Should I start a WMC system in 2017?

[jookyseapastor]

Hello all,
I've poked around and learned a few things, but the wikis are pretty empty and I guess I could use some guidance...
I built a HTPC with a nice SilverStone case. Older Athlon 64 hexacore processor, Win 7 pro. Just wanted to get rid of TiVo. I bought a SD HD HomeRun Prime all ready to switch over, then TiVo clipped me for my annual fee and I put everything aside. Resigned to TiVo service.

I live in Chicago, have Comcast basic broadcast+HBOs. I planned to install the HTPC near my network hub, away from my primary TV set, which I planned to connect with an XBox 360. Now I'm hearing that basically the 360 is incapable of playing Comcast recordings because they're in h.264.

I need a DVR, hate TiVo with a passion, and have all of this stuff. Should I bother trying to put it together, or will it not work at the end of the day for what I am hoping to do? My former system was based on Google TV, which hasn't been supported in forever. I've got to change, but I don't want to pay Comcast or TiVo any more money. Any recommendations about which way I should go to find eternal TV bliss that can be operated by wife and kids?

Thanks,
Alex

[Scallica]

Windows 7 + WMC + HDHomeRun Prime + EPG123 = Success

[jtx]

First of all, the XBox 360 can play back h.264 via a download - it may require an Xbox live account to get it, but it is free. I have done this for my 3 Xbox 360's that I have working with WMC/EPG123. Like the previous poster indicated, that formula works and I have it working too. I use WMC and Xbox 360's as media extenders from a headless PC in a Silverstone ML04 case with a Ceton PCIe6 tuner card.

There are some other options which depend on how many DRM channels you have. Silicondust is working on a DRM enabled DVR for their hardware but it is a work in progress. SageTV is a good option where you can circumvent DRM by encoding video from set top boxes and/or combine that with cablecard and antenna tuner support. You can use android TV boxes or PCs as media extenders for SageTV. In my house we have SageTV and WMC, but we use SageTV most of the time. Good luck.

[jookyseapastor]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm firing up the HTPC and xbox. My buddy has used SageTV since before they got bought up. Good to see that they're now open source and might be an alternative if WMC doesn't work out for me.

[DanH]

Windows 7 + WMC + HDHomeRun Prime + EPG123 = Success

I'm still using Microsoft's guide here in Boston without any problems....so you don't have to use EPG123. It might be worth trying your build with the default Microsoft guide before adding the complication with EPG123.

Between your MCPC and the extender, make sure you are using a wired network....and that the NIC and switch are gigabit as you have a lot of data flowing into the PC from the HD Homerun and out to the extender.

Ceton Echo is a low-cost, quiet (no fans) and inexpensive to run solution for your extender. They are available used on eBay and do work with h.264!

Don't upgrade to WIndows 8 or 10....they will not work with extenders other than the Xbox 360 (unless someone has come up with a hack, but I doubt it!)

[DavidinCT]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm firing up the HTPC and xbox. My buddy has used SageTV since before they got bought up. Good to see that they're now open source and might be an alternative if WMC doesn't work out for me.

Best advice I can give...

Find out exactly what you want the system to do and so. Do you want some streaming services (I use YouTube TV all the time on WMC for example) and do some homework, Although WMC is a dead product according to Microsoft, it is still a very capable system and the front end is STILL better than most 3rd party options out there. Even though this site does not have a lot of traffic any more it's still a major resource of lots of little things. ANd a lot of programs from as far back as 2009 could still work today and others with work-arounds.

First of all, setup different drives, or partitions for different content. for Example, I have the OS, on a small SSD (120gb), on this it's just the OS, I use different drives for Recorded shows and Movies. Keep the OS on a different drive so if the OS dies for some reason, you don't mess with your media.

1. Update your system to a point before setting up WMC and then DISABLE UPDATES (this is the way to keep a very stable WMC machine).
2. Find the best drivers that work with your tuner cards and disable auto updates. If it "aint" broken, DONT auto fix it.
3. Batch files with the task scheduler are a great thing. Schedule weekly reboots, or even re-sync the clock 2-3 times a week (for systems that clocks drift).
4. Guide data, If you have/had Tivo, you know ROVI data, it works but, not the greatest and goes down time to time but EPG123 is an option that costs $25 a year. Try with ROVI then move to EPG if you cant stand it.
5. BACK UP, BACK UP ! When you get your system STABLE, BACK UP at least your system drive...and if you do a lot of changes, backup weekly (I normally do the OS drive as Windows could die and I could have the system back up in about 20 min).

With a lot of tweaking it can become very stable. So have fun.

