Back in Media Center 2005 (XP) and Vista Media Center (Pre-TV Pack) days, users of either system where limited in many ways, one of which were how many tuners you could use, as well as the the TV sources you could use. In MCE 2005 as well as VMC you couldn’t have one tuner on NTSC cable tv and have the other one on NSTC cable tv with a cable box and IR blasters, if you have two NTSC tuners either both had to be setup on analog NTSC with no cable box or IR blasters, or visa versa.

You also couldn’t have cable TV and Satellite TV at the same time either, In fact I haven’t tested or confirmed if that has changed in 7MC yet either. I was recently on the Entertainment 2.0 Podcast and one of the topics we covered was about Media Center and its guide course, and Tuners. I talked about a friend of mine who I regularly talk with on IRC who is a SageTV user, and one of his biggest grips about Media Center is the tuner card and guide source limitations. This friend, because of where he lives (and because of greedy local broadcast stations) can not get his local channels via Direct TV or Dish Network, and because of the location of his home he can not get OTA broadcast tv signals strong enough to give him a decent picture quality.

So with this limitation he signed up for local only cable tv, meaning he only gets the local news channels and a few public access channels. So for his main TV service he has Direct TV, and for locals he has cable tv. Being a Media Center user and avid HTPC and technology fan he found that he couldn’t get Media Center (at that time MCE 2005) to use two different guide data sources. Basically he wanted to have one tuner setup with guide data for his local channels, then a second guide data with a second tuner setup for his Direct TV channels. Media Center would all him to setup either or, but not both at the same time. Eventually he did some research, moved over to MythTV but eventually found the hard ships with Linux and user support was non-existent at the time. He eventually found SageTV and though he didn’t like the user interface and lack of Media support for digital videos and photos and music, for went those issues and has used SageTV ever since.

Now fast forward to last year when TV Pack was “released” for Vista Media Center. When Fiji aka the TV Pack was released, it added some nice features that were badly needed for VMC, one of which was native clear QAM tuning. Before to get QAM in VMC you had to do some hacks which only worked with a few tuners, after the TV Pack you could natively tune clear QAM channels which in most cases was huge. TV Pack also increased the number of native tuner card support. Before you could only have two NTSC tuners and two ATSC tuners, or two cable card tuners and two ATSC tuners. After the TV Pack you could now have four tuners per tuner type, meaning you could now have a total of eight tuner cards natively. Four NTSC, four ATSC, four QAM, and four cable card. With 7MC coming out and the possibility of Dish and/or Direct TV satellite tuner support that could turn into 12 tuner cards, and then on top of that you have the HD-PVR which no one really knows how that will come into play.  Another big feature was Tuner pooling, and guide source adjusting.

Tuner pooling you ask? What we mean by tuner pooling is where you can give priority to tuners, and channels.

As quoted from a PC Mag article by Jeremy A. Kaplan “Two tuners may receive the same channel, but display it differently and list content from a separate source in the guide. For example, you may receive FOX as both station 5.1 and 705. TV Pack allows you to pool the two channels, so the contents show only once in the guide, and it lets you select which tuner you’d prefer to use for viewing and recording. Pool the high-def and low-def versions of a station and you can set a show to record on high-def if possible, but fall back to the standard-def tuner in a pinch. You’ll never again miss CSI because the high-def tuner is already recording, and you won’t have to set a standard-def recording manually.”

Basically you can take 4 NTSC tuners, and 4 ATSC tuners, and now 4 QAM tuners which which all can tune your local affiliates ABC, NBC, and CBS. For me here in Minneapolis area, CBS is channel 4, ABC is channel 5, and NBC is channel 11 for my NTSC tuners. CBS is 4.1 (or 1041 in MCE and VMC pre-tv pack), ABC is 5.1 (or 1051), and NBC is 11.1 (or 1011) for my ATSC tuners. CBS is 75.1, ABC is 79.1, and NBC is 75.2 for my QAM tuners.

So with tuner pooling and guide source changes made in TV Pack and migrated into 7MC I can now pool all the guide data, tuners, all together. So for example I can take channels 4, 1041, and 75.1 and since they all have the same guide data, I can group them together so that if say I had 4 NTSC, 4 ATSC, and 4 QAM tuners, I can point all 12 tuners to channel 4. Then when I set a recording on channel 4, I would give the 4 ATSC tuners priority 1 – 4, they would record via OTA on channel 4.1/1041 but to me via the guide it is channel 4. Same goes for the 4 QAM tuners, If the 4 ATSC tuners were being used to record shows on other channels, the QAM tuners would then come into play and they would record on channel 75.1 but again it is still channel 4 to me. Finally if the 4 ATSC and 4 QAM tuners were then all used up, they would do a final roll over to the 4 NTSC tuners. So in theory no matter what the original source is, what tuner is being used, to the end user it really doesn’t matter as long as the priorities are set, and the show gets recorded no matter what.

