Has there ever been any serious discussion here about the pros and cons of buying a typical standalone receiver vs. running a satellite backend system using DVB-S2 tuner cards or USB-connected tuners? I'll start a list:
Standalone receivers:
PROS:
PROS:
If you think I am wrong about any of the above points or want to add your own, that's the reason I started this thread. I may not have much to add to the above but I would be interested to see what others think.
Standalone receivers:
PROS:
- Not as expensive as a computer and tuners
- No additional frontend systems required - you directly connect your HDTV
- Generally easier to set up and configure
- In some cases additional features such as blind scanning are included and are much easier to use
- Virtually every receiver out there has bugs in the software that cannot be fixed by the user
- Users have no say over the software/firmware, you take what the manufacturer gives you (with rare exceptions)
- Even if firmware updates are made available, those typically end once newer models are released, or after some finite period of time
- Live programs and recordings can only be viewed on the TV connected to the receiver - typically there is no provision to stream to other devices on a local network (again with rare exceptions)
- Few receivers will play 4:2:2 and other very high-bandwidth signals
- As new formats appear it makes the receiver obsolete, so you may need to buy a new receiver to get all the channels even if your old one works perfectly fine. Even today many receivers will not receive all the available signals (DVB-S2 8PSK or 16PSK).
- No EPG in North America
- Far too many receivers do not have accurate clocks, which is a real problem if you are trying to use their PVR features - assuming they even have PVR capability in the first place
- Many receivers have a nasty habit of simply locking up or otherwise going "out to lunch" at inopportune times
- (This will be controversial but I will say it anyway) Once you buy a receiver, if you have problems you have to deal with they guy you bought it from. Some dealers are very good, and then there are others that seem to have Jekyll/Hyde personalities, and guess which shows up after they have your money?
PROS:
- You can stream the received signals and recordings to frontend systems (and in some cases, directly to computers/tablets/phones) anywhere on your local network
- If you encounter bugs it it somewhat more likely that the software developers will fix them - eventually.
- You can have multiple tuners. I've heard apocryphal stories of people having sixteen tuners (four quad tuner cards) in a single system, though the most I've seen personally is six
- Each tuner can record multiple channels from the same transport stream at the same time, so depending on the throughput limits of the hardware you could be recording from several sources at once
- If you are really good with hardware and software you can fix your own bugs, or even design your own backend system from the ground up
- If new formats become available you may only need to buy a new card that support the new formats, not scrap the entire system
- Generally speaking, the backend will stream or record any unencrypted (in the clear) signal that the card can receive, including bandwidth-intensive formats. If the frontend device has good enough hardware to play it, you can watch it - or after it's recorded, you can use an external program to convert it to a different format that is a bit less resource hungry
- The computer gets its time from an Internet time source (NTP server) so its clock is always right
- Much rarer for such a system to totally lock up or stop working, though it's not unheard of. But if that happens and it's not a hardware issue, it can probably be fixed by changing or upgrading software
- Although it's not an easy thing to set up, it's possible to actually have an EPG that shows what's coming up, though probably not for every channel you can receive
- Typically quite a bit more expensive than a standalone receiver, though this could change
- These systems can be much more difficult to set up and configure than a standalone receiver
- If it stops working or doesn't work properly, it's up to you to figure out what the problem is and fix it. For better or worse, you can't dump the problem in the lap of a dealer
- To play content on a TV you generally need to connect a computer or device running frontend software, which in many cases could be XBMC with an appropriate PVR addon. That also implies that you can stream directly to a computer, tablet, phone, or other device that can run XBMC or other frontend software
- There is generally no compression of the signal, therefore any recordings made can be huge, depending on the source
- Those familiar with Windows can use MediaPortal as the backend software but you may encounter a lot of bugs, particularly if you attempt to use DiSEqC or tone switches
- Those more familiar with Linux can use TVHeadEnd as the backend software, although you have to use the newest unstable versions to get the best hardware support. Which of course means that things might break if/when you upgrade. TVHeadEnd is also a bit non-intuitive until you get the hang of it
- If you have problems setting up such a system it is often difficult to get assistance. Linux guys in particular seem to have this attitude that you should learn all about Linux and fix your own problems, even though that's not entirely a realistic attitude in these days of user-friendly distributions such as Ubuntu. The attitude toward users in the Linux world is totally different from that in the Windows world
- Under Linux you may need to manually compile the drivers for your tuner card(s), which although not exceedingly difficult, can be a somewhat daunting task for new Linux users. And worse yet, every time Linux pushes out a new kernel upgrade, which they do rather frequently, and you install it, you may need to recompile the drivers again
- There are other software choices on both platforms but as far as I can tell none of them have the degree of support or the number of users as the ones I have mentioned above
- Sometimes the software is designed for free-to-air in other parts of the world and needs adjustments to work in the USA. This is one of the major problems with MediaPortal, which is very Euro-centric
- If it is possible to do blind scanning at all you will probably need to install a separate program, and even then you may have problems if the software was designed to operate in an environment different than yours, such as a specific custom Linux build. And such software will not automatically map the found channels into your backend program
- Most of the instructions that are out there for building such system suck, IMHO. They were apparently written by programmers and tend to be way too heavy on the mundane technical details, and light on the questions first-time users are most concerned with, such as "What do I need to do to get this thing to work?"
- While you can use multiple tuner cards, there may be limitations on the type or number of tuner cards that can be used, that are imposed by the software and/or operating system. For example, in Windows you may not be able to use two or more of the same model card because the Windows drivers won't support it, though that may depend on the brand of card used
- Just as receiver manufacturers stop supporting older receiver models, tuner manufacturers may stop issuing driver updates for older cards - or sometimes even for current cards that are still being sold. This could be a potential problem if you ever update your operating system
- Some backend software that works great with OTA tuners (such as the HDHomeRun) may not work very well, or at all, with satellite tuners
If you think I am wrong about any of the above points or want to add your own, that's the reason I started this thread. I may not have much to add to the above but I would be interested to see what others think.
