Looking For A Complete Htpc Solution..

[-Smooth-]

Let me first start off and say how frustrated I currently am

I recently moved from the USA to the Gold Coast and I am still trying to get a handle on the whole TV situation here in Australia.

Basically, I am looking for a system that has the following capabilities.

1) Handles Digital FTA programming (not analog)

2) Handles Austar

3) Is networkable and able to be used remotely throughout the house

4) Has a good WAF (wife acceptance factor)

In the US, I was using software called BeyondTV by Snapstream and it was just plain fantastic! The only problem for me is that it does not support DVB and they have no plans to support it.

I currently have a media PC in the living room, one in the bedroom and my server is in my office. I have my Austar connected with the box next to where my server goes. I also have a standard aerial outlet (attached to a very good antenna on the roof. I had an installer check the antenna out and he was very impressed with the setup and the numbers shown on his digital meter).

My server currently has a DNTV Live! Dual Hybrid PCI-E S2 card in it.

So now to my plea for advice.

Can anyone recommend a suitable setup that will allow me to watch Digital FTA and Austar anywhere in my house?

I do have some spare PCs and I would have no problem having 2 servers, 1 for FTA and another for Austar if they dont like talking to each other.

I have not looked into MCE or Vista and have no idea on their capabilities. Will they achieve what I am looking for or is there something else better and easier to run?

Thanks in advance

edit: I forgot to mention, I have purchased an ICETV subscription for FTA and I am open to buying whatever is necessary to make this work

[renura]

From the hardware point of view, adding a DVB-S card with CI, a CAM and using your Irdeto II subscriptiuon card is all you need to get Austar into your PC.

If you want to use an application that can handle both DVB-T and DVB-S, there are a variety. DNTV Live! is one of them. DVBViewer, MyTheatre can also do that. WAF depends on your wife

As for getting access to it remotely from around the house, that can be an issue. The best you can do is broadcast one decrypted channel stream to other networked PC/devicess around the house (ie only one channel to all clients at anyone time), this can be done with VideoLan or other software solutions.

[nigel1503559528]

MythTV supports DVB, and multiple client/server computers, but I am not sure about Austar. And it won't be easy - not many people have the necessary Linux skills or perseverance.

I did a search for "Austar MythTV CI" and found a few code changes for CI and EIT support in MythTV 0.20, but I don't know of anyone who has got it to work with a satellite card - I think most use the Austar set top box with a grabber.

(plus I don't think any PCI-X/E grabber cards are supported by Linux)

"open to buying whatever is necessary to make this work" - Wow. Thats what I call motivated. You should have no problems finding a someone to implement a solution for you :-)

[jasonbr]

As far as client/server set ups go have you looked at mediaportal or sage TV. Mediaportal is open sourse and their new tv server engine looks good although it is still in beta, it supports both dvb-t and dvb-s cards. Sage Tv is more mature but I am not certain if it supports sat cards.

I myself have tried both for DVB-T and find mediaportal much more user friendly, although stability varies from machine to machine. Very nice EPG integration.

DNTV Live has the best pq and stability of any of the progs I have tried but it does lack the ability to provide an intergrated server client solution which is a big shame.

Myth tv is always an option but unless you start with selecting you hardware for myth, getting everything to play nice is no simple feet.

[Nandn]

Smooth,

how did you go with your integrated TV and Sat media centre? What was your final solution?

Neil