Not withouth the r5000 mod only can record in sd quality. Can record the hd channels but only in sd without the mod.

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Dell xps420 w/ dual ATI cable cards
Hdhomerun for QAM
Panasonic 50" Plasma fed by xbox 360
Panasonic 42" plama fed by xbox 360
5TB in storage and counting

Not with your current setup, no.

Because the capture card you have can only bring in HD by way of the coax antenna input or standard definition through the composite video input.

The Dish Network recievers only output HD through Component or HDMI. And the signals it puts out are not compatible with your card.

The only way you'd be able to watch Dish Network HD is if you get the R5000 modified receiver or get a Dish Network receiver the r5000 supports and have it modified. Otherwise Hauppauge's PVR is the only other option and it is apparently not ready for intgrated MCE use.

Nope... that card doesn't have component video input for your cablebox.  It does have an QAM cable input so you can hook up your coax cable directly to it but it will only be able to record unencrypted channels only (good chance ESPNHD is encrypted).  Then there are the driver issues as Media Center doesn't really support QAM so special drivers have to be written to compensate for that.  Hauppauge recently released beta drivers to do just that but only specific cards.  Don't know if yours is on the list of supported cards.

jandk4014:

Let's talk about my situation in particular if you don't mind.  I haven't purchased Dish Network but I used them in the past and had a good experience so I planned on going back. 

If I wanted to record basketball on ESPNHD and I want to use my PC (Which has a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-125) will I be able to?  Will I be able to even watch HD content on my tv if I come from a Dish Network Receiver?

As others have said, the only real option if you want HD from Dish Network and want to watch it with Media Center is the R5000HD added to a supported Dish Network STB (you'd have to make sure to get one of the supported STBs).

You could buy the new Hauppauge HD-PVR instead, capture the component output from your a Dish STB, manually program recordings using the simple recording software that Hauppauge provides and then later watch it through the Video section of Media Center.  That is a very non-user friendly option though.  Eventually Hauppauge has said they will have a Media Center driver for the HD-PVR, but they don't yet; not even in beta form (that I know of).

Another option, if just using a PC is what you really want, would be to get either the Hauppauge HD-PVR or the R5000HD and use Sage TV (or another "Media Center like" piece of software).  Sage TV already fully supports the R5000HD (not beta drivers) and will likely support the HD-PVR sooner than Vista Media Center will.

One advantage to consider for the Hauppauge HD-PVR is it allows you to record HD from any source that outputs component video.  This means you could move around the HD-PVR and capture content from your cable STB, your satellite STB, or even your HD-DVR or Blu-ray player if you wanted to. 

The R5000HD provides better image quality and better software/driver options (currently), but it is locked to a single STB.  It also allows Media Center to control the STB directly, without an IR blaster and does not require an extra external box (like the Hauppauge HD-PVR).

Using your current HVR-1250 you can record HD ATSC over the air (if there are decent local HD ATSC channels in your area) and SD from Dish Network.  One additional option that might get you a few additional channels would be to hook up cable to the HVR-1250 and try to get QAM working.  You'll only be able to pick up free, non-encrypted clear QAM channels and depending on your cable company there may not be many (if any).  On top of that it seems that Hauppauge's beta QAM driver for Media Center really doesn't work very well for some reason (yet).  One final option is to still go with cable, but to instead purchase an HDHomerun QAM receiver.  These apparently do work well with Media Center.  As with your current QAM hardware, you are still limited to whatever free and clear QAM your cable company is sending you.

The R5000HD is the one and only way to bring subscription HD Dish Network content directly into Media Center.  The other advantages include true digital recordings, no IR blaster and recordings that you can burn to DVD, process to automatically remove commercials and even transfer them to portable Media Players, etc. if you like.

