[SoCalXMBC]

Since 1998 I've been working in the Streaming Media space to help architect IPTV away from being dominated by the Cable providers. As such, I've been an early adopter of IPTV HTPC solutions in the home and, by proxy, so has my family. They make for a good use case in which technologies are acceptable for the average user in the home.

For the last 7 years our home entertainment multi room network was powered by SageTV which was light years ahead of any other offering available. They truly understood the 10ft, 2ft, and Mobile experience with a refinement that your 5 year old could master in moments. It was brilliant, and such was gobbled up by Google a few years back. This unfortunately stopped all development and thus it began to stagnate as technology continued moving forward. Like many, I hung on as long as possible until things like Netflix and PlayOn integration stopped working. We all evaluated other solutions, most offering one good aspect but falling short on the whole package.

Fast forward to XBMC Frodo which could functionally do a good chunk of it, networked as clients across the house, but not very well. It was CPU hungry, not very intuitive, and really didn't have a LiveTV component which could be considered competitive against the cable TV offering. Needless to say, the Family was not happy but made the best of it. I assured them that this was the best available right now and it just needed time to mature. Shortly after, ServerWMC arrived on the scene. Finally, a live TV offering that held some promise and immediately fixed one of the most annoying aspects, the EPG. The release of Gotham was a big step to reducing CPU consumption which really improved the experience on some of the lower powered clients in the house. The incremental enhancements of WMC.PVR coupled with refinement in the various libraries and video plugins in XBMC have finally started to rise to the occasion.

Last night the family sat down in the livingroom in front of the TV and we thumbed through our library looking for something to watch, only to decided that the only thing worth watching was a TV series that was already recording. Everyone sighed since watching an in progress show has historically been problematic in one way or another. However I clicked and it started right from the beginning. Everyone was happy. We fast forwarded through commercials and slowly caught up to real-time. Near the end my son decided he was tired and wasn't going to make it so I told him he can continue watching it in his rooms XBMC, starting from where he fell asleep, even while we watch it in here. He looked surprised, and the moment happened where the family was happy again with the HTPC solution in place as a valid replacement for cable!

This would not have happened without the hard work you guys with WMCServer and PVR.WMC have committed to filling the LiveTV void left by XBMC and enriched it like none of the other plugins have been able to do to date. Great work! Our Family thanks you!

[Architecture]
XBMC PC in every room, single HVR-1600 Master Tuner, 16 drive Raid Array Master SAN, 10/100 and Dual Band WiFi

XBMC (Gotham Beta 3)
ServerWMC (1.0.0.28 build 1134)
PVR.WMC Addon (0.2.95)
PlayOn UPNP (3.8.23)
Sickbeard (alpha 503)
Sabnzbd (0.7.16)
Netflix Subscription

[awp0]

Cool story! Just out of curiosity, which XBMC skin do you use on the main (family) instance?

[krustyreturns]

Thanks soCal, that made my day.

[SoCalXMBC]

It should make your day! My only worry for the future is the end of life for Windows Media Center... so I figure we have about 4 years before moving to the next operating system causes a gap

I use the standard Confluence on all of them for uniformity and ease of implementation.

[awp0]

Thanks. I've struggled with XBMC themes as it relates to the family. The only on that seems to strike an acceptable balance for us is Bello, and it's not very actively maintained anymore.

[SoCalXMBC]

I too have run the gamut of skins and themes. I agree its not the easiest for the family of the skins available but it offers less frustration as things change and subsequently break over time and upgrades. Confluence seems to stay consistent with the least amount of oddities popping up and the highest compatibility. My biggest frustration with it is in some of the rooms where the TV is 4x3 and the text is rather small.

[LSU Jonno]

Arctic and Xperience 1080++ are both good PVR skins.

The text is a bit small on Arctic to really be a 10ft interface in the EPG and both have a little trouble aligning the channel logos from Mychannel logos imported from WMC but they are both nice skins. For the record, I've been running stock Confluence until Gotham is out of beta just so I don't introduce more bugs into the system than is necessary.

BTW, I'll echo SoCal's words. My wife has to "put up with" my HTPC obsession. Only since I've started running SWMC has she been "enjoying" it. Great work guys.

[awp0]

Cool, thanks guys. I think I've played around with those skins in the past, but it's been a while so maybe worth another look.

And I'll agree with everything else mentioned here. Big props to everyone involved here. Pvr.wmc is a great feature and it's really helped make the difference for my family as well.

[JazJon]

I'm impressed with the latest updates as well, great job improving behavior while watching a recording in progress. . I think I jumped in at the right time where everything is working well enough to be happy.

I've yet to try any skins yet since I'm on Gotham nightly builds. I'm looking forward to trying out skins at some point.

[negge]

I don't want to ruin the good vibes here but everything you see when you use XBMC has nothing to do with the pvr.wmc addon (unless I'm missing something here). The fact that you can play an in-progress recording is great, albeit not unique (it has always worked with tvheadend).

[krustyreturns]

No worries. We have had the ability to play in-progress recordings from first release too, but there has been a problem with trick playing them (ff, rw, etc), that only got addressed in the last rev. But it has to do with the weirdness of how wmc works, so yeah, I wouldn't expect other pvr solutions to have this problem.

[awp0]

I don't want to ruin the good vibes here but everything you see when you use XBMC has nothing to do with the pvr.wmc addon (unless I'm missing something here). The fact that you can play an in-progress recording is great, albeit not unique (it has always worked with tvheadend).

Yeah, that may be true, I've never used tvheadend. But I can tell you that pvr.wmc was the clear winner for me after evaluating Argus and NPVR. Windows support, super easy configuration, lightweight footprint, free EPG, series recording ability, remote scheduling and viewing over the web, very active and responsive development, are all among the reasons why I think this is a unique solution. All of these comes together to meet my family's requirements quite nicely.

[advocate99]

That's my concern as well.

WMC will work forever if someone figures out how to integrate Schedules Direct guide data ($25.00 per year).

Otherwise, when MS finally cancels the Guide Data, it'll either be NextPVR, ArgusTV, or TVHeadEnd for me...

My only worry for the future is the end of life for Windows Media Center... so I figure we have about 4 years before moving to the next operating system causes a gap

[krustyreturns]

IMO, in terms of computer tech, anything you can count on for two years is as secure as you can hope for (the same is true, btw, for engineering positions in si-valley: 2 yr = 'job security'). Anything good for 4 years is as close to forever as you are going to get.

So by my reckoning, since MS is still selling wmc, its 'secure'. I have heard of third party apps that let you plug different epg sources into wmc, I haven't bothered to figure out how they do it, but when we need to (and if anyone is interested when this time comes around) we'll figure it out.

[krustyreturns]

lol. After this post I got curious, this is the first hit I got:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/...76338.aspx