Okay... Now onto my needs from a DVR Application. I'll try to organize this (somewhat) into categories to make it easier to grep.
Now I'm just going to "get into it"... I'm just going to list what I need. In almost all cases, both BeyondTV and SageTV (which I may move to in the future) currently provide this support and it works well. If not, it will be noted. There are other DVR Applications out there (most notably, Windows MCE) which provide a subset of these abilities.
Stability
--------------------------1. Stability is the one place where I have few (if any) concerns over MC. However, I don't feel necessarily that it is any more or less stable than my current solution (BeyondTV). I would say both are very close to "appliance class stability". MC may have a very slight edge in overall stability, but in the ways BTV needs to work (not missing recordings and playback quality) It Just Works.
NOTE: BTV uses a whole pile of system services which are slow to start and annoying. They do crash occasionally (I'd say two-three times per month with the current release) but it has a service manager that catches these crashes and automatically restarts them. I don't need to reboot the system generally on BTV's behalf (patch Tuesday comes once a month and makes me reboot then anyway). Most importantly,
it doesn't miss scheduled recordings. I've been using this system (more or less, the hardware is constantly shifting) for almost 3 years.
I'd call this a tie overall. They're both very good, maybe a slight edge to MC, but only slight.
Integrated Program Guide
--------------------------------------------1. A fully integrated Program Guide which displays shows in a time grid, similar to what is provided by DirecTV or all Digital Cable systems.
2. Needs to include full "program info" including show synopsis, episode name, original air date, series title. Movies need to be classified into rough Genres (the EPG feeds provide this, though it stinks). Sports events should be categorized into sport and by team (BTV doesn't do by team). This info needs to be easily accessible by simply "clicking" on the program in the grid or anywhere else you find the show (via searching or category browsing described below).
3. Full support for my cable system, including automatically grabbing my channel lineup (based on entering a zip code and picking a cable provider), including both analog and digital cable system (and these need to be separate choices because some tuners are analog and some are connected to the digital cable STB). DirecTV and OTA ATSC support is required as well (I'm not using these currently, but that could change at any time and I need to not be locked in because of my software solution).
4. Fully searchable program information, including Title and Keyword search. Ability to save and "subscribe" to the searches, so I can search for "Patriots Football" save it, and it'll automatically record any Patriots Football game or any program that includes "Patriots" and "Football" in the summary.
5. Browse by category. Instead of the normal Grid View, an alternate method of "browsing" similar to Panes in MC. Browse by sporting events, movies, tv shows, news, etc.
6. Customizable channel lineup on a per-input basis. Need to be able to eliminate channels I don't get (or don't care about) from my Channel Guide, so I never see them. I also need to be able to tell the system that my HD channels or Digital Cable channels only work on certain capture devices and not others.
Intelligent Recording Support:
----------------------------------------------1. Ability to browse the Program Guide (forward and back in time) and choose shows to record based on the program, not the arbitrary channel number. Multiple capture devices and sources are irrelevant, as it shows one unified program guide (even if some channels come from an antenna, some from DirecTV Satellite, and still others from Cable TV). OTA Digital channels are represented cleanly as well and integrated as part of the guide.
2. TV Show "subscription" support: single occurrence, all first run episodes, all episodes, all episodes on multiple channels (record Law and Order on both NBC and reruns on USA and TNT), for all subscriptions the ability to set priority to/against certain channels (BTV doesn't do this, Sage does) so that I can tell it to "prefer HD channels" or "avoid HD channels" depending on the show.
3. Movie and Event recordings: ability to say "record this show/movie/event within 30/60/90 days" and have it just figure it out.
3. Full control over recording quality including: multiple codec support (encode and decode), full support for hardware encoding engines in capture cards, bitrates and resolutions (with easy-to-use Good/Better/Best presets, but the ability to get in there and set things manually too if desired). These settings need to be applicable on a per-recording (or per-subscription) basis.
4. Web UI to allow me to manage recordings from remote locations (I can go in and browse this same program grid, schedule recordings, and modify existing schedules/subscriptions completely via the web from my office computer with BTV).
