2012-05-05, 20:30
I'd appreciate any thoughts/experience here...
Short version: Openelec PVR vs DIY Ubuntu/XBMC PVR with tvheadend and USB tuners - any thoughts?
Long version:
I've been running XBMC PVR on what was originally an XBMC Live install for a couple of years now - so it's still 10.04/Lucid under the bonnet, albeit with the latest PulseEight code instead of the original Dharma.
I use twin USB tuners (DVB-S and DVB-T) and, frankly, have a terrible time with them. I don't think I've ever started the system without problems of some kind, normally resulting in a reboot or a quick ssh in to restart tvheadend. All in all, it's not really the seamless backend PVR experience I'd like.
Since I've moved to Openelec on my primary (living room) system and moved this to a spare room, I'd considered rebuilding it under Windows and trying Media Portal as a backend. I'm reluctant to do that for a couple of reasons, though: one is that Windows will just infect the whole hard drive (we all know that it doesn't play nicely when installing into an existing grub menu), and the second is that Vista ran like a dog on this little ION box, so I fear that Win7 won't be much better. I could do without the week-long boot up times and the interminable "shutting down and repatching your system, please grow old while I apparently do nothing" shutdown messages.
So, I'm tempted to try Openelec PVR on this system to see if it's any better - maybe it handles the USB tuners better, maybe the timings are more predictable with a streamlined OS/kernel, maybe I'd just be lucky. Alternatively, I could trash and move to 12.04 or XBMCbuntu or similar, but I doubt that things are getting slimmer as I head in that direction, and I don't need the cruft. So long as I can hack the .asoundrc (which I know I can on Openelec) and a few other things like xmltv (which I assume I can, although it'd probably die in an upgrade), that's all I need the box to do.
Any thoughts/experience/comments from anyone much appreciated.
Thanks...
Short version: Openelec PVR vs DIY Ubuntu/XBMC PVR with tvheadend and USB tuners - any thoughts?
Long version:
I've been running XBMC PVR on what was originally an XBMC Live install for a couple of years now - so it's still 10.04/Lucid under the bonnet, albeit with the latest PulseEight code instead of the original Dharma.
I use twin USB tuners (DVB-S and DVB-T) and, frankly, have a terrible time with them. I don't think I've ever started the system without problems of some kind, normally resulting in a reboot or a quick ssh in to restart tvheadend. All in all, it's not really the seamless backend PVR experience I'd like.
Since I've moved to Openelec on my primary (living room) system and moved this to a spare room, I'd considered rebuilding it under Windows and trying Media Portal as a backend. I'm reluctant to do that for a couple of reasons, though: one is that Windows will just infect the whole hard drive (we all know that it doesn't play nicely when installing into an existing grub menu), and the second is that Vista ran like a dog on this little ION box, so I fear that Win7 won't be much better. I could do without the week-long boot up times and the interminable "shutting down and repatching your system, please grow old while I apparently do nothing" shutdown messages.
So, I'm tempted to try Openelec PVR on this system to see if it's any better - maybe it handles the USB tuners better, maybe the timings are more predictable with a streamlined OS/kernel, maybe I'd just be lucky. Alternatively, I could trash and move to 12.04 or XBMCbuntu or similar, but I doubt that things are getting slimmer as I head in that direction, and I don't need the cruft. So long as I can hack the .asoundrc (which I know I can on Openelec) and a few other things like xmltv (which I assume I can, although it'd probably die in an upgrade), that's all I need the box to do.
Any thoughts/experience/comments from anyone much appreciated.
Thanks...