Freesat HD

[Dave_M]

That sounds amazing - and would only require a upgrade of my nVidia 7600GS. I tried it out and using the Matroska filter lowered CPU usage - but can that be done inside GBVR? The article sems to suggest it works ony with the tweaked media player.Anyone else got this working?

Easier said than done. But if you can grab the same decoder that media player classic home cinema has, and register it on your system with regsvr32.exe, then in theory, GBPVR will use it the hardware accelerating filter by default if it's priority is high enough.

But it may no be optimal. For example it may not look nice if you can't deinterlace the video. I think power DVD 8 or 9 has hardware accelerating decoders for blu ray. If those filters can deinterlace video it might work better.

With any luck the pentium M will be just about fast enough anyway.

[BigMoose]

The MPC h264 decoder is downloadable and registerable as a separate filter, I use it for Bluray playback within GBPVR and it works very well. However I dont think you can use it for LiveTV/recordings yet although there was a discussion in another thread about Sub including it in a future release.

[Bobins]

I got my SAT dish, 20m of dual cable, cable clips, Quad LNB and a SAT Finder meter all in one deal off e-bay for £25! Easily fitted and once pointing in the right direction, great reception.

I also got a dual DVB-SAT,dual DVB-T Pinnacle 7010i PCI-e tuner off e-bay for £36 (same as the £100+ Black Gold).

Above combination allows me to record minimum 4 channels simultaneously (more if they're on the same mux)

[liteswap]

@Bobins: Great deal - I should have start having a sniff around, although it looks like I AM going to have to upgrade the PVR hardware first.

Think I've settled on an Intel E7300 platform, not sure about the mobo yet, and my current GeForce 7300LE graphics card works OK so that may not need to change - but I suspect that's a discussion for a future thread....

[liteswap]

Update: more research suggests that an ATI 4650 XT video card (which I found fairly cheap - 60 quid) will do all the decoding and much of the processing in hardware. So that will arrive sometime soon and I'll report back on the effect it has on CPU usage.

The local satellite installation engineer arrives next week to survey and give a quote on installation - I'm hoping he can do a deal on the basis of the subsidy he'll get from Sky but still customise the install, ie specific location, quad LNB + cables etc.

I've yet to find the perfect tuner card yet though. We don't get DVB-T where I live and aren't due to switch to digital until 2012, which is my main reason for going satellite. Currently I have a Hauppauge 500MCE (twin analogue receivers) so I'm looking for a dual DVB-S/S2 card which should give me a fighting chance of a simultaneous watch/record facility. I've only found one so far: the Hauppauge HVR-4000. Is that my only choice?

[gEd]

what about the Pinnacle 7010i PCI-e tuner that Bobins mentioned above in #13?

I am very keen to see how your experiences(s) pan out.

I have finally received executive approval for a flat screen TV but I see the point in doing so if I can get Freesat HD working with gbpvr.

[liteswap]

gEd - you're right, I shouldn't overlook the Pinnacle card. I originally discounted it because it didn't have DVB-S2 - and I mistakenly imagined S2 was necessary for HD. Turns out I was wrong and HD works over DVB-S channels. And the Pinnacle card is cheaper than the Hauppauge one too.

So I've looked and they seem to be out of stock everywhere so if you see one, do let me know!

[BigMoose]

There have been comments on the digital spy forums that one day the BBC HD channel will move to S2 so maybe if buying now an S2 card makes sense. But I've not seen any firm or even vague time frames so I guess it's unlikely to be iminant, but it could happen any time I guess.

gEd - I have the BBC HD, ITV HD (and Luxe HD, not that I ever watch it) all working great with GBPRV.

[liteswap]

Yes, I've seen those - but maybe I'll just have to bit that bullet when the time comes.

Thing is, to future-proof would require two tuner cards as things stand now, in terms of twin tuner DVB-S/S2 product availability. And as I've a microATX mobo crammed into an Antec Fusion case, with no physical space for more than one tuner card, the more tuners on a single card the better, in my view. In other words, it's a case of going with what's availabe now...

But if the DVB-S stuff works, I won't mind ditching fuzzy analogue TV anyway...

[martint123]

I have the 7010x running in my test machine and it works a treat.
Having 2 dvb-t and 2 dv-s tuners, capable of all running simultaneously in one slot was too much of a temptation for me.

With all current S2 transmissions encrypted, I'm not worried for now.