Further to the Murdoch thread, it occurred to me last night that with the aid of Windows Media Centre I can get more of what I want to watch without having to pay for Sky. It also occurred to me that if I cancel the subscription I can afford to spec a nice WMC PC basically for free 🙂

So here’s what I want.

Hardware:

Quiet
Low power
Nice case
Possibly two blu-ray drives, one for US disks one for UK
Decent soundcard for analogue output to hifi as well as optical or digital out to the AV
Terrestrial freeview
And possibly freesat as well if possible

Software:
I have a VPN account which I’ll keep for watching Hulu and suchlike, but it’d be nice if I could have two network adapters and set up routes so I can watch iPlayer and Hulu or NFL stuff without having to mess about
I’m thinking Milliesoft TunerFree MCE will be required.
Does WMC support multiple TV tuners?

I want to watch as much stuff as possible via WMC since that works nicely with a remote.

Spec wise, my current desktop is an old 64-bit AMD 2200 – will this be enough? Can I upgrade my desktop and put the old bits in the WMC? 🙂 I’m thinking that if I get a graphics card with good hardware playback then it won’t tax the CPU much.

you’ll probably only need a cheap fanless graphics card to get decent 1080p playback.

i just have an atom/nvida ion and it copes fine with 1080 stuff, even recording one channel and playing back a divx video or something. Just had to make sure drivers are up to date so that its handled by the GPU

WMC7 supports multiple tuners i think.

i don’t have a soundcard, just take the SPDIF straight to a relatively cheap 5.1 system.

Good.. good.. my old mobo is only AGP so as long as I can find an AGP card that should be ok.

That means I can get nice new stuff for the desktop to help with video editing.. mm…

Atom/nvida ion here are well, had it for over a year, no problems. It is supposed to be fanless but was getting a bit warm so I fitted a very quite fan. Also use a laptop hard drive for low noise. Tuner is a USB stick which works fine. If you’re into Linux look at MythTV. Looks good and very capable but a bit complex (for me).

You can use as many tuners as you want, I suggest a twin tuner that uses 1 aerial input.

I wouldn’t buy 2 blu ray players, there are hacks about to make them region free.

I doubt you’ll need 2 network cards, our NAS copes very well putting films to 3 TV’s & 2 iPhones at the same time.

I would go for a fanless option, SSD, massive heatsink on the CPU and external PSU. I’m running MCE 2005 with a 1.6ghz, 2gb ram and 256mb Graphics card, but I’m no longer using a dual TV tuner card, as we have dedicated box for this. I would go for a Freeview HD (DVB-T2) PCI-E card.

The current desktop PC has an almost silent hard drive and CPU fan. The only noise is from the case fan.

The reason for 2 network cards would be for routing purposes – so I could pretend to be from the USA or the UK depending on what I want to watch.

When I last looked at freeview there were some channels I wanted on satellite and some on terrestrial. I’d like to be able to include both.

Will look into the blu-ray thing, cheers.

The reason for 2 network cards would be for routing purposes

Can’t you use a virtual 2nd NIC?

The reason for 2 network cards would be for routing purposes – so I could pretend to be from the USA or the UK depending on what I want to watch

2 network cards won’t achieve this, not unless you have 2 separate broadband accounts and one of them is tunnelled permanently to a server in the states.

You can do what you’re aiming for with one internet connection. Just VPN/ssh tunnel/web proxy to your box in the states for HBO. You could also easily add static routes for the IP address ranges of HBO/whoever to point at your VPN address so you don’t have to change the proxy/vpn tunnel settings all the time.

Proxy switch plugin for chrome/firefox (prob IE too) is a great easy alternative, if you’re using a proxy rather than VPN.

I do something similar for watching BBC iplayer from NZ.

If you’re into Linux look at MythTV. Looks good and very capable but a bit complex (for me).

😯 Only dare to touch MythTV if you like to do full on SQL sysadmin to tune a tv card or change channel or schedule a recording. Even the Mythbuntu, Mythdora, KnoppMyth are one serious PITA. People keep telling me “oh it’s easier now”. It wasn’t the last time I tried, nor the time before that, nor…
Stock Intrepid Ibex understood my Sat TV card. Spent hours trying to make MythTV do the same!

Now I have AMD3500+ (single core) running MeTV on some version of Ubuntu. Simple, but it’s free. And a Zotac Nvidia Ion Atom box for playback on the telly (should handle 1080x24p).

Can’t comment on MCE (or Windows anything in fact).

Have a look at XBMC too & see it that fits what you need

You could also easily add static routes for the IP address ranges of HBO/whoever to point at your VPN address so you don’t have to change the proxy/vpn tunnel settings all the time

Now this is interesting. I’d assumed VPN software stopped you doing this. Otherwise it’s massively insecure, no? If I VPNed into work and then had my PC also connected direct to the net, all hell could break loose. Now I appreciate public VPN (witopia) isn’t work, so there’s not really a risk, but will the software even allow it?

Only last problem with my plan is that my broadband can only manage 2Mbps 🙁 Unless they’ve upgraded the local loop, which was meant to be happening.