2013-03-13, 14:02
The PVR (wiki) guide on the wiki is still very incomplete and confusing to a lot of users. I think I've/we've been going about it wrong. Instead of trying to generally capture everything and be neutral about software and hardware, I say screw it. We've going to revamp it telling people exactly what to do and what to buy for their location and TV source. For example, there will be a guide for USA/cable.
We'll still have everything we currently have, and links for people who already have things, but the idea is that our target audience is starting out with nothing. No fussing with making existing stuff work. If they have a situation that's very complicated (sat TV and IR blasters) then we don't touch it and tell them to google or link somewhere else. In time, maybe we'll get that stuff too.
Over The Air is our main priority. Include other sources when it's easy enough to tell a newbie how to set it up, refer them to somewhere else if it's complicated.
Does that mean we tell people to use one software over the other, if that one software is easier for newbies? Yes. If we can include both as parallel guides, even better, but let's at least finally have a newbie friendly, start-to-finish, guide. Is there a box out there that does both tuner and has a hard drive in it, and is reasonably priced? Holy crap, let's pimp that out. Right now the image for some is that Live TV on XBMC is "pain", and people don't know there are easier options out there, so let's change that image.
How you can help:
Just say what you think is the easiest (and reasonably affordable) set up for each of the following situations for both hardware and software:
Americas/ATSC/QAM/Cable card:
Europe/rest of the world/DVB:
Someone's going to have to help me out here and say what the common/easy situations are for you guys. Outside of OTA, I pretty much know nothing about DVB.
We'll still have everything we currently have, and links for people who already have things, but the idea is that our target audience is starting out with nothing. No fussing with making existing stuff work. If they have a situation that's very complicated (sat TV and IR blasters) then we don't touch it and tell them to google or link somewhere else. In time, maybe we'll get that stuff too.
Over The Air is our main priority. Include other sources when it's easy enough to tell a newbie how to set it up, refer them to somewhere else if it's complicated.
Does that mean we tell people to use one software over the other, if that one software is easier for newbies? Yes. If we can include both as parallel guides, even better, but let's at least finally have a newbie friendly, start-to-finish, guide. Is there a box out there that does both tuner and has a hard drive in it, and is reasonably priced? Holy crap, let's pimp that out. Right now the image for some is that Live TV on XBMC is "pain", and people don't know there are easier options out there, so let's change that image.
How you can help:
Just say what you think is the easiest (and reasonably affordable) set up for each of the following situations for both hardware and software:
Americas/ATSC/QAM/Cable card:
- OTA - Standalone device (like on a NAS, a dedicated box, etc)
- OTA - Linux
- OTA - Windows
- Cable - If provider has most channels that are copy freely - standalone device
- Cable - If provider has most channels that are copy freely - Linux
- Cable - If provider has most channels that are copy freely - Windows
Europe/rest of the world/DVB:
Someone's going to have to help me out here and say what the common/easy situations are for you guys. Outside of OTA, I pretty much know nothing about DVB.
- Hardware : 
