Login at Kodi Home

bryan.sailer · 2015-02-09, 17:55

My family is preparing to move into our new house and I am planning on using Kodi throughout my home. I will be building a five separate boxes one for the living room, one for the entertainment room and the other three will be in each bedroom. What is the best way to push cable TV to each device? Do I need to have one central box with a tuner that the other boxes access or should I have a tuner in each box?

Thank you for you assistance in this matter.

Bryan Sailer
Huh

pcdude · 2015-02-09, 21:32

HDHomerun networked tuners such as the Prime work great for this as they accept cable-cards. The downside is that each HTPC device needs the horsepower to decode the HD MPEG-2 content, and a hard-wired ethernet connection. Chromeboxes would be a good option.

bryan.sailer · 2015-02-11, 15:59

The only problem is that I do not have a cable card provided by Time Warner unless it is internal to my cable boxes. The Chrome books look like a great option for my additional rooms. Would I be able to utilize a Hauppauge tuner card to bring in cable TV to my main Kodi HTPC and then push that out to the other boxes within the house of my home network?

browneye253 · 2015-02-11, 16:37

(2015-02-11, 15:59)bryan.sailer Wrote: The only problem is that I do not have a cable card provided by Time Warner unless it is internal to my cable boxes. The Chrome books look like a great option for my additional rooms. Would I be able to utilize a Hauppauge tuner card to bring in cable TV to my main Kodi HTPC and then push that out to the other boxes within the house of my home network?

You could actually return your cablebox and get a cablecard from them instead. You avoid the box rental fee and you get to access the programming on 3 devices simultaneously with the Hd prime.

bryan.sailer · (This post was last modified: 2015-02-11, 16:46 by bryan.sailer.)

Really, that is good to know. I just looked up the HD Prime and it looks great but how would that be incorporated with my Kodi HTPC?

browneye253 · 2015-02-11, 16:46

No. You could throw together mythtv or one of the other free PVR programs to do recording. There are Kodi clients for most of them so you can watch and record live TV from each of your Kodi boxes. If you're adding live TV to the mix for Kodi you'll want to review the hardware you're planning to use to make sure it'll handle it OK.

http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/prime/

bryan.sailer · 2015-02-11, 16:57

Thank you for your assistance. This looks like a great option.

Stereodude · 2015-02-11, 19:47

You have to use Windows and specifically Windows Media Center if you want to use that cablecard.

wrxtasy · (This post was last modified: 2015-02-11, 20:36 by wrxtasy.)

Be aware WMC is a paid upgrade in to the base version of Windows 8.1. Included in Win7.

smitopher · 2015-02-11, 21:09

I advise abandoning all hope of making this work.

It COULD work but I hate Windows Media Center, your ONLY choice, especially with Time Warner Cable. Effectively EVERYTHING is "Copy Once". You would also need 2 HDHomeRun prime boxes and 2 cable cards.

You would then have 5 cable tv islands. No sharing of recorded TV content.

Sharing a single storage server with 5 Kodi front ends is easily done.

Having a SINGLE whateveryoucallit is not feasible.

If you abandon Kodi, a Ceton server and 5 Ceton echos would give you 5 tv's sharing the server. http://cetoncorp.com/

MediaBrowser and and the Windows Media center plugin made by MediaBrowser combined with the Ceton setup MIGHT give you something close to Kodi. http://mediabrowser.tv/

bryan.sailer · 2015-02-11, 23:17

smitopher, why would I need 2 HDHR's? From what I have found 1 HDHR will bring in the digital cable signal and allow me to access the content from any network connected device. I can also have it setup to record my content using the backend of my choice, which will not be Windows Media Center. I just need the right application to store my recorded shows.

**bry** · 2015-02-11, 23:26

The prime consists of 3 tuners. You have 5 front ends as your goal. If you are recording a program you lose the tuner for that duration. If you get 2 primes you can record 1 program while watch TV on the other 5 front ends.

I would reach out to your cable provider first to see if you can find out how they flag their channels. Keep in mind that wmc is the only system that can view the encrypted channels. What you need to find out is the cci flag of each channel.

bryan.sailer · 2015-02-11, 23:46

Now, I see where you guys are coming from. Thank you all for the assistance. I will continue to research as I plan my home network. What if I went with a total Kodi setup and had a HTPC in every room. Could I have a tuner card in my main cable input and then access the content from the other HTPC that are running Kodi?

**bry** · (This post was last modified: 2015-02-11, 23:58 by bry.)

I do not record anything so I just use the direct stream from the HDHomeRun. Sounds like cost is not an issue for you.
Most people seem happy with the chromebox or a NUC

bryan.sailer · 2015-02-12, 04:56

I was thinking about the chromebox as an option but I do not know yet. Thank you again for all of your assistance.