[Slinkynose]

I love my system, and I have everything working exactly as it should, all with a decent WAF. But If I had known about TiVo's lifetime plans, I would have done that in a heartbeat.

Every time there is the slightest hiccup with the system I get dirty looks from the SO. I live in constant fear that my cable company will jack something up. Just last weekend I turned on the TV to find my cablecard needed provisioning, I rebooted and waited 15 minutes and the problem resolved itself. I dealt with the loss of guide data and EPG123 switchover this spring. I have updates turned off on an internet connected PC. I know that one day the Ceton will die and the game is over (my HDHR Prime does not perform nearly as well as the Ceton).

Meanwhile, several of my friends have TiVo with lifetime passes and enough boxes for all their rooms, their total spend was equal to my initial HW outlay. They have converged Plex, Netflix, Cable and other services. They have outside the home viewing on their mobile devices. They have the support of a company that still exists.

You should consider just buying the lifetime pass, or better yet, another year - because everything could be totally different in just a year.

[Bamadude514]

It's all bliss until Comcast decides to drop H264 in your area. I've been searching for hours on this forum the past couple of days to solve the dreaded "black screen with audio only" problem. This after several years of happiness. Big Bang season 11 premier was last night and we fell victim to this issue. Try screwing up your preggo wife's favorite show she's been waiting to see for months and see how well that goes

Problem is this isn't a Comcast problem according to most and is likely related to how WMC handles switching between MPEG2 & MPEG4. A solution would need to come from Micorsoft unless Comcast changes something... neither of which seems likely. Thankfully with help from this forum I have found a work-around to try tonight with segregating tuners, but this is not ideal and may cause conflicts with recording other shows. I'm not sure what my next move will be with TV at our house. Streaming, TiVo, OTA...?

Good luck.

[Ken H]

It's all bliss until Comcast decides to drop H264 in your area.

Exactly.

Once Comcast converts your area to MPEG4/H.264, you will no longer be able to use WMC without major issues. There are multiple topics in these forums with details.

The only possibility, is that I've found a Comcast rep on DSL Forums that is researching the issue. They bought a HDHomeRun and are doing testing to see if they can find the problem. My current belief is that the new video codec they use is incompatible with WMC as is, and without major effort on their part WMC will be obsolete. And, no major effort will be put forth based on the minute amount of Comcast subscribers that use a CableCARD, let alone with with WMC. Even if Comcast did modify their MPEG4/H.264 video, they have reduced the quality so much it may not worth it to you depending on how critical of an eye you have. I can easily see the difference and I don't like it, and that is definitely not going to change.

In my considered opinion from what you've said, there is no point in all the effort required to make a new WMC system work now. Stick with TiVo or try the X1 platform. Or for a better option, keep Xfinity Internet and switch to DirecTV for video.

I strongly disagree with anyone who thinks you will be better off switching to WMC now with Comcast, as opposed to staying with TiVo.

[bogglor]

It's all bliss until Comcast decides to drop H264 in your area.

Exactly.

Once Comcast converts your area to MPEG4/H.264, you will no longer be able to use WMC without major issues. There are multiple topics in these forums with details.

The only possibility, is that I've found a Comcast rep on DSL Forums that is researching the issue. They bought a HDHomeRun and are doing testing to see if they can find the problem. My current belief is that the new video codec they use is incompatible with WMC as is, and without major effort on their part WMC will be obsolete. And, no major effort will be put forth based on the minute amount of Comcast subscribers that use a CableCARD, let alone with with WMC. Even if Comcast did modify their MPEG4/H.264 video, they have reduced the quality so much it may not worth it to you depending on how critical of an eye you have. I can easily see the difference and I don't like it, and that is definitely not going to change.

In my considered opinion from what you've said, there is no point in all the effort required to make a new WMC system work now. Stick with TiVo or try the X1 platform. Or for a better option, keep Xfinity Internet and switch to DirecTV for video.

I strongly disagree with anyone who thinks you will be better off switching to WMC now with Comcast, as opposed to staying with TiVo.

You are absolutely right on this. The H264 switchover has been brutal. Your post gives me some hope that they will find the issue because it's about enough to make me cut the cord entirely.

[adam1991]

Cut away. I find no downsides to it, frankly. I did it over 2 years ago and got no pushback from the family. We went OTA, and Netflix/Hulu/Amazon are plenty mature to take over what cable used to do for us--at a much lower overall cost.

A few months ago we tried out Playstation Vue to see about going back to "cable". Eh. It works fantastic--but the end product is still the crappy pay TV stuff that has devolved into nothing very useful in the modern world.

