Is it an HTPC or an extender?

[Kieran]

Just curious... Where do you draw the line? What defines an "HTPC" and when does it stop being an HTPC and become a media extender? Conversely what defines a media extender, and at what point would you classify it as an HTPC? Does an HTPC have to have lots of local storage (no NAS necessary?) does it need a built-in TV tuner? Does it need to have a built-in Blu-ray player?

I have an AMD Fusion-based net-top, running Windows7 on which I use both XBMC And 7MC. It has a 256GB SSD for the OS and short term media storage (DVR space), and is connected to my LAN where a 2TB Synology NAS resides for long-term media storage. My tuner is an HDHomerun-PRIME, which also resides on the network in a different room, next to the NAS. I can operate the whole system with my Harmony remote via a FLIRC programmable infra-red dongle.

The only thing this system can't do that I think would be nice in an HTPC is re-encode my .wtv DVR recordings. Well, it COULD do it, but it'd take forever given the Fusion CPU. For this task I involve my main desktop PC when when powered up runs the MCEBuddy service which watches a network shared folder for new recordings, re-encodes them, and saves the outputs to the NAS. I suppose it also can't play Blu-ray discs, but I have an stand alone Oppo for that, and I rip my discs to the server via my desktop PC.

So is my net-top an HTPC or an extender? To me it seems like an HTPC. I mean it's running full-blown Win7, with 256GB of local storage. Not that I care. I just became curious what most people would call it, after reading a few HTPC articles recently.

Again, just curious... how do you define "HTPC"?

[mark1234]

You're running a HTPC. Within the Media Centre community, an extender is a device that will connect, over a network, to a PC running Windows Media Centre and "extend" the experience of using that software.

Now, you can achieve a lot of an extender's capability by using a second HTPC, but there are a few things that only an extender can do:

• Play live TV
• View the guide
• Schedule recordings
• Play copy protected recordings

There are software/hardware options to workaround the first three points, but nothing (so far as I'm aware, anyway) gets around the DRM.

[Kieran]

Now, you can achieve a lot of an extender's capability by using a second HTPC, but there are a few things that only an extender can do:

• Play live TV
• View the guide
• Schedule recordings
• Play copy protected recordings

Not sure I follow you... you said "only" an extender can do those things, but an HTPC can do all those things. How is an extender different?

[Cryofax]

Only an extender can do those things using data from the central HTPC. This allows you to have one HTPC with a cablecard, and extenders around the house that can all independently pull content off that central computer and schedule recordings on it. The "whole house solution" so to speak. A second HTPC can record and play it's own programming, but would require it's own coaxil+cablecard setup and would be independent of the other HTPC (i.e. they can't share content that is copyprotected because it's anchored to whatever hardware recorded it). The other thing is an extender doesn't need all the horsepower the HTPC does. An Xbox 360 or echo, in the $100-$200 range, can act as extenders.

So yes you could just have multiple HTPCs around the house, but you lose the convenience of centralized recording of shows and sharing of those shows. You could just schedule every HTPC to record the same shows I suppose, or just watch certain shows from certain HTPCs. I'm sure a lot of people do exactly that.

[blueiedgod]

Extender EXTENDS the Host HTPC WMC screen to another location.

Which is the main reason it is able to play copyright protected content on a different screen than the one connected to the machine it was recorded on. The actual playback is actually on the machine that made the recording. Think of RDP session, which is in fact how extender functions.

[mark1234]

Yes, I missed out the rather crucial piece that in the extender model, you have a single HTPC doing all the recording. Any other solution in some way compromises the "whole house" setup that extenders offer.

[Kieran]

OKay, I think I get it now.

It seems to me that using an HDHomerun sort of results in a hybrid solution, because the HDHR has multiple tuners that can be shared by any playback device on the network. So the way I have my setup, no single HTPC has a tuner, they all share the HDHR. DVR recordings are automatically moved from the local recording folder to a stand-alone NAS (Synology) where any of the HTPCs or devices can access them. The main shortcoming I see here compared to a central HTPC+extenders setup is that I can not view premium/copy-protected recordings from any HTPC. We have HBO, and those recordings are always viewed on the main TV. However, most premium channels (HBO, SHO, etc.) have a streaming app so that recording their shows isn't really necessary anyway. I can watch the episodes on any of our devices via HBO-Go.

So is an extender essentially streaming the recording from the central HTPC? Can my W7 net-top be setup as an extender?

Thanks for the discussion!

[slowbiscuit]

Yes. No.

