WMC vs Other DVRs

[TheOsburnFamil]

Ya know, this is actually a great topic that I personally think should be converted to some sort of Wiki or Sticky somewhere. Wikipedia has something "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video_recorder" but it's too clunky. Would be nice to simply have some sort of chart that breaks the options down.

Something like this:
State of DVRs
Name | Type | LiveTV Support | Shared Guide | Shared Recordings | Max SD Concurrent Tunners | Max HD Concurrent Tunners | Apps Support | Remote Access | Premium Content | Shared Premium Content | VOD | Max Concurrent Extenders | External Media Support | Types of External Media Supported

With something like this, we could simply drop-in WMC/Extenders, XBMC, SageTV, Tivo, CableSTBs, DirecTV, Dish, etc...

I would think we could also include price-- but personally, I think prices are far too subjective and can change on a dime. It'd be nice to just see the options regardless the pricess.

[EDIT]
Type could be "PC" or "Provided STB" or "Software + Hardware Extenders"... I'm open to suggestions but my thought would be we include something to distinguish "openness" of the ecosystem.
[/EDIT]

[kingwr]

I can tell you that for me moving to Windows M C E was not about the cost of set top boxes

I wish I were independently wealthy and not worry about the cost of things. But, I am not. So, for me it was all about costs.

My kids could really care less if Barney or Dora are 1080i /1080p HD or in SD, as long as it is available.

If I want to see a game in true HD, I just go to the game, and watch it live

It was actually when my kids started watching less ripped DVDs and the same episodes of SpongeBob and Phineas and Ferb and started watching live TV and wanting to make their own selections of recordings that I ended up moving off WMC (which was pretty much just serving the kids) and went to all DirecTV and RVU clients. Barnabas is right, I am on new customer deal at $73 a month for 6 rooms with no premiums (HBO and such) and pay separately $30 a month for 30/4 Internet on Charter. My DirecTV will go up $15 after a year (my Internet will go up too but they always negotiate you back to new customer pricing), then after two years I will have to switch (for a month or two) before DirecTV will send the "comeback to us" offer of the newest equipment, new customer pricing, and free HBO/NFL/etc. That's what I am counting on at least. I do go to some efforts to get the best price, but technology is the primary concern.

[DSperber]

If you are at work and someone mentions a show you want to watch, you can program your DVR with your phone or computer, and you don't need to be your own tech support and it doesn't take 2 months of research to set it up. Amazing.

This is equally possible today for WMC through Ceton's My Media Center smart phone app, http://cetoncorp.com/products/companion/.

For me, going to WMC in 2009 corresponded to my upgrade from WinXP to Win7. I went with the Ceton InfiniTV4 when it first came out, as well as the 1-tuner ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI card (which has subsequently been upgraded to Hauppauge 2-tuner HVR-2250) for OTA/ATSC and roof antenna. TWC/LA recompresses local networks so the OTA/ATSC version provides superior image quality.

Though I don't need more than four cable tuners (no kids!), Ceton does provide a 6-tuner option, as well as support for multiple 4-tuner/6-tuner cards in one machine, network-based tuners, and even network-shared tuners (by multiple Win7 machines on the network)... for those that need it.

I also have four Linksys DMA2100 extenders around the house, supporting my four HDTV's.

And I have almost 2TB of hard drive storage space for primary new recordings as well as for additional secondary "\Recorded TV" folder storage to move things to so that I can still see them and play them from my recordings list. Cable/satellite DVR's don't have the essentially unlimited additional/external storage flexibility that WMC and Windows7 provides (e.g. supporting hard drive replacement/upgrade as well as just adding more "\Recorded TV" storage folders) to increase capacity.

Not to mention the money saved through the one-time investment in some tuners and home ethernet cabling (which is a good thing in any case, avoiding wireless issues) and thus not having to pay TWC/LA for ongoing hardware/service rentals as well as each time they decide to increase rates (can't wait for the upcoming monopolization of Comcast+TWC).

