New Setup: BTV vs. Tivo

[richardwhite]

Hi everyone,

I'm considering BTV to replace my DTV-Tivo box. I'm very interested in the Medusa configuration. One of my many questions is, can this set up power more than one TV, displaying either live or recorded content? If not, how would I do that? Further the article isn't clear how or what the connection is between the TV and the PC.

The box I'm planning on building has the following specs:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz - 3.0GHz 512k 800MHz FSB
RAM: 1 GB (2x 514MB) DDR400 PC3200
HD: 250GB SATA 7200RPM
Capture Card: 4 x PVR-250BTV
Video Card: ??
Sound Card: ??
DVD Burnner: 2x DVD+-RW*
Case: Ahanix D4: X233 - D4 Silver
DirecTV Receivers: 4 RCA (from ebay)
4 port serial PCI card


What I understand so far is.

1. Build my box with the 4 PVR-250BTV cards inside.
2. Acquire 4 DTV/RCA receivers with the serial to RJ6 cables
3. Connect each Serial cable to a port on the HTPC, and each RJ6 to a DTV/RCA receiver
4. Turn everything on and pray.

Another item I don't understand is the connection from the PC to the TV.

I want it to be able to watch both live and recorded content on any TV in the house.

Thanks
Richard

[davefred99]

Another item I don't understand is the connection from the PC to the TV.

I want it to be able to watch both live and recorded content on any TV in the house.

As to the first part your PC will connect to the TV using the video out (svideo) from your pc videocard assuming you mean a standard TV. The audio will come from your PC sound card output. (analog of Spdif if available)

Here is the bad news. Your main PC running BTV is the server and can feed live or recorded tv to your main TV. You will need either a PC running BTV Link or some other client device like a MediaMVP to feed programming (live or recorded) to each additional TV in the house. Assumming you want different programming on each. You could of course send the same programming to multiple tv,s using a modulator but then all tv.s see one program.
The bottom line is depending on how many separate tv's you require you need a PC or client for each that will pull the progamming off the main server where all of the progamming is captured via the tuners and recorded. Just a side note too when comparing picture quality from a Direct Tivo a BTV Pvr setup, the Tivo wins. the reason for this is that Dtivo captures the raw digital feed off the satellite feed and just records it in its native form and the BTV pvr setup must capture it in analog format and then re-digitize it to your disk. The difference is not great and most advanced users are able to tweak it to near equal quality the file sizes are much bigger for BTV though. Dont get me wrong here I still like BTV for its file sharing capabilities but I am not giving up my Dtivo either.

[richardwhite]

Thanks for the insight.

Richard