Going to DVB-S

gaby · 2009-03-11, 10:42 PM

After a couple of weeks of farting around with DVB-T, drivers, motherboards, HDMI cables and the like, I have come to the conclusion that freeview signal we receive here is patchy at best. Watching TV is fine but I've had a hard time getting a clean enough signal to record anything longer than an hour and have the .ts file work.

The options are to either get a fancy wideband high gain digital aerial (no guarantee it'll solve our problem) or just fix it first time by getting a dish installed and going with Freesat, which should guarantee a clean signal. Having spent the last 6 hours reading forums, websites and almost contracting a migraine in the process, I now have a few questions relating to Freesat and GBPVR which I hope some of you wonderful, shiny people can help me with.

1. Hardware, in particular a low profile DVB-S/2 card. It's got to fit into my low profile HTPC and ideally needs several receivers on board. I understand that the BlackGold cards are a bit naff and the Compro ones have some issues scanning for channels. Being low profile causes one or two problems. Dual tuner would be ideal but two cards are better than none.

2. Satellite dish. If I want multiple tuners then I need at least a dual LNB, probably a quad for good measure. Are there any obvious gotchas that I'm missing? I must confess that I'm a satellite n00b. My plan is to have this installed professionally. There's an interesting cheat to get a cheap dish install but will that allow me to get the Freesat HD content?

3. Other satellites. I read that Freesat comes over the Astra2 satellite but are there any other satellites that I could have extra LNB's installed to point at that would provide other, free, *unencrypted* content? (I don't want to have to faff around with CAM systems).

4. Freesat EPG. From what I read, the EPG is encoded in a strange way that makes it tricky to read directly. Although this is a work in progress and MythTV have cracked it, I'll need to use XMLTV for this. How has this fared for you?

5. HD. I'm looking forward to BBC HD, I'm ambivalent towards ITV HD but LuxeHD looks like it might interesting. Are there any obvious problems (other than H264 support on Vista) that I might run into? Can I use the "red button" ITV HD with GBPVR?

Sorry for the barrage but my research has still left me with a few unanswered questions

***sub*** · 2009-03-11, 10:54 PM

Quote:1. Hardware, in particular a low profile DVB-S/2 card. It's got to fit into my low profile HTPC and ideally needs several receivers on board. I understand that the BlackGold cards are a bit naff and the Compro ones have some issues scanning for channels. Being low profile causes one or two problems. Dual tuner would be ideal but two cards are better than none.

Its worth noting that S2 and Diseqc support isnt covered by the Microsoft BDA specification so each an every manufacturer implemented it a different way. If you want to use these two features, you pretty much need to use a Hauppauge card. I'm not sure if they have low profile cards though. There is also some diseqc support for Twinhan cards, but no DVB-S2.

Elmo Putney · 2009-03-12, 08:15 AM

1. Personally I fell into the trap of buying a DVB-S2 card in the belief that it would make life easier in the future...its now on ebay. Freesat doesn't need DVB-S2 (yet), I think currently it is better to grab a couple of cheap DVB-S tuners use them either until the standards switch over or the DVB-S2 cards are more widley available/supported/twin tuners..
I just grabbed a Pinnacle 7010ix (2xDVB-s & 2xDVB-t) same as a blackgold 3540...I'm pretty sure its low profile too. Anyway It's doing a fine job in GBPVR.

2. Dish..have a look on ebay there are loads of S*Y mini-dishes with quad LNBs on there, I got a brand new one last week for buy it now Â£24, and it came with cable and bracketry. (where in the uk are you? you may need a bigger one if you're tup North).
I guess the only gotcha is running 1 cable for each tuner into the house, if it helps you can diplex the signal onto the same cable as your freeview aerial.

As a sattelite noob not long ago I did my own dish install and pointing...and I've done a few for friends and family since then. It really isn't hard, just grab a Â£10 sat beeper from maplin. This site helps to get you approx in the correct place:
http://www.dishpointer.com/

I guess the only thing that required a bit of reading was LNB skew.

3. There isn't much english content out there, take a look at http://en.kingofsat.net/

4. -> 5. Can't help much on these I only currently have 1 LNB pointing at Atlantic bird 3 for french channels for wife, the freesat dish is on the wall but not yet hooked up. However I do use xmltv to grab the french listings. It's pretty flawless appart from the odd time the french website it grabs from is down.
On my freeview I ditched the OTA EPG a long time ago in favour of xmltv from radio times, it's simply much better...

gaby · 2009-03-12, 10:29 AM

2 possible cards that might be "modified" to fit in a low profile socket:

Terratec Cinergy S
Cinergy S2 PCI

A hammer and a Dremel may do the job but I'd prefer something I didn't have to modify.

Elmo Putney · 2009-03-13, 03:47 PM

How about a Pinnacle 4000i? Again you'd have to chop a bracket......
There is also a scan issue with gbpvr, but there is a workaround.

gaby · 2009-03-13, 03:55 PM

All good options. Is the BlackGold card really that bad? It seems to fit the bill perfectly but I get the impression that it would cause more problems than it would solve.

martint123 · 2009-03-13, 06:33 PM

Elmo Putney Wrote:I just grabbed a Pinnacle 7010ix (2xDVB-s & 2xDVB-t) same as a blackgold 3540...I'm pretty sure its low profile too. Anyway It's doing a fine job in GBPVR.

A long way from being low profile - it's got 5 (or is it 6 with the remote connector?) connectors on the back panel if nothing else!!

I had a hell of a job fitting it into my standard machine and had to grind off some of the back panel :mad:

Elmo Putney · 2009-03-13, 07:45 PM

Yep my bad, I just looked at the spare one I have here (destined for new zealand) and whilst its lower than my nova-t-500 it aint half height.

liteswap · 2009-04-16, 11:11 AM

Looks like I might be getting a Pinnacle card - specifically, the PCTV Dual PCI - will the Hauppauge remote work with it, does anyone know, or will I need a new remote? If I will, does anyone know the right one to get?! Thanks...

gaby · 2009-04-16, 11:21 AM

I have a Pinnacle dual DVB-T card for sale if you're interested?