[blueiedgod]

OKay, I think I get it now.

It seems to me that using an HDHomerun sort of results in a hybrid solution, because the HDHR has multiple tuners that can be shared by any playback device on the network. So the way I have my setup, no single HTPC has a tuner, they all share the HDHR. DVR recordings are automatically moved from the local recording folder to a stand-alone NAS (Synology) where any of the HTPCs or devices can access them. The main shortcoming I see here compared to a central HTPC+extenders setup is that I can not view premium/copy-protected recordings from any HTPC. We have HBO, and those recordings are always viewed on the main TV. However, most premium channels (HBO, SHO, etc.) have a streaming app so that recording their shows isn't really necessary anyway. I can watch the episodes on any of our devices via HBO-Go.

So is an extender essentially streaming the recording from the central HTPC? Can my W7 net-top be setup as an extender?

Thanks for the discussion!

Dynamic tuner sharing is a bit different. Each PC is then the host, and gets its own feed from the tuner. With the extender model, multiple locations can view the same channel at the same time of within the buffer spread (default is 40 minutes) and only use 1 tuner. With dynamic tuner model, each location will tie up a tuner.

No, there is no soft-sled extender functionality. It was promised by the WMC team, but was nixed from the release. Win 7 was originally set up with that capability.

[mark1234]

It seems to me that using an HDHomerun sort of results in a hybrid solution, because the HDHR has multiple tuners that can be shared by any playback device on the network. So the way I have my setup, no single HTPC has a tuner, they all share the HDHR. DVR recordings are automatically moved from the local recording folder to a stand-alone NAS (Synology) where any of the HTPCs or devices can access them. The main shortcoming I see here compared to a central HTPC+extenders setup is that I can not view premium/copy-protected recordings from any HTPC. We have HBO, and those recordings are always viewed on the main TV. However, most premium channels (HBO, SHO, etc.) have a streaming app so that recording their shows isn't really necessary anyway. I can watch the episodes on any of our devices via HBO-Go.

This is one of the workarounds, and compromises, that I mentioned.

[mark1234]

No, there is no soft-sled extender functionality. It was promised by the WMC team, but was nixed from the release. Win 7 was originally set up with that capability.

Really? I've never seen said that before. Only realistic softsled talk I ever heard was back in the XP era.

[soccerdad]

IF the recordings on the HTPC are not copyprotected, then yes, another PC or laptop can function to extend the recordings from the HTPC. In other words, you can run WMC on another PC, use the HDHRPrime tuners for live tv, and then use the video function in WMC on the PC to watch the non-copy protected shows that you recorded and have stored on the HTPC (or in your NAS).

[kingwr]

No, there is no soft-sled extender functionality. It was promised by the WMC team, but was nixed from the release. Win 7 was originally set up with that capability.

Really? I've never seen said that before. Only realistic softsled talk I ever heard was back in the XP era.

You are correct. The codeword "Softsled" for a Windows XP-based software extender was coined at the same time as "Bobsled," the Windows CE-based extender reference platform that was licensed to OEMs, and "Xsled,"the XBox-based software extender. All of these used RDP to extend the UI of Windows M C E (Windows Media Center Edition) to the extender device or PC and then used Windows CE-based audio and video streaming mechanisms for the video and audio. Windows Vista was released with a new, incompatible, but very similar extender model referred to as V2 extenders.

Softsled was supposedly available to developers at Microsoft to test the extender model and how add-ins (extras) translated into the model. There has been much speculation on why Softsled was never released to end users, mainly oriented around protection of the OEMs producing the hardware extenders as well as bolstering XBox sales.

When Windows 7 Media Center (WMC) was being Beta tested, there was a lot of speculation that a Windows 7 computer could act as an "extender," not through the RDP-based extender model but through DCOM remoting of certain services from a central WMC computer. It made sense, because implementing such functionality would really be trivial, but it was never anything but rumors. I don't recall any serious source ever saying that Microsoft had a version of Windows 7 WMC that actually had the remoting services included.

[kingwr]

IF the recordings on the HTPC are not copyprotected, then yes, another PC or laptop can function to extend the recordings from the HTPC. In other words, you can run WMC on another PC, use the HDHRPrime tuners for live tv, and then use the video function in WMC on the PC to watch the non-copy protected shows that you recorded and have stored on the HTPC (or in your NAS).

In the context of this thread, though, this is not "extender" functionality per se - only file sharing. There is no shared guide, no shared recording schedule, no shared media libraries, no shared UI, etc.