Hey guys! New guy here... (1 Viewer)

bigjohn

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I've been enjoying the benefits and power of REPLAY TV for the past 6 years or so now, longer if you count the Showstopper from Panasonic.

I'm looking ahead. Even though we have a work around for the fact that the original service providers are turning off the guide service (most of us have been using WIRNS as a guide server for years anyway...), there are many features that I'm hoping to retain as I move forward exploring a new /replacement...

1 - Record in one room / play in any
2 - set up recordings from one TV on another (to manage conflicts)
3 - Pause / rewind / fast forward Live TV.
4 - Watch previously Recorded while recording live TV

I have to imagine that some of these are answered in the FAQ... I post here in hopes that someone else who's used the RTV5k series will know...
 

mm1352000

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    Hi bigjohn

    Welcome to the forum. :)
    I've never used Replay TV, but MediaPortal can certainly do all of the things that you mentioned. Our wiki is probably a better place to start looking for information than our forum or the FAQ. Here is a starter page on the TV features... -->link<--

    mm
     

    bigjohn

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    Thanks for the link.
    I have / use DISH NETWORK satellite, and so will likely use something like the Hauppauge HD-PVR or HD Colossus to capture the feed. So there would be a host/client PC for each of the 4 tuners in the house. I like the 'dedicated server' concept of the mediaportal but DISH does not offer PC - satellite tuner cards, so there will be 4 satellite boxes. With the dedicated server that would be tough to pull off given they all use the same IR blaster code...

    But I am interested in how they might perform using centralized storage - like a windows home server?

    Can a MediaPortal with a local tuner play/pause/record live tv to a network drive?

    As you can see, lots of questions!
     

    2BitSculptor

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    Greetings.

    Never used the Replay TV device, but here are some quick answers.

    #1. Yes. Media Portal uses a dual concept: TV-Server (to handle Tuner, Timeshift, scheduling and DVR duties), and separate client (as a front end to handle display of TV and playing other digital media). You will need one PC for TV-Server (with local and/or networked tuners) ... I use the networked dual Tuner HDHomerun (*plug), but also have an internal analog tuner card for capturing from my VCR and OTA FM radio. You can have the Server and Client on the same PC if you wish, and also have dedicated clients networked to the server. You will also, in the US, need a source for EPG. There is a solution to acquire guide data from free sources (with I find difficult, imo), but also a paid service ($20 annual) and a plugin to download the data.


    #2. Sort of... but yes. You can access the guide and scheduling from any of the client systems. TV-Server has conflict management built in. You can also avoid conflicts by installing multiple tuners. (I have 2 HDHomeruns, giving me 4 simultaniously accessed tuners).

    #3. Yes.

    #4. Yes. Depending on the number of tuners and the quality/distribution of your storage devices, you can watch recorded TV, while recording on all tuners.


    Welcome to the Forum!

    Chuck

    ... on your second concern.

    MP1 does not work with multiple TV servers, at least not talking to each other for conflict management, scheduling and recording. Each client/server would be an entity to itself, managing it's own timeshift and recordings. You can manually offload recorded programs to a central storage which can be accessed by each client as a video share, but not the TV section of MP.

    Chuck
     

    mm1352000

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    MP1 does not work with multiple TV servers, at least not talking to each other for conflict management, scheduling and recording. Each client/server would be an entity to itself, managing it's own timeshift and recordings. You can manually offload recorded programs to a central storage which can be accessed by each client as a video share, but not the TV section of MP.

    Correct - there is code smattered throughout TV Server for supporting that, but I think the feature has been disabled since the implementation ended up being too unreliable. The workaround would be to have clients in each location where you'd usually have an STB, and somewhere (hidden away maybe) have a stack of your 4 STBs with a server that has 4 Colossus cards. Of course, one of the four clients could also be the server...

    mm

    [Edit: and in answer to "can a MediaPortal with a local tuner play/pause/record live tv to a network drive?"
    I'd say a tentative "yes". I estimate the bandwidth requirements for each Colossus stream to be roughly 15 Mb/s - easily handled by a 100 Mb/s network. I think the difficulty would be latency. Sluggish access to the storage would make for a poor user experience when performing more random access (seeking, skipping ads). It wouldn't hurt to try it and see...]

    [Edit 2: you may want to Google "How to convert CW4K.zip" for a more "interesting" solution.]
     

    bigjohn

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    Interesting. But I'd hate to build something like that only to have it stop due to some changes...
    So using their boxes seems to be the only solution. And I think the way my house is wired I need to keep them where they are - due to the LNB switches and so on... so each has to be a client and a server. As to manage conflicts, what replay does - if I try to set up a recording for a show (fromthe replay) of - say, Master Chef - for 9pm on Monday, if there is a conflict on that replay it will ask if I want to try to schedule on another. If I say yes, it detects the schedules on the other replays and tells me which of my installed units does NOT have conflicts, and I can schedule it there.

