looking for a one stop solution

homewardbound11

Hi.
I am looking for a plug and play solution for a xbmc setup to move on to from my original mc htpc with tuner cards.
Ideally would like the setup to have multiple tuners that support pvrs for mbmc. Both DVB T mpeg4 and DVBS 2. Tv headend for example.xbmc would run on either openelec or ubuntu.
I was hoping for something like the zotac other sources look impressive such as android. But again with pvr and multiple tuners and epg.
I am up to building this but now with a family it is proving difficult to get the time to build or upkeep. Hence out of box solution.

PogMoThoin

You're plans go beyond what Android will be capable of with your need for tuner cards and storage etc. Why not get one of these and build a decent setup from there:
http://www.hpshop.ie/products.asp?partno=658553-421

There is a €120 cashback offer.

vibe666

i'm looking for something similar myself and i'm thinking (after reading a bit here: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=PVR/Backend/Tvheadend) that i'll keep the backend separate and out of the way with the tv tuners etc. and just use raspberry pi's at the tv headend remotely controlling the backend (possibly mythtv or similar once i've had time to look into it) which will allow me to stream live or recorded TV and downloaded content from my NAS to the RPi's connected to TV's around the house and also allow XBMC to run the EPG for setting up and kicking off recordings as required on the backend as well.

Johnboy1951

I found nothing when I was searching, that fulfils the need for SAT & DTT dual tuners and PVR, so had to build my own .... got it working just before Xmas and am (temporarily) using Openelec with XBMC V12 Beta & TVHeadend backend.

I haven't yet got the TVHeadend EPG working properly ... sometimes it is correct and others not ....... have to look into it soon I suppose ....

homewardbound11

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I found nothing when I was searching, that fulfils the need for SAT & DTT dual tuners and PVR, so had to build my own .... got it working just before Xmas and am (temporarily) using Openelec with XBMC V12 Beta & TVHeadend backend.

I haven't yet got the TVHeadend EPG working properly ... sometimes it is correct and others not ....... have to look into it soon I suppose ....

Thanks johnboy. And all would you mind if you gettime to pm or post your setup.I.e. tuners and motherboard and your backend pct setup. How did you find driver compatibility with openelec
many thanks.

Johnboy1951

I 'over-specced' the motherboard, because I intend to use it as a general purpose PC.

MSI H61MA-E35 motherboard
G630 CPU ... probably borderline, but good enough

PCI-e Tuner card .... Satellite Dual tuner TBS 6981 -- the manufacturer gives good Linux support.

At present I am using a €15 DTT dongle for the terrestrial channels.
I intend to decide what to do about that after I make a final decision on the software set up.

Presently Openelec is looking good.
I am using an unofficial release of Openelec which has the TBS drivers included --- so I had no work to do at all

TVHeadend is installed through Openelec/XBMC from the menus.
It is administered from another PC on the LAN.


You can PM me if you have any questions about it.

It is my very first try at an HTPC, and to be honest I am all at sea with much of the config stuff in TVHeadend, but apparently I don't need to know about a lot of it anyway ... not unless I introduce a decryption card into the system.

HTH

EDIT
Forgot to mention I wanted PCI-e, SATA 3 and USB 3 on the motherboard, which rather limited my choice.
I have fitted a 60GB SSD and now bought a 3TB SATA 3 drive for storage.

My standard Linux OS (PCLinuxOS) boots in about 8 secs using the SSD.
Openelec boots faster, but not by much, as it is a 'Live OS' with changes saved for the next boot.

vibe666

i could post my set up, but i put it together and it still makes my head hurt thinking about it, so it would probably melt yours!

it's all in mid-flux at the moment anyway as we've just moved house into somewhere with a pre-installed multi-tv media centre setup anyway which is about to be drastically changed by me to better fit my needs.

BUT, in brief, i currently have a virtual freeNAS box (running inside esxi5) with 8x 2tb disks for centralised movie/tv etc. storage. i'm hoping to be able to run another VM on the same esxi host to handle the TV backend, but i've got to figure out the details for that yet.

in front of the main tv i have an acer revo r3610 'nettop' pc running windows 7 and 3 flavours of xbmc (in windows, xbmcbuntu and openelec) for various bits of testing.

i also have two raspberry pi's which i plan on using in front of the other tv's in the house once i get the tv backend up and running.

it's a rented house and we're not allowed to put up a sky dish and the magnet cable tv that is available just isn't worth what they're charging, so i'm looking at some kind of saorview and uk freeview set up coming into the tv backend if i can get a good enough signal, which should give us enough channels etc. to be going on with for now.

