We have different usage patterns. I hardly record something that is worth to retrieve 5 years later, it happens but rarely. My main usage of recorded TV it's mostly to timeshift a program in the channel X, that is aired while I'm watching the channel Y, and I wish to watch both of them, or simply to watch a program that I'm going to miss because I'm busy with other duties. Other than that, Film and TV series may be worth to record 15 years ago, now it's easier to get them from the internet, in the format/quality/size I prefer. Sport events? Personally I can't watch a timeshifted event Well for HEVC is likely you find machines that lacks HW decoding for it in the shop now, so obviously anything that has official drivers for XP is out of question. Still a machine of the SandyBridge/IVY bridge class has way more than enough power to play a h265 video in XP (or anything else), perhaps in the setup we discussed, a file can be saved as trascoded to MP2, but before being packaged as WTV by WMC. Choices! That's what makes such kind of setup especially practical, there is not right or wrong, there are different paths for different needs, depending the user, the moment and so on... Worth to mention some fresh additions to the collection of backported SW by Maroc https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/some-of-my-latest-apps-done-for-xp.87973/#post-1822427
@acer-5100 I love your sense of humour, and yes, a good HTPC can have, for example, Kodi and Windows Media Center in perfect harmony. And we can get the best of both, without compromise our needs... If WMC has the add-ons like Kodi (IPTV Simple Client, YouTube, and some more), then, I'll accept the monogamy... ;-)
I tried to check on Ebay, but is complicated to find some used card in good shape and price... @Kévin Chalet If you can help me, I'll be really thankful... I've passed the entire day sniffing the eBay...
¨ Sorry but I overlooked your question about the tuner. My opinion here diverges from Kévins's one. In short while I used PCI card since the days of my first 486 (yes it was a late 486 machine and it had already PCI slots), since USB2 allowed for enough bandwidth, I vastly prefer the USB way for various reasons: #1 PCI[e] cards are nice when they spare a external cable (say a internal NVME adapter v.s. an external SSD), here you have one cable anyway, antenna or USB, so the PCI advantage is lost #2 IF a PCI card hangs you have to reboot (or even power cycle) your PC, but unplugging and replugging a USB device is usually enough. #3 Albeit PCI passtrough started to be a thing in this decade, redirecting a USB device to a virtual machine is (way) easier (even in Hyper-V in 2024) and is there even on 15 years old VMware/Virtualbox/Parallels #4 A USB device is usually cheaper #5 A USB device can be moved in seconds across different machines #6 Especially in mini ITX boards PCIe slots are precious, often you have just one, while you may have 6/8/10/12 USB connectors, so is desiderable to spare it for something that requires the PCIe capability, (a second VGA, a NVME adaptor, a raid controller, a USB4 adapter and alike) So, I suggest to get a HAUPPAUGE dual USB tuner, frankly unless you have a large family, 2 tuners are way more than enough (perhaps you can add more tuners if and when needed) . Also there are cheap single tuners based on realtek chipset, that cost something like 10$ and are perfectly up the task, you can buy a couple of them and they will be as good as as Hauppauge dual tuner. The explicit WMC compatibility is practically useless, first because any modern device works with WMC just like it works on other TV programs. Second because is pointless and unpractical to use it directly from WMC when you can use DVBlink/HDHRproxy/Tvheadend or a combination of them, to access your TV channels from any device. In matter of months or years given the discussed h265 codec thing this will be the ONLY way to use WMC in most countries. The remote controller requires a discussion on it's own, the support is very variable even across very similar Hauppauge models. The simpler approach is forget the bundled remote, get a cheap MX3 remote or similar remote on Amazon Ebay or alike, and spare yourself a lot of work.
@acer-5100 kindly sent me a copy but I didn't keep it as I wasn't happy with the result (lots of "PlayReady update required" errors that really degraded the user experience). I'm sure he still has it somewhere on one of his disks so feel free to send him a PM
Already done. For other readers Like I said we can consider it abandonware, but still I don't link it publicly for a while to avoid any misunderstanding.
P.S. Speaking of DVBlink v.s. HDHDrproxy, something that I believe we never mentioned, is that while DVBlink client needs at least Vista for 3.x or Win7 for 4.x, the server part can be installed in any OS as old as XP sp2, which means that it could come handy if you mind to repurpose an old PC, a netbook, an embedded machine, or simply if you want to install in a VM keeping its size and resource usage at the minimum level. Obviously in that scenario is unlikely that such machine has enough power to transcode, so if you want to add it, is likely better to do that in the client machine(s) or in a different device (say a Rasperry PI 4/5 over the LAN).
Yeah I'm happy as well, but computers working w/o a trouble are so boring Jokes aside, I just stepped in to it and trying to understand if it can be a worth alternative. Yeah I mentioned it while we are talking about DVBlink, and I mentioned how stupid was to drop the WMC support (i imagine DVBlink 5/6 where way improved over 4.1, but today there's no way to know, given even the demo needs the activation from a online server that isn't there anymore). Yes that's my point, the third point is likely the dealbreaker (unless they left in some code that solved the problem in DVBlink), but I was thinking to your way to inject directly the WMC DB you talked about at some point. Well, you know, I'm not a coder and I never compiled anything in my life under windows, I've always be scared by the amount of SW needed to do that, so I'm not sure I want to go in that rabbit hole. Back to TVmosaic, I faced the first problem. Looks like the bundled FFmpeg isn't compiled to understand the HEVC codec, it transcode well, but not the HEVC channels. The binaries I use normally in WSL aren't working (I guess because they are 64bit), I downloaded a couple of ffmpeg binaries that seem not working either. the FFmpeg binary taken from the old NextPVR 4.x (which is old and 32bit) works, but I guess it has a very old h265 components, so it stutters and takes a lot of CPU. For the rest the program seem working reasonably well, it has a nice android client, so I'll I think is still worth experimenting a bit more with it
OK I have a very first hand info about a new episode of the switchover saga here in Italy As I wrote in older messages the original date was pushed from Jan 2023 to 20 Jan 2024, then again to April 2024 Now seem there is a (hopefully final) decision. The switchover date is pushed again to Sept 2024, but the news is that this additional timeframe will be used to test the transmissions in "simulcast", aka the channels will be aired using DVB-T1 + DVB-T2 at the same time, and that scenario (assuming the tests are successful) will be retained for "a while". I never heard before of that scenario related to TV channels, although something similar is currently used by some telephony operators, to allow 3G + 4G (or other combinations) using the same frequencies. In short seem that RAI (and the involved ministry) care about the WMC survival as much as me/us.