new to home a/v and building a new home

[pete_c]

are you recording to a media server or just to cable/satellite STBs?

 
Both.  Did this already many years ago with my Tivo boxes saving or discarding what I wanted to save.  IE: like making videos smaller for my first Palm / Wintel mobile phones to watch while I traveled (well too playing with bluetooth in the 2000's).  Much easier to carry around but much smaller video to watch.  Well I would also wander from my airline seat to test the Bluetooth audio headsets that I played with (goofing a bit).  Curious one day on a Lufthansa flight took apart the media pieces of my seat to see how it worked; well it kept me busy on a long flight (no one did bug me).
 
MythTV (removing commercials)  / Satellite DVR (with commercials) stuff recording live.  (well a DBS user since the beginning of DBS).  Not using cable for TV anymore (had both cable and satellite going for some time).  I also using DBS Dish stuff.
 
PlayONTV is recording stuff in the cloud (without commercials).
 
Historically had two SA and one DTivo in the house totally modded doing the live TV streaming and recordings streaming to any box in the house.
 
I have used PlayOnTV now since its beginnings; it's evolved and personally just moved over to my new STB / XBMC boxes.  (slow on the WAF right now).
 
Guessing from the willy nilly FCC rules sets that OTA will be PPViewing sooner than later.  That PPV subchannel stuff was part of the OTA going to HD set ups done by OTA broadcasters throughout the country when they were made to go HD years ago.
 
For a bit this past year started to watch reruns of Seinfeld recording them sans commercials.  About a month ago started to stream the episodes by date and episode number which I liked better than recording. 
 
I am though playing much now with streaming media content on demand which I like now for video stuff.  Music though I still prefer my own rather than renting streaming or listening audio.  (that is me).

 

[drvnbysound]

I suppose I need to take a look at Plex, MythTV and the other players again at some point in the future. I've been running my SageTV system for a few years and love it - for now - while my extenders are still alive. However, I know that it's a dead product, so it will only be relevant for so long. I've got my own ideas for what the system should be able to do (based on what mine does now), and I don't want to lose capability or have to add multiple systems to achieve those things. 

 

[pete_c]

MythTV does do live streaming / recording stuff but I haven't tried it yet.  That said XBMC also has that feature such that you can control the MythTV or locally record stuff.  I do not save it though typically just to timeslot watch stuff.  I have configured and tested Plex but not really used it.  I did this just to see how it worked.  Not sure if you can timeslot streaming media with Plex.
 
Oh yeah here also have a Nexus satellite card in my MythTV box.   Mostly though I do not watch regular TV where as my wife does but its mostly recorded content stuff.

 

[snesgenesis]

nice approach - are your expresses hardwired or are you using wireless to get to them?
 
in my case I chose to hardwire them, to cut down on wireless overhead. the household wireless seems to be in almost constant video conferencing use.

I hardwire everything I can. The only thing I use wirelessly is my 1st gen ipad, laptop,and my wife laptop and thats it. I've picked up all my airport express units from ebay all between $30-$40 a piece. Airplay is so simple to use and reliable and I've considered trying airfoil as well.