Freeeeeedom from sky tv
#1
A big hello to the XBMC community fae Bonnie Scotland.

The time has come due to financial restraints to say goodbye to my sky subscription.

I'm in the process of looking into building an htpc with the intention of running XMBC , before i pull the trigger on buying parts i need a few questions answered and i'm hoping all you knowledgeable guys can help here.

Basically i'm looking to build an htpc that will give me the ability to watch , pause , rewind and record.Is this possible with xbmc ? would i be able to do that with things like the icefilm plugin and similar plugins?. Is this possible?.

Secondly it's what direction to go in with hardware

still not sure whether to opt for amd or intel

My requirements are in terms of priority

1. Low energy consumption (need to get those bills down)

2. quiet

3. the ability to record and timeshift

4. Opting for an ssd for main OS hopefully to avoid any lag in menu screens etc

Few other things please dont think i am being lazy here , i have been googling for weeks on end trying to figure it all out.Unfortunetly i now have more questions than answers,for example i was all set to pull the trigger and buy a 2tb WD green drive for storage then i read that there is issues with green drives when recording HD video.So i'm hoping to avoid any noob mistakes when buying the hardware.

I don't expect you to do all the leg work when it comes to sourcing parts , i'll do the searching for the bargains when the time comes.What i need to know is what parts i'm looking for e.g intel or amd , do i need a tuner , should i get a WD RED instead of green do these have issues.

I won't be gaming on this it'll be used for watching tv and web browsing , youtube etc.

Budget will be for as little as possible i want mid range don't want the fastest just something capable of doing everything snappy.

What do you guys think of the amd apu's the a4 a6 and a8's this is what i'm thinking at the moment because of the on board graphics and the benefits of not needing to buy a gpu added to that less heat , energy seems to suit my needs.

Thanks to all who take the time to read this and contribute with suggestions
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#2
Welcome to the XBMC forums.

Your choice of hw depends a lot on the OS you intend to run. Would this be Linux or Windows?
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#3
(2012-08-19, 13:00)FernetMenta Wrote: Welcome to the XBMC forums.

Your choice of hw depends a lot on the OS you intend to run. Would this be Linux or Windows?

Would love to go with Linux and down the open source route but i'm afraid it will probably be windows 7 in my case.I've dabbled with linux in the past and just don't want to be worrying about chipsets and drivers this time around.

Thanks for the response Fernetmenta
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#4
Welcome to the party. Laugh

I am just guessing here but if you are planning on getting TV signal through the air, I then would say you will need a TV tuner card for the computer you build. I have a A6-3500 and am well pleased with it but only use it for web browsing and XBMC. But I also have an A8-3850 I use in my office that runs great for all those needs. If I were to build another hptc with a tv tuner I would look into either the A8 or an Intel of equal power. I would use a 120 SSD for my main OS and use WD green drive as my storage drive. I would record on the main ssd drive and move the TV show or movie to the storage drive with either a batch script or manually. The Wd Green Drives are very good storage drives, I would not go with the red drives as of yet since the price differance does not seem to offset their reliablity and or functionablity (is that even a wordHuh) compare to the green.

Take in mind that since you will want to record TV, that will mean that the htpc will need to be on while the show is airing. So the amd or intel will be running almost 24/7.

These are only my thoughts and I have no tv tuner card attached to any of my htpc's , so I really do not have an idea of how much processor the tv cards need. I am only going on my experience from transferring dvd's to avi,mkv's, etc... and how much power that took.

Good Luck
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#5
Running a tv backend does not require much power. I run vdr together with XBMC-PVR on D2700.

Quote:Take in mind that since you will want to record TV, that will mean that the htpc will need to be on while the show is airing. So the amd or intel will be running almost 24/7.

You can program timers for recordings. If your system has no other capabilities for wake-up, you always can use ACPI alarms.
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#6
(2012-08-19, 17:39)Harro Wrote: I am just guessing here but if you are planning on getting TV signal through the air, I then would say you will need a TV tuner card

Not made any final descisons on that yet.
My current tv is going on 20 years old and is on the blink , it will be getting replaced with a 40 inch flatscreen which will come with built in freeview so i could make do with that for the main channels for now.

What i would like is the ability to record what i watch on xbmc plug ins such as icefilms etc is that even possible?

Thanks for the advice in regards to recording on the ssd then moving it into storage that would bypass any issues from recording onto WD green drives.

and in reply to functionablity (is that even a wordHuh)

I believe the word you were looking for was functionality but hey i'm scottish what do i know about the english language

Thanks for your reply Harro
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#7
The two cpu's mentioned above by Harro the amd a83850 and the a63500 are two that i have been looking at.

So am i right in thinking for a htpc cpu under a £100 that the AMD a series is the way to go for my needs?

The pros and cons as i understand it is the a8 would give me 4 cores whereas the a6 has three.Do i need 4 cores the a6 is £25 cheaper here and runs at 65w as opposed to the a8's 100w

Would the A6-3500 give me a snappy responsive system in the menus and recording etc? or will i regret not buying the A8?
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#8
Quote:"What i would like is the ability to record what i watch on xbmc plug ins such as icefilms etc is that even possible?"
I do not think it is possible to record and watch a plug-in at the same time , unless the plug-in gives you the option to download what you are watching. For more info on Icefilms. This forum and XBMC does not support it since this is XBMC stance on Piracy.

