Which media center SW is easiest to install/use... not necessarily best or cheapest?

915 Views 11 Replies 7 Participants Last post by budgetman, May 25, 2006

mpjohnst

Discussion Starter · May 7, 2006

I don't know if I'm getting lazy in my old age (29) or am just losing the patience to tweak as much as I used to, but I'm looking for the easiest media center software... to install, to maintain and to use by me and my wife. She doesn't like the idea of watching TV on our computer so I want to impress her with something very slick and easy. We have a computer in our bedroom which I've already silenced so I'd like to use the 21" monitor as a TV instead of paying for a $1000 LCD TV.

REQUIREMENTS

PVR - Most important is the PVR functionality. We've never owned one before so we're aren't set in our ways (like the Tivo fanatics who can't use anything else ). As long as it's easy to use, we'll be happy. I may add HDTV at some point but it's not a priority now.
FLAC - I have a huge FLAC library that gets sent out to the living room to our Squeezebox which we both love. The Media Center software should be able to browse/play FLAC, ideally with cover art which I already have stored in the folders.
DVD - I'd also like the program to be able to play DVDs from the optical drive. A nice to have would be to play them from stored on the HDD (again, with cover art if possible).

I know I'll need some additional hardware and software. I'm not afraid to spend money on quality stuff, but I don't want to break the bank either... if that was the case, I would just buy the $1000 LCD TV and rent a PVR from the cable company for $20/month. Two years of that, however, and I would be at $1500... I'm hoping to keep it to much less. Right now I have a P4 3.0GHz w/HT, 1GB DDR, an ATI AIW 8500DV 64MB, and a crap ton of HDD space (620GB locally and another 500GB of external drives). I realize there is a tuner on the AIW card but during the little playing I did with it, I was not impressed with the quality. I'm also worried it will not be supported by the newer software. I assume there are much better cards available now so I'm happy to get one if I need one. That said, I prefer not to buy a new GFX card yet if I don't have to... I'll simply disable the tuner if necessary. If the tuner's quality is not that bad compared to the newer cards and if it will work with the new software, I would be happy to keep it.

As far as PVR software goes, I belive these are my options, no?

SageTV
BeyondTV
MCE 2005
GB-PVR
Yahoo! Go TV
ShowShifter
Freevo
Myth TV

As mentioned, I'd like a common interface for Music and DVDs as well though so I assume some of those will be crossed off the list unless I use something like Main Lobby or something similar. I'm not opposed to that but I smell some serious tweaking to make it work...

So, can you HTPC sages help me out with some recommendations... both what to do about a tuner and the media center/pvr software? For any of the above software you experience with, please state how easy it is to install, maintain, use as well as cost. And if you want this to be for posterity, we might as well add in quality as well. Maybe SAT style would be best...

RANKINGS

(1) * = Very Hard/Very Costly/Terrible PQ

(2) ** = Hard/Costly/Poor PQ

(3) *** = Average Use/Cost/PQ

(4) **** = Easy/Cheap/Good PQ

(5) ***** = Super Easy/Free/Awesome PQ

CATEGORIES

Ease of Install

Ease of Maintenence

Ease of Use

Cost

Picture Quality

I'll try to consolidate the results at the top if there are enough responses. And of course, anecdotal experience would be apprecitated as well. Thanks in advance for your help.

-Matt

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mpjohnst

Discussion Starter · #2 · May 7, 2006

RESERVED FOR RESULTS

SOFTWARE ------ EOI --- EOM --- EOU --- COST -- PQ ----

=======================================================

SageTV -------- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

BeyondTV ------ N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

MCE 2005 ------ N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

GB-PVR -------- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Yahoo! Go TV -- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

ShowShifter --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Freevo -------- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Myth TV ------- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

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Bicker

· #3 · May 9, 2006

From my tests with the various software....

SOFTWARE ------ EOI --- EOM --- EOU --- COST -- PQ ----

=======================================================

SageTV -------- 1 --- ? --- ? --- 3 --- ? ---

BeyondTV ------ 5 --- 5 --- 5 --- 3 --- 3 ---

MCE 2005 ------ 3 --- 3 --- 2 --- 2 --- 3 ---

GB-PVR -------- 1 --- 1 --- 3? --- 5 --- 3 ---

Yahoo! Go TV -- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

ShowShifter --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Freevo -------- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Myth TV ------- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Note that for my uses, I was only concerned about broadcast ATSC and the ability to play DVD's. SageTV totally failed on my system for reasons unknown. Since I had numerous other programs to evaluate that didn't have these problems, I didn't spend much time on it. GBPVR installed, but I spent days diagnosing various glitches (I am an expert level windows technician). Finally I gave up. Hand's down, BTV was the simplest to get up and running and produced a really nice user experience. Lack of integration with DVD playback and Audio will mean some cobbling together for you although I expect them into integrate BTV and BM very soon. I'm currently using MCE right now -- primarily because I need closed captioning and MCE is pretty much your only choice. After fighting to get their mostly pathetic guide working, MCE is producing a very nice user expereince for me now. I gave it "average" on install and maintenance because it has some ups and downs. Their support for HD sucks in the guide and if you care about that, you're going to spend some time swearing until you figure out how to get BladeRunner installed and working. On the other hand, all the other install/update stuff that Microsoft does regularly is pretty slick. I frankly didn't notice any significant picture quality differences in any of them, but you cannot use something like FFDSHOW in MCE whereas you can in other products.

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MikeSM

· #4 · May 9, 2006

If you care about FLAC, Freevo, Myth, Meedio, support it natively. MCE supports it with a plugin. None of the others I believe support FLAC.

