4k tv upgrade

[Pauven]

You're making it hard for me to live vicariously through the cool purchases of others...

[Teddyboy]

Lol. I have not bought a tv yet. I ended up ditching my htpc after a windows update did something to it and something happened to my settings for madvr and undervolting. It was also running a little to hot for my comfort even though I never had a thermal event. I just got tired of the windows updates and pc maintanace. After I had spent money on a new mother board, cpu, ram. I took it down and packed it away for now. I may use it for a gaming pc in a small case. I have two Apple TV 4ks in the house. I converted all my movies to Mkvs. It was a Herculean effort, but it’s done. Converting tv episodes was a chore, but it wasn’t to bad with the help of FileBot. Emby runs on my server and keeps track of things now. MyMovies just helps catalog my collection. All my movies and tv shows are played through Infuse 7 pro on my Apple TV’s. It works great and the Apple TV is just a box that has run with very
Smoothly. It’s able to downscale or upscale media and it looks great. The interface is slick and easy to navigate.I just couldn’t take using a pc anymore for media playback. I don’t have to mess with it anymore.

I’m planning on getting a set during Black Friday. Something similar to what we’ve discussed already. I hated moving on because I was so nostalgic about my htpc, and I liked having to just rip and be done. I think I made a good Decsion for myself.

[Pauven]

While I'm happy you found a solution that you're happy with, I'm sad that it's not a HTPC with CMC.

But I totally get it. The content providers have essentially abandoned PC's - sure you can use a browser or Windows app but those work best with a mouse, and are next to unusable any other way. There used to be better front-end solutions for streaming services a few years ago that worked with remote controls, but the content providers have actually eliminated those solutions. So now if want the living room experience using a simple remote control, you have to use Apple or Roku or the like, not a HTPC.

And as long as you have to use something else for streaming, it makes it difficult to keep a HTPC around just for your movie collection. Especially when Microsoft makes Windows such a pain to maintain.

Ironically, I'm actually daily driving my HTPC with my keyboard to watch streaming services. So I definitely feel the pain in more ways than one...

[Jamie]

While I'm happy you found a solution that you're happy with, I'm sad that it's not a HTPC with CMC.

Ironically, I'm actually daily driving my HTPC with my keyboard to watch streaming services. So I definitely feel the pain in more ways than one...

Hi Paul,

I have been using a wireless keyboard with CMC for a couple of years now. It works great for cmc with all the mouse click features you added. I wish that my wireless keyboard could start the PC to bootup which is the only thing I need my remote for these days. Any ideas on a wireless key board that will power up a HTPC?

[Pauven]

Any ideas on a wireless key board that will power up a HTPC?

Pretty much any of them should be able to, depending upon your BIOS options. Essentially, you need to enable wake from USB devices in your BIOS. I've done it before, years ago, but don't remember exactly what it's called.

Note, sometimes only certain USB ports work with this feature, so you may need to move the USB dongle to a supported port.

Actually, I'm using a wireless keyboard with mine too, and I wake just by tapping any key.

[Teddyboy]

Hi Paul,
It was not a easy decision for me to make. I remember when I made my first HTPC back in 2005. I bought windows media center xp oem disc at the monthly computer fair that used occur at the Scottish Rite Center San Diego. Sad to say that is gone too. Many deals to be had there in it’s time. My first HTPC was a dual core pentium cpu, fan less nvidia GPU with 16 gigs of ram on a gigabyte motherboard. You had to buy nividia’s codec if you wanted to view DVDs for $30. I had a Hauppauge dual tuner card with two set top boxes attached to it. You had to place and tune the ir blasters just right to get it to change channels on the set top box. The case was a Arisetec Kanam case from Korea. What a great case it was at the time. Most of the parts I bought from PC Alchemy which was a local mail order business that is also gone. I was so thrilled when I put it together and loaded and configured media center. I was able to watch recorded programs, listen to music, or watch a dvd all in one box. Wasn’t much longer after that when they provided the netflix plug-in.

I had gone through several generations of WMC up to Windows 7 which I thought was the best of the bunch. Atone point I even thought of using windows embedded standard to preserve it more like a set top box. If I would have done that, I would have still been using it. It’s been a great ride, but I’m happy with my Apple TV, and my Roon Music server. I’ll still be around. I’m probably going to play with cmc on my workstation pc. You’ve done a great job with your software Paul.

[Pauven]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. You brought back a lot of good memories for me. My dad and I used to love going to computer fairs back in the 80's, buying software copied (legally?) onto 5-1/4" disks. There was a magic of discovery back in those days.

My first HTPC was in the 90's, before the advent of MCE. I still have the special VGA to BNC cables I needed to hook a PC up to my TV. I think the big deal back then was that PC's could do the 3:2 pulldown detection and improve the video quality of your DVD's, and better scaling to HD resolutions, and I was instantly hooked. I think I used ZoomPlayer. I still have the HTPC case that I hand-built from a special kit another enthusiast designed.

Just like you, the height of integration for me was Win 7's WMC with a Cablecard and My Movies. That was pure heaven. I even used it with software called Couch Potato that allowed me to watch my Cablecard recordings from a remote PC, which was handy when I was travelling.

You'd think with the passage of time that these solutions would only get better, but the industry hated it and has gone out of their way to eliminate these solutions. I think that's the real reason WMC is dead - the media industry just didn't want to play along. It really should be a competing product to Roku, a dominant player in the streaming wars. I'd love to have a way to run Roku plugins on the PC!

That said, I am really happy with my HDHomeRun - I love the free over the air broadcasts, and recordings that I can control. The GUI is usable, but I still have dreams of creating my own front-end someday, to really capture that old WMC + Cablecard experience I loved.