I stripe a few drives in a RAID array, giving myself a Super PVR with 12TB of storage?)
6 - How fast is WMC at sorting music / pictures, etc... I set something like this up a while ago and felt that my Windows Machine took FOREVER to index all of my media.

Whew! Lots of technical stuff in this one. (I wish Microsoft had a list of all the technical specs somewhere... does anybody know if they do / where they could be?)

Thanks again; you guys ROCK!

- Z

[spanner]

Some of these questions I will let someone else take that has more WMC tech Knowledge but off the top of my head

2. I believe the folders ( media ) monitored by WMC are the ones each extender will also monitor. I dont think that you can choose separately by extender

5. I dont believe their is a limit to the amount of media, but i have found that with my large music and photo collection, when setting up multiple extenders to set up one at a time and allow it to finish building its media library completely before installing the next extender. When having 2 or more extenders build up their initial library at the same time took forever and caused me some heart ache, not sure this is still a problem. As far as the size of the drives any drive and size you can get windows 7 to recognize should also be recognized by WMC.

[brennok]

I will mention one potential issue with the remote HTPC setup is monitoring the HTPC.

My original plan was to setup a remote HTPC to record content and use it to feed my system. The problem became though I had no way to easily be notified if an error occurred. Now I am not your normal usage scenario since I use Media Center and TiVos with the TiVo being the primary devices. I just found when an error did pop-up unless it was on my main PC I didn't catch it.

This probably won't be an issue for you since you would be watching it regularly via extenders, but just something to be aware of.

[Venom51]

Wow! Cool! Great answers! Thanks, Guys!

A few more questions:

1 - Is there a limit to the number of SERVERS you can have?
No server limit in terms of actual Media Centers. How ever I believe the Media Center to extender to be a one to one or one to many relationship.

2 - Can you limit media (music, movies, shows, pictures, etc...) to individuals (ie: can an extender ask you to log on to access certain content?)
Not in an extender based environment.

3 - Does Media Center pass things like Closed Captions and V-Chip data (like for TVMA, etc...) and have ratings limits?
Not certain about this one. I don't use extendersin my set up.

4 - How many tuners can you have on a server? (I heard 4 for Windows 7... can someone confirm?)
Depends on what you are deaming as a server. My server is not a media center. It's a DVBlink based server. That opens up a nother discussion.

5 - Is there a limit to how many files WMC can handle or how big the drives can be that it can access? (I'll be using a 64 bit version of Windows on a UEFI BIOS machine, so I'm unaffected by the 2.5TB drive limit.) (For example, could I stripe a few drives in a RAID array, giving myself a Super PVR with 12TB of storage?)
No drive limits that I am aware of.

6 - How fast is WMC at sorting music / pictures, etc... I set something like this up a while ago and felt that my Windows Machine took FOREVER to index all of my media.
Depends on the size of the directory being indexed.

Whew! Lots of technical stuff in this one. (I wish Microsoft had a list of all the technical specs somewhere... does anybody know if they do / where they could be?)

Thanks again; you guys ROCK!

- Z

[Danno100]

Number of TV tuners you can have offically supported in Media Centre is 4, but with a simple hack program (Tuner Salad), you can have up to 12 tuners. If you want network tuners, you can install the HD HomeRun devices. This network device looks like a locally installed TV tuner and allows ATSC/Clear QAM cable (not NTSC cable). Useful for a laptop which can watch live TV using the network tuner. For instance, take your laptop outside and wirelessly watch live TV while having dinner on the deck.

WMC has virtually unlimited file/drive capacity. I have 8 drives (10 TB's) available with 60,000+ songs, 20,000+ pictures, 500+ TV recordings, and 1,000+ video's. One very useful plug-in is MediaBrowser. It can bring together content over various drives into one or more virtual folders, so there is no need to span drives for a single library. Video content can be controlled using a limited parental control feature in MediaBrowser.

THe biggest limitations of Media Centre (IMHO) is the lack of Microsoft support, lack of commercial removal, lack of a Microsoft supported plug-in store, and lack of enhancements (although some are welcome) over the last 5+ years Media Centre has been around. I have a lot of hacks in my system to support some of the features mentioned (mostly because I live in Canada and Microsoft doesn't offically support ATSC/Clear QAM). Quite a shame as OTA HD TV is mandated by the government.

