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So, the guys over on the satellite forum sent me here
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24-01-2014 9:57pm#1Hi all,
I posted the following on the satellite forum (original post here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=88642192&postcount=4298) and was quickly referred here as a HTPC set up might well be the best solution for what I'm looking for, see this post http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=88642901&postcount=4300.
"Hi all,
I'm a bit of a lurker here. I've a 4 LNB FreeSat setup which NEVER gets used as it (obviously) doesn't have the Irish channels so we ended up keeping UPC which REALLY annoys me.
My New Years Resolution is to see if I can wean us off our dependence on UPC.
Here's my home setup and requirement:-
Setup:
- I have 100mb fibre broadband from UPC at home paid for by work which I will be keeping after I ditch my personal subscription to their TV service.
- I have an excellent Asus RT-N66U router which pumps out great WiFi throughout the house.
- I don't have any ethernet cabling in the house and homeplugs don't work due to some ultra sensitive electrical fuse system installed a few years ago. Believe me I tried everything and ended up selling 2 x sets of home plugs on Adverts.ie
- I have three TV's in the house I want to serve. Two TV's downstairs (let's call them my football/movie TV and the Family TV ) and a TV in the main bedroom.
- I have a 2 TB NAS stuffed with movies and TV series
- I have 2 X WiFi connected OUYA media boxes attached to the downstairs TV's running XBMC which stream online content and content from the NAS as well as Netflix.
- I have a Wifi connected WD Live box for the bedroom TV which is used for streaming NAS content and Netflix. That's about all it can do, it can't stream from the internet.
- I am about to sign up to www.privateinternetaccess.com VPN service
What do I want?
- One box with the Irish and UK FreeSat (or equivalent) channels for each TV which is easy to operate, has a 7 day EPG, series link type recording and can either record content to a local HDD or over the WiFi network to the NAS but obviously if it does this it would also have to be able to play content from the NAS also.
It seems to me that the Amiko Alien 2 might be the box to do this but the last 280 pages make me think that should I install 3 of these in the house and ditch UPC I'll have my money back in 6 months but I'll be permanently flashing an image here and sorting out a bug there and may end up pining for the good old days of UPC when TV just worked albeit expensively!!
I also read a few pages back that the Gigablue HD 800 QUAD HDTV PVR Linux Receiver and/or U+ ULTIMO Triple Linux HDTV Receiver might be better options for what I'm looking to achieve but a lot more expensive.
My thoughts are that I'll buy one box to replace the current FreeSat box I have (which is never used) and see if I can get it working in a stable manner to do the things I want it to do before buying and deploying two more boxes for the big UPC switch off.
Am I in the right thread to get support for this little project of mine or am I barking up the wrong tree all together? I'm a 5 out of 10 tech wise in so far as I flash the odd Android ROM and have set up the OUYA's with XBMC etc etc
Should I be going for the Amiiko Alian 2, the Gigablue HD 800 or the U+ ULTIMO Triple Linux HDTV Receiver?
Thanks in advance and not too much abuse please if I've strayed off topic or into the wrong thread for this.
Ben"
I quickly got the following response from one of the thread contributors
"I would suggest you consider building (or having someone build for you) your own HTPC - separate section on Boards for help with that - locate it at the main TV and stream from it to the other TVs.
Run Openelec on the HTPC, use the NAS for saving recordings (or save them locally if you use a big HDD) and the recordings, LiveTV and saved media will be available to all devices in the house running XBMC .... Ouya, Laptop etc.
Yes it will take a good bit of effort, but you will get things the way you want them ..... and time is on your side at present so there is no HUGE rush.
It is not a cheap option ..... buying suitable tuner cards can be costly and it does involve getting 'hands on'.
...... just another option ...... "
Hence I'm now creating this thread
I recall having a look at this mini PC (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-IdeaCentre-Ultra-Factor-Desktop/dp/B00DPJZQBG/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) thinking it might make a good media box / HTPC but that's as far as I got.
To build something which delivers what I want without ongoing drama (I don't mind a bit of maintenance, loading new versions of software etc) I'd need skills which I don't think I have.
Is this something which is a) practical to implement and b) capable of being built by me with my limited skills?
Are there mentors for rent around here?????
