Good info, many thanks. Could someone chime in on DVR interface? Can't picture it being as good as the box I got from the cable provider.
Well I never really looked into the DVR interface but I know Mediaportal does support something called MyTV which comes as part of the base install.
MediaPortal TV
* Supports analog TV, DVB-C, DVB-T, DVB-S and ATSC
* HDTV and AC3 support
* Support for multiple tuners
* Record, watch, and timeshift Live TV
* Advanced recording scheduler:
- Record once
- Record now
- Daily o Weekly
- Weekdays (Mon-Fri)
- Every time a program appears on this TV channel
* Timeshifting,Watch, Pause, Rewind, FF, RW Live TV
* Advanced recording management:
- Handle conflicts
- Set recording priorities
- Quality settings / recording
- Transcode to WMD, XVID or MPG
- Diskmanagement auto deletes old and/or watched recordings
* TVGuide:
- Grab DVB-EPG & MHW-EPG directly for DVB
- Supports XMLTV
- Colors for genres
* TV Guide search
* TV Channel grouping
* Supports over > 10000 channels
* Auto channel tuning
* Normal OSD (On Screen Display during movies/tv)
* Special ZAP OSD (Shows description of what is playing currently on TV)
* Support for Teletext
* Standby control to put your HTPC sleeping. It will awake when there a recording needs to start
My guess is you have to find out which TV tuner card to get that is compatible with your local provider?