[Mike88]

My HTPC is the most reliable DVR I’ve had. Previously I went through 6 Comcast Motorola DVRs due to missed recordings & am on my third Dish DVR due to missed or partial recordings. The HTPC has never missed a recording.

If you bought a new ready built PC & a network tuner you would not even have to open the PC ‘s case. You can still buy a Windows 7 PC for about $400, & pickup a network tuner on sale. So for about $450-$500 you’ve got a DVR.

However a lot of folks still won’t do that. They just don’t want to deal with it for whatever reason. They just want the cable company to install a DVR & hand them the remote. None of my friends have an HTPC yet some of them are technically able to put one together. As mentioned by STC, we appear to be a dying breed.

[Mike88]

When I was thinking about that none of my friends have an HTPC I also realized none of them have a whole-home system. Some have a small OTA HDTV in the kitchen or bedroom but that's it.

If they have only one TV connected to one DVR the cost savings of using an HTPC would not be as great as some of the folks here that use one HTPC & several extenders & therefore do not have to pay for additional STBs.

I wonder how many people, other than members of this forum, have a whole-home DVR system, either HTPC, cable or satellite.

[barnabas1969]

If I want to see a game in true HD, I just go to the game, and watch it live

Don't forget to bring your "HD Vision" sun glasses!

When I was thinking about that none of my friends have an HTPC I also realized none of them have a whole-home system. Some have a small OTA HDTV in the kitchen or bedroom but that's it.

If they have only one TV connected to one DVR the cost savings of using an HTPC would not be as great as some of the folks here that use one HTPC & several extenders & therefore do not have to pay for additional STBs.

I wonder how many people, other than members of this forum, have a whole-home DVR system, either HTPC, cable or satellite.

There was a report a couple of years ago which said that most people who have a DVR from their cable company don't even use it to record/time-shift their TV shows!

[kingwr]

There was a report a couple of years ago which said that most people who have a DVR from their cable company don't even use it to record/time-shift their TV shows!

This is what's great about Dish (for some folks). While the idea of the DVR deciding what to record is abhorrent to most of us, folks like my parents (80+) wouldn't use the DVR at all if it wasn't recording shows based on their watching habits. Their DVR is full of Andy Griffith, Are You Being Served, and Waiting for God episodes for my Mom to watch anytime she wishes, and she has no idea (nor does she care) how they got there. They do have a two-room "whole-house" system, by the way.

As far as expandability of storage being a deciding feature of WMC, I have never understood this. My WMC system had 230 ripped movies and at any given time 100-200 SD TV show recordings, plus all my music, photos, and home videos, and I don't think it ever amounted to 1 TB. My DirecTV HR44 Genie has 1TB of storage and I don't think I have ever seen it more than 40% full. It's like folks that have 20,000+ photos stored on their computer -- when will you ever be able to consume that much content? Are you storing 3TB of TV shows just because you can?

BTW, the Genie does have a SATA port that you can plug in an external HDD, and it will replace the internal drive for show recordings. So it is expandable.

[pittsoccer33]

None of my friends have an HTPC

None of my friends have a desktop PC period. A few still have Windows laptops. The rest have moved onto Macbooks and iPads.

My girlfriend has a Surface <3

I've had an "htpc" since my freshman year of college in 2002. For years my friends have told me how sharp they thought it looked and wished they had one. Like you said, its as easy now as it ever has been. There just isn't the big name consumer electronic muscle behind it.

Just for the sake of an example, if WMC arrived with Windows 8 think about how different the environment would be from the Vista version (which is essentially what we're all still using):
-efficent iGPU/APU
-multi tuner units
-moca and powerline being mainstream
-sub $99 extenders
-2TB/appox 320 hours worth of recording for $70ish
-easy remote access/remote scheduling
-still lacking adequate out of the box bluray, container, and codec support

What was Best Buy selling when Microsoft and their hardware partners were really pushing WMC 2007-2008ish?
-very large/expensive/noisy towers from OEMs only
-$300+ extenders and the expectation of using wifi
-320GB/approx 50 hours worth of recording for $70
-very expensive single tuner units available only from OEM and supported by no-one

I wonder how many people, other than members of this forum, have a whole-home DVR system, either HTPC, cable or satellite.