my only real caveat (afaik) is going to be getting the tv signals into the tv backend as a vm and if i can get tuner cards with pcie direct i/o or if usb dongles would do a good enough job as an alternative.

homewardbound11

Just a query. if there was a seperate tvheadend server. Is it possible to have multiple streams of the same channel or with a multiple tuner setup multiple streams of different channels. This would be an excellent solution if all other xbmc front end clients on a home network could use this. It would save on seperate sat boxes or tuners for added flexibility in the home.
Looks like ill end up trying this route. Openelec with tv headend. Multiple tuners and for all abmc clients running off this. I wonder what limitations will there be in hardware and software.
if the backend is robust enought and the xbmc front ends are out of the box setups then
It should be more stable.

vibe666

as far as live streams go, you can have as many streams as you have tuners, assuming your backend server is powerful enough to transcode the streams and your network is fast enough to push them out at the same time. the only practical limit on pulling down pre-recorded content from the backend would be disk read speed and network performance.

Johnboy1951

homewardbound11 wrote: »

Just a query. if there was a seperate tvheadend server. Is it possible to have multiple streams of the same channel or with a multiple tuner setup multiple streams of different channels. This would be an excellent solution if all other xbmc front end clients on a home network could use this. It would save on seperate sat boxes or tuners for added flexibility in the home.
Looks like ill end up trying this route. Openelec with tv headend. Multiple tuners and for all abmc clients running off this. I wonder what limitations will there be in hardware and software.
if the backend is robust enought and the xbmc front ends are out of the box setups then
It should be more stable.

From a backend with a few tuners, I would consider multicasting the full mux/transponder from each tuner.
That should give maybe 10 channels per tuner (depends on content of transponder), available over the LAN.


Of course if multiple devices are taking channels then the LAN will likely come under strain.
Definitely a Gigabit LAN would be needed.

homewardbound11

What are the pros and cons of either
A) backend multituner multicasting to clients
Or
backend with vu duo ultima receiver with multiple tuners and using XMBC clients on open elec
I am guessing a will be a complex setup with b being less flexible.


Also just saw the ho proliant offer is ending on the 31st. A good option for a backend with tv headend.

PogMoThoin

The Amiko Alien 2 with Enigma 2 is now as good as (if not better, has 3x tuners) the Vu Duo Ultima at half the price, no internal drive but supports network and usb.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056707402

Johnboy1951

homewardbound11 wrote: »

What are the pros and cons of either
A) backend multituner multicasting to clients
Or
backend with vu duo ultima receiver with multiple tuners and using XMBC clients on open elec
I am guessing a will be a complex setup with b being less flexible.


Also just saw the ho proliant offer is ending on the 31st. A good option for a backend with tv headend.

I guess the obvious one of many channels from a single tuner when multicasting the transponder.
Only those receivers locked to a multicast cause any LAN load ....

Yes, multicasting properly would require considerable setting up .... and truthfully is not needed by most.
Yet it is a nice solution for DTT, where we have only one (and 2 in the future) muxes to multicast.
It makes all DTT channels available to everyone on the LAN.

homewardbound11

Hi.
I picked up an alien 2 aniji Tripple tuner and Set it up today. I am running on sparks latest software and can stream to windows clients no problem. I can stream to android phones on the ftp or at least the spark tv server opens up to allow tv streams. The problem is that I can get video content to stream. I have vlc android player installed.

Also. Has anyone been able to steeami to xmbc android from their alien 2 . I am assuming it is some setup on android xmbc that I have not configured.
So far I can get one stream from the amiko alien 2 to windows xp ckients but as there are 3 tubers I had hoped for a possible 3 streams but this does not seem possible.
What are the advantages of upgrading the firmware to hdmu enigma2.

PogMoThoin

homewardbound11 wrote: »

What are the advantages of upgrading the firmware to hdmu enigma2.

For all the plugins and skins that are available for Enigma2:

• CrossEPG: working 7 day EPG for satellite, FTA only gives now and next. This is not working on default Spark but it is possible to fix
• Autobouquets: auto-updating of channels when they change transponder like a Sky box
• Cool TV guide: Sky planner type EPG http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp279/PogMoTho1n/2013-01-01142458_zps0c6e19d9.jpg
• Autotimer: similar to series link on Sky boxes
• RTE and 3 player plugins

This post shows what it looks like when done
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=82445824&postcount=186