Compro S350 DVB-S advice

fozzybear · 29 Aug 2010 at 22:28

I'm going to pick one of these up tomorrow as they look a bit of a bargain for the price. They also have W7 64bit driver on the Compro site as well.

What I need to know is if I should install the ComproDTV software or use Windows Media Centre. Also, is Mediaportal a good free option? What does that give me that WMC doesn't?

honosuseri · 29 Aug 2010 at 22:57

I have a hauppauge card and I do use MC over its supplied software. By and large MC is very good, especially if u have a MC extender (xbox 360 lets say). It's simple to setup and use and is in effect a "poor mans" sky plus, letting you pause, record and rewind live tv.

My only major gripe is when you record a whole series. It will playback the episode you chose but not move onto the next episode automatically. I make a quick playlist using mediaplayer to get around this and it also helps that other pcs on the network could play these recorded shows thru mediaplayer if they dont have MC.

You may also be interested in tversity, its a free app that allows you to stream your media content.

Hope this helps in some way. Any specific questions just ask

fozzybear · 29 Aug 2010 at 23:00

Yeah, I suspected MC would suit my needs. I don't really want to go messing with something like Mediaportal.

What's the catch with this card? It's around £21 on here yet I can't find too many with a bad thing to say about it!

honosuseri · 29 Aug 2010 at 23:19

I dont know much about it tbh. I think freeview cards are more popular so probably are more expensive as they are a all-in-one solution. To use this card you obviously need a sat dish and to run the cable from the LNB to the card which is going to add to the cost.

Nice feature that it can wake the pc to record btw. What's your setup? Do you already have a sat reciever for your tv?

fozzybear · 29 Aug 2010 at 23:32

No, I've just stopped my Sky subscription and have the satellite dish doing nothing. I thought I may as well get a sat tuner for my PC. My TV aerial is also a bit dodgy which led to me thinking about getting Freesat rather than Freeview.

So basically I'm all set up. I doubt the remote will work with WMC though. I've seen an Emprex 3009URF remote for around £14 as well. I may get that if the bundled one isn't usable.

I was just wondering. I have 2 cables from my dish. Do I NEED to connect both or not?

honosuseri · 29 Aug 2010 at 23:42

Well im pretty sure the sky box will still work, obviously you lose the sky package channels but most freeview sat channels should be good to go.

2 cables from the LNB is good, some sats only have one running from them. That is why i asked what you were planning on setting up. Leave the skybox be and run the other cable to the room the pc is in, you now get double bubble sat tv for 20 odd quid.......not too shabby at all

pepp77 · 29 Aug 2010 at 23:44

I have one of these cards connected to one of my old sky cables (in fact Im just watching MOTD 2 that I recorded earlier on it). I use it with Win 7 x64 Media centre and it works flawlessly. Windows 7 finds the card and installs the correct driver automatically, then when you open MC it sees the card and configures it automatically, you then have about 1000 channels showing, except ITVHD wont work immediately (you need tomake it work, the easiest way I found to do this was with this little piece of software.

I use it in conjunction with my harmony one (setup as a cyberlink remote) and have found that sky is being used less and less.

For the price (I paid £23) it is an awesome card.

Oh and to add - bin the software that comes with it, that is rubbish.

fozzybear · 29 Aug 2010 at 23:58

honosuseri said:
Well im pretty sure the sky box will still work, obviously you lose the sky package channels but most freeview sat channels should be good to go.

2 cables from the LNB is good, some sats only have one running from them. That is why i asked what you were planning on setting up. Leave the skybox be and run the other cable to the room the pc is in, you now get double bubble sat tv for 20 odd quid.......not too shabby at all

No, I've not even got the Sky box anymore. Just the dish cables lying there doing nothing.

The card has two connectors but won't I only need the one because the card only has one tuner?

Thanks for the advice pepp77. I'll definitely use that to get ITVHD.

honosuseri · 30 Aug 2010 at 00:03

Oh i see! Well it might be worth heading over to their website and see if you can download the manual or user guide to see what's what so your ready before you buy.

pepp77 · 30 Aug 2010 at 00:03

fozzybear said:
The card has two connectors but won't I only need the one because the card only has one tuner?

Thanks for the advice pepp77. I'll definitely use that to get ITVHD.

No problem. The card only has one input - the other connector is a loop/pass through connector that I have currently found no use for.

fozzybear · 30 Aug 2010 at 13:13

Picked one up this morning. The scan revealed just less than 500 channels. Is it usually more that that?

Also, I didn't need to run the ITVHD program. It was already available.

Finally, I've downloaded all the icons from 'MyChannelLogo' and everything is working fine.

edit//

ITV1HD should be channel 119 right? It's not there but there are 2 other 'ITV1HD' channels listed. Neither have the 'ITV1HD' logo in the corner of the broadcast screen though.

I've tried using the gimmeITVHD and it says I don't need to use it.

davieg · 30 Aug 2010 at 13:18

Loop/ Pass through is so you can feed the sat feed on again from there, the only problem is if you did this you would be stuck on whatever polarisation (Horizontal/Vertical), the sat tuner was currently on.
Doesn't work to great to be honest but isn't really an issue for the OP as he has a spare sat feed sat around doing nothing if he ever needed another.

Dave.

Edit. Just noticed your question about number of channels, around 500 sounds about right to me. A lot of them will probably be encrypted stuff but theres also plenty of fta stuff around there too.