Thanks,

Mike

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stanger89

· #5 · May 9, 2006

SageTV supports anything WMP or Winamp do via plugins.

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mpjohnst

Discussion Starter · #6 · May 10, 2006

Thanks for the replies... I was worried I wouldn't get any!

Isn't Meedio RIP? Does the new Yahoo Go version support FLAC and playing DVD's from a HDD. I poked around Yahoo's site a bit and most of the previous Meedio users seem pissed as it's not as good.

Anyone else care to offer rankings? More advice is welcome too!

-Matt

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stanger89

· #7 · May 10, 2006

Rankings are roughly pointless, and lead to much "heated" discussion as each product has it's plusses and minuses, and which ones are most important are a very subjective thing.

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IVB

· #8 · May 10, 2006

I personally prefer SageTV to all other DVR packages. I've used SageTV Studio to modify the UI to have a similar look&feel as my other, non-TV screens.

Here's a screenshot. Nothing earth-shattering here, primarily a background change with some menu changes, but to me I prefer it to the stock blue background and regular flow.

There's others who've done much more than I.

BTW, I have no idea why that white border is showing up on the right side. I must have screen-capped wrong.

http://www.myhometheaterpc.com/Main-TV.jpg

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mpjohnst

Discussion Starter · #9 · May 10, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by stanger89
Rankings are roughly pointless, and lead to much "heated" discussion as each product has it's plusses and minuses, and which ones are most important are a very subjective thing.

True, but I would attribute most of the "heated" debate to surround which one is *best*... which can be very subjective without qualifiers. I guess I thought I was asking for something a little easier to give impressions on, which is ease of installation/use. Even if there was a package out there that trumps everything else in every way (which there isn't), if it was too complicated to install or required too much babying to make it work, I wouldn't be interested.

So far BeyondTV sounds great but doesn't include support for FLAC. You and IVB both seem to recommend SageTV but Bicker had problems with installation. I'm not sure if that is the norm but it definitely makes me pause.

Thanks for the feedback though!

-Matt

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stanger89

· #10 · May 10, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by mpjohnst
True, but I would attribute most of the "heated" debate to surround which one is *best*... which can be very subjective without qualifiers. I guess I thought I was asking for something a little easier to give impressions on, which is ease of installation/use.

You would think...

They pretty much all install the same*, install app, setup tuner/guide source, recording directories, and recordings.

*Notable exceptions are MCE which requries an OS re-install, and MythTV, Linux software installs are quite a bit different than Windows ones.

Of course take SageTV for example. I install SageTV, tweak a few settings, and I can probably have it going inside an hour. Yet somepeople claim/report that it takes hours of hard work to install.

Quote:

So far BeyondTV sounds great but doesn't include support for FLAC.

BeyondTV doesn't include any media features by itself, you need to add Beyond Media for that stuff (and I don't know about FLAC support).

Quote:

You and IVB both seem to recommend SageTV but Bicker had problems with installation. I'm not sure if that is the norm but it definitely makes me pause.

I've used SageTV since it's 1.4 days, never had a problem that made me want to switch to another, though I have looked at others to see what they're all about.

For me, installing Sage is a matter of:

Installing hardware drivers

Installing video/audio decoders

Installing SageTV

Running through the config wizard (setting up tuning sources, decoders, etc)

->Sage is working at this point

Tweaking a few things that I like different than default.

Installing a couple "plugins" and related programs (Dirmon, ShowAnalyzer, comskip import)

I really don't have a clue why some have so much trouble, and I wouldn't say it's the norm by any means, but it does happen, and I think every app is like that unless it come pre-installed and ready to go.

I suppose I'll give it a shot though (note that my experience with things other than SageTV is much less detailed, recent, so may be inaccurate/irrelevent/out of date):

RESERVED FOR RESULTS

SOFTWARE ------ EOI --- EOM --- EOU --- COST -- PQ ----

=======================================================

SageTV --------- 3 ----- 4 ----- 4 ----- 3 ----- 5 ----

BeyondTV ------- 3 ----- 2 ----- 3 ----- 3 ----- 4 ----

MCE 2005 ------ 2/5 --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

GB-PVR -------- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Yahoo! Go TV -- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

ShowShifter --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Freevo -------- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A --- N/A ---

Myth TV -------- 1* --- N/A --- N/A ---- 5 ---- 3** ---

*Unless you know linux, it's just not very easy.

**Linux is still a ways behind windows in the video playback/processing department, most notably, no support for PureVideo/AVIVO type features which are a big deal for recorded TV.

BTW, isn't Showshifter dead?

I gave MCE a 2/5 for install, 2 if you do it yourself as installing the OS is a bit more difficult than "average", 5 if you buy it pre-installed

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flabingo

· #11 · May 25, 2006

My recent experience with Sage is horrible. The manual is 260 pages and they promise to respond in 72 hours. I would have paid double if they helped me by communicating. I hope there is an alternative software. I hate to think they are the only one. The software is sage 5 but the manual is 4.1. Bottom line if you don't have a capture card that is on their list forget it. I wish they told that to me up front. In their defense, I am not a skilled programmer.

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budgetman

· #12 · May 25, 2006

GB-PVR is free, and the others (minus mce) should all offer evaluation period, so try them all. I wouldn't put the linux variants on the list if you want easy....

Sagetv is often considered for its powerful PVR capabilities, atleast that's the impression I get from reviews, and my own personal experience. That's been its strong suit. The rest of the media stuff in it works fine for me, but I believe MCE improves on that, and seems to feel "prettier"; but you can get mce like interface for sagetv. I use sagetv exclusively for all my media: dvd discs, dvds on the hard drive, music, photos. PVR was tops on my list, because thats what I spend most of my time using.

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