Now with the advent of possible HD-PVR and Dish and/or Direct TV that really is a whole new ball of wax because you have IR blasters to deal with when it takes into consideration the HD-PVR, and because the MCE USB IR receiver only has two IR blasters it might be kind of hard to setup correctly, only time will tell to see exactly how that all plays out. Also will be interesting to see if you can over come the Cable vs. Sat TV and possibly getting both into the same system if you can work around the tuner pooling and guide source data issues. If you could you could possibly say channel xxx only is allowed to use tuner X Y and Z, and channel ZZZ is only allow to use tuner Y. So theoretically you could possibly over come the tuner and guide limitations you had in MCE 2005 and VMC with 7MC, but only time will tell.

As always you can follow me on twitter and register here and post up your comments.

- Josh

Andy VT just posted up a blog post about his main HTPC specs so I though I’d post up mine.

 

Case: Antec Sonata II  I love this case, in fact I own 4 of them. One for this HTPC, one for my WHS box, one for my main Office PC, and one for a spare just incase I need one later on. Comes with 450watt low noise, very efficient antec PSU. comes with 1 x 120mm fan, but is fitted to accept a second 120mm fan for the HDD rack in the front side of the case. I run 2 low speed, ultra quiet 120mm fans, that keep the system cool and at the same time keep it quiet. Most HTPC enthusiasts like to have AV rack style HTPC cases that can fit in their AV rack and look good, for me less is more, and not seeing the HTPC or hearing it, is a higher priority. Function over form goes a long way.

 

Mobo: Asus M3A78 PRO full ATX AMD 780G  I chose this mobo as its a full ATX mob that allows me to get additonal PCIe and PCI slots so that I could run all 4 internal tuner cards and still have a spare PCI slot for future expansion, possibly a sound card that supports bit stream HDMI audio.

 

CPU: AMD Phenom 9850 BLACK EDITION 2.5GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core (stock HSF) I am running this quad core in my HTPC as a friend of mine purchased this and didn’t confirm if it would work with the mobo he ordered at the same time, however it didn’t work and the CPU I was running (AMD 4850e 45watt AM2 chip) would work with his system and the mobo I ordered would support the quad core we just did a cpu swap, ended up getting the better deal.

 

RAM: 4 gigs GeIL Esoteria 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Since I am only running 32-bit Vista I decided to only go with 4gigs as 512mb of the 4gigs is shared with the onboard video, so I am using all 4gigs without waste.

 

Video card: SAPPHIRE 100234L Radeon HD 3450 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 used in crossfire mode with the AMD 780G mobo

 

HDD: 2 X Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive 1 X Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EACS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive  one 500gig HDD for OS, one 500gig HDD for direct DVR storage, 1 1TB HDD for DVR recordings after they have been processes and commercials removed.

 

Blu-Ray/HD DVD Drive: LG Black LG Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA Model GGC-H20LK got this on sale, normally don’t use the drive but for the few blu-ray and hd dvd movies I own, it works for what I need.

 

Tuner Cards: 2 X AVerMedia M780 PCIe hybrid tuner  2 x Vista View Sabar DA-1n1-I PCI hybrid tuner 1 X Silicon Dust HD Homerun network based dual ATSC/QAM tuner  (6 ATSC tuners, 4 NTSC tuners)

 

Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate 32-Bit

 

Software: Arcsoft Total Media Theater, Slysoft Any DVD HD, FFdshow, Haali Media Splitter, Lifextender, Media Player Classic Home Cinema. I don’t install any unnecessary software on my PC. You will find very little extra software on my Media Center PC. FFdshow and Haali is all I install for codec support. Arcsoft and AnyDVD HD are used for Blu-Ray and HD DVD playback. Lifextender is for commercial skipping.

 

For the main GUI, DVR, and media interface I use the built in Vista Media Center, that is part of Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate. Media Center is the “central” hub for everything I do in my home. Media Center is my DVR, my Music Juke Box, my digital photo frame, is basically the main source for my digital media entertainment. With the 10 tuner cards in this system I am able to DVR pretty much anything and everything I throw at it. I am able to stream live TV when needed, and I am able watch recorded TV on virtually any tv in my home.

This system is also my Blu-Ray player and my HD DVD player all in one. Which for me for the little investment I did, is a perfect solution for additional HD content. My only complaint is I can not stream Blu-Ray HD content to any tv in my home, until the day I can stream any HD content I want to any tv in my house hold via Media Center, will be the day my setup is complete.

My HTPC/Media Center system is located in my basement theater room inside of an adjacent closet that I have setup where my AV rack is located, where my home network hub is located, as well as my WHS machine is located. For more info on that setup see my Home Theater section of my website.

If you have any questions on my setup, and configuration beyond the parts and software list please feel free to ask, follow me on Twitter or sign up and post in the comments.

 

- Josh