Watch Freesat in 4 rooms. What to do?

miker1

miker1

miker1

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Hi,

As my Sky+ subscription is ending soon, I want to extend the functionality to multiple rooms. Theoretically 3 different programs at one time.

I am, sadly, not a Linux junkie - though I have been programming mainframes since '79 [Oh I am SO old.... :D ]

I wonder whether you folks could suggest the best way to extend my system and what hardware/software would be needed.

Links will do.

I currently have a 2 lnb dish which will be easy to upgrade to more, though the actual extra cabling will have to use a different route [due to an extension :{ ].

The house is fully gigabit networked and I have TV's or PCs for viewing.

Cheers

Mike
 
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you need at minimum a quad lnb (better to have an octo one though so 2 feeds to every room so you can record one whilst watching another imo).

you then need to run a cable (single or dual depending on the one you go for) from the lnb to each room.

you then need to connect said cable to a sat tuner whether that be in a set top box or in a pc.

imo the cheapest and easiest way to do it would be using freesat boxes available for cheap these days rather than a pc with a tuner and software.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/search?action=search&keywords=freesat

theres boxes available there for £5
 
To watch 4 different channels, you need a Quad-LNB. To record too, you need more.

You've then got a couple of options - firstly, run a cable to each room, and buy a box for each room.

Secondly, set up a single PC with tuner cards, and use something like XBMC in all the end locations - this can be PCs, Android/iOS boxes/phones/tablets, Raspberry Pi's, and combine your live/recorded TV with your other movies, tv shows and music, in one easy-to-use interface.

By going the PC route, you only need 4 tuners to be able to watch & record every single channel - each tuner will tune to one of the 4 different polarisation options, and then will use the single tuner for any channel on that polarisation.
 
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Confused said:
- each tuner will tune to one of the 4 different polarisation options, and then will use the single tuner for any channel on that polarisation.
Click to expand...

Polarisation options?

Is there a link on how to us a Pi like this [I also see comments about OCing them too]

So Sat-->PC----X4 Pi's [or whatever]

PC - what is the min spec [I assume a lot of disc space :>}] to potentially allow 3 rooms at a time watching diff progs?
 
miker1 said:
PC - what is the min spec [I assume a lot of disc space :>}] to potentially allow 3 rooms at a time watching diff progs?
Click to expand...

If it is linux and tvheadend that you use, then i cannot see the minimum spec on the website.

But if I was building a server for media I would be also thinking of using plex for when i'm out and about. So I would base my minimum spec on that:
A Ubuntu or Slackware PC with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor 2.4 GHz or better. I was thinking of using my i7 out of my main pc and getting the newest one to replace it, overkill and power hungry but hell electricity is a lot cheaper than ppl seem to think.
At least 2GB RAM

The setup I plan to do:
Server with many hard drives (depends on your current level of media).
Running ubuntu server, I find ubuntu the most community supported OS.
mysql database - for a shared xbmc library on all pis, this gives you shared watched status and ability to stop and resume on different devices.
tvheadend - for shared tv.
Minimum of 4 tv tuners. I personally plan to use Black Gold - BGT3620 x 2. As I will be sharing freeview and not freesat.
plex - To share transcoded and streamed media.
nfs and samba shares for media folders and some general storage folders. i.e. whatever you need from NAS. The nfs share is important as the pis will be more responsive with nfs.
Decent network. I have 1Gb throughout the house.

Pi at each TV running openelec, wired network connection (wireless and pi wasn't great, but if you have to the plexbmc might be a solution).
One master PI (or maybe a intel NUC) for the living room. I let this do all the scrapping of any media added to the library for xbmc.

Mobiles etc will all use plex so you can watch your media on the go.

Might be worth considering going fully for plex and dropping xbmc. That way you only have one program maintaining a media library. I rather like xbmc though.
 
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A terrestrial TV aerial is a wideband device, so receives all frequencies at once, it's down to the tuner at the end to pick out what it wants, by selecting one of the 6 multiplexes. So, to tune every Freeview channel, you'd need 6 tuners.

With satellite, the LNB on the dish is a narrowband device, so only tunes to one at a time. The 4 options are: low band/horizontal, high band/vertical, low band/vertical and high band/horizontal.

The tuner sends a signal + power up the cable to select one of these 4 modes. This is why you can't just split a single cable to multiple boxes, like you can with a terrestrial aerial.

So, with 4 tuners, you can have each output on a quad-lnb active at the same time, and receive all channels.


If you have a PC as the back-end for this, you can use a number of either Linux or Windows based software programs to deal with the tuning and recording of the channels. I personally use Argus-TV on Windows Home Server 2011, and run a copy of XBMC on this, I don't have any need for the transcoding feature added by Plex (but XBMC will soon have better support for transcoding)

It's something relatively simple to set up, I had my server up and running within a couple of hours with everything configured and can now watch TV from anywhere in the house.
 
For TV and the option to transcode/stream TV to other devices then look into MediaPortal and WebmediaPortal, saves all this Plex/XBMC etc etc.

If you want nonfreesat Sky there are options to install card readers that will work with your subscription.
 
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