Ben0
Comments
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IMO, the first decision to be made is whether you build a HTPC or a backend server with tuners to serve lightweight/small devices designed to play the media on the TVs ..... or whether to build a HTPC which is designed to sit under one TV, provides the video output for that TV, as well as serving other TV devices as above.
The big difference between the two setups would be the requirement for a reasonable video card in the HTPC, whereas the backend server would run headless and not have a requirement for a good video output.
Generally silent (or near silent) running is a requirement, and this can be difficult (just needs to be kept in mind when choosing components) but not at all impossible.
Adding in tuner cards will contribute some heat to the HTPC which makes silent running a little more difficult, as well as making the choice of case and motherboard important. Both have to be capable of accommodating the chosen tuner card/s.
I built such a HTPC .... 2 x Sat & 2 x DTT tuners .... some time ago.
It runs near silent ..... I have one slow running case fan and a CPU fan, and the PSU fan only comes on as required.
My intention is to change to a backend TV & media server, thus getting rid of the rather large case from under the TV and replace it with a small device like a R-Pi or better.
You will need to decide how many tuners you need, which is dependent on how many TVs you wish to be able to watch different Satellite channels at the same time.
I hope that gives you something to think about
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Hi Johnboy, thanks for the reply.
I have a three year old i3 family PC, it's not up to much but does the job for web browsing, playing Minecraft etc. I guess I could use this project as an opportunity to upgrade that PC to double up as both the family PC and a back end server as I already have extenders (is that the correct term?) at each TV I can use to stream from the back end server. I have OUYA's (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=OUYA) at two TV's and a WD Live box at the other. The WD Live box may not be up to the job of streaming TV etc so I could try one of these when they become more widely available, it looks like an OUYA on steroids!! http://cubox-i.com/products
In terms of budget I'd be prepared to invest circa €600 to €800 on this project, is that realistic/viable?
A few questions for users of the HTPC forum in general if I may:-
I will try to answer as best I can, and hopefully others will chime in ......
If a R-Pi can work as the TV device then anything a little higher spec would do the same and probably be able to navigate its menus a little faster.
A backend server, which does not have to provide a HD display to a TV, can be quite low powered ..... but the mother board would have to have sufficient card slots for the tuner cards required.1. If I'm serving 3 TV's and want a single 7 day EPG for Saorview/Freesat and watch one record another functionality on all three (preferably recorded back to the NAS so the recording can later be watched from a different TV if necessary) does that mean I need to run 2 cables from the satellite and 2 cables from the Saorview ariel to the back end server for each TV i.e. 12 cables in total? Given I currently have a 4 LNB FreeSat satellite I guess that means upgrading to a 6 LNB or 8 LNB if I want to build in some future expansion capability?
If you want view and record Satellite channels at one TV then you need two Sat cables going to a tuner box sited at that TV.
You would need to do the same for each TV.
So 3 TV = 6 Sat cables, plus a DTT aerial cable for each.
There are methods of combining a DTT aerial and Sat, and/or using a Sat cable with dual wires.
If you use a HTPC as a server (or a backend server), then the cables would all go to that one point, and the TV client devices would connect to the server over the LAN - the HTPC displaying on the TV where it is located.
In Ireland we only have two muxes transmitted, and so only two DTT tuners are required in total provided the tuners make available all channels on the mux it is tuned to. All the good tuners do, as far as I am aware.
Generally a dual DTT tuner card will only require one aerial connection for the two tuners, and even if another tuner card was required in the future there should be a 'loop through' output from one tuner card to the other ..... meaning only one cable required from the DTT aerial.
Often it is much easier to bring in all the required cables from dish & aerial to one point rather than run them individually to each TV point.2. Will the back end server require two cards (one FreeSat and one Saorview) per TV served so a total of 6 cards will have to be installed into the PC thus requiring a tower chassis large enough to fit and vent all that gear?
You can get quad tuner Sat cards.
If you really require 6 channels to be tuned simultaneously, as you indicate above, then you will need two Sat tuner cards ..... 1 x 4 & 1 x 2 for instance.
As previously described I have two such cards installed on a motherboard in a HTPC case under the TV.3. Do any of the custom PC builders offer the option of having your back end server built to your spec with all required cards installed and tested etc? If so can you recommend any?