There are still some potential issues with the R5000HD to keep in mind that you may have to deal with.  For starters the current beta MCE driver needs more work.  Talking with Nextcom and debugging the issues I had with my system, it does sound like they are aggressively working on the driver to fix up all of the issues.  Right now FireSTB is probably a better way to record R5000HD content for Media Center (it works quite well, but I found it difficult to get set up properly at first).  Another issue is the fact that while the R5000HD supports any compression format that Dish network does, Media Center itself doesn't support h.264 compression for Recorded TV yet.  The R5000HD can work around this by recording all h.264 recordings to a directory where you can access them through Media Center Videos (My Videos for MCE2005).  Microsoft will be releasing an update to Media Center with true h.264 support for Recorded TV, but we don't know when it will be released.  Both of these issues have functional work arounds today and I expect will be resolved properly in the reasonably near future.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

WOW!  What an eye opening experience.  With your guys advice what should I do if I want to record HD shows from Dish Network?  What cards (Hauppauge?) do I need to buy? 

My overall goal is to network my 4 MC PCs together, share the recorded TV shows and use My Movies to share my movie collection.  The My Movies bit I'm almost done with.

I really could use some direction on this.  HELP!!!

jandk4014:

WOW!  What an eye opening experience.  With your guys advice what should I do if I want to record HD shows from Dish Network?  What cards (Hauppauge?) do I need to buy? 

My overall goal is to network my 4 MC PCs together, share the recorded TV shows and use My Movies to share my movie collection.  The My Movies bit I'm almost done with.

I really could use some direction on this.  HELP!!!

For what you want to do, your only option is the R5000HD.  There is nothing other than the R5000HD that can do it today.  Read through the last few posts.

Quite honestly, Media Center PCs or HTPCs really are still more of a hobby than a practical way to watch HDTV.  They do work extremely well, with the right hardware (R5000HD for Dish), but take a ton of work to set everything up (commercial skipping, weather, HD-DVD/Blu-ray, etc.).

The "easy" solution - that works without much trouble - is to pick up a couple of Dish HD-PVRs that allow you to network a couple of rooms together and to pick up a Blu-ray player for Blu-ray.

If you want the full blown, networked PC solution where you can watch archived DVDs anywhere and HD, digitally recorded HDTV everywhere takes a lot of work.

Personally we have 6 Media Center PCs, all with networked high definition Recorded TV (1 TB of hard drive storage on the primary Media Center PC), My Movies for archived movies (500 GB of hard drive storage), Music, Photographs, etc. (another 500 GB).  All 6 systems also provide automated commercial skipping for all Recorded TV (SD and HD) and weather forecasts.  Our HD recordings all come from the R5000HD and in our case we only have a single STB and can only record one channel at a time.  To work around this we subscribe to the time shifted networks on ExpressVu (Dish should have something similar).  What this does is allow us to access 3 separate time zones, making it extremely rare that we can't record a prime time show.  It isn't as good as 3 separate tuners, but not too far off.   For example 8 PM prime time is available at 8 on one channel, 9 or 10 on another, and 11 on yet another.  Not all channels work this way, but enough do that it solves our recording conflict issues.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Quick question for you Slider, with a media extender can you watch the Live HD feed from the R5000 or just recorded events?

LASooner:

Quick question for you Slider, with a media extender can you watch the Live HD feed from the R5000 or just recorded events?

Unfortunately I don't know the answer to that since I don't have one.

I would assume you should be able to watch Live HD from it when the MCE driver is used, but can't confirm.

Can a media extender watch Live TV from an HDHomerun unit?  My (limited) understanding is the HDHomerun and the R5000HD both use the same technique to integrate into Media Center.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Slider-
Thanks for taking the time to help me really understand what I'm having to do.  It is safe to say, that if I do want the "true" HTPC experience I need to invest in R5000HD but at $500 that is rather hard to justify as a hobby.  I do, however, like your "easy" solution. 

One of your earlier posts will also help me clarify my point:
   "The R5000HD does work well with Dish Network so that is definitely an option for HD (your only option if you want to run Media Center actually).  For SD you can simply use any regular PC Tuner card, connected using an s-video cable."

