I tried to move on, but I am back
Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2016 4:02 pm
I tried to move on, while Christmas shopping I stumbled across a great deal on a OTA TIVO Roamio. It came with a lifetime guide subscription and appeared to be the way we should go. Many HTPC friends had long since moved on and were singing the praises of a commercial DVR. Channelmaster, TABLO or TIVO? It looked like a slam dunk, TIVO has a version of commercial skip, offers streaming services, and I thought the ability to watch my recordings on my phone while traveling. TIVO was the benchmark, mostly glowing reviews, I dove head first into a commercial DVR.
It was March of 2009 when I first built my HTPC. I carefully selected the best parts for a HTPC and I tinkered for a while with MediaPortal on XP. When comskip for WTV came along, I made the switch to 7WMC. It seemed almost perfect. I wanted a "replace everything HTPC box" so I loaded up all our pictures and music, got the Netflix add in, and customized it to directly boot into WMC. I added MCshoutcast, comskip, customized the WMC menu, Heatewave, Hulu Desktop, Amazon Unbox, etc... It all worked great, most of the time...
Then I had issues with the BR DVD drive not playing movies, eventually fixed with a stand alone BR player. OK so my HTPC was no longer a "do everything box" ...but still all was good. Then I lost Heatwave, Netflix, Hulu, and McShoutcast. Bummer. I adapted, Chromecast became my friend for streaming content and Google Play music replaced McShoutcast. Finally, the MC "issues" with the schedule data disappearing. In the Fall of 2016 the writing was on the wall, or so I thought.
Right after I ordered the TIVO the HTPC power supply died. Sigh, well it was nearly 8 years old. Time to move into my new TIVO. I had a few issues setting up TIVO, firmware updates and code "11" connection dropped, but eventually it was up and running. I programmed the recordings we wanted. The first observation was that TIVO thought it was a feature to shove a small live TV window in the home screen. Wow is that annoying, we never watch live TV, at least I discovered how to turn it off. The TIVO UI is way too busy, too cluttered in my opinion. After a while the home screen just disappears and it reverts to a full screen TV show. Why would you ever do that if I did not select it??
The TIVO RF remote is slow to respond and finicky, and the much touted TIVO commercial skip feature only works for shows that are tagged. Not tagged is the National evening news, I miss comskip . The TIVO compression algo can be blocky for fast changing content, so picture quality suffers. You apparently can't actually download or stream content to your phone with the version I purchased, you need some external streaming box.
So I tried, for 2 weeks I tried, and then yesterday I put a new power supply in the 8 year old HTPC and put it back in service as my living room DVR. Long live WMC, cause it will be harder than I ever imagined to eventually say good-by to it....
Happy Holidays to all, and thanks to the team that keeps this site here for us to share!
It was March of 2009 when I first built my HTPC. I carefully selected the best parts for a HTPC and I tinkered for a while with MediaPortal on XP. When comskip for WTV came along, I made the switch to 7WMC. It seemed almost perfect. I wanted a "replace everything HTPC box" so I loaded up all our pictures and music, got the Netflix add in, and customized it to directly boot into WMC. I added MCshoutcast, comskip, customized the WMC menu, Heatewave, Hulu Desktop, Amazon Unbox, etc... It all worked great, most of the time...
Then I had issues with the BR DVD drive not playing movies, eventually fixed with a stand alone BR player. OK so my HTPC was no longer a "do everything box" ...but still all was good. Then I lost Heatwave, Netflix, Hulu, and McShoutcast. Bummer. I adapted, Chromecast became my friend for streaming content and Google Play music replaced McShoutcast. Finally, the MC "issues" with the schedule data disappearing. In the Fall of 2016 the writing was on the wall, or so I thought.
Right after I ordered the TIVO the HTPC power supply died. Sigh, well it was nearly 8 years old. Time to move into my new TIVO. I had a few issues setting up TIVO, firmware updates and code "11" connection dropped, but eventually it was up and running. I programmed the recordings we wanted. The first observation was that TIVO thought it was a feature to shove a small live TV window in the home screen. Wow is that annoying, we never watch live TV, at least I discovered how to turn it off. The TIVO UI is way too busy, too cluttered in my opinion. After a while the home screen just disappears and it reverts to a full screen TV show. Why would you ever do that if I did not select it??
The TIVO RF remote is slow to respond and finicky, and the much touted TIVO commercial skip feature only works for shows that are tagged. Not tagged is the National evening news, I miss comskip . The TIVO compression algo can be blocky for fast changing content, so picture quality suffers. You apparently can't actually download or stream content to your phone with the version I purchased, you need some external streaming box.
So I tried, for 2 weeks I tried, and then yesterday I put a new power supply in the 8 year old HTPC and put it back in service as my living room DVR. Long live WMC, cause it will be harder than I ever imagined to eventually say good-by to it....
Happy Holidays to all, and thanks to the team that keeps this site here for us to share!