1020a can support diseqc + HD?

[psychosquid]

Can the TwinHan 1020a use Disequ and view HD channels? Please say yes becuase it is a cheap card. Does it also accept two "stream"/signals?

If system specs matter. I'm running a beast with an AMD X2 4200+, 2GB of ram dual channel, and an 8800GT

I've looked at a million ( :eek: a sight exaggeration) other media center applications and GB-PVR looks to beat the pants off the competition in terms of aesthetics except for windows MCE which loses in functionality with its limited/non-existent DVB support.

[sgilani]

Should be a yes for both. The 1020a doesn't care if its SD or HD since the MPEG2 decoding is done by your decoders; the Twinhan itself doesn't do anything with it by itself. I'm not sure what you mean by "two streams?"

[psychosquid]

The photos I've seen of the 1020a show two male coax connectors like a dual tuner. Does this mean i can connect two dishes/lnb's with this card to record and watch two separate channels? Pardon me if I'm not making sense as I don't know much about satellites.

[sgilani]

The photos I've seen of the 1020a show two male coax connectors like a dual tuner. Does this mean i can connect two dishes/lnb's with this card to record and watch two separate channels? Pardon me if I'm not making sense as I don't know much about satellites.

No, the card only has a single tuner. A lot of satellite equipment has a "loop out," and that is what is on the 1020a as well. It's just a "passthru" for connecting an additional card or satellite receiver, but the second receiver will only be able to receive signal from odd or even transponders, depending on the transponder that the 1020a has tuned the LNB to. You really should read up on the basics of satellite reception in order to grasp all of these concepts.

If you want to connect two LNBs to your Twinhan, use a Diseqc switch. If you want the ability to record more than one show (reliably) then you will need two cards, and a switch that will allow two receivers to be connected to it.

[bogyver]

Wanted to give out some info, I learned when looking into HD Sat in North America, and it looks like you do. From what I have read north American sat providers use 8psk-turbo for the HD channels. I don't think that the 1020a can do 8psk-turbo, but you can do the regular SD channels. As right now there are only a handful of cards that support 8psk-turbo and they are in the 250 dollar range. Hope fully in the next year they will come down in price. If I am in error on this please let me know

[NI2O]

If I am in error on this please let me know

Think you might be.

I am using a 1020a in my MythTV setup and am watching HD from B3V which is plain old whatever comes down from 82W.

As for recording 2 streams; well not quite. You CAN record 2 "channels" from the same multiplex if your software supports it (yeah for MythTV!) but otherwise it's a single tuner card.

I have to agree with a comment a few posts up about GBPVR being the best out there for the money. I am/was an absolute Windows hater and Linux/Mac evangelist until this came along. Now I can't say that I'm a windows convert but I'm prepared to suffer it's issues for the sake of a good bit of software.

Mark

[bogyver]

I never looked close at the B3V stuff as I'm in the us but the I do know that the DN stuff is 8psk-turbo, I thought i read some where that the B3V stuff was as well. My mistake, I was thinking of picking up one of those cards to at lest do the regular stuff for DN so i can get off the crappy cable here. I really want HD channels (our cable co only has Discovery HD theater, HD Net/Movies and ESPN and premium movie HD's) DN just added the most important HD channel for me, SCIFI, HD Stargate and Battlestar ftw.
But thanks for the info

[NI2O]

SCIFI, HD Stargate and Battlestar ftw.
But thanks for the info

Be careful! Just because a station is labeled "HD" doesn't bean that it's output is HD.

We fell into this trap back in the UK (I'm a Brit) when the BBC went to 14x9 and C4 went to PAL Plus. They touted "High Definition" TV but actually it wasn't. The 14x9 standard was an interim (which I think they still have today) which would display letterbox on a 4x3 TV and not quite widescreen on a 16x9 set.

Do a google for "Waddington Television experiment" to read all about the smoke and mirrors.

Mark

[NI2O]

Forgot to mention that I have a CW3000HD that I'm very disappointed with. However it is HD capable.

It's an Athlon based 1.6GHz machine with a MOBO that has some NVidia card thingy on it with MPEG2 etc. It's RX's are "no-name" cards but they are QAM/8PSK capable and also MPEG2/4.

Assuming that you are running the right version of SASC-NG you can use it to view DN and B3V's HD output. Without the software you can view the HD promo channels as they are FTA on both systems.

Mark

[psychosquid]

I've been looking I found a DVB-S2 car the Twinhan 1041 which is supposed to support 8psk

Would this card allow me to receive the DN HD? If not which will?