I think its growing. Look at the Comcast X1 - thats really sharp. If it could play my archived movie library I'd consider it. Dish and Directv have sort of been leading the way.

But on the other hand imagine a series of smart tv sets from a given manufacturer that had cablecard access. If you plugged all your smart tvs into the network, you could stick a cablecard and a usb hard drive into the main tv in the house. The smart tvs would make up your whole home DVR. It would be so easy to do that now but nobody is because the demand isn't there for a DIY solution.

WMC (and Cablecard for that matter) were just too far ahead of their time. Look at all the possible WMC extenders out there - Roku, WDTV, Neotv, Chromecast. And to that all the other devices in that space over the last 5 years - Boxee Box, Logitech Revue, Sony SMP, Smart TVs, Smart Bluray players, etc. None ever supported any sort of live tv access by design.

[pittsoccer33]

Are you storing 3TB of TV shows just because you can?

Sort of. Heres my DVR habit:

For starters, I record a ton of movies off Encore, MGM, and TCM. HBO to a lesser extent. And I'll add those to my library. I scan every week or two looking for upcoming things I've never seen, like but not enough to buy, or think might be interesting in the future.

I have a bunch of keywords WMC looks for -
WW2
WWII
World War
WW1
WWI
Vietnam War
Pittsburgh
Cold War
Space Race
Soviet Union
Founding Fathers
Christmas
Civil War
NASA
Evolution
and some others I can't think of.

I let WMC do its thing and record whatever comes up. I've disabled a ton of channels I'll never watch to get rid of false hits, but I look through and delete whatever looks like garbage.

I cancel my cable subscription every May or June, whenever Penguin season ends. I pick it back up later in the fall. In those months I'll go through and watch all the stuff I've recorded.

[DSperber]

As far as expandability of storage being a deciding feature of WMC, I have never understood this. My WMC system had 230 ripped movies and at any given time 100-200 SD TV show recordings, plus all my music, photos, and home videos, and I don't think it ever amounted to 1 TB. My DirecTV HR44 Genie has 1TB of storage and I don't think I have ever seen it more than 40% full.

I do not use WMC for movies or anything else other than HDTV. And I do not record/watch anything in SD... I only view HD. That is a significant increase in storage requirements.

Also, when special situations such as the Olympics arrive, and you're recording 12-24 hours per day (from multiple channels) of HD content over 16 days, that is a significant storage requirement. Of course it can't possibly be watched in "real time", so it will be "viewed down" over many weeks or even months after the events complete, but being able to store all of that HD content for future viewing requires considerable storage capacity.

Are you storing 3TB of TV shows just because you can?

Summer Olympics in HD is very storage-intensive. Not to mention the additional "very likely postponed" recordings of regular ongoing programs during the same period which will also be viewed well after being recorded, again adding to storage requirements.

Granted, this is a very special situation that arises every two years. But not having to worry about running out of room or doing premature automatic deletion to make room for new recordings is something I'm glad I have.

BTW, the Genie does have a SATA port that you can plug in an external HDD, and it will replace the internal drive for show recordings. So it is expandable.

Although I realize the ability to add a single external drive is better than nothing (and this is not a universally available capability with cable providers), it isn't anything like the infinite flexibility and expandability (for multiple folders and drives, both internal and external and network) available through WMC.

[dabretty]

All very good discussion here - and I am/will remain a loyal WMC user - but if you take a step back, isn't it about time that all of this gets trumped by a major overhaul of how we fundamentally view television? Most of the discussion here - aside from on-demand services directly from providers - revolves around the notion of us setting up fairly elaborate devices to trap/catch programming as it is broadcast in real-time. This model - while it technically works - seems just really, really stupid considering the lion's share of what we're recording does not necessitate a "live" stream in the first place (the content itself was long-ago recorded). Imagine if the only way for you to listen to a new song was to set up a device to record a live radio stream at a very specific time of the day, and you'd end up with bits and pieces of commercial and/or DJ talk around it. We'd all agree that'd be pretty stupid ... and yet some of us were doing just that way back in the day (I remember recording MJ as a kid onto cassette tapes). The music industry evolved, it seems like it's about time for the television industry to do the same.

