A whole home entertainment solution - What would you do?

[hossnine]

Hello,

If you had the following equipment and goals how you would you build out your whole home entertainment solution?

GOAL:
* Be able to easily (as easy as using a Cox/Comcast/etc. cable box) watch Cable based Live TV (OTA here is lacking), DVR, and watch media library (primarily MKV based) from the TVs, computers (Win 7/8), and portable (Android and iOS) based devices in the home. Music library is nice but not required. What is required is that the solution be clean, simple, and as consolidated/consistent across devices as possible so the family won't gripe all the time. Sounds simple on the surface.

CURRENT PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT:
* Living Room
- Cox Cable Box (want it gone)
- XBox 360
- Bluray DVD

* Bed Room
- Cox Cable Box (want it gone)
- Win 8.1 Pro w/MCE HTPC w/Ceton InfiniTV 4 (just did a base install - haven't configured yet)

* Game Room
- TV Connected to Cox w/o cable box

* My Office
- Cox Cable Box connected to a Hauppauge HD-PVR 1212 which just died (3rd one to fail in 45 months) connected to a Win 7 (soon to be Win 8.1 pro) PC.

* Wife's Office
- Win 8.1 Laptop

* Miscellaneous
- iPhone
- Android Phone

CURRENT SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENT
* Library - Serviio
* Live TV - Windows Media Center
* DVR - Widows Media Center
* DVR to Library - DvrmsToolbox w/ Comskip w/ VideoRedo Suite
* Mobile - Notta
* Windows PCs - Was using Ceton Tuner sharing but it didn't work reliably and is lost in the Win 8.1 rebuild.

CONCERNS/CONSIDERATIONS:
* Copy Flag - Cox will periodically flip flags on me and shows recorded on the Ceton can't be played on other TVs. Infuriating.
- I've kept a cable box in my office with the HD-PVR for shows that tend to get flagged periodically BUT last night my HD-PVR box bit the dust. This is the 3rd box in less than 4 years. Won't be buying another one. Hauppauge doesn't support Windows 8.1 Media Center (8MC) on the Colossus and doesn't support MC at all on the HD PVR 2. So I'm a bit stuck trying to come up with a viable option if I continue to use Media Center. There are only 3 of us in the home so technically the 4 tuners on the InfiniTV 4 should be sufficient for us across the home but being a cable card based solution I'm concerned Cox could start setting flags at any time. However this is solutioned I have to keep that in mind. Don't want to put a lot of time and effort into a solution that can be brought to its knees if Cox decides to flip 1 little switch. Grrr.

* Current Hardware - The hardware is decent but a little aged. With that said, it should handle any software solutions offered up.

* Cost - I'm not opposed to spending a little more money to make this work but can't justify a bunch. If possible would like to make the HTPC the centric device in the bedroom and the XBox the centric device in the living room.

Well, I think this is a big enough book. Look forward to hearing your thoughts and recommendations. Best to one and all.

[kingwr]

DirecTV Genie HR34 and Genie Clients (C43), DirecTV to Go, and Roku in Living Room.

[mdavej]

Looks to me like you're already there except for maybe one more Xbox. Extenders are the only way around copy flags. What else is holding you back?

[hossnine]

mdavej and kingwr,

Thank you both for sharing your thoughts and ideas. In my write-up I intentionally left out that we like to keep a local library of our purchased movies and the TV shows that we watch. Did that because I didn't want to arbitrarily limit the responses and because it puts a bit of a demand on me because I have to keep an eye on the commercial pruning and WTV to MKV conversion and have to rip our movies to MKV format. While I like using the MKV container because of the flexibility it affords I also dislike it because of the Media Center challenges it adds. With that additional framing I'd like to pose a couple questions to your responses.

kingwr, you suggest a DirecTV solution with Roku. It is an interesting solution in that it would afford me live tv and dvr functionality for the TVs but it looks like Live TV is very limited on the computer and mobile devices. If I were to do this solution, is it possible to transfer recorded shows to my network? Something better then GenieGo.

mdavej, sticking with XBox as extenders does well does have merit but the question remains of how to get Live TV to the computers and other devices as well as keeping the library with the copy flag threat.

Both are good options and I look forward to your continued thoughts. Thanks much.

[mdavej]

Sorry, missed the part about 8.1. I think if you switched to a Homerun Prime, you'd get Live TV over DLNA. As I said before, extenders are the only way to share copy protected recordings. Is it really that critical to have live TV on every device you have? Is that difficult to fire up Remote Potato, start a recording and chase it? Honestly, how often would you actually watch live TV on your phone?