[adam1991]

THe biggest limitations of Media Centre (IMHO) is the lack of Microsoft support, lack of commercial removal

now now, ShowAnalyzer works superbly at marking commercials--and DTb works great at using those markers and skipping the commercials.

[Danno100]

I remember the days of Lifextender, a simple commercial remover application. Dtb and Showanalyzer don't work natively on .wtv files used by Win 7. Dtb does workbut doesn'r remove commercials, and it works only after .wtv files are converted to the old Vista recording format (.dvr-ms). I know that last step can be automated. Just longing for a simple one step installation.

[MZmuda]

Again, Guys, all I can say is WOW and THANK YOU!!!

I definitely think this is the way to go for my soon-to-happen video setup. The only thing I still need to investigate is how loud / quiet an XBOX 360 4G is, since it will be located in a bedroom, and, since I'd like it to be "always on", if it's loud, that could be a deal-breaker. (Then I'll need to see if I can pick up some of those other extenders.)

Fantastic! Thank You ALL SO MUCH for ALL of the detailed (and great!) information!

- Z

[Danno100]

My XBOX 360 4G's are fairly quiet (one in living room). I never bought the old XBOX specifically because of the fan noise. Having said it is quiet, my wife wouldn't like a XBOX 360 4G in the bedroom because she'd likely hear it. Our DMA 2100 extender is in our bedroom and it is totally silent (no fan). DMA uses 8 watts in wired mode, XBXOX is around 60 watts (if energy consumption is an issue). No doubt though, the XBOX has a better look and feel (e.g. animations, faster scrolling, plays more video formats natively).

[alastor]

I wouldn't keep an Xbox 360 on all the time, even one of the new quiet and efficient 4g ones. It'll be a power hog! We use a older white Xbox 360 Jasper in one of our bedrooms that is only powered on when we need to watch TV. Ours can be fully connected to Media Center and ready from power off in around 20 seconds. The newer Xboxes may be even slightly faster. Secret is to ensure the Xbox is set to automatically log into Media Center and that auto-login to LIVE is disabled.

[Scott R]

Hello all, one of my two TiVo HD's recently got fried and although I had a new-in-box TiVo HD collecting dust, I've been thinking again about trying to go with WMC, but I'm worried if it will work as reliably for my wife as the TiVo has for so long. I'd love to save the cost of the monthly TiVo fee, and wouldn't mind having DVR functionality in 3-4 rooms, and since I already have a couple of spare computers (one of which I'd dedicate to being the WMC server) and one XBox 360, and since the cost of XBox 360's has decreased and the options for cablecard tuners have increased, it's definitely all tempting me.

Over the last couple of days I've done some experimenting with the bits of hardware I already own and have run into some concerns. Here goes...

1) The fan on the XBox 360 Arcade I bought a while back (I think the net cost was $99) is too loud for the bedroom. I could put the computer in there (which is actually quite quiet), but I'm curious just how quiet the new XBox 360 Slims are. I've read online some claim them as being silent, but others disagreed. One of the computers I was hoping to use as the server is my Acer Revo 1600 (Intel Atom / NVIDIA Ion nettop), in case any of you have one of those and can comment on whether the XBox 360 Slim is as quiet as that.

2) I had upgraded my Acer Revo 1600 to Windows 7 and I have a couple of Hauppauge 950Q USB ATSC/ClearQAM tuners that I've been testing out. I've found that the Revo seemed to do a good job playing one channel, but when I recorded one channel and then changed to a different channel, it seemed like the motion wasn't as smooth. When I went to another room and fired up the XBox 360, it complained that I might not have enough network bandwidth. But later I tried another test where I shut down the WMC app on the Revo and fired up the XBox 360 and it seemed to work fine recording two channels and playing back a 3rd previously recorded show. So I'm thinking that this might mean that the Revo can operate well as a server/recorder, but it can't do a good job of doing that while also running the WMC UI and playing back content of its own. Is there any reason why my dual Hauppauge 950Q USB tuners might be consuming a lot of resources which the HDHomeRun Prime or Ceton USB tuner might not be, or is that wishful thinking?