Basically - aside from things necessitating "live" streams like sports/news - I think we need to kill this whole idea of taking pre-recorded video, creating real-time broadcasts from it, and us end-users recording it again for later playback. Of course, this would mean cable companies would become nothing other than ISPs with fat bandwidth pipes. Something that the likes of Comcast will fight against until the end of time. And for that reason, I really don't think anybody - Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc - has the interest to take them on (it would be a full-blown war that would take a ton of cash and back-room dealing with content creators).

[mark1234]

There was a report a couple of years ago which said that most people who have a DVR from their cable company don't even use it to record/time-shift their TV shows!

There is similar data in the UK as well. It's just weird behaviour. Why, why, WHY would you stick with schedules and adverts if there is a simple way to avoid it? Live TV is the least used option on my 7MC.

[barnabas1969]

There was a report a couple of years ago which said that most people who have a DVR from their cable company don't even use it to record/time-shift their TV shows!

There is similar data in the UK as well. It's just weird behaviour. Why, why, WHY would you stick with schedules and adverts if there is a simple way to avoid it? Live TV is the least used option on my 7MC.

My main two problems, besides the cost, of the rented cable company DVR were that there weren't enough tuners (only 2) and there wasn't enough storage space. I constantly had to decide which show wasn't going to get recorded, and what to delete. But I definitely used the DVR... it was so much nicer to watch TV on my own schedule. I did consider adding a "DVR expander" external drive, but my cable co only supports certain models, and only up to 1TB. I know several people who have one, and they have nothing but problems with it (e.g. the DVR expander just stops working, and the only way to get it working again is to reformat it... and lose all of your recordings).

I suppose the same question could be asked about people who have a programmable thermostat, but never invest the 10 minutes required to program it. Studies have shown that very few people who have a programmable thermostat use that feature.

Of course, this would mean cable companies would become nothing other than ISPs with fat bandwidth pipes. Something that the likes of Comcast will fight against until the end of time.

The "fat pipe dream" has been around for a long, long time. It hasn't happened for the reasons you stated. The cable companies want your money. The content creators want control of their content. That isn't going to change.

[DSperber]

I suppose the same question could be asked about people who have a programmable thermostat, but never invest the 10 minutes required to program it. Studies have shown that very few people who have a programmable thermostat use that feature.

I'm on that short list of those who DO use my programmable thermostat as intended to control my heat pump system (A/C or heat, as required per AUTO setting)... 7 days per week, 4 time slices per day, adjustable control for each time slice for each day.

Set it and forget it, no matter summer or winter. AUTO.

[adam1991]

I suppose the same question could be asked about people who have a programmable thermostat, but never invest the 10 minutes required to program it.

Oh, that's right--you're no longer married.

[kingwr]

Are you storing 3TB of TV shows just because you can?

Sort of. Heres my DVR habit:

...I cancel my cable subscription every May or June, whenever Penguin season ends. I pick it back up later in the fall. In those months I'll go through and watch all the stuff I've recorded.

That actually makes sense, as well as the Olympics thing. I was thinking it was more for storing the entire series of Lost that you refuse to delete, or something along those lines. Anyway, the only TV shows I have ever had that much passion for was From the Earth to the Moon, Band of Brothers, and Battlestar Galactica, and my wife bought all three of those on DVD or Blu Ray for me for Christmas through the years (I am hard to buy for).

[adam1991]

oh, man, From The Earth to the Moon was an absolutely fantastic piece of filmmaking.

Most of the time I rant about "why do I bother to have any TV at all, it's so bad..." and then I stop and remember, once in a blue moon they get it right.