Not sure if kingwr was joking or not. Like Tivo and cable DVRs, satellite DVRs are certainly a viable option, but I don't think any self-respecting HTPC user would ever resort to that.

I personally think it was a mistake to put 8.1 on your HTPC. I did that a while back and eventually had to go back to 7. Win 8.1 made 4 of my extenders very awkward to use.

[kingwr]

DirecTV has Direc2PC, that allows you to watch recorded shows from the Genie DVR on your PCs. The tablet and phone apps let you stream SOME live TV channels while connected to the house wi-fi and DVR. But it's not every channel. You can also play select VOD titles (movie and TV) on the tablet and phone apps, even when not on the wi-fi. Both the tablet and phone apps offer control, with the pad app be very configurable (I use my iPad to browse the guide, set recordings, see what's on, and select programs without having to disturb what's playing on the TV). The phone app offers voice searching when local and guide/recording setting when remote (though DirecTVs servers). GenieGo allows you to download programs to your device, but I don't have that. You can also get Youtube and Pandora on the DirecTV receivers.

Am I kidding? I may not be self-respecting, but I have a very capable environment that blows away anything that Windows Media Center was ever able to provide. The only thing missing is commercial skip, and you have to switch sources to get to the Roku (for local file streaming, pictures, music, Netflix, AmazonVOD, etc.). Not a problem for the Harmony remote, though. You can replace the Roku with an AppleTV to add AirPlay (which I use quite often).

[mdavej]

I understand. I used to have DirecTV too and enjoyed all of that stuff (except the price). It's certainly an option. But I think the OP is looking for a cable-HTPC solution. As I said, he's really close already.

[hossnine]

mdavej - As I said before, extenders are the only way to share copy protected recordings. Is it really that critical to have live TV on every device you have? Is that difficult to fire up Remote Potato, start a recording and chase it? Honestly, how often would you actually watch live TV on your phone?

Your points are valid. No, Live TV on the phone isn't huge BUT neither my wife nor I have TVs in our offices and both work from home. We've used our computers to fulfill that roll via an assigned Ceton Tuner in her office and the HD-PVR in mine. An extender only solution doesn't address that thanks to Microsoft's insistence of not letting PCs be used as extenders. From what I see with Remote Potato aside from hoops that I'd have to get my wife to agree to there are other challenges such as losing HD.

mdavej - I personally think it was a mistake to put 8.1 on your HTPC. I did that a while back and eventually had to go back to 7. Win 8.1 made 4 of my extenders very awkward to use.

You may be SO right on 8.1. I've already waded into the water so I'll splash around a bit more before I decide to backup to Win 7.

kingwr - DirecTV has Direc2PC, that allows you to watch recorded shows from the Genie DVR on your PCs.

After your first post I went back looked at the Satellite offerings. Particularly Direc2PC and GenieGo. There were advantages to the products but definite detractors. The lack of live options for the major networks, particularly when off my home network, my inability to find information on the stored video formats bugged me. If I record a TV show I'd like to be able to access the file and use my local tools on it.

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From the feedback received so far it sounds like I'm being outdated for wanting to keep a local library and not embracing the streaming options available today. The frustration is that I don't like be nickel and dimed every time I want to watch/re-watch something. Particularly for movies that I've already purchased. For my family, we don't mind purchasing a movie or show if we think we'll enjoy watching it more than once. With the streaming options out there today the lack of consistency is frustrating. A movie that is available for streaming this month may not be a month from now when I would like to see it again.

Guess my hope was someone was going to tell me of some fantastic media solution that could use HD-PVR 2 type devices as tuners, could support the Ceton cable cards, could assign recording to tuner pools (HD-PVRs), supported a local media library, and had a clean user interface (as clean as MCE) that worked with TVs (via XBox, Roku, and/or ??), laptops, and iOS/Android. I'd be willing to pay for software solution like that if for no other reason than the convenience of not having to install a half dozen different applications and hope they all integrate. Well that and the ever persistent threat of an incorrectly set copy flag (intentionally or accidentally) gum up the works.

[christoph86]

Unfortunately for those of us that have copy protected channels such as HBO and others, wmc (and extenders)is the only way to watch those channels/recordings and I don't think that will change anytime soon. I'm happy with my current setup, using wmc, ceton tuner/cable card, Xbox, echo, and mediabrowser 3 and server for my movies and mobile/tablet viewing everything but drm. I have one regular charter set-top box on a tv upstairs that would be a pain to get a wired connection to. It also provides backup in case my htpc goes down and gives me the on demand options on at least one tv if needed.