Another option for me is to use an older HP Slimline 3020n desktop PC in the bedroom, which I believe is quieter than the XBox 360 Arcade, but not quite as quiet as the Acer Revo. I think I may have a problem there, though, because it's on-board graphics chip may be too antiquated to handle 1080p video and it's on-board ethernet is only 100 Mb, making it a bad server. I have both a gigabit card and an upgraded video card, but because of the limited space/slots in the Slimline, I can't use both at the same time. If this is to be a server, the gigabit ethernet is a must, so I'll have to see if the on-board graphics can handle the task. Another option might be to steal the graphics card that came in a recently purchased desktop and see if it's smaller than the other graphics card, such that I could use both at the same time, but at this point I'm assuming that I'd have to get by with the on-board graphics. Again, this is an old GPU, so it isn't as good as the Revo's NVIDIA ION chip. OTOH, the HP Slimline has a faster CPU than the Revo. Obviously, the ideal thing would be to buy a new, more capable, but still super-quiet PC, but then I'm probably spending a good $400 which decreases the value proposition as compared to just having 2-3 active TiVo HD's. Keep in mind that with the WMC option, I'd already be looking at spending $250-300 for the external cablecard tuner box and $150-200 for an XBox 360 Slim.

3) I'm a bit concerned about the fact that the server / multi-XBox approach means that high-bitrate video is being transmitted across my network, resulting in a possible hit to performance of other things I might be doing (in particular, connecting over VPN to work clients). With the multi-TiVo approach, everything is self-contained, and the network only gets taxed when I want to transfer a show from one room to another.

So at this point I'd say things look hopeful, but there are some big/costly issues I'm facing, and I'd hate to spend the money on an XBox 360 Slim only to find that it's still too loud. And I'm worried about spending the money on the cablecard tuner only to find that neither my Revo nor the Slimline had enough horsepower to act as both a server and player for one of my rooms.

[WScottCross]

I remember the days of Lifextender, a simple commercial remover application. Dtb and Showanalyzer don't work natively on .wtv files used by Win 7. Dtb does workbut doesn'r remove commercials, and it works only after .wtv files are converted to the old Vista recording format (.dvr-ms). I know that last step can be automated. Just longing for a simple one step installation.

Not true. I am using SA to scan and mark commercials in my WTV recordings and DTB skips the commercials just fine. I'm using the 1.0 beta of ShowAnalyzer (with profiles) and it has been very good at detecting commercials quite accurately (except on CBS, but that's because they intentionally mess with the transitions to keep these apps from working correctly) I absolutely HATE commercials, so I record anything I'm remotely interested in so if I do decide to watch it, I can skip the commercials automatically.

More info for the OP:

You can have 4 tuners of each type without any hacks (ATSC, CableCard, NTSC). With TunerSalad, that increases to up to 12 of each type. I currently have 8 Cablecard tuners in my machine (2 Ceton quad tuner cards)

You can copy the recordings off to another machine for storage. I record from the main Media Center PC, but then have some batch files that run every night to move the movies and recorded TV shows (anything older than 10 days) off to my Windows Home Server 2011 machine which has a 16TB RAID5 array. This is treated like a large external hard drive. The shows are still played back on the main Media Center (or one of the extenders connected to it). The nice thing about this arrangement is that the recordings stay on the main Media Center for a while and ShowAnalyzer has time to get them commercial scanned and then they eventually get moved off to the server for longer term storage. This works fine because it doesn't matter where the show is stored, as long as the filename doesn't get changed, DVRMSToolBox will still associate the correct commercial skip file with the recording and commercials will still be automatically skipped.

As you might guess from my description, Media Center is the centerpiece for ALL our viewing/listening in our house. There are 4 adults and 2 kids in the house and we share 5 TVs and currently have nearly 80 series set up to record and whatever movies look interesting. My family has fully embraced the interface and we would hate to have to go back to a crappy cable box interface.