My A6-3500 runs great but at start up on the menus it has lag which is caused IMO from my hard drive which an old 60 gb notebook drive and lags only at the start up, if you would go with ssd I would think the menus would be snappy from the start up.


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#9
[quote='Harro' pid='1172673' dateline='1345400884']
Quote: This forum and XBMC does not support it since this is XBMC stance on Piracy.

Bugger! my apologies guys i should have read the forum rules but who does , it won't happen again
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#10
I have an a6 with a ssd and I'm completely happy. Don't regret buying it and everything runs smooth and snappy!

Edit: i don't run a tvcard so I can't tell you if it has enough power for it, but I guess it does...
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#11
Thanks for the input Cirkator
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#12
My approach to this was to put a TV card in my Ubuntu Server. I've got a DVB-S2 hooked up to my old sky dish, now any XBMC device in my house has PVR. I choose VDR because I had (limited) experience with it.

You hardly need a good PC for LiveTV, the specs of my server are in my sig (it doesn't even have a graphics card).
Guide to building an all in one Ubuntu Server - TV(vdr),File,Music,Web

Server Fractal Designs Define XL, Asus P5QL/EPU, Dual Core E5200, 4gb, L4M-Twin S2 v6.2, Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8I, 1*SSD & 13*HDD drives (24TB total) - Ubuntu Server
XBMC 1 ASRock Z77E-ITX, G850, 8GB RAM, SSD, BD - Ubuntu / OpenElec frodo
XBMC 2 Revo 3700 - OpenElec frodo
XBMC 3 Raspb Pi
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#13
(2012-08-19, 23:24)charlie0440 Wrote: My approach to this was to put a TV card in my Ubuntu Server. I've got a DVB-S2 hooked up to my old sky dish, now any XBMC device in my house has PVR. I choose VDR because I had (limited) experience with it.

You hardly need a good PC for LiveTV, the specs of my server are in my sig (it doesn't even have a graphics card).

Hey charlie0440 thanks for your input.

I'm really interested in your post , are you in the uk?

Could you expand on what you said above in noob speak so i can grasp it.
Further to my mistake in mentioning piracy related plugins , i'll now take the opposite route.

Can i ask everyone if you take away all the piracy plugins what are the good legal stuff i could do with xbmc?

Genuine question as i kinda know little about its full capabilities.

For example would it give me access to more free legal channels in the uk ? i know about netflix etc but im not looking to subscribe to anything , just free entertainment mainly.
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#14
(2012-08-19, 23:52)bannockburn1314 Wrote:
(2012-08-19, 23:24)charlie0440 Wrote: My approach to this was to put a TV card in my Ubuntu Server. I've got a DVB-S2 hooked up to my old sky dish, now any XBMC device in my house has PVR. I choose VDR because I had (limited) experience with it.

You hardly need a good PC for LiveTV, the specs of my server are in my sig (it doesn't even have a graphics card).

Hey charlie0440 thanks for your input.

I'm really interested in your post , are you in the uk?

Could you expand on what you said above in noob speak so i can grasp it.
Further to my mistake in mentioning piracy related plugins , i'll now take the opposite route.

Can i ask everyone if you take away all the piracy plugins what are the good legal stuff i could do with xbmc?

Genuine question as i kinda know little about its full capabilities.

For example would it give me access to more free legal channels in the uk ? i know about netflix etc but im not looking to subscribe to anything , just free entertainment mainly.

couch potato+sickbeard you can find guides in tips and tricks section (trust me this will do it for your needs)
(2012-08-20, 04:07)lagledavid Wrote:
(2012-08-19, 23:52)bannockburn1314 Wrote:
(2012-08-19, 23:24)charlie0440 Wrote: My approach to this was to put a TV card in my Ubuntu Server. I've got a DVB-S2 hooked up to my old sky dish, now any XBMC device in my house has PVR. I choose VDR because I had (limited) experience with it.

You hardly need a good PC for LiveTV, the specs of my server are in my sig (it doesn't even have a graphics card).

Hey charlie0440 thanks for your input.

I'm really interested in your post , are you in the uk?

Could you expand on what you said above in noob speak so i can grasp it.
Further to my mistake in mentioning piracy related plugins , i'll now take the opposite route.

Can i ask everyone if you take away all the piracy plugins what are the good legal stuff i could do with xbmc?

Genuine question as i kinda know little about its full capabilities.

For example would it give me access to more free legal channels in the uk ? i know about netflix etc but im not looking to subscribe to anything , just free entertainment mainly.

couch potato+sickbeard you can find guides in tips and tricks section (trust me this will do it for your needs)

ps yyou can PM me if you need further help
My HTPC AMD A8-3870K CPU/ SilverStone ML03B/ASRock MB-A75M /Seasonic SS-400ET/Corsair XMS3 4GB
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#15
What about an application feel, eg OpenELEC.
It will kind of be like a Sky box. As in power on boots in within seconds, and your good to go.
Runs a light linux base, but you never see or use it.

They do a PVR build. I played with this for awhile, running Intel and a TV Tuner card, using my old Sky Sat dish.
Worked ok, but I could have spent more time with it. As you need to scan all channels, and then I was manually giving them numbers similar to Sky.
But then stopped for some reason so never finished.

Never got to the recording bit either, that was next on my list.
But watching was good, except some stutters now and then, or a few seconds to buffer the channel.
My full HTPC build log:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=129352
Core i3-2120T 2.6Ghz, 4gb Kingston DDR3, mSATA SSD, Moneual 312 Case, GT520 GPU
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