Satellite cards for PC's

[martint123]

I have the s350 in my main pvr server now.
It is only setup for BBC HD and one obscure SD channel for testing.
AFAIR no matter what mux you setup in config it will use ts-mux for HD stuff (hmm, maybe not if full-ts is picked). I think full-ts is basically for subs debug purposes??
I've got it set to record something this evening, so will see how it goes. I'm a little wary about using it for BBC ITV etc in case it is unreliable. There again, I may, as I lost a recording yesterday as it looks like there weren't enough available tuners and/or they hogged the PVR150/Sky tuner.

I can get a scan from dvbviewer as below, just need some way to tweak it into gbpvrs scan.cache format in case the next gbpvr version still doesn't pick up the channels properly.

Client support for live preview would be a nice birthday present in the next versions as well

[Channel0]
TunerType=1
Frequency=10773
Polarity=h
Symbolrate=22000
FEC=3
APID=5001
VPID=5000
PMTPID=261
PCRPID=5000
AC3=0
TelePID=5003
SID=6301
StreamID=2045
NetworkID=2
LNB-Selection=0
LNB=9750
DiseqC=0
Root=Scan 22/07/2008
Name=BBC 1 London (eng)
Category=BSkyB
Encrypted=24
SatModulation=1
SatModulationSystem=0
Group=0
Language=eng

[Dava]

I manually did this for a few channels when I stated with this card, the data from the Compro supplied S/W had a similar layout to that you have posted.

I just selected a channel that was found with gbpvr and close to the one I wanted, then edited the values from symbol rate, freq, pol, PID etc into the scan cache file. This worked with a little trial and error so it should be possible for me to create an autoit script to do it. However, I would much prefer an integrated scan that worked. From what Sub said in the other thread on this, he has fixed it but just can't release a patch for 12.13.

[gazoo]

I don't have any satellite cards (in the U.S., using QAM off cable), but I have the same 780g board and Vista. The only thing that's not working is HA in mpeg2, but it is being done in software. HA in H.264, looks great. However, I don't know if the h.264 format of programming on your satellite channels is the same exact profile and format as the ones nicked off p2p h.264 .mkv movies. Those movies play great via video library for me (720p and 1080p)

However, I have an XP 780g Asus board which won't do any HA, but at least it works good with software decoders.

[Pob]

I had a go last night adhering to the "Free Open source Hotwto get DVXA" thread and have the following results.

The BBC HD in LivePreview mode has sound but no picture, despite H264 being switched on in the MPC Video Decoder.
Playing a .TS file that I recorded earlier makes it all go dark and then reboot 15 seconds later, no BSOD, just black and reboot.

SNIP

I experimented a lot with this - the MPC decoders definately will not work with the TS MPeg2 H264 channels or recordings. I had been using the MPC decoder with very good results playing MKV Mpeg4 H264 files - and the hardware acceleration was working in XP!
(Actually MPC does not use HA as such, it passes the whole thing onto the video card, resulting in almost no CPU use, but heavy GPU use. I think this is what may have fried my Northbridge chip!)
This is the issue with HD satellite - you find you cannot use the same setup you have been using for some time, and start experimenting with other decoders, many of which cause more problems. Finding a decoder that does all the files types and is capable of HA is like finding the holy grail!
We are fortunate - GBPVR allows a lot of customisation of the decoders and renderers. But you can never have to much of a good thing, and I would love a further option to specify a decoder for the HD satellite TS files, so we could carry on using the decoders we know for eveything and a separate one for the HD sat channels...

[Pob]

Having returned my Hauppage HD S2 card, and now my Gigabyte motherboard, I have now come to the conclusion that the problems I was having with satellite viewing must be software issues, and not caused by faulty hardware!
Having had to revert to another PC, I decided to put the Compro S350 card into it. Totally different hardware, Nvidia rather than ATI, and a rock-steady PC that has worked for years without problems. Guess what? Started to get the same crashes trying to watch sat TV in GBPVR. Always the same message "PVRX2 has encountered a problem and needs to close" sometimes right away, other times after a few minutes - but nothing logged in event viewer and nothing helpfull in the logs (attached).
The cards own software only found 300 or so channels, when it shoud be more like 1000...
I am beginning to wonder if any PC, with any brand of satellite card, can work without problems. Sat viewing seems so unreliable compared to terrestial TV viewing - I don't think I've ever had a crash watching terrestial...