5. Full and easy-to-use Prioritization for these subscriptions. I want to be able to set "Big Love" and "Lost" to ALWAYS RECORD, and I don't want The Daily Show (which airs multiple times per day anyway) to intercept it. Smart and automatic use of multiple tuners/encoding cards to resolve conflicts automatically. (BTV has this, but honestly it could be a LOT better. SageTV has better priority support including a "prefer first-run airings" setting which can be applied on a per-subscription basis.)
6. Automatic Overlap detection. I'll let Snapstream explain: "If a higher priority show is being recorded and runs up to five minutes over it will continue recording before moving on to the next recording. So if Lost ends at 8:03 PM and you have a lower priority scheduled recording to begin at 8:00 pm, Beyond TV will continue recording the higher priority recording of Lost before starting the 8:00 PM recording." This takes multiple tuners into account, and also can "tell" if a show runs back-to-back with another scheduled recording. This has improved dramatically with the most recent couple of versions of BTV.
7. Full schedule Tweaking support. The guide says the show ends at 10pm, but your affiliate always delays its start time for some station break or something and it doesn't really end until 10:06pm? That's okay, set the subscription to "start on time" and "end 8 minutes late" (or start 5 minutes early and end 5 minutes early). These settings can be added on a per-subscription or global basis (or both).
8. "Back Recording". Started watching a show and after 15 minutes you wished you had recorded it? Just hit record and the existing buffer will automatically become part of the new recording as though you had scheduled it all along. I use this all the time. I'm watching the Olympics and my wife comes in to talk to me, so I hit pause. After talking to her for a while, I realize this is going to take longer than I had first thought so I just hit the Record button on the remote. It asks if I want to schedule recurring or just this instance. I hit this instance and it automatically includes the full, existing timeshifting buffer (not from the moment I hit pause, but from the first moment I started watching the channel) in the recording. I can close out of BTV and it keeps on recording.
9. Full HD Support including OTA via a Digital HD Tuner and via devices like the
Hauppauge HD PVR and
Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro. (BTV doesn't support the Intensity Pro, SageTV does but it takes some hacking. Both now support the new Hauppauge HD PVR.)
10. Ability to "prioritize" certain capture devices over others both globally and on a per-show basis (so that whenever possible it uses my highest-quality HD Capture device first, but when there is a conflict between two recordings Lost always records using the highest quality HD-supporting capture device and "The Daily Show" uses the old crappy analog capture card).
11. The Web UI should have an optimized for mobile use version. My BTV web UI has a special "mobile" version, like lots of web sites, that I can easily use from my iPhone.
12. Minimum supported recording formats: MPEG-2 (including hardware encoder support, of course), WMV, XviD/DivX AVI (including hardware support), and H264 (including hardware support).
13. Drive Pooling. I have those two 750GB drives. They aren't in a RAID config or anything complicated. Just plain vanilla NTFS formatted drives. But BTV "sees" them as one unified recording pool and automatically uses them both (you can go in and add as many "recording paths" as you want). It actually "levels" the usage of these drives in a smart manner as well so that all your eggs aren't in one basket.
14. Free space management and automatic recording "expiration" (including the above mentioned Drive Pooling support). I can set individual recordings (after the fact) or subscriptions (beforehand) to different levels of "importance". EG: Never Delete or Delete when Needed (SageTV has more granular control including an intermediary "Prefer not to Delete" option). That way, if I run out of space because I have 10 million recordings of The Family Guy, it won't "not record" the new episode of True Blood on HBO because it thinks it is out of space. It'll just delete "just what is needed", preferring to delete things that are marked as "watched" over things that are marked as "unwatched". However, really important recordings can be marked as "Never Delete" and they'll be protected (it actually marks them as read-only in the system too).
That finishes those two sections (unless I think of more as I go)... There's more to come, but I need more time.
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Topic: Why MC's Television Support Doesn't Work For Me (Read 2808 times)