With that being said what I'll have to do is:
   1) Connect my Dish HD-PVR via HDMI (or Component) to a TV input.
   2) Connect my HTPC via HDMI (or Component) to another input on the TV
   3) Now, when I want to watch a movie with "My Movies", listen to music or just do anything with the HTPC I switch inputs.  If I want to watch Dish I switch to that input.

Does this sound right?  Because if it does then that will be the way that I hook things up

Right now my parents have Dish and I just set them up with their first HTPC.  The Dish receiver isn't HD it's rather old, it has coax output going directly to the TV.  Could I use my Hauppauge card that I bought, stick it in Media Center and use MC as my DVR being connected to that receiver?  Your post from this thread would indicate that I could.  Correct?  Since the input is analog I don't see why that should be a problem.

Thanks again Slider I sure appreciate your help!
Jeff N.

jandk4014:

Slider-
Thanks for taking the time to help me really understand what I'm having to do.  It is safe to say, that if I do want the "true" HTPC experience I need to invest in R5000HD but at $500 that is rather hard to justify as a hobby.  I do, however, like your "easy" solution. 

One of your earlier posts will also help me clarify my point:
   "The R5000HD does work well with Dish Network so that is definitely an option for HD (your only option if you want to run Media Center actually).  For SD you can simply use any regular PC Tuner card, connected using an s-video cable."

I wouldn't say you "need" to invest in the R5000HD.  Many people have been getting "the HTPC" experience with only SD (and using a different method for HD).  You can still get Blu-ray, HD-DVD and SD relatively easily.  There are some other solutions for HD out there, including Cable Card (with a new PC) and using hardware Media Center Extenders to share HD (note that Extenders cannot do streaming DVD, nor Blu-ray nor HD-DVD).  You can also download HD content from various sources (some legal, some not).

I do consider the R5000HD the only way to provide "the ultimate Media Center experience" at the moment if you want multiple Media Center PCs, each capable of watching SDTV, HDTV, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray DVD, as well as streaming DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray DVD all served from a single system (not to mention shared music, photos, and videos). 

With the R5000HD's ability to stream Live TV to any locally networked Media Center PC, this also means you get Live TV (including HD) at each and every Media Center PC also.

This truly is the ultimate setup.

jandk4014:

With that being said what I'll have to do is:
   1) Connect my Dish HD-PVR via HDMI (or Component) to a TV input.
   2) Connect my HTPC via HDMI (or Component) to another input on the TV
   3) Now, when I want to watch a movie with "My Movies", listen to music or just do anything with the HTPC I switch inputs.  If I want to watch Dish I switch to that input.

Does this sound right?  Because if it does then that will be the way that I hook things up

This sounds right.  You'll also probably want to connect the Dish HD-PVR to your Media Center PC so you can record SD there.  This way your HD-PVR will have all of its storage devoted to HD only.

jandk4014:

Right now my parents have Dish and I just set them up with their first HTPC.  The Dish receiver isn't HD it's rather old, it has coax output going directly to the TV.  Could I use my Hauppauge card that I bought, stick it in Media Center and use MC as my DVR being connected to that receiver?  Your post from this thread would indicate that I could.  Correct?  Since the input is analog I don't see why that should be a problem.

Thanks again Slider I sure appreciate your help!
Jeff N.

Correct.  SD works well with Media Center, captured through composite or s-video (s-video produces a better image).

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

One thing I forgot to mention earlier in this thread is the R5000HD's server/client platform also enables you to watch Live TV at all Media Center PCs on the local network.  No longer are you limited to Live TV only on the Media Center PC connected to the TV Tuner.

This really does provide the ultimate setup since you end up with a true Extender experience combined with streaming DVD, etc. from a server at each and every Media Center PC.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Slider-
How to do stream Live TV to the different networked PCs?  Don't you need a multituner source to accomplish this or does R5000HD give you that?

jandk4014:

Slider-
How to do stream Live TV to the different networked PCs?  Don't you need a multituner source to accomplish this or does R5000HD give you that?

