TV Card advice request

scruffeh

scruffeh

scruffeh

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11 Apr 2006
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504
I have an Amstrad Sky+ box, which is hooked up to a magic eye + small TV upstairs (coaxial cable, I believe). The TV that it is hooked up to is small, so I'd really like to plug the feed into my PC and 26" LCD monitor.

So, my question is: is it possible to get a TV card to allow me to use my PC, instead of my TV? I'd really like to be able to record the feed, and it would be great if I could use the card to pick up BBC HD as well. I've been looking at cards by Hauppauge, but I'm unsure as to whether they would work properly.

Running extra cables from the box is not an option. I'll need to use the existing one, or forget the idea.
 
If you want BBC HD , your only option is a freesat card
I use the Hauppauge Nova-HD-S2 card for doing that very thing (including making recordings)
Sadly OCuk only stock carpy compro cards (which are poop) and dont support the S2 "newer" satallite HD format
 
I've got a compro s350 card and it's fine!
Cost me about £25. Win7 picked it up straight away and BBC HD was found in the automatic channel scan in media center. ITV HD took a bit of work as it's a red button service, but it wasn't too hard at all.

What's poop about compro cards?

btw, with a freesat card, you'll have to run a cable from your sky dish to your PC, but it's worth it. you could even run two cables (a la sky+) and use two cards so you can record 2 channels at once. As you have sky+ you should have some spare sockets on your LNB on the dish.
 
S2 isn't necessary right now. You can always upgrade the card in the future (were talking years probably) if you need to.

S350 has a BDA driver so should work with Win7, which will give you the best TV functionality (incl freeTA HD channels).

Both the S350 and the Nova-S2 are single tuner cards though so not as versatile as a dual tuner card (which win7 supports), although you can use two.

You will need to run a cable (or 2 for dual tuner cards) from the sat dish, assuming that it has a quad LNB. If not then you can buy quad LNBs off t'internet, they're easy to change as long as you can get to the dish easily.

To record a feed from the sky box's output on coax you'd need an analogue tuner card and then tune a channel to the right frequency. Alternatively you can convert a scart output to composite video and record via a 'video in' on a TV (most of them have it) or video capture card, I use this method to record stuff permanently from the sky box. It's actually possible to control a sky STB through media centre if you have a MCE remote. All of this is worse though (picture quality, functionality etc) than having a proper sat card and connecting to the dish, especially as you always have to be watching whatever is being watched on the STB.
 
I'm looking at hooking my PC up to Freesat, as I have an unused Satellite dish right next to my home office. Are you saying that there's no advantage to buying the Hauppauge Nova-HD-S2 over the Compro S350?

monkeyspank said:
ITV HD took a bit of work as it's a red button service, but it wasn't too hard at all.
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on this please? What do you mean by 'a bit of work'? Registry alterations, additional software, etc., or just setting up in the card's software?
 
Depends , they are trialling S2 HD broadcasts now
S2 is is a more effecient method for sending HD streams and will be what will be used
in the next year or so , currently the Eurobird sat is running out of bandwidth for new channels so I could see it changing sooner rather than later.

And to answer the question what is poop about compro cards , the drivers are
they removed some functionality is handling PS streams from their drivers making it very
difficult to get channel scans to work properly.
 
derkaderka said:
And to answer the question what is poop about compro cards , the drivers are
they removed some functionality is handling PS streams from their drivers making it very
difficult to get channel scans to work properly.
Click to expand...

:confused: Don't know about that mate. I didn't even need to install any drivers with win7. I literally put the card in and it showed in media center. Then I did an automatic scan and got loads of channels.
 
Robbie G said:
I'm looking at hooking my PC up to Freesat, as I have an unused Satellite dish right next to my home office. Are you saying that there's no advantage to buying the Hauppauge Nova-HD-S2 over the Compro S350?



Can you elaborate on this please? What do you mean by 'a bit of work'? Registry alterations, additional software, etc., or just setting up in the card's software?
Click to expand...

No advantage that I can see mate! Not until S2 broadcasts start and even when/if they do I'll just get another cheap card IF I need one. Nobody really knows for sure yet, so why spend 3X the price?

as for ITV HD:

do a single transponder scan with these values:
Carrier Frequency is 11427
Symbol Rate is 27500
Polarisation Horizontal.
Then do a channel scan, the one you need comes up on my guide as a channel named 10510 (not the channel number, the channel NAME). It will come up as an audio service only.

Close media center, then start Regedit. Go to,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\TVConfig and change the value in fAllowDvbsMHEG from 0 to 1.

To watch ITV HD I first have to go to BBC HD and then switch to ITV HD. (I have them next to each other in the channel list to make it easy.
You can't record ITV HD as it's not actually a channel as such
 
Last edited:
monkeyspank said:
No advantage that I can see mate! Not until S2 broadcasts start and even when/if they do I'll just get another cheap card IF I need one. Nobody really knows for sure yet, so why spend 3X the price?

as for ITV HD:

do a single transponder scan with these values:
Carrier Frequency is 11427
Symbol Rate is 27500
Polarisation Horizontal.
Then do a channel scan, the one you need comes up on my guide as a channel named 10510 (not the channel number, the channel NAME). It will come up as an audio service only.

Close media center, then start Regedit. Go to,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\TVConfig and change the value in fAllowDvbsMHEG from 0 to 1.

To watch ITV HD I first have to go to BBC HD and then switch to ITV HD. (I have them next to each other in the channel list to make it easy.
You can't record ITV HD as it's not actually a channel as such
Click to expand...

Hmmm , when I want to watch or record BBC HD , I just select that channel
and it comes up straight away.
I can record ITV HD ( tho most of the time there is bugger all on it)
 
ITV HD , has no problems when I try and select it , I just select it thru
either the tv listing page or just enter its channel number ( 82 for me)
I have got my HD's recordings being automatically converted to mkv for me
doing this shaves of about 15-20% of the file size
 
Thanks again to all who replied. Luckily the dish is accessable, and on the same floor as the room with that would have the TV card, so it would be relatively easy to rig it up, so I'll probably take that option. Is it possible to advise me on the type of cable that I would need? I've tried a few searches and it's not 100% clear to me. I'm OK with checking and/or replacing the LMB
 
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