Looking for confirmation of SeverWMC features, been doing lots of research

[scanner50 8]

I'm a current Comcast X1 customer, but looking at ways of reducing monthly costs by going back to my own DVR solution (used to use WMC in Windows 7's heyday on just one TV). I am a Premiere Emby user and want to try to leverage that for my whole home TV experience. I've been spending a lot of time these past few weeks researching different backends like NextPVR and even Emby's built-in solution, but I have very specific must-haves and it seems these backends end up lacking something on my checklist in one way or another. I do remember WMC handling them well, so I'm hoping someone can enlighten me on how ServerWMC handles these items. They are:

 

1. Wake to record, go back to sleep after: To keep initial equipment costs down I'll be using my rather power-hungry gaming system for the server, with the goal of using a lower-power system down the road. I don't want my rig powered on 24/7, diluting the savings from a lower Comcast bill.  Back in my WMC days I used to use MCE Standby Tool to assist with this, but it doesn't looked to be developed anymore. And I believe Luke has said elsewhere that currently the native Emby solution doesn't support this ability.

 

2. Tuner prioritizing and channel-combining: My current plan is to combine an HDHomerun Prime for CableCard duties with an HDHomerun Connect for OTA. My hope is that there would be some way to prioritize the Connect for local channels, but have the Prime record the same content on the Comcast channels if the Connect's tuners are already in use (we tend to watch more local stuff than cable stuff).

 

3. Sports team handling: I don't remember how WMC used to do this, but it is really important for us to be able to easily flag a team, extend all recordings at the end to catch any overtime, and have it just record all of the games on any channel. With the option of current season only.

 

4. Recording conflicts management: This was a thing of beauty on WMC, and X1 works well with this. The ability to tell immediately if there is a possible conflict somewhere and act on it is paramount. From what I've researched, many backends fall short in this respect.

 

My system is Windows 10, so I've already been researching how to get WMC working, and it looks easy enough. Anyway, thanks in advance for any light you all can shed on these things.

Edited August 27, 2016 by scanner50

[Luke 37007]

We don't do wake to record because it requires administrative privileges to schedule the wake. That's not going to be acceptable for most people so we haven't spent any time on it.

 

We do have tuner combining.

[krustyreturns 191]

One thing I think you might have some confusion over, is that serverwmc does not record anything, wmc does.  Serverwmc just lets you use emby server (and kodi and plex) to schedule recordings in the wmc recording service - instead of using the wmc app.  So the answers to most of your questions are just about wmc not really serverwmc or emby.

 

1.  Wmc is very good about taking the computer out of sleep mode for recording, so I am not sure what the issue is here.  One thing to check:  I recall some time ago people complaining that they had trouble with win10 and the hacked wmc waking up, this has probably been resolved by now, but just saying.

 

2.  This just depends on how you set the channel sources in wmc's setup.  You can set the priority of the tuners you want to use for each channel.

 

3.  The wmc guide will flag sports events, so you can use it to extend the end recording time of them automatically.  As for recording just certain team games on any channel, I don't think it has a way of doing this, short of just setting it to record all the NFL games.  It might be able to do this by setting up a keyword wishlist, but I'm not sure.  Might try asking on the wmc forums.  This feature has been requested to add to serverwmc - have it auto-schedule certain team sports every week - but so far I have not implemented it.

 

4.  Wmc's conflict management will still be working, but emby (and the other serverwmc clients) currently don't have an in-your-face way of telling you have a conflict.  These days people have so many tuners on their systems it usually isn't an issue.  

[scanner50 8]

Thanks Luke and Krusty for the clarifications. Incidentally I just came across information that the Windows 10 anniversary update breaks WMC pretty badly and it's a bear to get working again. May have to look at other options since I don't have a Windows 7 PC at the moment.

[krustyreturns 191]

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/37556-win10-anniversary-edition-breaks-wmc/