New IceTV branded PVR

[Mantorok]

I read today that IceTV will be releasing their own PVR onto the market. 

Link: http://news.icetv.com.au/news/blog/2013/07/16/tv-gets-mobile-as-icetv-plans-digital-recorder-with-mobile-streaming/

I for one am rapped such a device will be available here.  It's about time.  The PVR market has been stagnent for years. Let's hope this spurs other manufacturers to release some new models.

If anyone from Ice is reading this are you able to give any more details like tech specs, operating system, features, UI screenshots, release date...anything really! 

[prl]

There's also an article about it in The Age, though that seems to be pretty much a cut-and-paste of the IceTV blog item.

[BBWilly]

Would like a date on this as well, looking at buying a unit to replace the Foxtel unit soon and am looking for something with 4 tuners a twin tuner doesn't really cut the mustard in our house and the extra features look awsome.

I dont even mind being a beta tester if so be it.

[mcpaton]

Love the idea of this, particularly the idea of being able to stream to mobile devices around the home. We currently use air video for this with media files, but have no way to do it with fta TV.

I hope they go for a GUI like XBMC that can play media files as well, to become a complete home media centre!!

[IanL-S]

Yes, sounds very interesting. I would very much like to get my hands on one (even as a beta tester).

Ian

[Heinz]

It's going to be a hot release when our baby hits the market. Powerful hardware with advanced chips and superior user interface under its bonnet.   

At this stage, we are working through a few supplier options. As much as we'd like to tap into the Christmas business, our "Icebox" is likely going to hit the market in early next year.

We're going to invite our most active bloggers to meet the team here at IceTV in late September -- to get you guys critique our plans! We want to give you what you deserve. Keep blogging everyone please ...

 

[jeisner]

Very keen to see this occur.. i.e. A device that ICETV have control over supporting, the Humax padding debacle was not fun..

I had the first ICETV compatible Strong unit which reset randomly as did my beyonwiz p1, the Humax was never able to reply padding correctly if coming on from standby mode (ended up returning it, and they are the only option available here now)..

I do have two Topfield Masterpieces which are completely reliable units but feeling a bit dated.. It would be nice to see a unit ICETV have control over and with true quad recorders and catch up playback like SBS and particularity iView (a feature the topfield is sorely lacking)... Sadly the slingshot playback would probbaly not work for me with my 2mbps ADSL2+ that just barely plays an iview video let alone uploading a stream...

[Mantorok]

Since the Ice staff are monitoring this topic I thought I'd kick off with a list of features I'd like to see in the new "Icebox":

PVR Features:

• Date and Time syncing with time servers (the broadcast time can be wrong which stuffs up timers)
• Automatic handling of Daylight Savings including its impact on EPG and timers (ie. no need to clear EPG caches and resending timers)
• Pre and Post padding to handle early/late running of TV shows
• Consecutive timers with padding on the same LCN should not leave a small gap between the recordings. The recordings should overlap in this case.
• Concurrent recordings on the same network but different LCNs should only use one tuner leaving the other(s) free (although with 4 tuners maybe this is not that important)

Media Player Features:

• Ability to stream content from SMB shares and DLNA servers
• Support for more video formats/codecs and up to 1080p resolution
• Make the blu-ray player optional (2 models?) - Especially if it means the Icebox must have Cinavia content protection
• Support for all the main audio/video formats/codecs (up to 1080p resolution)
• Display album art for audio files

That's probably enough from me for now. Anyone else like to add the features they'd like to be included?

[prl]

PVR Features:
Better IceTV integration than competing models.

Even the Beyonwiz IceTV integration leaves something to be desired, even though from the posts here it seems to be better than the Topfield or Humax.

[csutak40]

I still use Toppy 5K with TED as my main PVR.  Both are getting rather long in the tooth and both have problems, especially as TED is no longer supported, and of course Toppy doesn't show HD.  I stick to them, because they do what I want.  I also use WMC on my equally ancient XP PC (I just bought a new Win7 box, including a WMC, just need to find the time to set it up ) but only use it as a back up, for three reasons - to record stuff I intend to keep or if the both the Toppy's tuners are in use, or if I want to record something on a HD channel.  It has all sorts of problems, on which I won't comment here until I test drive the Win7 version.
However, I do know for a fact that the setting capabilities leave a lot to be desired, even if they do as intended (which they certainly don't on the XP)  If you could make the new PVR  work something like the Toppy/Ted combo, I'd be your first customer! As I have no programming knowledge, I am stuck with TED and when (not if) it stops working, I'll be devastated.    Here is TEDS webpage, where you can read all the stuff it can do http://home.exetel.com.au/trappett/teds/  Just an example of a small thing that has always annoyed me on the WMC (although it would probably be less annoying with four tuners) is that it doesn't do Sequential Timers, when two shows follow on the one channel.  TED simply merges the two (or how ever many) shows, placing the chosen padding at the beginning of the first and the end of the last, makes it so much  easier to watch and/or separate if you want.

[IanL-S]

It is possible to created a PVR where pre- and post- padding are respected on consecutive timers/reservations. I understand that some PVRs do so.

One way of doing so would be to take advantage of multiple LCNs with the same content (in Melbourn the 'pairs are' LNC 1 and LCN 12 (TEN ONE) LCN 1 and LCN 21 (ABC 1), LCN 7, LCN 70 and LCN 71 (Seven), and LCN 3 and LCN 33 (SBS 1) [LCN 30 has same content in HD]. Another way is to schedule them on different turners. The more turners there are, the easier this is to achieve. Yet another way is to use one tuner and copy the extracted LCN feed to a new recording during the overlap of the first and second scheduled recording. This clearly possible as it is how time-shift buffer works on some PVRs.