I built my own so cannot help with this.4. What kind of user experience can I expect? Will my kids be able to use the TV as easily as they do with UPC i..e Single remote for channel surfing, selecting and watching recorded programmes, watching RTE Player etc etc? Can I expect and any lag when starting up or switching channels or is the experience the equivalent to UPC/Sky?
I have no idea how 'easy' it is to use UPC
If the XBMC software is used at the TV devices with an appropriate backend software that integrates with it, then yes .......
one remote
one channel listing
options to select LiveTV, Videos, Recordings etc etc
Access to the internet services would be something others will have to comment on .... I have not as yet had the requirement.5. Can my proposed set up be run over WiFi? (The back end server will be cabled directly into the 100mb UPC broadband modem but everything else will be WiFi)
I have no idea what a "UPC broadband modem" would do or how it would be involved.
My HTPC/Server is connected to a router and each TV point connects to that router.
Whether the WiFi will be sufficient or not depends on a lot of factors, not least your physical environment, interfering devices, as well as the client devices at the TVs.
All I can say is that my R-Pi was not capable of displaying Live HD TV without stutters, when I tried it using WiFi in my environment.
It works fine using ethernet cable.
That might be due to the lightweight R-Pi as the client device, but you are using Ouya which is considerable higher spec.I'm serious about giving this project a go if what I want to do is viable so any help/advice/feedback positive or negative is very much appreciated.
cheers,
Ben
Keep asking questions and what you want/need will soon solidify in your mind.
Personally I would recommend using ethernet cable to each TV point.
It is faster, more secure and less liable to interference from other devices.
Given your proposed budget you should have little difficulty in building what you need.
My dual Sat & Dual DTT tuner, all new parts, in a rather expensive HTPC case, cost about €600 for the parts.
You are looking at an extra Sat tuner card and someone to build it, so that would bring you near to the top of your budget.
On the other hand if you go for a backend server which can be placed out of sight and sound, then you can save a lot on the HTPC case.
For the present I would not worry about your proposed budget.
One of the benefits I see with the use of a server, rather than individual receivers at each TV, is that recordings from each TV LAN device are saved on a central server, so a program recorded by the device at the bedroom TV, can be watched at any TV later.
The negative side is of course that all TV reception and media provision, is invested in one server device, so if that should fail in the future then all TV points 'black out'.
This has gotten too long ..... 0 -
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Thanks JB,
TOTALLY lost you there when you started talking about "Muxes" and "loop through's"
I'll read up on this stuff a bit more before reverting with potentially silly questions!!
Ben
A 'mux' is a group of DTT channels transmitted on a single frequency ..... the Sat equivalent is a transponder.
A single tuner can tune into the frequency and all the channels transmitted on that frequency can be viewed.
There are presently two DTT muxes for the Saorview channels so two tuners would allow reception of all the Saorview channels.
Satellite is more complicated as there are many many transponders and it would be impossible to have sufficient tuners to allow reception of them all.
So the Sat tuner number you require will be determined by how many simultaneous Sat channels you wish to receive ..... a tuner for watching a channel and a separate tuner for recording.
With 6 tuners you could have three TVs watching three different channels and also those three recording three completely different channels.
Of course if it is unlikely that all six would be required at the one time, then the number of tuners could be reduced.
Only you know how many you will actually need.
The 'loop through' is just a description of the aerial connection being made available on an output of the card, so that the aerial could be used by another device or card.
I hope that helps.0 -
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One single cable going to each tv to feed the UPC box at tv plus one tv also has twin cables from the FreeSat dish feeding Sagem box which never gets used. It's these two cables I was thinking of using to set up and figure out Amiko Alien 2 box along a Saorview Ariel.
Ben
Those single coax cables would need to be replaced by dual coax cabling from the Sat dish.
So the routing of those cables would be different than at present I expect.
How you would integrate the DTT aerial signal into separate feeds is another matter .... possibly require a device out at the dish and then splitters inside to separate the signals again.
IMO, a large part of your decision will be based on physical limitations for running cables etc.
On the other hand ..... if your wifi is perfect where you need it, then it might suffice for your TV use too.
It might be worth trying.
So yes you have a lot to consider to come to a decision about which type of set up will suit your situation.
..... remember the server option was only mentioned as a possible alternative It is most certainly not for everybody 0 -
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