Alternatives...

[Raffles]

After being a dedicated Tivo user since getting one of the last ones sold by Powerhouse (remember them?) with a lifetime sub I'm finally weaning myself off

I've experimented with MythTV, Windows Media Center and various other things but they've all been an exercise in frustration for various reasons. I still don't have a solution for my TV management needs that's as good as Tivo but I bought a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Connect network Freeview tuner a while back that offers hope. At the moment I run the HDHomeRun DVR Manager on my QNAP NAS along with HDHomeRun DVR UI which I can access from my PC, tablet or phone. With this I can setup recordings of upcoming content which, between the dual tuners, plus1 channels and repeats usually works. What it lacks is Wishlists, Season Passes and a decent search facility. The search is so dire that I still have one Tivo under the TV just for that!

What I'd really like is Tivo software that I can run in a VM or container that can manage the HDHomeRun tuners. In the meantime I'm going to have a play with MythTV, Kodi, etc now that I can side-step the hardware issues.

P.

[Pegasus]

What it lacks is Wishlists, Season Passes and a decent search facility.

Yes wishlists is always the killer for me. I put up with SD quality (which isn't that bad really) and a single tuner as they're far outweighed by programme / actor wishlists. I can't believe no-one else has done those yet. I guess until you've had them you don't realise how good that functionality is. Maybe I need to join the MythTV development team! (wish I had the time )

[mikerr]

Wishlists ... even the virgin media tivo is far less useful with wishlists than thomson tivo is/was.
Why ? because you can't filter out channels (like unselecting channels I receive) - this means a keyword wishlist picks up endlesss kids shows...

So in addition the VM Tivo, I've been running this for the past few years:

A Raspberry Pi with 4x freeview tuners running TVHeadend which sits in the loft (you could run it on a linux VM)

That has wishlists (autorecs) by keyword in title or description, and can be restricted by channel.
All control is via a web page on tablet/phone - there are various android apps too.
We can view recorded shows on any tablet in wifi (2-3 simultaneously) and also on TVs of course.

Has a pretty good live-search too which I use all the time.

[Pegasus]

Sounds interesting. What do you use for storage? Can it do actor wishlists?

[mikerr]

storage: mine records to a 4TB usb drive so total power usage is < 20W
but have had it going to a NAS over NFS in the past.

actor wishlists: not directly, but the major actors are usually listed in the description
so I have auto-recording keyword matches like "sigourney weaver" which work well enough.

there is also match by genre in combination with keyword title/description/channel as well as padding & "record at most" settings.
Only as good as the epg data itself though !

[Pegasus]

Nice.

storage: mine records to a 4TB usb drive

Ah yes that would make sense - attached direct to the RPi?

Only as good as the epg data itself though !

True, but you can use the same EPG data as we use in AltEPG, which seems generally good. (It's provided upstream by Tribune which is a name you may remember, as the original provider for Tivo Inc )

[bandsp]

So in addition the VM Tivo, I've been running this for the past few years:

A Raspberry Pi with 4x freeview tuners running TVHeadend which sits in the loft (you could run it on a linux VM)

.

Much as I love my old TiVo, the single tuner is a bit of a bind, and iplayer doesn't cut the mustard for me ..

Is there a "A Raspberry Pi with 4x freeview tuners running TVHeadend" for Dummies available?

[mikerr]

Here's my guide :

http://www.redrobe.com/mike/recording-t ... pberry-pi/

[bounderboy]

I stopped using Tivo a long time ago and switched to WMC for a longtime. However I am not suing Plex DVR and it is pretty good. Being able to record centrally and use almost any client to watch recorded content is a real brilliance of the setup and the new features that are coming out really are making it a great system. Built in Comskip works pretty well too....