Record TV on Home Server

Skeeter · 9 Mar 2011 at 10:06

Ok, I'm after a setup to allow me to record TV on my server, but don't know whats about. I have a server and a spare TV card, I want to be able to have my server record TV to its own drives, but not display TV or play it. Ideally I would like the files recorded in a format that can be viewed on my PS3 or my laptop or any other PC, and maybe even streamed to other devices. I would also ideally like to have a web front end I can access anywhere to set it to record programs.

It doesn't need to play TV or timeshift or anything, as the server is headless and I have a Media PC for that. Its just for recording things when nobody is around to avoid having 2 machines on as the server is always on anyway.

Do programs exist that will do this?

chipperhead · 9 Mar 2011 at 12:35

I'd definitely be interested if such a setup exists.

Skeeter · 10 Mar 2011 at 11:05

Ive found something called For The Record that looks to do what I need. It has a web interface and is designed so you stick something like MediaPortal on top to view recorded TV. I will give it a go when I get a chance.

lurkio · 10 Mar 2011 at 11:43

Mediaportal will allow you to do this
it uses client / server model
you install the tv server on your server and the client on your front end
a bit of configuring and you are good to go

Skeeter · 10 Mar 2011 at 12:03

But I dont want a client. I just want TV shows recorded to AVI or MP4 or the like and put in a folder so I can watch them on any device I can stream videos from my server to. I also cant see any mention on the MediaPortal site about being able to manage and set recordings off through a web browser.

Pho · 10 Mar 2011 at 12:19

I use NextPVR (the site hasn't been rebranded to the new version yet) which allows you to configure recordings in a web browser, or you can install the software on client machines + your server and schedule recordings / watch recordings over the network from the server.

Alternatively you can just share the recordings folder and watch with XBMC (that's what I do).