TIVO to Media Center Edition 2005

[cobravert19]

Ok folks, ive got an interesting project going and im looking for a bit of help. I have two DirecTivo's, one of them is hacked and streaming thru CCXstream. This i have presently going into an XBMC X-Box. I recently got a hold of a Media Center 2005 system. What i like about it is the "extenders". Here's what i want to do: Use the DirecTivo as a tuner in essence, saving the digital to analog to digital conversion on the MCE box that would happen if i use a regular directv STB and a capture card. So take the Mpeg2 stream from the tivo as it comes in from the sat and send it to the MCE, let the MCE decode it and decide to record it or not in the same way that say XBMC decodes it. Am i way off the mark here? Seems like a good way to get HDTV into the MCE system... or at least SDTV. Then i can use the extenders to play back whatever i feel like in whatever room im in.

[malfunct]

Ok folks, ive got an interesting project going and im looking for a bit of help. I have two DirecTivo's, one of them is hacked and streaming thru CCXstream. This i have presently going into an XBMC X-Box. I recently got a hold of a Media Center 2005 system. What i like about it is the "extenders". Here's what i want to do: Use the DirecTivo as a tuner in essence, saving the digital to analog to digital conversion on the MCE box that would happen if i use a regular directv STB and a capture card. So take the Mpeg2 stream from the tivo as it comes in from the sat and send it to the MCE, let the MCE decode it and decide to record it or not in the same way that say XBMC decodes it. Am i way off the mark here? Seems like a good way to get HDTV into the MCE system... or at least SDTV. Then i can use the extenders to play back whatever i feel like in whatever room im in.

Look into using EtiVo. There is a thread on it in this forum. It automatically extracts video via mfs_ftp and then converts it to wmv files which media center edition just loves. HDTV streams may not work so well, I don't know that etivo properly handles them.

[cobravert19]

eTivo is cool but i think what id really like to do is pull the livetv feed rather than have an ftp job goign all the time and actually reencode it using MCE. I suppose the eTivo could dump the stuff into MCE My Video's but then id need to work on a scheduling interface in MCE for the Tivo (since Tivo would still have to handle recording. I think ideally i would liek to stream the live TV from both tuners into MCE. Probably require a custom tuner driver for MCE...

[malfunct]

eTivo is cool but i think what id really like to do is pull the livetv feed rather than have an ftp job goign all the time and actually reencode it using MCE. I suppose the eTivo could dump the stuff into MCE My Video's but then id need to work on a scheduling interface in MCE for the Tivo (since Tivo would still have to handle recording. I think ideally i would liek to stream the live TV from both tuners into MCE. Probably require a custom tuner driver for MCE...

You realize that the only way I have seen to get the "liveTV" feed is mpeg2 encoded (in the tystream format) and you would have to take pretty much the same steps to convert it to something that MCE could use don't you?

As far as a scheduling interface goes couldn't you do the scheduling through TivoWebPlus? You could even put a more MCE like interface over top of it that makes the calls into TivoWebPlus if you wanted.

[cobravert19]

So it seams theres two ways of getting this functionality: 1) Use Etivo and hack together a scheduling interface to tivoweb's API from the MCE. and then just dump the content into a new my videos section as wmv9 (which mce already supports and if its laid out properly could probably be made to read the xml info file.) then just use a regular tuner or STB with an analog input for live TV and disregard MCE's ability to timeshift. 2) Use the DTivo's as a source for live TV and hack together a WDM capture driver of somesort for MCE. It would need take the incoming tystream mpeg2 and feed it to the MCE liveTV interface somehow (mabey MCE can use a .ty codec?). Some folks seem to be exploring this for firewire input from STB's. Then use the MCE channel change api (same as the dtv serial channel change mod does) to make a tivoweb call to change the channel when needed. I suspect ill end up with option 1, but option 2 would sure be cool.