I bet nerdy Andrew Chaikin never thought he himself would be immortalized like that when he was diving into the details around the space program the way some of us here dive into the details of a silly little media center application.

[barnabas1969]

I suppose the same question could be asked about people who have a programmable thermostat, but never invest the 10 minutes required to program it.

Oh, that's right--you're no longer married.

Not that it's any of your business, but I want to set the record straight (you struck a nerve with your comment)...

I divorced my first wife in 2004 (well, that's when I filed... it wasn't final until 2007, after a legal battle that cost me in excess of $2M). My ex-wife is a nut job, but let's not go too deep into that subject. I'll just state it simply like this... nobody understands how deep her craziness goes except me, my immediate family, and my closest friends. I've only met one person whose ex-wife could measure up to the insanity of mine... and his ex-wife (luckily for him) overdosed and died 10 years after their divorce.

I'll ask you these questions:

1) Have you ever awoken in the middle of the night to find your wife sitting on top of you, punching you as hard as she can, because she had a bad dream?
2) Have you ever awoken in the middle of the night, in mid air, because your wife put her feet on your back and literally kicked you out of bed?
3) Have you ever had to physically stand between your wife and your children to protect them from her?
3a) Have your children ever come to you to tell you that your ex-wife literally picked your daughter up by the hair, off the floor (feet not touching the floor) and literally THREW her into a wall? And... this was because your daughter ate the last slice of bread? And... when you reported it... the Department of Children and Families did NOTHING about it... because you are a man?
4) Does your wife call you a minimum of 5 times a day at work/home/cell (sometimes as many as 15), and if you don't answer your work phone, she will call the telephone operator at work and cuss her out, and insist that she page you over the loud speaker, leave lengthy nasty messages on your phone, and text you (or, back in the day before text messages on cell phones, PAGE you) endlessly? And, ten years after your separation, she still does this?
4a) Does your ex-wife tell you and other people she knows that she wants to find a man just like you?
4b) Does she tell you that she wants you back, even after 10 years?
5) Has your wife ever called your work, pretending to be someone else, and disparage other employees (including people who were currently being considered for hire)?
6) Oh, here's one for you... have you ever spent the night in your (adopted... yes... she had two kids prior to marrying her... and I adopted them) oldest daughter's bedroom, which was the only bedroom on the ground floor, during a hurricane (to protect your family), and woke up to your wife literally ripping a post off of your daughter's four-poster bed, and threatening to beat you with it?

I could go on and on and on. People assume that a person is exaggerating about his ex wife/husband. Very few people I know really understand what I've been through, and what I continue to go through. The only people I know who can come close to imagining what I went through (and continue to go through) with my ex-wife... are the people who were here with me to experience it themselves. I think my ex-wife is the 0.0001% of ex-wives.

Let's put it this way... my closest friends were literally afraid to testify in court for fear of what she might do to them. She always bragged about the things she had done to people who she felt had "wronged her" in some way, and she had no qualms about exacting vengeance on those people. I had a long, uphill battle in my divorce, which cost me dearly in a financial way. I lost financially, but I won my freedom. I also eventually managed to have a good relationship with my children. And that is what is really important (and the primary reason I left her, but she still doesn't understand this... and still asks me to come back to her to this very day).

Thankfully, now that my children are getting older, they see the truth about their mother too. My son has turned out very well. All of his core classes in high school are Advanced Placement. He's an honor student who will graduate high school in May this year with his AA degree, and has been accepted to the University of South Florida to work on his BS in Computer Science, with the objective to go on to his MS. He wants to be a software engineer. He will start at USF as a Junior. I support him 100% in this, and do everything I can to help him advance.. I fully expect him to have his Master's degree by the time he's 22 years old or younger. That's amazing to me.

My daughter... well... I'm still working on that. I don't want to say anything about her here in a public forum except that she's very intelligent and very artistically talented.

