DLNA set top box

[Willson94]

At the moment we have various set top boxes around the house of varying ages.  My parents recordings are now of course all over the house.  Is there a set top box which can either

 

a. Record direct to a NAS, we have a WD MyCloud

OR

b.  Record to its local hard drive and act as a DLNA server.  I have seen set top boxes that can receive content over DLNA but haven't been able to confirm any to transmit media.

[Murdoch]

Since you're in the UK I can probably answer. Yeah, you can get some set-top boxes that can act as a DLNA server, Panasonic make some Freeview Recorders that can.

 

Although you've got a couple problems with them, mostly they come with pretty small Hard-drives (500GB-1TB) - I think this is mostly down to copyright laws, they're designed for 'Time-Shift' recording, not as a permanent copy - which is actually kind of against the law, which states that a TV show can be recorded to view later, but doesn't actually say how much later. But this is the same reason that Catch-up services only store shows that have been broadcast in the last 7 days.

 

Secondly, when you're viewing via DLNA you are completely stuck with whichever format is recorded by the Set top box (PVR) and there's no guarantee that whichever other devices you are streaming to will actually play the format.

 

I think there will be an improvement in home network PVR over the next few years, but at the moment it's quite lacking.

 

There is a more Do-it-yourself option, which would be to build a HTPC, and add a DVB-T2 / DVB-S2 Card. You could run Media Portal and it would be easy to record to your NAS and run any Media / DLNA Server software you wanted.

[Willson94]

@aesrock Thanks for the reply I hadn't of media portal until now will look into it.  I was hoping for a less bespoke solution but did hear the Panasonic streaming was a bit flaky. Thanks again.

[Murdoch]

@aesrock Thanks for the reply I hadn't of media portal until now will look into it.  I was hoping for a less bespoke solution but did hear the Panasonic streaming was a bit flaky. Thanks again.

 

No probs, it was by no means a full answer though. Here's another few examples of the market moving towards what you want, but just not quite being there yet.

 

HD Homerun - Network TV tuner, that streams content to and can be controlled by PCs, Tablets, Phones etc on your network.

 

Slingbox - Network video streamer that plugs into your Set-Top-Box - can stream to and be controlled by PCs, Tablets, Phones etc on your network / over the net.

 

TV Headend - Open source software that runs on a supported NAS, which allows you to plug a USB TV Tuner directly to your NAS,  do it yourself NAS PVR.

 

DVBLink - Similar to above allows supported NAS hardware, to run a TV Tuner and act as NAS PVR.