[sub]

Satellite viewing can be as smooth as DVB-T, but there is nothing to say that there isnt something in your particular broadcaster's streams that PVRX2 doesnt like. There can be a lot of variability in the stream the various broadcasters produce.

Its worth trying to determine if its a recording or playback problem. ie, ignore live tv initially - can you reliably record? Can you playback those recordings?

If its looking like a recording problem, the best thing to do is try to spot if its specific transponders that are causing problems, or all those from a specific broadcaster. Once thats established, if someone can supply a 200MB or so full transport stream file, that I can use to try to reproduce the problem here.

[Dava]

I experimented a lot with this - the MPC decoders definately will not work with the TS MPeg2 H264 channels or recordings.

I guess as Gazoo said, it is OK in the US but ISTR that we have 1080i rather than 1080p and as Sub said it could be something specific in the stream.

Last night tried the MPC standalone player on some of the TS recordings that I had made yesterday and they played! I tried them in WMP (9 I think, the default one with clean XP SP2) and they played!

So I reckoned that if I set everything back to "System default" in config, this would use the same set of filters as WMP (as Sub suggested many times). Unfortunately, gbpvr just hangs with a black screen forcing me to terminate it.
The most annoying part is that I cannot even get the lastgraph out of gbpvr to see what it was using.

It seems, for me at least, that this card IS recording, but gbpvr does not like the TS files that it produces as the above happens with both SD and HD. I turned off the "Use internal TS reader" in config but no joy there either.

[martint123]

Although I can't scan properly, my s350 in a pcchips motherboard seems to work reliably.
Scanning with their own software or dvbviewer picks what I guess is the full channel list.

Must admit though, most of our viewing is of recordings rather than live TV which we tend to watch "live on the TV" this may well change when FreeSat HD channels churn out more stuff - like this afternoon with the Olympics.

[Dava]

Although I can't scan properly, my s350 in a pcchips motherboard seems to work reliably.

Hi Martin,

Could you let me know what you have selected for the following so that I can attempt to emulate your success?

Video Renderer
BDA MUX
H.264 Decoder
MPeg2 Decoder
Internal TS reader?
LivePreview mode?

Thanks.

[gazoo]

I guess as Gazoo said, it is OK in the US but ISTR that we have 1080i rather than 1080p and as Sub said it could be something specific in the stream.

Last night tried the MPC standalone player on some of the TS recordings that I had made yesterday and they played! I tried them in WMP (9 I think, the default one with clean XP SP2) and they played!

So I reckoned that if I set everything back to "System default" in config, this would use the same set of filters as WMP (as Sub suggested many times). Unfortunately, gbpvr just hangs with a black screen forcing me to terminate it.
The most annoying part is that I cannot even get the lastgraph out of gbpvr to see what it was using.

It seems, for me at least, that this card IS recording, but gbpvr does not like the TS files that it produces as the above happens with both SD and HD. I turned off the "Use internal TS reader" in config but no joy there either.

Dava,

I had this problem too. It turned out to be that WMP uses vmr7 I think as default, but GBPVR uses whatever you set it to (VMR9, EVR, etc.). You have to use graphedit and drop the movie file into it and see what it's using natively and then switch the renderer out between all the ones available in GBPVR to find out which one of those works. I found that EVR and VMR9 not FSE worked most times. Then you can switch GBPVR renderer to the correct one. Of course, none of the ones might work and you may need to switch codecs again. However, I think I'm using EVR on XP with MPCDecoder and it works. It works with VMR9 too as I recall but then I had an mpeg2 issue with VMR9.

It sucks that it's such a balancing act, but if you mess around with it enough you'll get there.