I re-married in 2011 (met her in 2009, started living together in 2010). My current/new wife is a terrific woman who is very frugal. She has a law degree in Romania which doesn't do anything for her here in the USA. She could have stayed in Romania and had a prestigious career in law... but she was unwilling to submit to the corrupt hiring practices there for employment in such a career. She routinely shops at church thrift shops, yard sales, and Goodwill for clothing. Amazingly, she actually finds lots of really nice clothing in those places, at amazingly low prices. I don't like spending my weekends driving around to yard sales and such. When I need clothing, I'd rather just buy it all now, so I prefer to just go buy what I want when I want it... but I still look at places like Ross and Marshall's to see if I find good deals before I go on to higher priced places.

My wife was born in 1968 and raised in communist Romania, and was part of the street protests that led to the overthrow of the communist Ceausescu government in 1989/1990... even though her mother was very pro-communism and was a police officer (and her father worked for the state-owned railroad). To their credit, they quickly adapted to our "imperialist" ways, and were some of the very first people in Romania to invest in Western corporations... so that their retirement is comfortable, but not extravagant.

She appreciates the fact that I do things to save energy. She grew up in an era where the electricity was only turned on during a few short hours each day, and they charged car batteries so that they would have lights in their house at night. She also LOVES Windows Media Center... even though she thought I was wasting my time/money when I first started looking in to it in late 2010.

[barnabas1969]

I suppose the same question could be asked about people who have a programmable thermostat, but never invest the 10 minutes required to program it. Studies have shown that very few people who have a programmable thermostat use that feature.

I'm on that short list of those who DO use my programmable thermostat as intended to control my heat pump system (A/C or heat, as required per AUTO setting)... 7 days per week, 4 time slices per day, adjustable control for each time slice for each day.

Set it and forget it, no matter summer or winter. AUTO.

My programmable thermostat keeps track of the number of hours that the system runs. I logged this during two weeks a few years ago where the average outdoor temperatures were similar. During the first week, I let the system run as programmed. During the second week, I set the indoor temperature at a fixed setting.

I found that the program saved approximately 12% on my cooling costs. I live in Florida, so we have a very short period each year for heating (and none during some years).

Based on my observations, the price of electricity in my area, and the size/SEER of my cooling system, the programmable thermostat saves me 12% on my cooling costs (an average of $8.00 per month while we are using the air conditioning). In a typical year, we only use the heat for 2-4 weeks, and I have natural gas heat... so I didn't measure that. Heating costs much more that cooling, and is a significant cost in northern states, so a programmable thermostat could save people in those regions even more money.

In the last couple of years, the Nest thermostat has gained a lot of attention. My programmable thermostat cost less than $40 seven years ago. I understand that they cost even less now. If you take the time to setup your programmable thermostat, it is difficult to justify the cost of the Nest.

[glugglug]

As far as expandability of storage being a deciding feature of WMC, I have never understood this. My WMC system had 230 ripped movies and at any given time 100-200 SD TV show recordings, plus all my music, photos, and home videos, and I don't think it ever amounted to 1 TB. My DirecTV HR44 Genie has 1TB of storage and I don't think I have ever seen it more than 40% full. It's like folks that have 20,000+ photos stored on their computer -- when will you ever be able to consume that much content? Are you storing 3TB of TV shows just because you can?

Bolded two key points to your answer. HD has at least 6x the pixels/sec of SD, and similarly probably 6x the bitrate. In addition to that, you are recording from DirecTV, which like most Satellite or European TV providers uses H.264 exclusively. Most cable companies in the US transmit only using MPEG-2. To get the same quality as an H.264 stream, the MPEG-2 stream would need to have at least double the bitrate. (and that's in the best case that there is practically no action). DivX, which is a subset of H.264 with a few features removed for easier playback, claims it is 11x the compression efficiency of MPEG-2. For fast action scenes this actually seems about right. For a general case instead of just action scenes, I would guess the normal is probably about 5x. So an hour of HD from a normal cable company is going to take 5x the space of an HD recording from DirecTV. I have many 1 hour recordings from FIOS that are around 8GB each.