MythTV User - Wanting to move to BTV

[treythompson]

I've read quite a bit on this site over the past few months. I'm a pretty happy MythTV user, but to be honest, it just takes too much to manage, and I'd like something that's a little more set, and forget. I'm wondering if someone could answer a couple of quick questions for me, so that I can move one of my tuners over, and start my transition...

1. Does BTV support Windows Server 2003? I found several posts, but nothing stating that it would work OK. I have two tuners, a PVR-500 and a PVR-150, just on analog cable.
2. I see the file format support listed, are these regular, unprotected files (either MPG2 or DIVX)? I just copy the files to DVD for archiving purposes, or to my laptop for travel.

To be honest, that's about it, I feel comfortable having done all the other reading and research.

Thanks in advance! I look forward to being a regular part of the community, and a contributing member!

Trey

[Khris]

1) Many people have got BTV to work on Server 2003.

2) BTV records to an MPEG2 format with no DRM or anything like that. From there you can "Showsqueeze" to DIVX or WMV.

[myktek]

Server 2003 is unsupported but as Khris said, some have got it to work.

[ZetaVu]

You can also record directly to divx with a plextor card

[ZetaVu]

HD records as tp (transport streams) you can convert those to either divx with showsqueeze or mpeg with external programs

[treythompson]

One more quick question. One thing I do today is rip the kids DVDs to an .iso file, and they can watch them from any MythTV Front End.

Can I do that with BTV? Meaning, watch the saved .iso from any remove BTV Front End?

[ZetaVu]

You can watch dvd Video_TS directories (and I think Iso files) with the DVD plugin for Beyond Media, they have it in 2 parts, but currently there has been no development for Beyond Media and they might either open source it or integrate into Beyondtv. I use Media Portal also as a front end, that lets you read the iso's but you need to install the Daemon tools. For DVD's you could also save them as a single vob (rename as mpg) or use autogk to convert (from ifo files) to xvid. Takes much less space.

[Khris]

So in other words, the answer is No, you can not watch the saved .iso from BTV!

[Bigbird999]

But you can rip the DVD movie to a single mpeg file. You lose the menus etc. Btv sees it as a recorded mpeg file.

BB

[queonda]

Current the answer is NO. But if you convert to mpeg or xvid or divx or wmv then it will work. Is there a way for you to use Mythtv as a frontend and BTV as a backend?

[Khris]

Originally Posted by queonda

Current the answer is NO. But if you convert to mpeg or xvid or divx or wmv then it will work. Is there a way for you to use Mythtv as a frontend and BTV as a backend?

No sorry.

[treythompson]

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

But you can rip the DVD movie to a single mpeg file. You lose the menus etc. Btv sees it as a recorded mpeg file.

BB

Which would be fine. Does BTV do this natively, or do I still need a 3rd party plugin/program to do that?

[jkirk]

no plugins needed though i would suggest those movies be located in a seperate folder this way you can go to the directory view and not have the tv&movies mixed together.

[ZetaVu]

Originally Posted by treythompson

Which would be fine. Does BTV do this natively, or do I still need a 3rd party plugin/program to do that?

If you are talking about ripping DVD's to mpeg files, you would need something like dvd decryptor (which is possibly the same program you would use to rip to dvd files) or the ripit4me family or womething like that.

With dvd decryptor, you can rip in ifo mode, it makes one large vob file with the whole movie on it (under ifo settings tell it not to break the file up into smaller sizes). This can then be renamed as an mpeg file. I typically run this file through videoredo, tends to have a lot of errors that sometimes affects BTV and leads to audio sync issues. You can also take your existing iso file or VIDEO_TS directory on a hard drive, and use Videoredo's joiner to link all the film vob's and make an mpeg out of that. I still run that through a second pass just to remove any frame errors. I typically compress this file to xvid with autogk, which you can also do with the ifo file from you Video_ts folder directly (although sometimes you end up with audio synch issues there as well).

For iso files, isobuster will let you extract them to disk.

There are other ways to do this, this is just off the top of my head, not sure your level of expertise. Instead of videoredo there are freeware apps, someone else can chime in on that.

[treythompson]

Originally Posted by myktek

Server 2003 is unsupported but as Khris said, some have got it to work.

I don't really see any posts on the forum relating to specific problems people have had. I did see a couple by people using it.

Is it safe to assume (I know, it's NEVER safe), that the reason it's unsupported is primarily because it is a server operating system, and not necessarily the unavailability of drivers, or functions of BTV?

The reason I ask, is that I have a great Dell PowerEdge server at home (former business server), and I've got XP on it now. Well, since it is one of Dell's server systems, it does not technically support XP, so I have video/sound problems.

I am a Microsoft Partner, and an expert at administering Server 2003. From the groups experience, before I rollout my full BTV solution, do you think it's safe for me to give it a shot and see if I can "get 'er done!"?