HTPC to replace all functionality of Sky Plus/Free view box

roccles · 6 Jan 2014 at 15:16

I am about to cancel Sky and have been looking at a Humax 1 TB box with dual HD tuners and built in YouView (Humax DTR-T1010/1TB) which is priced around the £250 mark.

The box has good reviews and I am sure it would be a good replacement for my Sky Plus box. But it has got me thinking could you build a HTPC with all the functionally of this for a similar price? As this would give me what I need plus lots of of other benefits (music/web browsing etc.)

My biggest concerns are the EPG, the need to be "always on & ready" to take care of all my recordings and reliability (i.e missed recordings)

Have any of you guys had any experience with doing something similar.

Cheers

Baboonanza · 6 Jan 2014 at 15:54

£250 would be difficult given that the HD tuners alone are going to cost you almost £100. If you used an AMD E-350 board and the cheapest available components you might just manage it.

All of your other requirements are certainly doable, though you may end up needing a Windows 7 license as well unless you can handle setting up a Linux TV backend.

gropingmantis · 6 Jan 2014 at 17:10

Baboonanza said:
£250 would be difficult given that the HD tuners alone are going to cost you almost £100. If you used an AMD E-350 board and the cheapest available components you might just manage it.

All of your other requirements are certainly doable, though you may end up needing a Windows 7 license as well unless you can handle setting up a Linux TV backend.

Thats not totally true seeing as this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-029-CP&groupid=701&catid=1915 will do HD.

You can do it for around £250, the advantage of a £250-300 DIY PC is it will be faster than a prebuilt box (which in my experience can at times be slower than my Pi). However it may be slightly larger, also if you are willing to spend a little more fo a blueray drive it can replace any disc players you may also have.

Defconluke · 6 Jan 2014 at 17:57

Freeview HD in the UK is on the DVB-T2 standard. The card mentioned above will not reveive Freeview HD transmissions. Cards that support this standard are reasonably expensive and start around £90 for a dual tuner version.

Given that you have Sky in place you could use a DVB-S2 card and use Freesat HD instead, connecting the cards to the existing satellite dish rather than the regular tv aerial. Again these are around £90 for a dual tuner version.

As a quick spec you could use this + the tuner of your choice + Windows

YOUR BASKET
1 x Silverstone Milo ML03 HTPC Case - Black (SST-ML03B) £55.99
1 x Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £47.99
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 1TB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA100) HDD £43.99
1 x Asus H81M-K Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £37.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £32.99
1 x SuperFlower Amazon 300W "80 Plus Bronze" Power Supply £29.99
Total : £262.44 (includes shipping : £11.25).

roccles · 7 Jan 2014 at 09:39

Excellent thank you for your responses and the idea of using the satellite is a good idea.

I will spec this out but I feel this is not going to be quick to get everything running properly so I may give Sky a few extra months while I build this.

FrankJH · 7 Jan 2014 at 11:22

With a choice like yours, I just wouldnt go for an HTPC at all - Humax are just a lot less hassle and just work.

As per the specced machine below, its going to be ~£70 more than your budget (as spec as stated doesnt include windows) let alone wireless keyboard / mouse / ....and lets face it Windoes can be a lot of hassle just to get just as you want it (although that could be looked at as a plus point through endless customisation choices)

The only real plus point is that with humax while it can be done, certainly on my model it can be fidly swapping the hdd for a larger capacity (due to encryption used on HD broadcasts). With a windows machine it should be a lot simpler.

(This is coming from an IT professional, who can do everything with one hand tied behind my back......but I just wouldnt choose too in my time away from work)

roccles · 8 Jan 2014 at 16:03

FrankJH said:
Humax are just a lot less hassle and just work.

After looking further into the software to run XMBC/Media portal etc. I think you may be right, hassle free and reliable is what I want. Although I may still build a HTPC in the future for everything else but as for a "do everything" system I think I will hold fire.