If live sports is your thing, understand that that's the driver for paying the cable company to deliver video to your household. The tradeoffs you have to endure with that are costs, the high continuing escalation of costs, crappy equipment, and as you're seeing the inability more and more to roll your own.

[jachin99]

I started mine late last year, and with some help from EventGhost everything works really well. I don't have comcast though, I have cox.

[sgbroimp]

I think it depends upon what you want to view. I only have h.264 issues (Comcast) on the premiums and I watch very little of that content and so am ok to watch it in SD. I personally would do another WMC today, but understand why some would not. I certainly would not pay Comcast for the Premiums package again as it is mostly old movies I have seen before.

[Ken H]

I started mine late last year, and with some help from EventGhost everything works really well. I don't have comcast though, I have cox.

If he stays with cable, he's stuck with Comcast and as we are trying to explain, switching to WMC now would be a big mistake.

For other cable systems, starting now with WMC would be fine, as long as you use the EPG123 product for the guide.

[Ken H]

I think it depends upon what you want to view. I only have h.264 issues (Comcast) on the premiums and I watch very little of that content and so am ok to watch it in SD.

On Comcast systems, H.264 issues are not limited to premiums. They include all the ESPN channels, among others. And it's not just recorded playback, it's live TV viewing.

[stuartm]

I have to disagree here. I have Comcast with the h.264 switchover and have almost no problems. The only real problem I encounter is switching a tuner from H.264 to MPEG2 channels, the black screen problem happens in that case. Fortunately, I watch/record almost exclusively HD programming and switching between h.264 channels has never failed for me. The only HD channels on my Comcast lineup that are still MPEG2 appear to be the cable versions of the local OTA stations. While I record lots of stuff off those I use the simple workaround for OTA of having a separate tuner card to record those OTA and not from cable. I avoid all the problems with extenders by not using extenders but having multiple HTPCs and sharing the tuners amongst them. Depending on what your goals are WMC can still be quite viable even with Comcast having switched to h.264 for their HD channels. The only other annoyance is the replacement of the 1080i signals with the lower resolution 720p. In the end it's going to depend on if your Comcast lineup still has any MPEG2 content that you really want to watch/record and if you feel you must use extenders.

[Bamadude514]

I guess it depends on your technical prowess and also the desire to keep investing time and money to solve these issues. In my case it means adding an additional OTA tuner, buying a roof antenna, invest in something else for multi-room since extenders stopped working (I have 2 xboxes that were just that). Even then you still don't know for sure if/when a real show stopper might come along and obsolete all of the EXTRA effort you put in to keep this rig functioning. I don't want that thought in the back of my head after investing more and more time. Maybe if I were still single without house renos and a kid in the oven... not anymore.

[stuartm]

I'll agree it takes some technical know-how and time to get set up and working, Also it requires a bit more ongoing supervision. It's not buy it and forget it. You need to be willing to invest a bit of time (I view it as a sort of hobby). I was mostly trying to make the point that Comcast h.264 is not the necessarily the total killer that many posts here were making it out to be. I have always had an OTA antenna since that pre-dated my use of WMC. Also, the benefit of using OTA is that you avoid the compression and quality loss that Comcast applies to the version they send down their pipe.

[sgbroimp]

I think it depends upon what you want to view. I only have h.264 issues (Comcast) on the premiums and I watch very little of that content and so am ok to watch it in SD.

On Comcast systems, H.264 issues are not limited to premiums. They include all the ESPN channels, among others. And it's not just recorded playback, it's live TV viewing.

Happily not my experience. Ran a debug screen last night on ESPN HD (Yes, Comcast I am) just to confirm. Shows h.264 as video codec and comes in fine, video and audio. What does not come in fine are the Premiums like HBO, Cinemax etc in HD which are h.264 copy once. Those produce sound and no video as many others have reported. I run Intel HD 2000 Graphics (no separate video card) by the way. Maybe your situation or set up is different than mine also of course, such as your head end running ESPN as copy one (which would be really nasty). I assume you have run the DCA and done signal setup and reboot to no avail.

[DaveInPa]

The Comcast h.264 cable has a variety of results. Some, as mentioned, have difficulty with premium and switching between codecs.

I have none of those problems. My only issue with Comcast cable is fast forward/skip forward/rewind/skip backwards. If I push buttons too fast on h.264, it will freeze up, hang WMC and I am forced to restart the program (windows 7, 64 bit). This happens on live TV and on recorded TV.
If I am slow and pause 1-2 seconds between skipping around, everything is fine.

I can switch between HD and SD, h.264 and mpeg2, and even ESPN without issues. I do not use extenders.

@OP: To answer your original question... I'm not sure you should start fresh with a WMC setup. It will likely have issues which may be minor to major. It's a risk.