Ian

[RoderickGI]

It has all sorts of problems, on which I won't comment here until I test drive the Win7 version.

G'Day Judy,

I was in the same situation as you, although with a few less Toppies to manage! I just had a TF6000PVRt and TEDS Suite running on an old laptop connected to it. It worked fine, but I was getting a lot of grief about not being able to receive HD channels, especially as there was a cheap set top box out in the back room connected to an old 30" Sony CRT TV that could receive HD!

Anyway, you will find that WMC on Windows 7 does work a bit better than on XP, but it doesn't do much more. I built a new HTPC on Windows 7 (didn't like the idea of Windows 8 yet, as the choice of add-on bits is limited and untested for a HTPC) and ran WMC for a while. For TV alone it worked okay, but I wanted a better Media Centre than WMC could provide. So I looked around at XMBC, Media Portal, Plex, Media Browser ( 2 and the fledgling 3), J River Media Center, Media Monkey, Argus TV, NextPVR, and others I don't remember.

I picked "J River Media Center" as it provides Live TV and Recording, EPG, and TV Show, Movie, Video, Image and Music Media Server capabilities. It is not perfect. The documentation consists of a Wiki and the Forums, and leave quite a bit to be desired. But the CEO and CTO post on the forums and reply to questions, so access to the company is great. There is also a strong group of "Beta Testers" that hang around on the forums a lot. It reminds me of the old original Toppy forum in Australia, where you could actually get quality technical help when needed. JRMC also provides superior sound and video reproduction, having been developed for audiophiles. Lots of the stuff people have to muck around with in XBMC is already there is JRMC.

Mind you, while it works out of the box, it does require quite a bit of fiddling to get the best out of it, and match it to your amp, receiver, or other hardware capabilities. It is also very configurable, a part of it I am still grappling with. There is a steep learning curve.

It is far less capable than TEDS in managing recordings, but it will series and individual program record, and has global padding for recordings. It doesn't have keyword recording, but allows you to look through a whole list of TV Series it is aware of (from current and previous EPG data I think) and "Subscribe" to any of those.

I'm not sure if it will record two channels from one broadcast stream (Sister LCNs) yet, but I put a Quad Tuner Digital Now card into my HTPC, so the overlapping programs hasn't been an issue yet. It also handles Time Shifting differently, which seems to give it an advantage. It will run a time shift buffer (set to four hours by default!) and a recording on the same channel in parallel. Neat! When you start a completed recording which has padding included, it start playing where it thinks the actual program should be, not at the start of the file. A little skipping forward or back, and it is easy to find the start of the program, if the station didn't start it on time. Excellent.   (Frankly, I'm not sure if it doesn't do that for an in-process recording as well. I think it might, rather than jumping to the Live TV position.) Still learning here. It may be more suited to a geeky person, or a determined one! But I think the company recognises a more consumer based, user friendly application is their future.

JRMC is a Media Server, so you can watch anything stored on it on any networked DLNA capable device on your network. I can manage he server from my PC in my office, set recordings, watch programs, move, edit file names, tag files, create play lists, start a program playing on the TV in my lounge, or stop it, or play a music play list. They have a web based remote, plus and Android app, some third party providers for other remote controllers. You can even manage your server away from home, or stream content to another location over the internet, and setup is pretty easy! I like the potential, even if it isn't all perfect yet.

I am using IceTV's EPG in XMLTV format via WebGet, which is what TEDS was doing as well. It works but I am still trying to work out my future with IceTV. There some options for getting EPG in Australia, but IceTV is still the best option I have seen. However, some of the nice features of IceTV, particularly the web based management of your TV viewing and IceTV Interactive, are under threat of being usurped by over the internet management of a JRMC server, if they get their act together and build better TV recording selection functionality.

Getting away from PVR firmware issues to normal PC BIOS and Windows issues is  . . . Wonderful

Bottom line: You have been playing around with PVRs and TEDS as long as I have, based on how long I have seen you on forums, and you have been able to make them work. So if you have built a Windows 7 HTPC, do yourself a favour and have a look at J River Media Center. http://www.jriver.com/ Take a long look, because they provide a 30 day trial, and you might need that long to be convinced. Enjoy.

[Vortical]

I'm very interested in the outcome of IceTV PVR and willing to lend a hand to beta test such a unit should the opportunity arise.

Can't wait to see this product and what it can do. 

Personally I can't live without IceTV, over the years it's recorded everything I wanted without repeats where needed and with very few problems, most problems were caused by hardware issues with the way the pvr's talk with IceTV and IceTV has always come good and ensured they proved workarounds in a timely manner for those of us with old devices.

Now with IceTV in control of the hardware & software implementation I really hope it becomes the best pvr on the market, just make sure the PVR aspects are fully featured and work flawlessly and you'll be on a winner right from the beginning.

[paulgraham]

As a long time ICE user who has always used topfield devices and ice via TEDS or interactive, I'd also put my hand up to test run a new device.

Cheers, Paul.

[Heinz]

We're glad here at IceTV that the announcement of our own PVR is generating so much excitement on the Forum, as well as in the marketplace. Colin (our Executive Chairman) and I (CEO) are committed to making our new PVR a leapfrogging game changer. It will be "the best box" combined with "Smart Recording" features that Australia has not seen yet! It's a step up from our "Interactive" strategy...
Several vendors are "catwalking" around us at the moment, trying to be part of the "Icebox". This will enable us to come in at an aggressive price point -- but these additional partnering options are pushing the release date into early 2014. In the meantime, thank you for everyone's encouragement! Please tweet and post on our Facebook page, too.
Regards & success,
Heinz