    So mr. MM, you're on the dev group... Perhaps I shall take some time to share some of the cool work-flows I'm used to today. Something that simulated or improved on this would be better by far that the 'downgrade' I expect from WM7 and HomeServer (though home server 2011 is quite a great upgrade from it's previous iteration...)
     

    mm1352000

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    As to manage conflicts, what replay does - if I try to set up a recording for a show (fromthe replay) of - say, Master Chef - for 9pm on Monday, if there is a conflict on that replay it will ask if I want to try to schedule on another. If I say yes, it detects the schedules on the other replays and tells me which of my installed units does NOT have conflicts, and I can schedule it there.
    Just to be very clear: TV Server installations are *not* able to communicate or share tuners. If you have 4 single-seat installs (ie. 4 x [TV Server + Colossus type device + MP client]) then each install will only be able to handle conflicts *on that install*. That is why I recommended that you have one TV Server. There is *much* more flexibility with one TV Server that is able to juggle the scheduling over four cards than there is with four TV Servers that only have one card each...
     

    bigjohn

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    As to manage conflicts, what replay does - if I try to set up a recording for a show (fromthe replay) of - say, Master Chef - for 9pm on Monday, if there is a conflict on that replay it will ask if I want to try to schedule on another. If I say yes, it detects the schedules on the other replays and tells me which of my installed units does NOT have conflicts, and I can schedule it there.
    Just to be very clear: TV Server installations are *not* able to communicate or share tuners. If you have 4 single-seat installs (ie. 4 x [TV Server + Colossus type device + MP client]) then each install will only be able to handle conflicts *on that install*. That is why I recommended that you have one TV Server. There is *much* more flexibility with one TV Server that is able to juggle the scheduling over four cards than there is with four TV Servers that only have one card each...

    Hmm.
    If a server, on a network, is not aware of it's brothers... well, it should be! Or rather the client should.
    Wirns - a third party tool written for Replay TV users, provides a HOST of capabilites as well..
    Perhaps the MediaPortal team ought to get with the folks who know Replay best to see if these capabilities can be integrated?
    WiRNS - the Windows Replay Network Server

    Not saying media portal is bad - but if the client's need to view other servers content as "video shares" then perhaps having some awareness built in would be helpful. On top of all that, REPLAY allows users to send shows to eachother's units - if I miss a show (the storm blocks out my satellite, for example) I can request that one of my replay friends just send it to me. A few hours later its on my unit and ready for viewing, just as if I'd recorded it myself - with all guide data / show info, etc.

    Anyway, thanks for listening to the ramblings of this old man...

    Any threads on using multiple DISH receivers in one closet?
     

    mm1352000

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    Hmm.
    If a server, on a network, is not aware of it's brothers... well, it should be!
    Easy to say, *very* hard to do. This is not going to happen with MP 1.x...

    Not saying media portal is bad - but if the client's need to view other servers content as "video shares" then perhaps having some awareness built in would be helpful.
    As I understand it, the MP framework was designed back in 2004 or 2005. It is simply not flexible enough to support such things without a huge rewrite... which is happening in the form of MP 2.

    On top of all that, REPLAY allows users to send shows to eachother's units - if I miss a show (the storm blocks out my satellite, for example) I can request that one of my replay friends just send it to me. A few hours later its on my unit and ready for viewing, just as if I'd recorded it myself - with all guide data / show info, etc.
    Nice feature, but again, not available with MP. I'd imagine it would be illegal in most European countries.

    Any threads on using multiple DISH receivers in one closet?
    Unlikely... but if you choose to go the Colossus/HDPVR route then having four Colossae hooked up to four receivers is almost exactly the same complexity as only having one. The people that post in this thread are your best source of info for the Colossus and HDPVR (I know WileECoyote has 2 Colossae). Be aware that you're not exactly getting yourself in for an easy setup. Capture card support has never been particularly mainstream in MP, hence the difficulty in getting the setup right. Once it is working, it should work fine - it is just getting it to that state that is the tricky part.

    mm
     

    rekenaar

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    Hmm.
    If a server, on a network, is not aware of it's brothers... well, it should be!
    Easy to say, *very* hard to do. This is not going to happen with MP 1.x...
    mm

    True.
    Once upon a time, there was a master/slave setup possible, but it was not fully implememted everywhere and were causing stability issues. The team decided to remove the multi-server support in favour of getting TVServer stable for the 99% other use cases.

    If you really can't go without it, you can investigate the ForTheRecord 3rd party plugin.
    It will replace the TVPlugin client on MP.
    You can configure the 4TR core service to use recorders (TVServers) from multiple PC's.
    All recordings and schedules will be handled centrally in the core service.
    See this old post for an explanation.
     

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