[Rakeesh]

I have some different machines that run XBMC based HTPCs, and I want to DVR enable them. I have an OTA based HDHomeRun, and I run a Linux based file server that currently hosts my video library. I want to run a DVR headend on my existing server, but I'm not sure which one to use.

My criteria is basically: Easy to configure, supports automatic commercial removal, and automatic transcoding to h264.

Anybody have any suggestions? I tried mythtv a while back, and it never really worked that well, but if there's a better workflow out there I might try it.

Ideally the backend can be completely configured using XBMC itself.

[puithove]

The one that currently has the best built-in support for HDHR (the only one really) is MythTV. I've been using it quite successfully both with the old ATSC/ClearQAM box and now with HDHR Prime with CableCard. It just works (from the tuner / lineup perspective). I had to do a bunch of tweaking overall for the details, but it's been pretty stable and once you get to know it, it's easy enough.

TVHeadend is working on native support, but it's under development so I don't know how stable it is (I've just started watching this as I'm interested in seeing how it goes). I haven't been able to turn up any documentation yet of how to make it actually work. For ATSC it seems to work like any other tuner in TVHeadend so that'd probably work for you, but for me I need Cablecard and haven't been able to figure that out since there's no documentation.

The others have all been using dvbhdhomerun which is a dirty hack IMHO so I wanted to avoid it - which is the primary reason I settled on Myth.