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mikey1273

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#41

Post by mikey1273 » Wed Jul 27, 2016 1:13 pm

Crash2009 wrote:
mikey1273 wrote: I am concerned about what is going to happen when M$ stops supporting win 7 and the guide data in 2020. then I will need to move to X1 or Tivo Bolt.
You can move to X1 or Bolt if you like. WMCv12 works fine in Win10, including protected channels. For the guide, many have been dumping ROVI and moving to EPG123

I would like to try win10 and WMC 12 but not willing to do it on a setup I have in use with recordings I'm trying to hold on to for a bit. Rovi is not so prefect so EPG123 might be better I have to learn how that all works. I have not invested a lot of time in learning more about this and how things have changed and new stuff since what I have was working fine... The things I like about Tivo Bolt is it brings the live, recorded and streaming content together, but don't like the monthly/anual subscription fees. X1 probably wont do that and wont have either wont support my locally stored digital movies like WMc does with media browser.

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Crash2009

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#42

Post by Crash2009 » Wed Jul 27, 2016 2:05 pm

Nobody said anything about going to Win10 on your main rig. I am running both right now... Win7 with Infini4 and Ceton Echo's. Win10 with HDHR-3CC and Xbox360's.

I have about 100 bucks invested in the experimental Win10 Project ($50 HDHR + $50 laptop). If the project doesnt work out, I can always blend the $100 into Win7.

mikey1273

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#43

Post by mikey1273 » Wed Jul 27, 2016 8:22 pm

Crash2009 wrote:Nobody said anything about going to Win10 on your main rig. I am running both right now... Win7 with Infini4 and Ceton Echo's. Win10 with HDHR-3CC and Xbox360's.

I have about 100 bucks invested in the experimental Win10 Project ($50 HDHR + $50 laptop). If the project doesn't work out, I can always blend the $100 into Win7.
I think I can find an Lenovo laptop that will run 32 bit win10 that might be ok to experiment with once I get the Zino up to 100% again. I don't think I would buy a second tuner and least not a cable card one... I do have a USB NTSC analog/ATSC/clearQAM tuner stick I could use for OTA on it just to play a bit. I would not be able to connect that to cable anymore since my cable is fully encrypted.

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Crash2009

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#44

Post by Crash2009 » Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:56 am

mikey1273 wrote:
Crash2009 wrote:Nobody said anything about going to Win10 on your main rig. I am running both right now... Win7 with Infini4 and Ceton Echo's. Win10 with HDHR-3CC and Xbox360's.

I have about 100 bucks invested in the experimental Win10 Project ($50 HDHR + $50 laptop). If the project doesn't work out, I can always blend the $100 into Win7.
I think I can find an Lenovo laptop that will run 32 bit win10 that might be ok to experiment with once I get the Zino up to 100% again. I don't think I would buy a second tuner and least not a cable card one... I do have a USB NTSC analog/ATSC/clearQAM tuner stick I could use for OTA on it just to play a bit. I would not be able to connect that to cable anymore since my cable is fully encrypted.
Some of the Lenovo's use Display Port which means WMC will not play DRM channels. OTA should work OK. There are 3 versions of WMC that are X86... Version 12 (v12) is one of them. Some digging will be required to find the other two.

V12 Manual

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... ost1253128

V12 Software

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... ost1200602

bob_p

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#45

Post by bob_p » Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:46 am

I would like to try win10 and WMC 12 but not willing to do it on a setup I have in use with recordings I'm trying to hold on to for a bit. Rovi is not so prefect so EPG123 might be better I have to learn how that all works. I have not invested a lot of time in learning more about this and how things have changed and new stuff since what I have was working fine... The things I like about Tivo Bolt is it brings the live, recorded and streaming content together, but don't like the monthly/anual subscription fees. X1 probably wont do that and wont have either wont support my locally stored digital movies like WMC does with media browser.
We have WMC on Windows 8.1 with 7 cablecard tuners (a 3-tuner box and a 4-tuner box) and 6 Xbox 360s. We're using Comcast, and there aren't many options for watching and recording DRM programs - and will likely continue using WMC on 8.1 for now.

I've done some cost estimates of the few options we have. Comcast in our area is charging $100 per year per cablecard - which makes the CC rental a significant long term cost.

Since we already own our WMC hardware, the 5 year cost for running WMC is $1,000 - which would increase some if we shifted to EPG123.

If we shifted to Comcast's X1, and rented a DVR and STBs, our 5 year cost would be $3,600. X1 has less functionality than WMC, losing the ability to do automatic commercial skipping or watching downloaded/personal videos. And while they have streaming support - it is only for the channels in your package - not the popular streaming services.

If we shifted to TiVo, we'd probably need two Bolts today, along with minis, the 5 year cost would be $3,850. TiVo is pretty close to the functionality we have in WMC today, plus it adds integration of the major streaming services. BUT, the Rovi acquisition creates uncertainty about the future of TiVo, so it may be worthwhile to let the dust settle on the acquisition before committing to TiVo.

If TiVo produces a 6 tuner Bolt, we'd only need one Bolt "Pro", which reduces the 5 year cost to $2,650.

The last option is SD's new DVR software. As of today, it appears to fall far short of being a WMC replacement and because they haven't implemented tuner sharing between clients, we'd probably have to add a 3rd HDHR tuner box, which increases our annual cablecard rental. If SD eventually implements enough functionality to serve as a viable WMC replacement, the 5 year cost would be $2,550, assuming we'd use our existing WMC PC as the DVR and our existing HDHR tuner boxes, only having to purchase replacements for the Xbox 360 extenders.

With the free Windows 10 upgrades expiring this week, I've added an old disk to our WMC PC and cloned the WMC system disk to that disk. I plan to perform the Windows 10 upgrade on this extra disk - and then store it, in case we ever decide to use Windows 10 on this PC (whether it's with the WMC hack on Windows 10 or using SD's DVR software). Since WMC seems to work fine for us on Windows 8.1, there doesn't seem to be any reason to try running WMC on Windows 10.

mdavej

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#46

Post by mdavej » Thu Jul 28, 2016 2:44 pm

mikey1273 wrote:The things I like about Tivo Bolt is it brings the live, recorded and streaming content together, but don't like the monthly/anual subscription fees. X1 probably wont do that and wont have either wont support my locally stored digital movies like WMC does with media browser.
I'm an ex-WMC user with two Tivo systems in two homes and have never paid any subscription fees whatsoever. You can still find Roamios with lifetime for reasonable prices. I paid $300 for each of mine. As for locally stored content on Tivo, Plex works fairly well. I had WMC for a few years and now Tivo for a few years. My Tivo requires none of the fiddling I was constantly doing on WMC. And I never get phone calls about the DVR not working when I'm away from home. The multi-room capabilities of Tivo also trumps the WMC extender model in terms of performance and reliability. Add to that channel logos, quick play and commercial skip, I've got just about everything my old WMC system had but in a trouble-free, maintenance-free package.

The only thing I'm nervous about at this point is the imminent Rovi takeover of Tivo. My old WMC system is ready and waiting in the wings just in case. But I hope I don't have to resort to that.

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