Migration to WMC7 - Opinions, tips, tricks, shortfalls

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by svemuri

Information
* Max 4 tuners per type - Analog, OTA, ClearQAM, CableCard - so 16 in total

Tunersalad allows you to increase the number of each type tuner from 4 to either 6 or 8. Works for me.

DVBLogic can control more than one HDPVR. There is a serial channel changing application for some Direct TV boxes.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Though if enough of SageTV's user base moves to Media Portal or XBMC, perhaps they'll eventually become viable alternatives.

That would require hardware extenders.

Originally Posted by svemuri

For the WMC7 experts: I currently have analog capture cards capturing Dish output, HDHR for clear QAM/OTA and Firewire for cable. Sage lets me create different lineups for each of these sources. It appears that WMC only supports ONE lineup? How would that work?

The way I understand it is you get one lineup, but that lineup is capable of handling both "provider" (cable/sat) and OTA channels on different tuner types. What you can't do, is create lineups for multiple cable/sat providers I believe.

The more I look for alternatives, the more I miss Sage.

Yeah, I know the feeling.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by stanger89

That would require hardware extenders.

XMBC has that possibility.

[stanger89]

Other than the AppleTV(2)? It looks like it has trouble with HD MPEG2.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Other than the AppleTV(2)? It looks like it has trouble with HD MPEG2.

Yeah, Apple TV2 does have issues. Send more pioneers! Free land on XBMC if you can get MPEG2 (among others) working on Apple TV2!

Back to the real world, there was this announcement back in Jan. Not sure if much has come of it:
http://xbmc.org/theuni/2011/01/12/more-about-sigma/

[drewg]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'm must wondering what Myth or XBMC does that sagetv doens't? what's the reason for the pioneering?

Timestretch (ability to play video faster or slower than realtime without distorting audio) is MythTV's killer feature IMHO, but Mythtv's front end in general is so much of a clusterf*** that I happily gave that up for SageTV 3.5 years ago. It seems like at least VLC now has that feature, so perhaps other players do to (ideally xbmc).

If XBMC ever runs on something small and low-wattage (like an AppleTV) that also plays 1080i Mpeg2, I'll probably wind up using it in conjunction with a MythTV back end. See http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=MythTV

Drew