Hi Guys, Our BT YouView box has died, the tuner in our TV is also dead. We can't at the moment afford to buy a new TV, so I've decided that as I have lots of spares, and pretty much have a complete system I can use which will connect to out current TV via VGA or HDMI. I also have a Single Tuner TV Card I can put in. I'm wondering at this point, should I use some kind of Linux Distro ? Or should I stick with Windows 7 as it really needs to be user friendly for Donna, so that all she has to do is fire up an application and watch TV. I intend to get a media center remote control. We will also be using it for Plex as thats loaded on my main PC and that serves our network with TV Shows and so on.
Windows and DVBlink - I think it's great. Happy to provide more info if you like - what tuner will you be using? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Windows Media Centre (a resource hog but user friendly and generally reliable), or else Kodi, formerly known as XBMC. The latter runs on Windows and Linux.
The availability of drivers around the tuner card and remote may make the decision for you. I would google the card to see if there any reports of it working under linux.
It's an old Compro DTV 250 or something. It's pretty old but seems to be working fine. I don't have a remote for it, although it does support one. Used to connect by a 2.5 mm jack cable and the ir sensor was on the end of that. For the time being to prove the concept works I've got it going with Windows Media Centre on Windows 7 I had spare. I do think the PC I'm using for the job is pretty over kill though, if the card would fit into one of my Dell SFF PC's as either one of them would be more suited to the task and not make the living room look like my room where I tinker and play games.
If you want to do free then I'd say go with Linux and put XBMC as your front end. Hands down the best HTPC interface (that I've used at least). You could even go Steam OS and integrate XBMC into it, which people have been doing.
If you want something simple, have a look at OpenElec for a linux plus XBMC (Kodi) all-in-one. Worked great on the Raspberry Pi.
