Quick Freeview and MCE2005 questions

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karll

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#16390 7-Oct-2007 19:35

thanks to the great information on these forums, I have managed to get a MCE2005 machine up and running with a HVR3000 card. Sweet.

So - Now I have a few questions...

The EPG - how exactly do I get this going for the freeview? Does it get downloaded from the satelite broadcast?

Next - Can you still get non-widescreen from freeview - I don't have a weidescreen just yet amd some of the programming on 1 and 2 are 4:3 in widescreen making it super-small on a 4:3 tv! If not - is there any way of zooming in with MCE?

Finally - it seems my radio isn't working on the HVR3000?? Any idea's wy this would be happening? I have the radio option in MCE, but if I click the 'start radio' noting happens!!!

Thanks heaps in advance, and thanks heaps for all the contributors who have got me to this point so far!

Karl

rhysb

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#90002 7-Oct-2007 21:13

"The EPG - how exactly do I get this going for the freeview? Does it get downloaded from the satelite broadcast?"

You cannot get the epg from the DVB-S stream with MCE 2005 or VMC yet, it's slatted for a future VMC update apparently. Until then you can use reven's excellent xmltvnz at www.reven.co.nz which also has some excellent guides for getting it going. Another option that looks promising is to use upsilon's method in this thread http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=34&TopicId=16290&page_no=2

"Can you still get non-widescreen from freeview...is there any way of zooming in with MCE?"

If you have a MCE remote press the i (more) button and you should see a zoom option which allows you to choose from a number of zoom options.

"it seems my radio isn't working on the HVR3000?? Any idea's wy this would be happening? I have the radio option in MCE, but if I click the 'start radio' noting happens!!!"

MCE does not properly support hybrid cards that have an analogue tuner as well as the digital tuner. The radio part on these cards is analogue. There is a hack to get it going, so you could try that if you really need the radio part.

Hope that helps

DrAndrew

6 posts

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#90137 8-Oct-2007 17:24

Hi!
I Just setup the same card with Vista last week, then wiped everything on Saturday to make sure it wasn't a fluke. All going in 1 1/2 hours, not bad from a bean bag looking up at a 42"!
My radio doesn't work either, I do recall at one stage of the first build setting up Analogue TV in MCE, then radio, then changing tv to DVB-T (sat. in our case), and the radio was still their. Vista tends to crash out occasionally if the 'primary' program at the root of the driver cd/download for the 3000 is set to 'force primary'. Ive got mine at 'allow overlay', and its all good. After fresh load, i've used the 3.4d drivers. If you have any more questions, while its still fresh in my short term memory...fire away. I should really document all the steps, so others dont have to trawl through pages/forums to get it nice...

CYaBro

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#93382 2-Nov-2007 04:08

Yes please!
I'm just trying to get a couple of Nova-S Plus cards going in Vista Home Premium but not having much luck.
I have got the lastest drivers and the dvbs-reg program.
I copied someone elses settings from this site to make the reg file. Just had to change the 11300000 to 10750000 for the LNB settings.
I tested it in WinTV first and got all the channels OK so I know the cards and satellite etc are working.
Doing a scan in Media Center finds no services!

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rhysb

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#93396 2-Nov-2007 08:15

Make sure you have Australia selected in the Media Center region settings, rather than NZ.

cyril7

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#93403 2-Nov-2007 08:44

The EPG is transmitted on the satellite with all the programming. There are two streams available, the standard EIT which should work right out of the box, and the mheg5 stream that will require a FreeView specific port to work.

Cyril

rhysb

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#93404 2-Nov-2007 08:51

But unfortunately Media Center cannot read either stream.

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CYaBro

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#93426 2-Nov-2007 11:13

Yup I set it to Australia.
After finding a different set of numbers on here in another thread I actually got it to pick up the channels.
But it picked up the TVNZ transponder about 4 times so in the end had about 55 channels!
Then when I went to go and watch a channel MCE just froze.

Can someone please post the correct figures to use to create the reg file (and how did you come about finding these?)

I know the transponders - 12456 & 12483
Symbol Rate - 22500
Polarity - Horizontal i.e. 1
DisEsq - None - 0
My LNB - 107500000

How do I find out what the rest of the numbers are?
Do I need to install a video decoder like nVidia Purevideo or will it just work with Vista?

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rhysb

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#93432 2-Nov-2007 11:30

CYaBro, these are the settings that I use for generating the reg file

dvbs_freq,dvbs_polarity,dvbs_srate,nit_onid,nit_tsid,nit_nid,DiSEqC_Port, dvbs_LowOsc, dvbs_HighOsc, dvbs_SwitchFreq
12456000, 1, 22500, 47, 22, 1, 0, 11300000, 11300000, 0
12483000, 1, 22500, 47, 21, 1, 0, 11300000, 11300000, 0

There is a lot of very good info in this thread http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=34&TopicId=13287

To get rid of the freezing, you could try setting the PCI latency to 32 in your motherboards bios. I've found that the Hauppauge cards like to have a low PCI latency.

You don't need any third party mpeg decoders with VMC as Microsoft have included a very good one with Premium & Ultimate.

CYaBro

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#93440 2-Nov-2007 11:55

Yea that looks like the same as what I've got now thanks.
How did you find out that the nit_onid,nit_tsid should be 47 / 22 & 47 / 21?

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rhysb

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#93442 2-Nov-2007 11:56

You can get them from the Hauppauge WinTV app

CYaBro

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#93563 3-Nov-2007 01:31

Couldn't find the settings in WinTV anywhere...

Anyway had another go with those settings listed earlier and it all seems to be working fine now!
Got EPG going as well!
I did notice though that while MCE scans for channels it picks up the channels quite a few times and if I don't cancel the scan after it has found them all once I end up with about 55 channels - Most showing at least twice but on different frequencies.
I also noticed that the frequencies change for some of them if I do another scan but one set stays the same.

My PCI latency was already set to 32 in the BIOS

Something else that might help others in setting this up - Make sure when creating the reg file with dvbs-reg that you use the /number option at the end and set it to 5
e.g. dvbs-reg freeview.txt freeview.reg /5
I found that if I let it use the default of 1 then MCE would not pick up any channels.

If anybody needs help getting the EPG working I can help there as I have done it quite a few times now.

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rhysb

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#93582 3-Nov-2007 10:31

Great to hear you got it going

DrAndrew

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#93589 3-Nov-2007 11:49

What are you using for epg? tvxb or reven? I only ask 'cause my tv2 is out by a day with tvxb sometimes, and shortland street didn't record last night, which led to trouble in the house...:)

rhysb

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#93606 3-Nov-2007 16:25

Not too sure if you're asking me or CyaBro, but I use xmltvnz 3.0.0.9 running on a seperate Win2k3 std server. Runs rock solid and makes it easy to re-setup the Media Center as I don't have to re-do the epg every time.

CYaBro

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#93629 3-Nov-2007 22:19

I'm using the Freeview file from http://epg.pvr.geek.nz/epg
There is a post on here somewhere that had the link and also a batch file to grab the xml file (using wget), unzip it (gzip) and put it in the correct place for BladeRunner to then convert to guide.bin for MCE.
Getting Bladerunner to work with Vista MCE is a bit of a pain but only has to be done once. Found instructions for this on Revens XMLTVNZ site and just subtituted the xmltvnz bit with the above.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.