What Happens When This All Goes Away ?

[JazJon]

Everything is working great, figured out the skip forward/back buttons. (use directional left right buttons surrounding the OK button)
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?ti ... pid1636125

XBMC rocks! (bye bye no signal popup errors, and full one stop solution.)

[JazJon]

P.S. The new MCEBuddy 2.3 Beta 15 supports true WTV Unproccessed profile & Skip Remux Skip Copying. (doesn't work in pre beta 15 builds)
https://mcebuddy2x.codeplex.com/discussions/437842

Commercials are cut out lightening fast now.

I know some people want to convert WTV to MP4 etc, but XBMC PVR ServerWMC works great with native WTV files since it uses Media Center as the full backend.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=ServerWMC

So far so good, I'm happy!

I even got the MySQL shared XBMC libraries working across multiple machines.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?ti ... pid1637748

[hooraah]

I believe we have at the least another 5 years, probably much more of WMC. I think WMC will die due to something better coming out due to technology. The tech I see a future for is Video On Demand (VOD). The cable companies are already supplying some of there content this way. The thing I hate about Hulu is the forced commercials with no way to skip them. I bet the content providers hate the skip button and I think they would like a system which allows you to watch TV shows when you want, like a DVR, but still force you to see commercials.

The other thing is as our parents leave us and we become the senior citizens and expect high end technology and cut our cable TV or commercial skip, then we will see a shift in how content is provided so that they can get marketing material in front of us or do like social media and perform some type of data mining about our likes and dislikes.

I had originally thought that VOD was going to be much more adopted by the cable companies, and that the improvement of cableco VOD might be the driving force that would make some people throw in the towel on WMC and go back until I had the chance to use VOD at my in-laws house.

I picked a few shows from their VOD lineup in the cable box, hit play, and got hit with non-skipable commercials! WTF? At least if I record a broadcast I can hit the FF button. If the cableco is going to do stuff like that, I don't see a big push to go back.

All I hear from my non-techie friends is 'netflix netflix netflix'. I don't think its the variety of shows they have, its the lack of commercials and the binge-series capability that people like. Before netflix there was a brief period of stardom for DVD box sets of TV shows.

As long as the cablecard continues to work my HTPC will run win 7 and WMC. I don't see anything new forcing an upgrade. The only thing I could see killing it is the loss of guide data or possibly the inability to handle any new HDCP that comes along, possibly the result of 4K tv or something similar.

[barnabas1969]

When I first dove in to Media Center in February 2011, I thought I would miss VOD. I didn't and don't. The free VOD that was available had forced commercials. The quality on both the free and paid VOD content sucked, and so did the transport control (pressing the pause button resulted in the video pausing a couple of seconds later). On the rare occasion that I miss a recording of a show, I can usually catch it on Hulu (with forced commercials) or just torrent it minutes/hours after it originally aired. There are lots of other options to watch movies (Netflix, Vudu, Amazon are my top choices).

[hooraah]

On the rare occasion that I miss a recording of a show, I can usually catch it on Hulu (with forced commercials) or just torrent it minutes/hours after it originally aired.

I think this is the elephant in the room when people discuss HTPCs. Not everyone that does it admits to it, and it doesn't seem to come into the discussions much despite most savvy people doing it.

Plus, I sometimes wonder how I would approach HTPCs if this wasn't an option. The other day I was having trouble (again) with the stupid DRM while trying to record the Walking Dead. After I realized I would miss the first quarter anyway, I thought 'eh, I can always torrent it tomorrow' and went and watched something else. If I didn't have that option I probably would have been much more upset at WMC.

[barnabas1969]

I don't torrent much stuff. It's usually because I got a rented/borrowed DVD/Bluray that doesn't play (the ones from the library are often scratched badly) or because I missed a recording.

I want to direct people who are watching this thread to go to the following thread. If this legislation is passed with verbiage that gives cable companies the green light to drop support for CableCARD, all this will go away.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =30&t=7068

[richard1980]

FWIW, my recording failure rate on my HTPC is lower than it was when I had a DVR from the cable company. Of course, back then we didn't have this new-fangled torrent stuff...or Hulu et al.

[Mike88]

All I hear from my non-techie friends is 'netflix netflix netflix'. I don't think its the variety of shows they have, its the lack of commercials and the binge-series capability that people like. Before netflix there was a brief period of stardom for DVD box sets of TV shows.

What I read about is that to save money one should drop cable & use Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon, etc. Problem is it will cost me about $10/month for each of these & I still won't be able to get the same content as satellite gives me.

I had Netflix a few years ago when it was something like $8-$9/month for streaming & discs. That was a good deal. The problem I found with streaming is there were very few new/newer movies available, but I got those from their discs. As far as TV programs I don't recall a lot of new episodes available either. If I missed CSI for example I used free Hulu. And of course there's no guarantee they'd have it. I don't know what's available on Amazon.

I'm not a fan of Comcast but had them several years ago. You almost didn't need to record programs if they were popular. They probably had the most popular 100 programs available as free OnDemand. These would show up about 1-3 days after the original broadcast, and they'd typically have the last 4 or 5 episodes available.

We watch a lot of broadcast TV programs. I've thought about dropping satellite, but don't find a lot of alternatives to give me access to current programs on Discovery, History, USA, SyFy, etc. The regular free Hulu seems to be as good as anything. I guess I could try a torrent, but that's unchartered territory for me. I've read that may not be safe, yet a lot of folks seem to torrent programs & movies.

I hope WMC keeps working as it's been the most reliable DVR I've had.

[Moderator note: comments in this thread violating CoC removed]