TV Card Software

doggo

doggo

doggo

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Evening all,

I'm in the process of building my new rig and would like some advice as to what TV recording/playing software is recommended.

I've got the choice of two cards to install, either a Nebula or a Black Gold BGT3620.
The Nebula software is ok but it's not been updated for ages and is a bit limited.
The BG card is a nice little card that I had in my pervious WHS 2011 rig, didn't work that well in their due to software limitations of WHS.

Can anyone suggest good (free perferably) software to record/watch tv on my new rig.
 
If you've got Windows Media Center, then it's a bit of a no-brainer in my opinion. There are alternatives, such as MediaPortal, but I can't use any for more than a few hours - they just feel so... clunky. I'm sure if you work at it they're quite polished, but for me WMC does everything so much easier - everything except extending live TV from one PC to another.
 
Windows Media Center works well, much better IMO than any of the apps you get bundled with cards, and obviously it's free as it comes with the OS (assuming you're running Windows 7).

I switched to MediaPortal a while back though, on the grounds that WMC seems to be circling the drain, and although it'll supposedly be available as an add-on in Windows 8, it doesn't really look to me to have much of a long-term future. MP is a bit more laborious to set up, but it's better in many ways than WMC for PVR purposes, notably its ability to record multiple channels on a single tuner, provided they're all on the same mux or transponder - all the Freeview HD channels are currently transmitted on the same mux, so you could theoretically record them all simultaneously on your BGT3620, whereas you could only record a maximum of two at a time with WMC (one channel per tuner).

There's a nice guide to setting up MediaPortal here if you want to give it a shot.
 
lurkio said:
i use mediaportal
Click to expand...

Me too. Been using MePo for 3 or 4 years now, and I find it far more user friendly than MCE, which is just .... awful. Looks pretty, completely lacks anywhere near the functionality that MePo has.

As for the cards. Bin the Nebula. The developer is flakier than dandruff! He's been promising new versions of software and drivers for years, but the same thing always happens: He starts developing something, then gets bored and disappears for a year or more at a time with no update to his customers.
 
this_is_gav said:
If you've got Windows Media Center, then it's a bit of a no-brainer in my opinion. There are alternatives, such as MediaPortal, but I can't use any for more than a few hours - they just feel so... clunky. I'm sure if you work at it they're quite polished, but for me WMC does everything so much easier - everything except extending live TV from one PC to another.
Click to expand...

Take a look at DVBLink it manages the tuners/channels and passes it through to WMC. You can then install a client application on your other PC's and watch live TV on them (subject to having enough tuners). It also creates a DLNA server so you can watch live TV from WMC on anything that's compliant.
 
i use WMC because i like the look, its guide is excellent, its all i use for my HTPC

tv/blu rays (addon)/ 3d Blu rays (TMT5 addon)

i didnt like xbmc, its to remote control orientated for me
 
Thanks all for the suggestions. I'll have a look at a couple of them over the coming weeks.

I've tried WMC in the past and not been that impressed with it so will give some of the others a go

Infidelus said:
As for the cards. Bin the Nebula. The developer is flakier than dandruff! He's been promising new versions of software and drivers for years, but the same thing always happens: He starts developing something, then gets bored and disappears for a year or more at a time with no update to his customers.
Click to expand...

Infidelus, your not wrong, everytime I look on the Nebula forum there are posts saying where is the new drivers/software. I don't think there has been anything new since the Win 7 64bit drivers. Shame realy, it's an ok card.

@ CaptainCrash, thanks for the link, I'll give that a try on my BGT3620 first off.
 
doggo said:
Infidelus, your not wrong, everytime I look on the Nebula forum there are posts saying where is the new drivers/software. I don't think there has been anything new since the Win 7 64bit drivers. Shame realy, it's an ok card.
Click to expand...

Only WDM though, and only for the PCI card. No BDA drivers and no X64 for the USB (except the Vista ones that don't work on Win 7).
 
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