Lately I have been thinking about computer based DVR systems, and to a larger extent Media Servers. I have been using Microsoft Media Center Edition (MCE) for several years now to serve my AudioVideo system TV, Movies, Music, and occasionally pictures.

As AppleTV is now shipping, this seems like a good time to bring up this topic. I've talked about AppleTV in fair depth previously. To sum it up, I think it is a neat product if you want to bring your iTunes Music and your iTunes TV Shows and Movies to your TV. My main issue with AppleTV is something it doesn't do, and that is DVR function. I'm a single source kind of guy. Meaning that I prefer a single source for my Live TV, Recorded TV, movies, music, etc.. This is something that Media Center does very well. 

I'll talk more about music another day, but I'm looking at my Media Server more from a TV and Movie perspective now, not so much music. Currently my main source of content is Cable TV, standard definition (SD), DVD's, both disc's and ripped to my MCE. My TV is a 1994 35" tube TV which does a pretty darned good job with SD content. With my SD TV, and my SD Cable TV I've been hesitant to move to the realm of HDTV until it became more ubiquitous. It damn near kills me when I go into Costco about every week and have to walk past that huge area now devoted to flat panel TV's. But an HDTV necessitates HD content to benefit from it's capabilities. HD Content means I've got to either record HDTV from Over The Air (OTA) which is all the main broadcast channels for free in glorious HD with my MCE2005 based system, or go with a new DVR / Media Center solution.

The options. Tivo, I don't like it, for one thing I don't like the subscription, and the cost of a Tivo3 is high enough to make me want to stick with a computer based solution so that I can also have Movies not just TV. Cable Company DVR has about the worst GUI that I've ever encountered (at least the offerings from my Cable provider.) AppleTV has no DVR but it does do movies. Then there are other PC based solutions similar to Media Center. The next gen of MCE on Windows Vista does HD via CableCard. My two problems with that solution is 1) you can't use commercial detection and skipping software with CableCard recorded media, this is a function that I'm not sure I can live without after having it for so long now. (Tivo lacks this too.) 2) There are no version 2 Extenders for VistaMCE yet (Xbox 360 works as an extender, but I have no interest in a 360 or it's price.) Moxi by Digeo has a new retail DVR solution coming out this summer if all goes well. One variant will be CableCard based, the other an OTA based setup. This is interesting as I've always thought the Moxi GUI was beautiful.

MythTV is a Linux based solution which has some interest to me. It can operate on a Server / Client mode, where a Server does all the recording and can store all the media, then a client pc, even a Mac Mini running an OS X MythTV front end can be used to access everything including Live TV. This has a lot of appeal to me. I would consider this solution and even consider dropping my Cable TV altogether and just going with OTA HDTV and DVD's. I can always snag a show I miss from bittorrent if I'm really jonesing something that isn't available OTA.

Ideally I'd prefer a native Mac Solution. There are some projects and applications to this end, such as Media Central, XHub, and Center Stage. But they just simply aren't to the level of something like MCE is today. One reason I really like my MCE Extender is that it is an appliance, not a computer, that is great. I like a 10 foot experience, not a computer in my family room.

I've decided to stay where I am for now. With my MBA program I don't watch as much TV as I might otherwise be inclined to watch anyway. I'm hoping that better computer based DVR solutions may crop up in the next year or so. Maybe MythTV will progress even further than it currently is. Maybe Apple will shock us all and enter the space. Maybe third party solutions like from ElGato will improve.

There is always hope, but I need some more working solutions.

It shouldn't be that hard to come up with a kick ass Media Server solution that is affordable with today's technology.



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