XP MCE Freeview vs Sky - hookup and quality question

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › XP MCE Freeview vs Sky - hookup and quality question

geekiegeek

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#15893 13-Sep-2007 15:50

I currently have a sky STP hooked up via S-Video to my capture card in my XP MCE machine. Just wondering how much of a improvement in picture quality I would get moving to a HVR 3000 and Freeview connect directly to the sat.

openmedia

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#86561 13-Sep-2007 16:26

geekiegeek: I currently have a sky STP hooked up via S-Video to my capture card in my XP MCE machine. Just wondering how much of a improvement in picture quality I would get moving to a HVR 3000 and Freeview connect directly to the sat.

Major difference. You can then capture and playback at broadcast quality rather than re-encoding. Most of our myPVR customers who have Sky also have a DVB-S card for direct freeview support.

What type of capture card do you currently have?

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

rhysb

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#86576 13-Sep-2007 17:12

You'll get a big improvement, appart from the fact that freeview has a higher bitrate than sky. With a sat card you can keep the signal digital all the way rather than all those nasty conversions you have to go through with a STB & s-video.

cyril7

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#86578 13-Sep-2007 17:46

Whilst this thread is running, a question for Steve (Openmedia), I have little experience with the media player side of things so have a couple of questions.

Do the DVB-S cards provide the entire TS its currently tuned to to the pci bus to allow the software to strip what sub streams it wants out, or does the card have a TS stripper and only pipe selected elements to the pci bus.

If it does supply the entire TS is it then possible for say the user of the server to be viewing TV1 off the 12483 mux and another on a client elsewhere on the lan to be pulling say MaoriTV or TV2 at the sametime, via the single DVB-S tuner, ie can multiple clients view different program streams within a TS or can only one be pulled off at a time.

My thought is can a single server with two DVB-S cards (one for each mux) supply 3,4,5, maybe more clients with access to any of the Freeview channels simulatiously.

Cyril

mruane

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#86580 13-Sep-2007 18:01

Cyril

Media Portal does precisely that. You can record TV1 and TV2 together at the same time off the one DVB-S card and deliver the content to clients over the network. I guess you can also record anything else from the same transponder, but I have personally only recorded TV1 and TV2 together.

Not all Media systems will do that though. For instance GBPVR cannot do the same thing - it can only record one channel from the mux at a time. I am not sure about MythTV - Steve will be able to answer that.

I am installing a second DVB-S card so that will enable me to record all Freeview transmissions from just two DVB-S cards. Of course, if Freeview take a third transponder then it will be time for a new plan!

Cheers Mike

lchiu7

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#86583 13-Sep-2007 18:11

..

Not all Media systems will do that though. For instance GBPVR cannot do the same thing - it can only record one channel from the mux at a time. I am not sure about MythTV - Steve will be able to answer that.
..

I wonder if this is a feature we should ask Sub to put into gbpvr. I quite like gbpvr and would not be willing to go through the headache of implementing a new PVR

Larry

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geekiegeek

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#86593 13-Sep-2007 19:11

Sounds like it should make a nice change then, currently using a ATI 550pro based card.

Also looking at gbpvr as I think it is able to capture the direct stream where MCE will convert to mpeg (not 100% sure on this). It will also grab the EPG from the Sat as well where as MCE still requires bladerunner and xmltv for guide data.

Hardly watch the sky channels anyway so if the WAF is good it may be goodbye sky.

openmedia

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#86594 13-Sep-2007 19:28

mruane: Cyril

Media Portal does precisely that. You can record TV1 and TV2 together at the same time off the one DVB-S card and deliver the content to clients over the network. I guess you can also record anything else from the same transponder, but I have personally only recorded TV1 and TV2 together.

Not all Media systems will do that though. For instance GBPVR cannot do the same thing - it can only record one channel from the mux at a time. I am not sure about MythTV - Steve will be able to answer that.

I am installing a second DVB-S card so that will enable me to record all Freeview transmissions from just two DVB-S cards. Of course, if Freeview take a third transponder then it will be time for a new plan!

Cheers Mike

The MythTV support for this is still in development, but it is close. There is a hack, but I need a stable setup for my customers.

The cards we use are technisat Skystar2 units that provide the full TS stream.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

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cyril7

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#86741 15-Sep-2007 08:42

Thanks for the heads up on some of the ability of media centres, looks more and more promising.

Cheers
Cyril