The way it works is the latest R5000HD DVR software has an MCE "server" mode (this is intended to be the normal mode for the Media Center PC with the R5000HD connected to it).  In this mode, it constantly streams whatever video stream it receives from the STB over the local network.  Then you install the MCE Virtual Tuner on each Media Center PC (including the one attached to the STB - if you want Live TV in MC on it).  The Virtual Tuners appear to Media Center as a local TV Tuner plus each Media Center PC has the ability to take control of the STB to change channels, etc. using the Virtual Tuner.

Once this is set up, you can sit down at any Media Center PC, take control of the STB and watch whatever you want through Live TV.  You could also use any Media Center PC to record TV, but to avoid conflicts only one should do the actual recording. 

To take it to the next level, you could then install Recording Broker on each system and this will allow you to view and control the recording schedule from any Media Center PC, while only one does the actual recording.  Note Recording Broker is not available from Nextcom, but can be downloaded from www.babgvant.com.  This should allow any Media Center PC in your home to become a fully functional Media Center Extender, plus since each one is actually a fully functional Media Center PC (instead of a limited functionality Extender), you can also stream DVDs, watch HD-DVD/Blu-ray, play DivX videos, etc.

Softsled functionality is finally here.

Note that I have not installed the Virtual Tuner on each of my 6 Media Center PCs yet to test this all out, but I will definitely get it working once the (currently beta) MCE Virtual Tuner is improved a little.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

It says in their documentation that they "wrap" the recoding in dvr-ms which is copyrighted does this mean I can't use commercial skip on the dvr-ms recoding?

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Dell xps420 w/ dual ATI cable cards
Hdhomerun for QAM
Panasonic 50" Plasma fed by xbox 360
Panasonic 42" plama fed by xbox 360
5TB in storage and counting

PLUCKYHD:

It says in their documentation that they "wrap" the recoding in dvr-ms which is copyrighted does this mean I can't use commercial skip on the dvr-ms recoding?

Commercial skipping works fine.

What Nextcom means is they pass the unaltered digital transport stream directly to Media Center and Media Center stores all recordings as dvr-ms files.  Media Center takes the transport stream and essentially "wraps it" in a dvr-ms "container".  The dvr-ms file format (and Media Center) does support digital rights management (DRM) content protection.  Since the R5000HD does not strip off any content protection flags such as CGMS-A or the broadcast flag, it is possible for Media Center to decide, based on these flags, to apply content protection.

The reality is Media Center does not support the broadcast flag and simply ignores these, but it does support CGMS-A in an improper way.  Unfortunately, instead of "doing the right thing" and allowing CGMS-A "copy once" flagged content to be recorded and DRM protected, Media Center simply will not record anything flagged using CGMS-A as anything other than unprotected content.

What this ultimately means is the majority of your recordings will record fine, but any content that is flagged as protected using CGMS-A flags will simply not record at all.  Since regular TV Tuner cards also provide CGMS-A flags to Media Center, if you can record shows today with your existing TV Tuner, you will also be able to record those same shows with the R5000HD (only now digitally and in HD).

With our ExpressVu recordings, it is pretty much only the children's shows such as Toopy and Binoo, Pokemon and Spider-man cartoons that contain CGMS-A flags today (and even with these, perhaps 10% contain the flags and the rest will record).  These shows will not record with the R5000HD, just like they won't record with our old Hauppauge PVR-250.  Almost everything else records fine and only once in a blue moon does a movie or prime time show fail to record (it has happened, including to season finales - these in particular were trying to record using the PVR-250, not the R5000HD).

This is an ongoing issue with Media Center and really has nothing to do with the R5000HD (unless Nextcom was willing to intentionally strip off the CGMS-A flags for us Canadians; I very much doubt they would be willing to though).  This thread http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/176207.aspx (all 52 pages) discusses the issue in detail.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote