Hi everyone,

I am a relatively new Mediacenter (6 months) and have managed to set up a pretty good home system with a home theatre hooked to a project and two other tv's hooked to extenders.  Overall am quite happy with mediacenter except for access to high definition tv.  It sucks to have the receiver and not be able to import that signal into mediacenter.  The only option I seem to have is the R5000HD system which according to its website will enable me to import hd from my Starchoice receiver into Mediacenter. 

Is anyone out there using the R5000HD system with Starchoice and mediacenter?  Does it work well?  I would appreciate any advice other users would have before shelling out about 500$ for this solution.

Thank you,

Peter H

Yesh, HTSlider and I have been using this mod for some time now.

He has lots of posts of good info on TGB if you do some searching.

I am using Starchoice and he has Bell.

There is a relatively new driver that acts as a "virtual tuner" that VMC can see.  In theory, this is a great solution for getting HD into VMC but the driver is pretty unstable and I have been experiencing issues with channel changing.  It also doesn't seem to send live TV to the extenders at all.

However, their native software works quite well and with the help of HTSlider and the mighty Timm Moore, we have been able to use the FIREstb software (legendary around TGB) and HDpump to convert the file from their .ts format to the native media center format dvr-ms.

This solution is not ideal because it will only give you the ability to record and watch HDTV.  It will only allow you to watch SD live.  It also has its share of crashes and channel changing issues (like everything else) but at least you get two backup copies (the .ts from their homemade s/w and the SD copy from the co-ax out on your stb).

It really is the only option for us Canindians at the moment because we live in a vacuum cable/satellite monopoly that forces all tv to be encrypted which is completely backed by the Canindian Government.

Thanks HTSlider.

I am still not convinced as to whether I should go forward or not.  The R5000HD website really says this is the solution and it works great....   Geez, I'm more confused than before!

Any news as to whether the Hauppauge HD recorder will be compatible with MediaCenter.  What the heck is wrong with Microsoft that they don`t seem to get that we want HD content no matter the source?

Peter

Well, it isn't cheap, the driver is buggy as heck, and the support is questionable...

However, it is A solution for satellite.  Did you look into clear QAM in your area?

I heard the Hauppage driver wasn't ready yet and it isn't true HD. 

This isn't a MS issue, but an unrestrictive content issue...