OK, so we've been told - no more attempts at improving the experience. We are to accept what has been delivered.

On comparing the product with its aspirations it fell a little short, but perhaps we incorporated our entire wishlist into expectations. Having a look at the carton it was packed in there doesn't actually seem to be much missing on the delivery side (or correct me).

We've all had our gripes - EPG, timeshift, GUI lag, speed on file transfer, AV-IN issues, spontaneous reboots etcetera... and we've had the benefit of some great contributors to this forum - fat-tony from Ireland, dasjournal and a heap of others - and can I cay Australian participation was very high and helpful for us aussies.

Anyway we have to move on - we've been told; forum shifted; topics closed and the rest.

Just 2 questions:

1. what should we use as the best firmware for this device? and/or
2. where is the current action - is it with ACR, Realtek, Android, what other devices are being actively delivered?

So long..

The best firmware version is a personal choice

Some find the sdk 3 firmwares good some the sdk 4.x

For the rest there are no new players anounced at the moment.

Well my PVR is sitting up on a shelf in my study, alongside the containers of 3.5" floppies that I'll never use again

It was a device with potential, but let down by Realtek's seeming insistence on retaining total control of the development environment. Maybe if they "open sourced" the development libraries the community could do something with the box, maybe not!

I've moved on to a general purpose mini-ITX motherboard which can run Windows or linux and have been using xbmc as a player for my DVD and music collection and have attached an external USB DVB-T tuner. Works very well on Windows - excellent, robust database (most important!) and almost equally as well on linux. I'm just waiting on ATI to improve their open-source sound drivers so that I can enjoy full DTS-HD on linux. Ironically, it is Realtek who supply the drivers which enable a full, multichannel sound experience on Windows
At the moment it would appear that motherboards with nVidia-based HDMI graphics and sound are the ones to go for if you want the full HD experience on linux.

Hi Tony,

good to hear from you. Looks like you're occasionally dropping in to this forum out of curiosity (fond memories?).

For myself, and I know I threatened to return the POHD, but am currently using the device albeit with clunkiness. I suppose I recognise that these toys "last" about 2 years (like the modern mobile phone - either battery life or cracked screen usually spells demise).

And so it would do us no harm to just move on.

My OP was to fish for ideas as to where we, as individuals, were considering going. And my preliminary thoughts have been along the lines of MythTV.

You have steered me towards the XBMC harbour; I like it. The version Frodo in development will include native PVR and EPG. Supposed to be released shortly. Love that it's OPEN, and looks to have active and growing participation. Python plugins can be knocked up by those with talent in no time at all. I'll give it a couple of months and go down that track, with something like your mobo the MSI-E350IA-E45 AMD Fusion. It will be a device about 3-4 years "newer" than the POHD and hopefully (for the planet's sake) give me a base to work with and retain for a longer period until "end of life".

All good.

Lastly we need to keep it all positive and happy on these threads, else the padlock goes up. - Be Happy Sure, we're moving on, just don't want to be kicked out of the house, please Mods.

PS. for those that may be unaware there's some pretty good info (on many topics) on the whirlpool forum