Hi. Several years ago I built a dedicated HTPC, expensive case, 4TB storage, 4GB RAM, Vista, TBS6925 DVB-S2 Professional Tuner, ect. It's basically a super expensive HDTV, DVB-S2 recorder / media player. I play back SD and HD video, .ts, .mkv, .avi (various codecs), .mov, .mp4, .flv (all using VLC) ect. . . I mainly built it for the recording quality. When I watch and record HDTV OTA I want the original, untouched, unconverted transport stream for maximum quality. When I record from satellite DVB-S or DVB-S2 I want the untouched, unconverted transport stream saved directly to my hard drive. I have been having some problems with the software programs I use to watch and record HDTV OTA and satellite freezing or crashing, even crashing the whole OS, I don't really trust it anymore to work flawlessly.
I am thinking about replacing my HTPC in part or maybe all together with a dedicated set top box that "does it all" but is much more stable, cooler, and less power hungry than my current PC system. I haven't paid attention hardly at all over the last ten years to set top boxes so I don't have much of an idea of what is currently out there or what they can do, as far as being able to be integrated with my home network and storage. I have seen some boxes now and then over the years that automatically convert and compress what is recorded, I definitely don't want that, I want everything untouched. I need a set top box with both a high sensitivity HDTV tuner as well as a DVB-S2 tuner like my TBS6925 that sends the untouched transport stream to a hard drive, the built-in hard drive (at least 1TB to 4TB), which can also be user upgraded in the future. I would also need a gigabit Ethernet port and a few USB 2 or preferably USB 3 ports, HDMI 1.3 and optical out. This set top box would also have to act as a medial player, basically anything that VLC can play it should be able to play. I also need to be able to move what I have recorded off of the internal hard drive, easily, to external storage on another computer, for editing or long term storage, as well as being able to play files from other computers or external storage. Some "media players" I have seen only seem to stream from the Internet (ROKU) and require you to plug in a USB flash drive or external hard drive to be able to play only certain kinds of media files (like some blu-ray players do), I need something more advanced. Everything now seems to be moving toward "streaming" from or to the net or storage "in the cloud".
I'm hoping some of you know of a set top box that can do all or most of these things. I'm hoping someone will be able to "give me a boost" and point me toward something solid. I will continue doing more searching in the mean time.
Thanks for your time.
I am thinking about replacing my HTPC in part or maybe all together with a dedicated set top box that "does it all" but is much more stable, cooler, and less power hungry than my current PC system. I haven't paid attention hardly at all over the last ten years to set top boxes so I don't have much of an idea of what is currently out there or what they can do, as far as being able to be integrated with my home network and storage. I have seen some boxes now and then over the years that automatically convert and compress what is recorded, I definitely don't want that, I want everything untouched. I need a set top box with both a high sensitivity HDTV tuner as well as a DVB-S2 tuner like my TBS6925 that sends the untouched transport stream to a hard drive, the built-in hard drive (at least 1TB to 4TB), which can also be user upgraded in the future. I would also need a gigabit Ethernet port and a few USB 2 or preferably USB 3 ports, HDMI 1.3 and optical out. This set top box would also have to act as a medial player, basically anything that VLC can play it should be able to play. I also need to be able to move what I have recorded off of the internal hard drive, easily, to external storage on another computer, for editing or long term storage, as well as being able to play files from other computers or external storage. Some "media players" I have seen only seem to stream from the Internet (ROKU) and require you to plug in a USB flash drive or external hard drive to be able to play only certain kinds of media files (like some blu-ray players do), I need something more advanced. Everything now seems to be moving toward "streaming" from or to the net or storage "in the cloud".
I'm hoping some of you know of a set top box that can do all or most of these things. I'm hoping someone will be able to "give me a boost" and point me toward something solid. I will continue doing more searching in the mean time.
Thanks for your time.
